[39] Essai physique sur l’Économie animale (1747).
[40] “There have been since the world began three great inventions which have principally given stability to political societies, independent of many other inventions which have enriched and advanced them. The first is the invention of writing, which alone gives human nature the power of transmitting without alteration its laws, its contracts, its annals, and its discoveries. The second is the invention of money, which binds together all the relations between civilised societies. The third is the Economical Table, the result of the other two, which completes them both by perfecting their object; the great discovery of our age, but of which our posterity will reap the benefit.” (Mirabeau, quoted in Wealth of Nations, Book IV, chap. 9.) Baudeau is no less enthusiastic. “These figures,” he writes, “are borrowed with the consent and upon the advice of the great master whose genius first begat the sublime idea of this Tableau. The Tableau gives us such a clear idea of the premier position of the science that all Europe is bound to accept its teaching, to the eternal glory of the invention and the everlasting happiness of mankind.” (P. 867.)
The first edition of the Tableau, of which only a few copies were printed, is missing altogether, but a proof of that edition, corrected by Quesnay himself, was recently discovered in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris by Professor Stephen Bauer, of the University of Bâle. A facsimile was published by the British Economic Association in 1894.
[41] “The discovery of the circulation of wealth in economic societies occupies in the history of the science the same position as is occupied by the discovery of the circulation of the blood in the history of biology.”
[42] Quesnay’s table consists of a number of columns placed in juxtaposition with a number of zigzag lines which cross from one column to another. If he had been living now he would almost certainly have used the graphic method, which would have simplified matters very considerably, and it is somewhat strange that no one has attempted this with his Tableau. Hector Denis has compared his tables with those of the anatomist and traced a parallel between the links of the economical world and the plexus of veins and arteries in the human body.
His explanation of the Tableau by means of mathematical tables gives him a claim to be considered a pioneer of the Mathematical school. Full justice has been done to him in this respect. An article by Bauer in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1890, recognises his claim, and there is another by Oncken in the Economic Journal for June 1896, entitled The Physiocrats as Founders of the Mathematical School. His contemporary Le Trosne is even more emphatic on the point: “Economic science, being a study of measurable objects, is an exact science, and its conclusions may be mathematically tested. What the science lacked was a convenient formula which might be applied to test its general conclusions. Such a formula we now have in the Tableau économique.” (De l’Ordre social, viii, p. 218.)
[43] Turgot, although he is not speaking of the Tableau itself in this case, sums it up admirably in the following: “What the labourers get from the land in addition to what is sufficient to supply their own needs constitutes the only wages fund [note the phrase], which all the other members of society can draw upon in return for their labour. The other members of society, when they buy the commodities which the labourer has produced, simply give him the bare equivalent of what it has cost the labourer to produce them.” (Turgot, vol. i, p. 10.) For a more detailed account see Baudeau, Explication du Tableau économique.
[44] “This movement of commerce from one class to another, and the conditions which give rise to it, are not mere hypotheses. A little reflection will show that they are faithfully copied from nature.” (Quesnay, p. 60.)
[45] They imagined that it was actually so. “On the one hand, we see the productive class living on a series of payments, which are given in return for its labour, and always bearing a close relation to the outlay upon its upkeep. On the other, there is nothing but consumption and annihilation of goods, but no production.” (Quesnay, p. 60.)
[46] “It is impossible not to recognise the right of property as a divine institution, for it has been ordained that this should be the indirect means of perpetuating the work of creation.” (La Rivière, p. 618.) “The order of society presupposes the existence of a third class in society, namely, the proprietors who make preparation for the work of cultivation and who dispense the net product.” (Quesnay, p. 181.)