body does to the soul. Hence the perpetual and necessary If such a Natural Law exists, our intelligence is capable of discovering it. For if not, it would be useless, and the sagacity of the Creator would be at fault. As, therefore, these laws are instituted by the Supreme Being, all men and all states ought to be governed by them. They are immutable and irrefragable, and the best possible laws: therefore necessarily the basis of the most perfect government, and the fundamental rule of all positive laws, which are only for the purpose of upholding Natural Order, evidently the most advantageous for the human race. The evident object of the Creator being the preservation, the increase, the well-being, and the improvement of the race, man necessarily received from his origin not only intelligence, but instincts conformable to that end. Every one feels himself endowed with the triple instincts of well-being, sociability, and justice. He understands that the isolation of the brute is not suitable to his double nature, and that his physical and moral wants urge him to live in the society of his equals, in a state of peace, goodwill, and concord. He also recognizes that other men, having the same wants as himself, cannot have less rights than himself, and therefore he is bound to respect this right, so that other men may observe a similar obligation towards him. These ideas, the products of reason, the necessity of work, the necessity of society, and the necessity of justice, imply three others Liberty, Property, and Authority, which are the three essential terms of all Social Order. How could man understand the necessity of labour to obey the irresistible instinct of his preservation and well being, without conceiving at the same time that the instrument of labour, the physical and intellectual qualities with which he is endowed by nature, belongs to him exclusively, without perceiving that he is master, and the absolute proprietor of his person that he is born and should remain free? But the idea of liberty cannot spring up in the mind without. associating with it that of property, in the absence of which the first would only represent an illusory right, without an object. The freedom the individual has of acquiring useful things by labour, supposes necessarily that of preserving them, of enjoying them, and of disposing them without reserve, and also of bequeathing them to his family, who prolong his existence indefinitely. Thus liberty, conceived in this manner, becomes property, which may be conceived in two aspects as it regards moveable goods, or the earth, which is the source from which labour ought to draw them. At first property was principally moveable. But when the cultivation of the earth was necessary for the preservation, increase, and improvement of the race, individual appropriation of the soil became necessary, because no other system is so proper to draw from the earth all the mass of utilities it can produce; and secondly, because the collective constitution of property would have produced many inconveniences as to the sharing of the fruits, which would not arise from the division of the land, by which the rights of each are fixed in a clear and definite manner. The law of nature which permits every one to do what is most advantageous for himself, on the sole condition of not injuring any one else, was not violated by the first cultivator enclosing, labouring, sowing, and incorporating his labour with the soil, so that a portion of his moveable wealth, so to say, increased its value in a manner almost fabulous. This act was eminently just, because it was useful to himself and to the whole society. This did not diminish the natural right of man to labour to live, but, on the contrary, made it less precarious, much more certain and profitable. Without the prodigious! increase of subsistence by agriculture, from which came gradually the difference of professions, and the division of labour, it would be impossible to arrive at the providential development of the human mind in the triple domain of industry, art, and science. Property in land, therefore, is the necessary and legitimate consequence of personal and moveable property. Every man, then, has centred in him by the Laws of Providence certain Rights and Duties: the right of enjoying himself to the utmost of his capacity, and the duty of respecting similar rights in others. The perfect respect and protection of reciprocal rights and duties conduces to production in the highest degree, and the obtaining the greatest amount of physical enjoyments. The Physiocrates, then, placed absolute freedom, or property, as the fundamental right of man,- freedom of Person,-freedom of Opinion-and freedom of Contract, or Exchange; and the violation of these as contrary to the Law of Providence, and therefore the cause of all evil to man. Quesnay's first publication, Le Droit Naturel, contains a general inquiry into these natural rights; and he afterwards, in another, called "Maximes générales du Gouvernment économique d'un Royaume agricole," endeavoured to lay down, in a series of thirty 1 maxims or fundamental general principles, the whole basis of ausge the Economy of Society. The 23rd of these declares that a nation suffers no loss by trading with foreigners. The 24th o declares the fallacy of the doctrine of the Balance of Trade. The 25th says, "Qu'on maintienne l'entière liberté de commerce; car la police du commerce interieur et exterieur la plus sure, la plus exacte, la plus profitable à la nation et à l'état consiste dans la pleine liberté de la concurrence." In these three maxims were contained the entire overthrow of the existing system of Political Economy, which Quesnay and his followers developed, and, notwithstanding certain errors and shortcomings mentioned below, they are unquestionably entitled to be considered as the founders of the science of Political Economy. 