Physiocrat

Encyclopdia Britannica Article

Any of a school of economists founded in 18th-century France and characterized chiefly by a

belief that government policy should not interfere with the operation of natural economic laws
and that land is the source of all wealth. It is generally regarded as the first scientific school of
economics.
Physiocracy etymologically denoted the rule of nature, and the physiocrats envisaged a society
in which natural economic and moral laws would have full play and in which positive law would
be in harmony with natural law. They also pictured a predominantly agricultural society and
therefore attacked mercantilism not only for its mass of economic regulations but also for its
emphasis on manufactures and foreign trade. Whereas mercantilists held that each nation must
regulate trade and manufacture to increase its wealth and power, the physiocrats contended that
labour and commerce should be freed from all restraint. Again, whereas mercantilists claimed that
coin and bullion were the essence of wealth, the physiocrats asserted that wealth consisted solely
of the products of the soil.
The origin of these ideas may be traced in numerous works, in France and in Britain, from the end
of the 17th century, but the so-called physiocratic school was founded by Franois Quesnay (q.v.),
court physician to Madame de Pompadour and later to Louis XV. His first publications were in
the field of medicine. His knowledge of the circulation of the blood and his belief in the creative
healing power of nature influenced his later economic analyses. Also, despite a long residence at
Versailles, Quesnay remained a countryman at heart, and his economic ideas were coloured by his
early studies of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. His crowning work and the one that set forth his
views schematically was the Tableau conomique (1758; Economic Picture), which, by deftly
chosen data, demonstrated the economic relation between a workshop and a farm and purported to
prove that the farm alone added to a nation's wealth.
By the early 1750s, Quesnay's rooms at Versailles had become the meeting place of persons
interested in economic and administrative problems. His first important disciple was Victor
Riqueti, Marquis de Mirabeau, who wrote Explication du Tableau conomique (1759;
Explication of the Economic Picture), Thorie de l'impt (1760; Theory of Taxation), and
Philosophie rurale (1763; Rural Philosophy), all elaborations of Quesnay's theories. In 1763 the
young Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours came to Quesnay's notice, and it is this event that
marks the real beginning of the physiocratic school, which was joined, among others, by P.P. le
Mercier de la Rivire (171992), G.F. le Trosne (172880), the abb Nicolas Baudeau (173092),
and the abb P.J.A. Roubaud (173091). The school was popularized by du Pont, who published a
collection of Quesnay's writings under the title La Physiocratie; ou, constitution naturelle du
gouvernement le plus avantageux au genre humain (1767; Physiocracy; or, The Natural
Constitution of the Government Most Advantageous to Humankind), from which the school took
its name. (The followers, however, preferred to be known as conomistes. The term physiocrats

became current only in the 19th century.) Also influential in popularizing the school were
Roubaud, who edited the Gazette du commerce, and Baudeau, who controlled the journal
Ephmrides du citoyen.
By 1768 the physiocratic school was in decline. In 1774, however, shortly before Quesnay died,
the hopes of both school and party were raised by the appointment of Jacques Turgot as
comptroller general. Turgot himself was not a physiocrat, but he had affinities with the school,
and the physiocrats rallied around him. Eventually, accused of putting the government into the
hands of theorists, Turgot was dismissed in 1776, and the leading physiocrats were exiled.
Given their assumptions and the social system that they desired, the physiocrats were logical and
systematic. What they did was to rationalize medieval economic ideals, employing to that end the
more modern philosophical and scientific methods. Hence in their writings there is a strange
blend of conservative and revolutionary thought and, to the modern mind, some inconsistencies.
They asserted in a general way that prices were determined by cost of production and by supply
and demand, but they assumed that there was a constant fair price (bon prix) that obtained under a
regime of free trade. On the other hand, they claimed that government should fix the rate of
interest. Again, they glorified tillage and lauded the cultivators but assigned the net product
(produit net) to the landlords. No wonder, then, that the physiocrats have been variously regarded
as levelers, as liberals, and as feudal reactionaries. Their system did not survive for long. Their
free-trade theories were, however, embodied in the Anglo-French commercial treaty of 1786 and
in the Revolutionary decree of Aug. 29, 1789, freeing the grain trade. The land tax established by
the Revolutionary Constituent Assembly on Dec. 1, 1790, also followed physiocratic precepts, but
the issue of assignats, or paper money, in April 1790 ignored completely their theory of wealth.
Indeed, this last theory soon ceased to hold respect. It had already been attacked by Adam Smith
and was soon to be demolished by David Ricardo. Of greater importance than the conclusions of
the physiocrats was their scientific method, which ironically in other hands and in different
circumstances was destructive of physiocratic doctrines.

To cite this page:

MLA style:
" physiocrat ." Encyclopdia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopdia Britannica Online. 16 Jan.
2009 <http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9059871>.

APA style:
physiocrat . (2009). In Encyclopdia Britannica. Retrieved January 16, 2009, from
Encyclopdia Britannica Online: http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9059871