[83] Quesnay, Maximes, i. The Physiocrats were in favour of a national assembly, but would give it no legislative power. It was to be just a council of State concerned chiefly with public works and with the apportionment of the burden of taxation. See M. Esmein’s mémoire on the proposed National Assembly of the Physiocrats (Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 1904).
[84] “The personal despotism will only be the legal despotism of an obvious and essential order. In legal despotism the obviousness of a law demands obedience before the monarch enjoins it. Euclid is a veritable despot, and the geometrical truths that he enunciates are really despotic laws. The legal and personal despotism of the legislator are one and the same. Together they are irresistible.” (Mercier de la Rivière, pp. 460-471.) This despotism is really not unlike that of Comte, who remarks that there is no question of liberty of conscience in geometry.
[85] “On the contrary,” says Quesnay in a letter to Mirabeau, “this despotism is a sufficient guarantee against the abuse of power.”
[86] “That is an abominable absurdity,” says Baudeau, “for on this reckoning a mere majority vote would be sufficient to justify parricide.”
Is it necessary to point out that this is exactly the reverse of the view held by interventionists and socialists of these later times, who think that the mission of the State is to redress the grievances caused by natural laws?
[87] “This single supreme will which exercises supreme power is not, strictly speaking, a human will at all. It is just the voice of nature—the will of God. The Chinese are the only people whose philosophy seems to have got hold of this supreme truth, and they regard their emperor as the eldest son of God.” (Baudeau, p. 798.)
[88] Some writers—for example, Pantaleoni in his introduction to Arthur Labriola’s book, Le Dottrine economiche di Quesnay—seem to think that the Physiocratic criticism proved fatal to feudal society, just as the socialistic criticism of the present time is undermining the bourgeois society. Politically this is true enough, for the Physiocrats advocated the establishment of a single supreme monarch with undivided authority. Economically it is incorrect, for their conception even of sovereignty and taxation is impregnated with feudal ideas.
[89] Dupont, Discours en tête des Œuvres de Quesnay, vol. i, p. 35.
[90] Ibid. p. 22.
[91] Turgot, who is less inclined to favour agriculture, thinks that certain royal privileges must be granted before manufacturers can compete with agriculture (Œuvres, vol. i, p. 360).