Unlike the other Physiocrats, who swore only by Dr. Quesnay, Turgot owed a great deal to a prominent business man, Vincent de Gournay, who at a later date became the Intendant of Commerce. Gournay died in 1759, at the early age of forty-seven. Of Gournay we know next to nothing beyond what Turgot says of him in his eulogy (See Schelle, Vincent de Gournay, 1897).
Bibliography. Books dealing with the Physiocratic system, both in French and other languages, are fairly numerous. A very detailed account of these may be found in M. Weulersse’s work, Le Mouvement physiocratique en France de 1756 à 1770, published in 1910, which also contains a very complete exposition of the Physiocratic doctrine. In English there is a succinct account of the system in Higgs’ Physiocrats (1897).
[10] Especially in the celebrated pamphlet, L’Homme aux Quarante Écus.
[11] J. J. Rousseau, the author of the Contrat Social (1762), was a contemporary of the Physiocrats, but he never became a member of the school. Mirabeau’s attempt to win his allegiance proved a failure. The “natural order” and the “social contract” seem incompatible, for the natural and spontaneous can never be the subject of contract. One might even be tempted to think that Rousseau’s celebrated theory was formulated in opposition to Physiocracy, unless we remembered that the social contract theory is much older than Rousseau’s work. Traces of the same idea may be found in many writings, especially those inspired by Calvinism. To Rousseau the social question seemed to be a kind of mathematical problem, and any proposed solution must satisfy certain complicated conditions, which are formulated thus: “To find a form of association which protects with the whole common force the person and property of each associate, and in virtue of which everyone, while uniting himself to all, obeys only himself and remains as free as before.” Nothing could well be further from the Physiocratic view. Their belief was that there was nothing to find and nothing to create. The “natural order” was self-evident.
It is true that Rousseau was an equally enthusiastic believer in a natural order, in the voice of nature, and in the native kindness of mankind. “The eternal laws of nature and order have a real existence. For the wise they serve as positive laws, and they are engraved on the innermost tablets of the heart by both conscience and reason.” (Émile, Book V.) The language is identical with that of the Physiocrats. But there is this great difference. Rousseau thought that the state of nature had been denaturalised by social and especially by political institutions, including, of course, private property; and his chief desire was to give back to the people the equivalent of what they had lost. The “social contract” is just an attempt to secure this. The Physiocrats, on the other hand, regarded the institution of private property as the perfect bloom of the “natural order.” Its beauty has perhaps suffered at the hands of turbulent Governments, but let Governments be removed and the “natural order” will at once resume its usual course.
There is also this other prime difference. The Physiocrats regarded interest and duty as one and the same thing, for by following his own interest the individual is also furthering the good of everybody else. To Rousseau they seemed antagonistic: the former must be overcome by the latter. “Personal interest is always in inverse ratio to duty, and becomes greater the narrower the association, and the less sacred.” (Contrat Social, ii, chap. 3.) In other words, family ties and co-operative associations are stronger than patriotism.
[12] “There is a natural society whose existence is prior to every other human association.… These self-evident principles, which might form the foundation of a perfect constitution, are also self-revealing. They are evident not only to the well-informed student, but also to the simple savage as he issues from the lap of nature.” (Dupont, vol. i, p. 341.) Some Physiocrats even seem inclined to the belief that this “natural order” has actually existed in the past and that men lost it through their own remissness. Dupont de Nemours mournfully asks: “How have the people fallen from that state of felicity in which they lived in those far-off, happy days? How is it that they failed to appreciate the natural order?” But even when interpreted in this fashion it had no resemblance to a savage state. It must rather be identified with the Golden Age of the ancients or the Eden of Holy Scripture. It is a lost Paradise which we must seek to regain.
The view is not peculiar to the Physiocrats, but it is interesting to note how unfamiliar they were with the modern idea of evolutionary progress.
[13] Mercier de la Rivière, vol. ii, p. 615. “Natural right is indeterminate in a state of nature [note the paradox]. The right only appears when justice and labour have been established.” (Quesnay, p. 43.)
[14] “By entering society and making conventions for their mutual advantage men increase the scope of natural right without incurring any restriction of their liberties, for this is just the state of things that enlightened reason would have chosen.” (Quesnay, pp. 43, 44.)