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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. V1L, No. 168 



sought refuge from this intolerable pandemonium 

 of perpetual interference in the soothing doctrine 

 of absolute liberty ? The times were ripe for a 

 reaction, — a reaction in every sphere of life, 

 political, religious, economic. In politics this was 

 ushered in by Rousseau, in philosophy by Voltaire 

 and the encyclopedists, in economics by the advent 

 of the physiocrats. The great significance of the 

 physiocrats, as their name denotes, is the belief in 

 the natural order of liberty; their tenets of pro- 

 duit net and imput unique being subordinate doc- 

 trines, which grew out of their endeavor to reha- 

 bilitate agriculture, and bring the dissolute classes 

 back to a sense of primitive simplicity. Just as 

 the mercantilists had laid stress on the national 

 element, applying the principles of domestic 

 economy to political life, so, on the other hand, 

 the physiocrats represented the universal, the cos- 

 mopolitan, the international view. In that con- 

 fused progeny of stoic philosophy and Roman 

 law as nurtured by the continental jurists and 

 philosophers, and known as the law of nature, 

 Rousseau found the life-blood of his contrat 

 social, the support of his revolutionary theories. 

 And the same misconception led Quesnay and 

 Gournay to formulate the laws of industrial 

 society as eternal and immutable truths, which it 

 was the function of man to expound, but which 

 it would be utterly impossible — or, if possible, 

 utterly ruinous — to change or tamper with. 

 Laissez-faire, laissez passer, is the key which un- 

 locks all economic puzzles. The ' be quiet ' sys- 

 tem, as Bentham calls it, is the sole panacea for 

 human ills, the only hope of social regeneration. 

 Give free play to the natural laws of liberty and 

 equality, and prosperity will soon shine in all its 

 refulgence on the expanse of national life. 



The great statesman and economist, Turgot, 

 undoubtedly made a move in the right direction 

 in the celebrated six edicts of 1776, which abol- 

 ished the guilds and the corvees, and reformed 

 the corn-laws. The economistes, indeed, were in- 

 defatigable in their opposition to the abuses of the 

 powerful to the privileges of the few. In the 

 place of restriction they demanded freedom, in 

 the place of nationalism they demanded cosmo- 

 politanism, in the place of paternal government 

 they demanded individualism. In every respect 

 the sheer opposites of their predecessors, the 

 physiocrats, beyond all cavil, sounded the just 

 note of discontent with prevailing theories and 

 insl it utions, which had become utterly unsuitable 

 and anomalous ; but their enthusiasm for reaction 

 made them overshoot the mark, and go to the 

 other extreme. An excellent work was done in 

 clearing up the old errors as to the function of 

 government, but it is almost too much to expect 



from the physiocrats the consciousness that they 

 also were going too far. They could not be ex- 

 pected to foresee that the absolute reign of the 

 ' let alone 1 system would produce, as it has done, 

 evils almost as great as those against which they 

 battled. Physiocracy was a timely and necessary 

 movement. The ardor of its advocates in the 

 search for economic laws enabled them to throw 

 great light on the subjects of the division of labor, 

 capital, wages, interest, and profits ; and the only 

 fault that can be found with them is, that, in un- 

 duly exaggerating the possibility of individual 

 self-interest as an emanation of natural law, they 

 laid the germs of a doctrine which was in future 

 decades to prove an obstacle to a well-rounded 

 social reform. 



5. It is well known that Adam Smith, the 

 greatest of all economists, owed much to the 

 physiocrats, and that he was for some time a 

 disciple of Quesnay. Many portions of the 

 4 Wealth of nations,' in fact, are translations of 

 and excerpts from the French writers ; although 

 Smith, of course, opposed their minor doctrines 

 of the sole productivity of agriculture, and of the 

 single tax on land, — a project which had already 

 been formulated in the preceding century by John 

 Locke. But Smith was far more than a slavish 

 follower of the physiocrats. He took, indeed, 

 many thoughts which he found in other authors, 

 English as well as French ; but he individualized 

 their passing remarks, he placed them in such a 

 connection that they became invested with a new 

 significance, he clothed them in such a garb that 

 they must henceforth be regarded as his own 

 progeny. And this, after all, was a work of 

 genius, for it is given to no man to be entirely 

 original : every one is the product of the times, of 

 the Zeitgeist, and the ideas of the period are un- 

 consciously reflected in the individual. So with 

 the idea of liberty in Smith : he too was feeling 

 the indefinable influence of the new current of 

 thought, already partly expressed in Hume and 

 Cantillon. Had he never seen the physiocrats, 

 his ideas on liberty would have been the same, for 

 both were an unconscious emanation of the spirit 

 of the age. 



Smith's thoughts were formed on the very 

 threshold of the industrial revolution. In 1758 

 James Brindley built the first canal between Liver- 

 pool and Manchester, in 1769 the barber Ark- 

 wright re-discovered Wyatt's method of roller- 

 spinning, in 1770 Hargreaves perfected the spin- 

 ning-jenny, in 1776 Crompton patented his mule 

 founded on the water-frame, in 1765 Watt dis- 

 covered the use of steam as a motor power, and 

 in 1785 Cartwright invented the jDOwer-loom. The 

 house system of industry, which had supplanted 



