Agreeably to this reasoning, the French philosopher gave to transport trade the name of economical trade, which it still retains. This species of commerce, he asserts, is not destined to provide for the wants of the nation that engages in it, but merely to serve the convenience of two foreign nations. The carrying nation acquires from it no other profit than wages, and cannot grow rich except by the saving which economy enables it to make on them.
Quesnay, next adverting to manufactures, considers them an exchange, just the same as commerce; but instead of having in view two present values, their primitive contract is, in his opinion, an exchange of the present against the future. The merchandise produced by the labour of the artisan is but the equivalent of his accumulated wages. During his labour, he had consumed the fruits of the earth, and the work produced by him is nothing but their value.
The economist next directs his attention to agriculture. The labourer appears to him to be in the same condition as the merchant and the artisan. Like the latter, he makes with the earth an exchange of the present against the future. The crops produced by him represent the accumulated value of his labour; they pay his hire, to which he has the same right as the artisan to his wages, or the merchant to his profit. But when this hire has been deducted, there remains a net revenue, which was not be found in manufactures and commerce; it is what the labourer pays the proprietor for the use of his land. This revenue, Quesnay thinks, is of a nature quite different from any other. It is not wages; it is not the result of an exchange; it is the price of the earth's spontaneous labour, the fruit of nature's beneficence; and since it does not represent pre-existent wealth, it alone must be the source of every kind of wealth. Tracing the value of all other commodities, under all its transformations, Quesnay still discovers its first origin in the fruits of the earth. The labours of the husbandman, of the artisan, of the merchant, consume those fruits in the shape of wages and produce them under new forms. The proprietor alone receives them at their source from the hands of nature herself, and by means of them is enabled to pay the wages of all his countrymen, who labour only for him.
This ingenious system totally supplanted that of the merchants. The economists denied the existence of that commercial balance to which their antagonists attached so much importance; they asserted the impossibility of that accumulation of gold and silver which the others expected from it; throughout the nation, they could see only proprietors of land, the sole dispensers of the national fortune; productive workmen, or labourers producing the revenue of the former. and a hired class, in which they ranked merchants also denying to them, as to the artisans, the faculty of producing any thing.
The plans, which these two sects recommended to governments, differed not less than their principles. While the mercantilists wished authority to interfere in every thing, the economists incessantly repeated laissez faire et laissez passer (let every man do as he pleases, and every thing take its course;) for as the public interest consists in the union of all individual interests, individual interest will guide each man more surely to the public interest than any government can do.
An excessive ferment was excited in France by the system of the economists. The government of that nation allowed the people to talk about public affairs, but not to understand them. The discussion, of Quesnay's theory was sufficiently unshackled; but none of the facts or documents in the hands of the administration, were presented to the public eye. In the system of the French economists, it is easy to discern the effects produced by this mixture of ingenious theory and involuntary ignorance. It seduced the people, because they were now for the first time occupied with their own public affairs. But, during these discussions, a free nation, possessed of the right to examine its own public affairs, was producing a system not less ingenious, and much better supported by fact and observation; a system which, after a short struggle, at length cast its predecessors into the shade; for truth always triumphs in the end, over dreams, however brilliant.
Adam Smith, author of this third system, which represents labour as the sole origin of wealth, and economy as the sole means of accumulating it, has, in one sense, carried the science of political economy to perfection, at a single step. Experience, no doubt, has disclosed new truths to us; the experience of late years, in particular, has forced us to make sad discoveries: but in completing the system of Smith, that experience has also confirmed it. Of the various succeeding authors, no one has sought any other theory. Some have applied what he advanced to the administration of different counties; others have confirmed it by new experiments and new observations; some have expanded it by developments, which flow from the principles laid down by him; some have even here and there detected errors in his work; but it has been by following out the truths which he taught and rectifying them by light borrowed from its author. Never did philosopher effect a more complete revolution in any science: for those even who dissent from his doctrine acknowledge his authority; sometimes they attack, solely because they do not understand him; most commonly, they flatter themselves with the belief of still following, even while they contradict him. We shall devote the rest of this article to explain the science which he taught us, though in an order different from his. We shall arrange it under the six following heads: Formation and Progress of Wealth: Territorial Wealth; Commercial Wealth; Money;
Taxes; and Population.