23. We shall now endeavour to give an outline of the Physiocrate system, reserving a more particular examination of separate doctrines for a future chapter. In the Mercantile System, gold and silver only were held to be wealth and the wealth of a country was estimated by the quantity of gold and silver it could accumulate. The Physiocrates held that man could only preserve himself on the earth by obtaining from it those useful and agreeable objects which preserve us from pain and death. These useful and agreeable products were called biens, goods, and are all composed of natural products. So long as persons or tribes lived in a state of isolation, and themselves consumed the things they produced, these products were called simply biens. A man living by himself would live on his produce, and would estimate various things only by their use to him. He would regulate the extent of his culture by his consumption, and he would not work to produce anything useless to him. But when men came to live in society, they would find that they had numerous wants, which they could not satisfy by means of their own products directly. And as this is the case with all men, they would find it advantageous to exchange some of their own products, which were in excess of their own wants, for the products of others which they require. When these biens, or products then, and when only, are exchanged they become WEALTH. The Physiocrates unanimously held that the quality of wealth sprung out of an Exchange. The Physiocrates exclusively restricted the term WEALTH) Au to the products of the earth, which were brought into commerce, or exchanged. Thus they held the principle of Wealth to reside exclusively in exchangeability. They then laid it down as a fundamental principle that all Wealth comes from the earth. M The earth only gives products which have the physical qualities Jef necessary to satisfy our wants. But in society they acquire at dui new quality which springs from the communication of men with each other: this is exchange, which attributes VALUE to them. This Value is a quality only relative and accidental, not absolute and inherent in them. It is, therefore, only commerce which causes Value: and value is the relation which exists between two products which are exchanged. The Physiocrates divided labour into PRODUCTIVE, and STERILE OF UNPRODUCTIVE. They defined Productive labour to be only that employed in obtaining the rude products from the earth; or that employed in increasing the quantity of rude produce. This labour extended over three kingdoms, the animal, vegetable, and mineral, and under it were included all agriculturists, hunters, miners, quarriers, fishers, wood-cutters, &c. They called this kind of Labour productive, because they alleged that it was the only labour which added to the Wealth of the Nation, or the quantity of products. They maintained that this was the only kind of labour which left a surplus after defraying its own cost. The excess of the natural products obhautained every year from the earth, above the quantity of them તલ required to defray the cost of obtaining them, was called the Produit Net, and they alleged that all other classes of society are maintained out of it, and its Value was the sole Revenue, or annual income, of the State, and the sole increase of national wealth. But this rude produce is scarcely ever in a fit state, or in a fit position, to be used by men. It has to be fashioned, and manufactured, and transported from place to place, and perhaps sold and resold more than once, before it is ultimately used. use. All this intermediate labour employed between the original producer and the ultimate buyer, the Physiocrates denominated as STERILE, or UNPRODUCTIVE, and classed under DISTRIBUTION. All products obtained from the earth were destined for human The person who used them was called the CONSUMER. But as the Science dealt only with products which were brought into commerce, all who used what they themselves produced were excluded from consideration. Therefore the Consumer was the final purchaser, and the Physiocrates called him the Acheteur Consommateur. Hence the Consumer was the person for whose benefit all the preceding operations took place. Production was only for the sake of consumption, and consumption was the measure of reproduction, because products which remain without consumption degenerate into superfluities without value. The complete passage of a product from the original producer through all the intermediate stages to the consumer, the Physiocrates designated as COMMERCE, or an EXCHANGE. And as originally any man who wished to consume, or enjoy, any product, must have some product of his own to give to purchase it, he also was a producer in his turn. Hence, in an Exchange, things are consumed on each side. An exchange has only two essential terms a Producer and a Consumer. These are the only two sorts of men necessary to Commerce, the first seller and the last buyer-consumer; and they often exchange directly between themselves without any intermediate agents. All intermediate persons who transported the product from place to place, or sold and resold it, the Physiocrates termed |