Mil NATURAL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS :'>:',!> 



cious physician of Louis the Fifteenth, whom even 

 that graceless prince appreciated and called his 

 " thinker," was an eminently practical man, espe- 

 cially conversant with agriculture. As the name 

 taken by his disciples implies, his teaching was, 

 professedly, based upon careful observation of, and 

 induction from, the course of nature, as it bears 

 upon politics. It would hardly be too much to say 

 that we owe to the Physiocrates the modern clear- 

 ness of conviction that the world of human society 

 is as much the theatre of order and definite 

 sequence of cause and effect as the world of extra- 

 human nature ; that there are rules of action, the 

 observance of which brings about prosperity, while 

 their neglect entails ruin, which have nothing to 

 do with the laws of morality or with the ordinances 

 of religion ; and that the wicked who follow these 

 rules will not beg their bread, while the pious who 

 neglect them will. But Quesnay and his followers 

 would have been more than mortal if they had 

 escaped the influence of the spirit of their age ; 

 and though they never fell into the speculative 

 monstrosities of Rousseau, yet, about the time 

 that the latter was occupied with his essay on 

 " Inequality," Quesnay composed that short work 

 entitled " Le Droit Naturel," which is all too 

 largely infected by the d priori method. 



Quesnay begins by laying down the proposition 

 that " Natural Right" may be " vaguely defined '' 

 as " the right which a man has to the things which 



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