Unconnected with the Encyclopædists and unnoticed by Rousseau, there were two men who, without exciting much attention, were then elaborating a system of pure Socialism. Morellet, in his Code de la Nature, preached community in property, capital, dwelling-houses, and all requisite tools for labour, State education, and the distribution of work among members of a community according to their strength, and of the means of subsistence according to their wants. The Government of the State was to be modelled in all respects on that of the family, whose members, though unequally endowed with physical and mental strength, share the income in common. Mably, a financier and man of the world, deeply versed in affairs, adopted these views with enthusiasm, in spite of their apparent unpractical Utopianism.
The school of economists and Physiocrats, as they were called, had in some respects a more immediate influence on the politics of the Revolution. The main point of Quesnay, the head of the school, seems to have been identical with Mr. George's proposition, "that all taxation should be abolished, save a tax upon the value of land." Turgot, in some respects a disciple of Quesnay, succeeded in introducing during his ministry (he became Controller General in 1774, after the accession of Louis XVI. to the throne) some economic reforms into the French Administration, as well as in abolishing some of the most scandalous abuses. He removed, amongst other oppressive forms of taxation, that most infamous of all, the Corvée; he suppressed exclusive industrial corporations or trade-guilds, whose restrictions and monopolies had been one of the many fatal obstacles to the trade of the country. This last reform was hailed in Paris with
