POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



delineate clearly before his view the object he w 



>ystem was probably suggested by the 

 merchants whom he consulted. It is now generally 

 known by the epithet mercantile, sometimes also by the 

 name CtUMrtum, Not thai Colbert was its author, or 

 unfolded it in any publication; but because lie was 

 beyond comparison the most illustrious of its profes- 

 sors ; because, notwithstanding the errors of his theo- 

 ry, the applications he deduced from it were highly 

 advantageous; and because, among the numerous wri- 

 ters who have maintained the same opinion, there is 

 not one who has shown enough of talent even to fix his 

 name in the reader's memory. It is but just, how- 

 ever, to separate the mercantile system altogether from 

 the name of Colbert. It was a system invented by 

 trading subjects, not by citizens ; it was a system 

 adopted by all the ministers of absolute governments, 

 when they happened to take the trouble of thinking 

 on finance, and Colbert had no other share in the mat- 

 ter than that of having followed it without reforming it. 



After long treating commerce with haughty con- 

 tempt, governments had at length discovered in it one 

 of the most abundant sources of national wealth. All 

 the great fortunes in their states did not indeed belong 

 exclusively to merchants; but when, overtaken by sud- 

 den necessity they wished to levy large sums at once, 

 merchants alone could supply them. Proprietors of 

 land might possess immense revenues, manufacturers 

 might cause immense labours to be executed ; but nei- 

 ther of them could dispose of any more than their 

 income or annual produce. In a case of need, mer- 

 chants alone offered their whole fortune to the govern- 

 ment. As their capital was entirely represented by 

 commodities already prepared for consumption, by 

 merchandise destined for the immediate use of the 

 market to which it had been carried, they could sell it 

 at an hour's warning, and realize the required sum with 

 smaller loss than any other class of citizens. Mer- 

 chants, therefore, found means to make themselves be 

 listened to, because they had in some sort the com- 

 mand of all the money in the state, and were at the 

 flame time nearly independent of authority being 

 able, in general, to hide from the attacks of despotism 

 a property of unknown amount, and transport it with 

 their persons, to a foreign country, at a moment's no- 

 tice. 



Governments would gladly have increased the mer- 

 chant's profit, on condition of obtaining a share of it. Im- 

 agining that nothing more was necessary than to second 

 each other's views, they offered him force to support in- 

 dustry; and since the ad vantage of the merchant consists 

 in selling dear and buying cheap, they thought it would 

 be an effectual protection to commerce, if the means 

 .were afforded of selling still dearer and buying still 

 cheaper. The merchants whom they consulted eager- 

 Jy grasped at this proposal ; and thus was founded the 

 mercantile system. Antonio de Leyva, Fernando de 

 Gonzago, and the Duke of Alva, viceroys of Charles 

 V. and his descendents the rapacious inventors of so 

 many monopolies had no other notion of political eco- 

 nomy. But when it was attempted to reduce this me- 

 thodical robbery of consumers into a system; when de- 

 liberative assemblies were occupied with it ; when Col- 

 bert consulted corporations ; when the people at last 

 began to perceive the true state of the case, it became 

 necessary to find out a more honourable basis for such 

 transactions ; it became necessary not only to study 

 the advantage of financiers and merchants, but also that 

 of the nation ; for the calculations of self-interest 



cannot show themselves in open day, and the first be- I'olitic*! 

 nefit of publicity is to impose tilence on base senti. R 

 ments 



Under these circumstance*, the mercantile system 

 was moulded into a plausible form ; and doubtless it 

 must have been plausible, since, even till our own times, 

 it continued to seduce the greater part of practical men 

 employed in trade and finance. Wealth, said those 

 earliest economists, is money : the two words were re- 

 ceived into universal use as almost entirely synonymous ; 

 no one dreamed of questioning the identity of money 

 and wealth. Money, they said, disposes of men's labour, 

 and of all its fruits. It is money which produce's those 

 fruits; it is by means of money that industry continues 

 in a nation ; to its influence, each individual owes his 

 subsistence and the continuation of his life. Money is 

 especially necessary in the relation of one state to ano- 

 ther. It supports war, and forms the strength of ar- 

 mies. The state which has it, rules over that which 

 has it not. The whole science of political economy 

 ought, therefore, to have for its object the increase of 

 money in a nation. But the money possessed by a 

 nation cannot be augmented in quantity, except by the 

 working of mines, if the nation has any ; or by foreign 

 trade, if it has none. All the exchanges carried on 

 within a country, all the purchases and sales which take 

 place among Englishmen, for instance, do not increase 

 the specie contained within the shores of England by a 

 single penny. Hence it is necessary to find means of 

 importing money from other countries ; and trade alone 

 can do this, by selling much to foreigners, and buying 

 little from them. For in the same way as each mer- 

 chant, in settling with his correspondent, sees at the 

 year's end whether he has sold more than he has bought, 

 and finds himself accordingly creditor or debtor by a 

 balance account which must be paid in money ; so 

 likewise a nation, by summing up all its purchases and 

 all its sales with each nation, or with all together, would 

 find itself every year creditor or debtor by a commer- 

 cial balance which must be paid in money. If the 

 country pay this balance, it will constantly grow poor- 

 er ; if it receive the balance, it will constantly grow 

 richer. 



For a century, the mercantile system was universally 

 adopted by cabinets ; universally favoured by traders 

 and chambers of commerce ; universally expounded by 

 writers, as if it had been proved by the most unex- 

 ceptionable demonstration, no one deeming it worth 

 while to establish it by new proofs ; when, after the 

 middle of the eighteenth century, Quesnay opposed 

 to it his Tableau Ecoitomique, afterwards expounded by 

 Mirabeau and the Abbe de Riviere, enlarged by Dupont 

 de Nemours, and adopted by a numerous sect, which 

 arose in France, under the name of Economists. In 

 Italy, too, this sect gained some distinguished partisans. 

 Its followers have written more about the science than 

 those of any other sect ; yet they have admitted Ques- 

 nay's principles with such blind confidence, and main- 

 tained them with such implicit fidelity, that one is at a 

 loss to discover any difference of principle, or any pro- 

 gress of ideas in their several productions. 



Thus Quesnay founded a second system in political 

 economy, still named the territorial system, or more 

 precisely, the system of the economists. He begins 

 by asserting, that gold and silver the signs of 

 wealth, the means of exchange, the price of all com- 

 modities, do not themselves constitute the wealth 

 of states ; and that no judgment can be formed con- 

 cerning the prosperity of a nation, from the abundance 



