Estudio Economistas Franceses entre ellos Quesnai.

...

Law had indeed influenced French economists like M61on and

Dupr6 de St. Maur.f But Cantillon's work was almost exclusively

the source of the physiocrat doctrine that the application

of capital to agriculture is the sole fountain of aU

wealth. Besides this last representative of English physiocracy,

which was to a good extent a development of mercantilism,!

Hiune's essays (translated in 1754 into French) gave a

proof of the futility of the reigning doctrine of the balance of

trade. But his theory of the creation of wealth hy labor, the

outcome of Sir William Petty's doctrine of its production hy

population, which Cantillon had accepted and Miraheau had

subsequently introduced into his Ami des Sommes (1756), was

refuted hy Quesnay. For in France capital was wanting, and

the increase of population seemed to be the consequence, and

not the cause of it. This divergence from the English doctrine

is therefore to be ascribed to his observations, as set

forth in his articles.

• His suocesBful experiments are described by Henry Fatullo, Essai ntr I'JnUlioration

des Terres, 1768, p. 77.

tin the Ephimerides du Citoyen for 1769, U., p. 67, Dupont de Nemours

regrets that the wise principles and truths found in the works of Culpeper,

Locke, Decker, Child, and especially Joslah Tucker, had not become known

earlier.

tin an article on Cantillon, in the forthcoming DlMonary o/PoUticaZ Eoonomy,

edited by Mr. B. H. Inglis Faigrave, I shall Introduce such proofs as will

indicate his English nationality.

NOTES AND MEMORANDA lOS

The inference he drew was a negative one indeed: that

all economic reform must commence with putting aside all

restrictioDS on the exportation of corn, which occasioned a

want of outlet and the ruin of the rural population. But

such a negative programme could not be prescribed as a

cure for another national distress,— the financial confusion.

Machault, the controller of finances of 1750, was unable to create

order, and after him Silhouette gave a fatal blow to public

credit. His successor in 1760 found the treasury empty.

One vingti^me was raised after another. The parliaments

protested in vain agamst government vexations, but, in spite

of the public calamity, were unable to recommend other measures

than " economy in the necessary expenses."

Plans of financial reform, especially concerning the taille,

had been modelled a long time before. The levelling and

centralizing tendency of Louis XIV.'s administrative policy

had given its stamp to most of them. One of the first of

tbese "systems," the dime royale of Vauban, exhibits the

advantages of a tenth upon all estates whatever. Other

financial reformers were De la Jonchdre, Law, Boulainvilliers,

St. Pierre, and D'Argenson. But their projects,

even when introduced, like St. Pierre's, proved failures. They

were not founded upon a scientific knowledge of the objects

to be taxed, and, when calculated to remove the load from one

class of tax-payers, proved oppressive to another. But a

doctrine of taxation had been developed by Quesnay in his

articles in the JEncyclop&die. He had calculated the amount

and productivity of capital necessary to obtain a sound state

of agriculture. Capital, therefore, in its application to agriculture,

was to him the only means of obtaining a taxable

net produce. By means of this theory of income he could

proceed to build a natural system of finances, not an arbitrary

one, like that of his predecessors.

The letters accompanying the Tableau Economique, which

Quesnay sent to Mirabeau, show that such was the original

character of the physiocratic system. " I have tried," he says,

" to make a fundamental tableau of the economic system

[de Vor dre Sconomique'], ia order to represent consumption

and production in a manner easy of comprehension, and to

104 QUABTEBLY JOUBNAL OF ECONOMICS

permit of a clear judgment of the arrangements and disorders

tbe