96 ADAM SMITH. 



posed on any goods or any labour except a single impost, 

 and that upon the net produce, the rent of land this 

 (the impot 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 accept- 

 ance with the learned few than with the general mass of 

 readers. Upon these few, however, they soon made a 

 deep impression, which was increased 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 doc- 

 trines, like our Franklin, by the aid of apposite fables or 

 apologues. He became thus easily the leader, or head of 

 a sect, and he was looked up to by his disciples with the 

 same reverence that the followers of the ancient sages 

 paid to the objects of their veneration. The Marquis of 

 Mirabeau, father of the famous revolutionary leader ; 

 M. Mercier de la Riviere ; M. Dupont de Nemours ; 

 M. Condorcet, and M. Turgot, for some time Controller 

 General of the Finances, were the most celebrated of this 

 school. Their chief died as early as 1774, but they con- 

 tinued to instruct mankind by their writings, which, 

 however ingenious and learned, were almost all deprived 

 of their full effect upon the bulk of readers, by the dry, 

 scholastic, and even crabbed style in which they were 

 composed, and the want of that simple arrangement 

 and that plain manner of unfolding their system which 



