[8] “The genuine economists are easily depicted. In Dr. Quesnay they have a common master; a common doctrine in the Philosophie rurale and the Analyse économique. Their classical literature is summed up in the generic term Physiocracy. In the Tableau économique they possess a formula with technical terms as precise as old Chinese characters.” This definition of the Physiocrats, given by one of themselves, the Abbé Baudeau (Éphémérides, April 1776)—writing, we may be sure, in no malicious spirit—shows us that the school possessed not a little of the dogmatism of the Chinee.
[9] The first not only in chronological order but the chief recognised by all was Dr. Quesnay (1694-1774), the physician of Louis XV and of Mme. de Pompadour. He had already published numerous works on medicine, especially the Essai physique sur l’Économie animale (1736) before turning his attention to economic questions and more especially to problems of “rural economy.” His first contributions, the essays on Les Grains and Les Fermiers, which appeared in the Grande Encyclopédie in 1756 and 1757, were followed by his famous Tableau économique in 1758, when he was sixty-four years of age, and in 1760 by his Maximes générales du Gouvernement économique d’un Royaume agricole, which is merely a development of the preceding work.
His writings were not numerous, but his influence, like that of Socrates, disseminated as it was by his disciples, became very considerable.
The best edition of his works is that published by Professor Oncken of Berne, Œuvres économiques et philosophiques de F. Quesnay (Paris and Frankfort, 1888). Our quotations from the founders are taken from Collections des Principaux Économistes, published by Daire.
The Marquis de Mirabeau, father of the great orator of the Revolution, a man of a fiery temperament like his son, published at about the same date as the production of the Tableau his L’Ami des Hommes. This book, which created a great sensation, does not strictly belong to Physiocratic literature, for it ignores the fundamental doctrine of the school. La Théorie de l’Impôt (1760) and La Philosophie rurale (1763), on the other hand, owe their inspiration to Physiocracy.
Mercier de la Rivière, a parliamentary advocate, published L’Ordre natural et essentiel des Sociétés politiques in 1767. Dupont de Nemours refers to this as a “sublime work,” and though it does not, perhaps, deserve that epithet it contains, nevertheless, the code of the Physiocratic doctrine.
Dupont de Nemours, as he is called after his native town published about the same time, 1768, when he was only twenty-nine, a book entitled Physiocratie, ou Constitution essentielle du Gouvernement le plus avantageux au Genre humain. To him we owe the term from which the school took its name—Physiocracy, which signifies “the rule of nature.” But the designation “Physiocrats” was unfortunate and was almost immediately abandoned for “Économistes.” Quesnay and his disciples were the first “Économistes.” It was only much later, when the name “Economist” became generic and useless as a distinctive mark for a special school, that writers made a practice of reverting to the older term “Physiocrat.”
An enthusiastic disciple of Quesnay, Dupont’s rôle was chiefly that of a propagandist of Physiocratic doctrines, and he made little original contribution to the science. At an early date, moreover, the great political events in which he took an active part proved a distraction. He survived all his colleagues, and was the only one of them who lived long enough to witness the Revolution, in which he played a prominent part. He successively became a deputy in the Tiers État, a president of the Constituent Assembly, and later on, under the Directoire, President du Conseil des Anciens. He even assisted in the restoration of the Empire, and political economy was first honoured at the hands of the Institut when he became a member of that body.
In 1777 Le Trosne, an advocate at the Court of Orleans, published a book entitled De l’Intérêt social, par rapport à la Valuer, à la Circulation, à l’Industrie et au Commerce, which is perhaps the best or at least the most strictly economic of all. Mention must also be made of the Abbé Baudeau, who has no less than eighty volumes to his credit, chiefly dealing with the corn trade, but whose principal work is L’Introduction à la Philosophie économique (1771); and of the Abbé Roubaud, afterwards Margrave of Baden, who had the advantage of being not merely a writer but a prince, and who carried out some Physiocratic experiments in some of the villages of his small principality.
We have not yet mentioned the most illustrious member of the school, both in respect of his talent and his position, namely, Turgot (1727-81). His name is generally coupled with that of the Physiocrats, and this classification is sufficiently justified by the similarity of their ideas. Still, as we shall see, in many respects he stands by himself, and bears a close resemblance to Adam Smith. Moreover, he commenced writing before the Physiocrats. His essay on paper money dates from 1748, when he was only twenty-one years of age, but his most important work, Réflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses, belongs to 1766. As the Intendant of Limoges and again as a minister of Louis XVI he possessed the necessary authority to enable him to realise his ideas of economic liberty, which he did by his famous edicts abolishing taxes upon corn passing from one province to another, and by the abolition of the rights of wardenship and privilege.