[24] Dialogues sur les Artisans.
[25] Mercier de la Rivière, vol. ii, p. 617.
[26] The origin of the famous formula is uncertain. Several of the Physiocrats, especially Mirabeau and Mercier de la Rivière, assign it to Vincent de Gournay, but Turgot, the friend and biographer of Vincent de Gournay, attributes it, under a slightly different form, laissez-nous faire, to Le Gendre, a merchant who was a contemporary of Colbert. Oncken thinks that the credit must go to the Marquis d’Argenson, who employed the term in his Mémoires as early as the year 1736. The formula itself is quite commonplace. It only became important when it was adopted as the motto of a famous school of thinkers, so that this kind of research has no great interest. For a discussion of this trivial question, see the work of M. Schelle, Vincent de Gournay (1897), and especially Oncken’s Die Maxime Laissez-faire et Laissez-passer (Berne, 1886).
[27] “The prosperity of mankind is bound up with a maximum net product.” (Dupont de Nemours, Origine d’une Science nouvelle, p. 346.)
[28] “Labour applied anywhere except to land is absolutely sterile, for man is not a creator.” (Le Trosne, p. 942.)
“This physical truth that the earth is the source of all commodities is so very evident that none of us can doubt it.” (Le Trosne, Intérêt social.)
“The produce of the soil may be divided into two parts … what remains over is free and disposable, a pure gift given to the cultivator in addition to the return for his outlay and the wages of his labour.” (Turgot, Réflexions.)
“Raw material is transformed into beautiful and useful objects through the diligence of the artisan, but before his task begins it is necessary that others should supply the raw material and provide the necessary sustenance. When their part is completed others should recompense them and pay them for their trouble. The cultivators, on the other hand, produce their own raw material, whether for use or for consumption, as well as everything that is consumed by others. This is just where the difference between a productive and a sterile class comes in.” (Baudeau, Correspondance avec M. Graslin.)
[29] “A weaver buys food and clothing, giving 150 francs for them, together with a quantity of flax, for which he gives 50 francs. The cloth will be sold for 200 francs, a sum that will cover all expenditure.” (Mercier de la Rivière, vol. ii, p. 598.) “Industry merely superimposes value, but does not create any which did not previously exist.” (Ibid.)
[30] Baudeau, Éphém. ix (1770). One feels that the Physiocrats go too far when they say that “the merchant who sells goods may occasionally prove as useful as the philanthropist who gives them, because want puts a price upon the service of the one just as it does upon the charity of the other.” (Du Marchand de Grains, in the Journal de l’Agriculture, du Commerce, et des Finances, December 1773, quoted in a thesis on the corn trade by M. Curmond, 1900.) We must insist upon the fact that “unproductive” or “sterile” did not by any means signify “useless.” They saw clearly enough that the labour of the weaver who makes linen out of flax or cloth out of wool is at any rate as useful as that of the cultivator who produced the wool and the flax, or rather that the latter’s toil would be perfectly useless without the industry of the former. They also realised that although we may say that agricultural labour is more useful than that of the weaver or the mason, especially when the land is used for raising corn, one cannot say as much when that same land is employed in producing roses, or mulberry trees for rearing silkworms.