The Golden Age of Economic Thought

Joseph Dana Miller

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, November-December 1938]

Joseph Dana Miller was during this period Editor of Land and Freedom. Many of the editorials published were unsigned. It is therefore possible that Miller was not the author of this article, although the content is thought to be consistent with his own perspectives as Editor.

There is no period in history in which there were so great a number of men gifted with real vision as in the time of France immediately preceding the Revolution.

These were the Physiocrats of whom Dr. Francois Quesnay was the titular head and the philosophers who shared their liberal views, but did not subscribe wholly to their economic opinions. Nearly all were believers in natural rights and all were free traders. Dr. Quesnay who was eminent in medicine founded his system on natural laws, but in his contention, shared by his disciples, that agriculture and mining were the sole means of increasing the wealth of a nation he narrowed his concept to a point which prevented its acceptance as a programme for general application.

But he laid stress as did the others upon individualism and freedom. Industry and commerce must be unshackled, and they taught that what served the true interests of the individual served alike the interests of society. As Henry George later expressed it in homely phrase, "Mankind is all hooked and buttoned together." Turgot, who for twenty months filled the post of Finance Minister, and who himself was a physiocrat though standing aloof from them on account of what he regarded as their sectarianism, had written, "It has been too constantly the practice of governments to sacrifice the happiness of individuals to the alleged rights of society. It is forgotten that society is made up of individuals."

It is interesting, too, to note that Turgot united the economic law with the moral law.

It was Gournay who held that competition was the most effective spur to production, and it was he who invented the phrase, "laissez faire, laissez passer." It was Gournay who most vigorously opposed the regulation of the prices of commodities by government.

Quesnay, as leader of the Physiocrats, was regarded with something little short of veneration by his followers. It was Turgot, who by reason of his brief occupancy of the post of Finance Minister, accorded the economists official recognition of their principles.

Turgot's abolition of trade guilds and trade monopolies was the crowning act of his official career. It is doubtful if anything quite so important has been accomplished by any Finance Minister in so short a time. The nobility and the beneficiaries of privilege combined against him and forced him out of office. In this way they were aided by the designing Marie Antoinette and her influence with the weak-minded Louis. But Turgot's fame is secure and if he failed he is only one more of those who have struggled unavailingly against inequality and privilege.

In Turgot was united a wide knowledge and proficiency with a seer-like vision of a redeemed society. He is more like Henry George than any man we know in history.

On one of the earliest papers by Turgot that have come down to us is a treatise on money, and of this his friend, Du Pont de Nemours, said: "If forty years later the majority of the citizens composing the Constitutional Assembly had possessed as much knowledge as Turgot, France might have been saved the Assignats." And he might have added the Revolution as well.

A word regarding Du Pont de Nemours.* He was the equal of his associates in mental power and like them in breath of vision, and it was he that gave the name Physiocratie (the natural order) to the philosophy of this forward looking group with which he was affiliated. He had met Turgot at the home of Quesnay and this acquaintance ripened into a fast friendship which lasted till the death of the Finance Minister in 1781. It was Du Pont who drew up an address to the people of France on Taxation in which he argued that taxation must be direct and levied only on visible objects.

The authorities neglected to mark the spot where Turgot lies buried in Bons, Normandy. But that is of little consequence. His name remains as one of those who glorified the annals of France at a time when the future of the country trembled in the balance.

It is known that in the few last days of his incumbency as Finance Minister he was engaged in working out a system of land taxation. Whether he would have found a solution, or come approximately near it, and whether his plan would have prevented the Revolution and thus perhaps the destinies of the world, who shall say? Certainly, if he had the real solution, no danger would have deterred him. And his disciples, equal to him in courage, would have raised the standard of a world rescued from chaos.

But it was not to be. The machinations of a shallow, intriguing queen and the vacillation of a weak king completed his downfall and Necker stepped into his place. Necker was an advocate of internal tariffs, belonging to the school of Colbert. Turgot had written what to this day is regarded as a forcible presentation for universal free trade. Of this treatise Voltaire said: "I have read Turgot's masterpiece. It seemed to me that I beheld a new heaven and a new earth."

Turgot sought a solution of all economic problems in the natural laws and this was his attitude of mind when scarcely twenty. This was a philosophy unknown to Necker, who, on his advent to power, introduced measures prohibiting the harvesting of grain with a scythe. Other Rooseveltian devices were adopted, such as providing that the size of handkerchiefs should be reduced.

We should not leave one individual of the Physiocratic group unnamed. That is Condorcet, perhaps the most many-sided of these libertarians. Condorcet stood like the others for free trade and the natural rights of man. He believed, like Henry George did, that mankind was inherently good. He was opposed to capital punishment for private crimes, advocated woman suffrage and proportional representation. He believed in a unicameral legislature. None of the Physiocrats, not even Quesnay or Du Pont, had a more complete vision of what a redeemed society might attain. Condorcet is a man mark of in a time when the spirit of freedom was articulate, and when it commanded more influential names than at any time in history.

When Turgot was forced out of office and Necker took his place the stage was set for the Revolution. So passed this brief period in which, like expiring candles, these great souls flashed their message on a decadent nation. Condorcet perished through exposure and Turgot lies in an unmarked grave. In this way France paid her debt to these great souls. In the day of smaller men that were to succeed them these pathfinders on the road to liberty were forgotten. Yet they could have saved France from the ruin that overtook her. Can their teachings yet save America?

Footnote

* This Du Pont is the honored ancestor of the Du Pont family in America. Nor has the family tradition been forgotten. There has not been a time in the history of the Henry George movement in this country when some member of the Du Pont family was not affiliated with the movement in some way.