Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/375

POLITICAL ECONOMY 359 pushing towards an entire change of the existing system, they yet would gladly have avoided political demolition through the exercise of a royal dictatorship, or contemplated it only as the necessary condition of a new and better order of things. But, though marked off by such tendencies from the purely revolutionary sects, their method and funda mental ideas were negative, resting, as they did, essenti ally on the basis of the jus naturx. We shall follow in detail these French developments in their special relation to economic science, and afterwards notice the correspond ing movements in other European countries which showed themselves before the appearance of Adam Smith, or were at least unaffected by his influence. 1. Before Adam Smith. France. The more liberal, as well as more rational, principles put forward by the English thinkers of the new type began, early in the 18th century, to find an echo in France, where the clearer and more vigorous intellects were prepared for their reception by a sense of the great evils which exaggerated mercantilism, serving as instru ment of political ambition, had produced in that country. The impoverished condition of the agricultural population, the oppressive weight and unequal imposition of taxation, and the unsound state of the public finances had produced a general feeling of disquiet, and led several distinguished writers to protest strongly against the policy of Colbert and to demand a complete reform. The most important amongst them was Pierre Boisguillebert, whose whole life was devoted to these controversies. In his statistical writings (Detail do la France sous Ic regne present, 1697; Factum de la France, 1707) he brings out in gloomy colours the dark side of the age of Louis XIV., and in his theoretic works ( Traite de la nature et du commerce das grains ; Dissertations sur la -nature des richesses de V argent et dcs tributs ; and Essai sur la rarete de I argent] he appears as an earnest, even passionate, antagonist of the mercantile school. He insists again and again 011 the fact that national wealth does not consist in gold and silver, but in useful things, foremost among which are the products of agriculture. He even goes so far as to speak of "argent criminel," which from being the slave of trade, as it ought to be, had become its tyrant. He sets the "genuinely French Sully" far above the " Italianizing Colbert," and condemns all arbitrary regulations affecting either foreign or internal commerce, especially as regards the com trade. National wealth does not depend on Governments, whose inter ference does more harm than good ; the natural laws of the economic order of things cannot be violated or neglected with impunity ; the interests of the several classes of society iu a system of freedom are identical, and those of individuals coincide with that of the state. A similar solidarity exists between different nations ; in their eco nomic dealings they are related to the world as individual towns to a nation, and not merely plenty, but peace and harmony, will result from their unfettered intercourse. Men he divides into two classes those who do nothing and enjoy everything, and those who labour from morning to night often without earning a bare subsistence; the latter he would favour in every way. Here we catch the breath of popular sympathy which fills the social atmosphere of the 18th century. He dwells with special emphasis on the claims of agriculture, which had iu France fallen into unmerited neglect, and with a view to its improvement calls for a reform in taxation. He would replace indirect taxes by taxes on income, and would restore the payment of taxes in kind, with the object of securing equality of burden and eliminating every element of the arbitrary. He has some interesting views of a general character : thus he approximates to a correct conception of agricultural rent ; and he points to the order in which human wants follow each other, those of necessity, convenience, comfort, superfluity, and ostentation suc ceeding in the order named, and ceasing in the inverse order to be felt as wealth decreases. The depreciating tone in which Voltaire speaks of Boisguillebert (Siiclc de Louis XIV., chap. 30) is certainly not justified ; he had a great economic talent, and his writings contain important germs of truth. But he appears to have exerted little influence, theoretical or practical, in his own time. The same general line of thought was followed by the illustrious Vauban in his economic tracts, especially that bearing the title of Projet d une dixmc Eoyale, 1707. He is deeply impressed with the deplorable condition of the working classes of France in his day. He urges that the aim of the Government should be the welfare of all orders of the community ; that all are entitled to like favour and furtherance ; that the often despised and wronged lower class is the basis of the social organization ; that labour is the foundation of all wealth, and agriculture the most important species of labour; that the most essential condition of successful industry is freedom ; and that all unnecessary or excessive restrictions on manufactures and commerce should be swept away. He protests in particular against the inequalities of taxation, and the exemptions and privileges enjoyed by the higher ranks. With the exception of some duties on consumption he would abolish all the existing taxes, and substitute for them a single tax on income and land, imparti ally applied to all classes, which he describes under the name of " IJixme Royale," that is to say, a tenth in kind of all agricultural produce, and a tenth of money income chargeable on manufacturers and traders. The liberal and humane spirit of Fenelon led him to aspire after Fenelon. freedom of commerce with foreign nations, and to preach the doc trine that the true superiority of one state over another lies in the number indeed, but also in the morality, intelligence, and indus trious habits of its population. The Telemaque, in which these views were presented in an attractive form, was welcomed and read amongst all ranks and classes, and was thus an effective organ for the propagation of opinion. After these writers there is a marked blank in the field of French economic thought, broken only by the Reflexions Politiques sur Us Finances et le Commerce (1738) of Dutot, a pupil of Law, and the semi-mercantilist Essais Politiques sur le Commerce (1731) of Melon, till we come to the great name of Montesquieu. The Esprit dcs Montes- Lois, so far as it deals with economic subjects, is written upon quieu. the whole from a point of view adverse to the mercantile system, especially in his treatment of money, though in his observations on colonies and elsewhere he falls in with the ideas of that system. His immortal service, however, was not rendered by any special research, but by his enforcement of the doctrine of natural laws regulating social no less than physical phenomena. There is no other thinker of importance on economic subjects in France till the appearance of the physiocrats, which marks an epoch in the history of the science. The heads of the physiocratic school were Francois Physio- Quesnay (1694-1774) and Jean Claude Marie Vincent, crats. sieur de Gournay (1712-1759). The principles of the school had been put forward in 1755 by Cantillon, a French merchant of Irish extraction (Essai sur la nature du Commerce en general), whose biography Jevons has elucidated, and whom he regards as the true founder of political economy; but it was in the hands of Quesnay and Gournay that they acquired a systematic form, and became the creed of a united group of thinkers and practical men, bent on carrying them into action. The members of the group called themselves "les economistes, " but it is more convenient, because unambiguous, to designate them by the name " physiocrates," invented by Dupontde Nemours, who was one of their number. In this name, intended to express the fundamental idea of the school, much more is implied than the subjection of the phenomena of the social, and in particular the economic, world to fixed rela tions of co-existence and succession. This is the positive doctrine which lies at the bottom of all true science. But the law of nature referred to in the title of the sect was something quite different. The theological dogma which represented all the movements of the universe as directed by divine wisdom and benevolence to the production of the greatest possible sum of happiness had been trans formed in the hands of the metaphysicians into the con ception of a jus nature, a harmonious and beneficial code established by the favourite entity of these thinkers, Nature, antecedent to human institutions, and furnishing the model to which they should be made to conform. This idea, which Buckle apparently supposes to have been an invention of Hutcheson s, had come down through Eoman juridical theory from the speculations of Greece. It was taken in hand by the modern negative school from Hobbes to Rousseau, and used as a powerful weapon of assault upon the existing order of society, with which the " natural " order was perpetually contrasted as offering the perfect type from which fact had deplorably diverged. The theory received different applications according to

the diversity of minds or circumstances. By some it was