174 ADAM SMITH. 



clear produce ( ( produit net') in the shape of rent over 

 and above the expense of raising it by payirTg the 

 workman's wages, and replacing with the ordinary 

 profit the capital expended ; that all other labour, as 

 that of manufacturers who fashion the raw produce, of 

 merchants or retail dealers who distribute it, whether 

 raw or worked up, and professional men who do not 

 operate upon produce at all, are, though highly useful, 

 yet wholly and all equally unproductive, because those 

 classes only receive their wages, or the profit of their 

 stock, from the productive class the agriculturists. 

 From this theory he deduced practical inferences all 

 of great importance, but of different degrees of value 

 or accuracy ; that all commerce, both external and in- 

 ternal, both in the raw and manufactured produce of 

 any country, should be left entirely free ; that all in- 

 dustry of every class should be alike unfettered ; that 

 all men should be left to employ their capital and 

 their labour as their own view of their own interest 

 directs them ; that no tax should be imposed on any 

 goods or any labour except a single impost, and that 

 upon the net produce, the rent of land this (the im- 

 pot fonciere) taking the place of all others, and alone 

 being levied to support the state. 



Dr. Quesnay's ingenuity and learning, the boldness 

 of his views, their great simplicity, their originality, 

 all made a powerful impression ; but from these very 

 causes, and still more from the harshness and obscurity 

 of the style in which they were unfolded perhaps 

 one might say enfolded, they were better calculated 

 to find acceptance with the learned few than with the 

 general mass of readers. Upon these few, however, 

 they soon made a deep impression, which was in- 

 creased by their author's simple and amiable manners, 

 his exemplary purity, though living in a corrupt court, 

 and the admirable talent which he had in conversation, 

 of exposing his doctrines, like our Franklin, by the 

 aid of apposite fables or apologues. He became thus 



