A Physiocratic Digest on Wealth, Agriculture, and the Grain Trade
A Digest of the Œconomical Table
Library records attribute On the Corn Laws to Victor de Riquetti, marquis de Mirabeau, while listing François Quesnay as the author of the Œconomical Table from which the work is digested. Its descriptive title presents it as a digest of extracts from that table, accompanied by explanations, and as an attempt to ascertain and exhibit the source, progress, and employment of riches. It is an English-language work whose catalog subject is the corn laws of Great Britain.
The book therefore brings together two distinct contexts: Quesnay’s physiocratic model of economic circulation and the British question of laws regulating the grain trade. It is not presented as an original treatise by Quesnay, but as an English digest of his table, prepared and explained by Mirabeau.
The Search for the Source of Riches
The work’s stated aim is analytical: to identify where riches originate, how they advance, and how they are used. In plain terms, it is concerned with the origin of wealth, its movement through the economy, and its final employment. This is the central question inherited from Quesnay’s table, and the digest uses extracts and explanations to set out a physiocratic account of wealth.
The title also places that account within discussion of the British corn laws—measures governing the grain trade. The book is thus framed as an application of physiocratic economic reasoning to a concrete policy question, rather than as a purely abstract exposition of Quesnay’s model.
The Three Classes and the Circulation of Wealth
The Œconomical Table was an economic model that divided society into three agents: a proprietary class of landowners; a productive class of agricultural laborers; and a sterile class of artisans and merchants. Production and cash flow begin with the proprietary class because landowners own the land and buy from the other two classes.
The table’s importance lies in its attempt to picture wealth as circulating among interdependent groups rather than as a static hoard. Quesnay, influenced by medical ideas of circulation, treated the movement of money and produce as vital to the economy. His model claimed that only the farm generated a surplus that added to national wealth.
Agriculture as the Only Productive Labor
The physiocratic theory behind the table held that wealth derives solely from land agriculture or land development. For Quesnay and his followers, agricultural labor was the sole source of value; industrial and other non-agricultural work were regarded as unproductive appendages to agricultural labor. Profit in capitalist production was understood as the rent received by the landowner.
The digest’s concern with the source, progress, and employment of riches is therefore tied to a specific claim: that the economy’s productive core is the land, and that the rest of the economy depends on the agricultural surplus. This is why a work addressed to the corn laws would begin from Quesnay’s table rather than from a general theory of trade.
An English Frame for a French Model
The work is described as digested from English translations, and its title addresses the corn laws of Great Britain. It therefore presents Quesnay’s model in an English idiom and directs it toward a British question about grain. The book’s interest lies in showing how physiocratic ideas were extracted, explained, and adapted for an English audience engaged with the regulation of the corn trade.
Catalog metadata gives 1815 as the first publication date. One catalog record describes the work as reprinted for W. Clarke and Sons in 1815, with 110 pages and a height of 21 cm. It also notes that the item is a reproduction of an original from Goldsmiths’ Library, University of London, and supplies Goldsmiths’-Kress no. 21183 and OCLC 16723409; a Thomson Gale electronic reproduction from Farmington Hills, Mich., is dated 2005. Another record gives the phrase “digested from the English translations as printed for W. Owen” and lists Victor de Riquetti, marquis de Mirabeau (1715–1789) in the statement of responsibility, with François Quesnay as author/contributor.
Quesnay, the Tableau, and Later Writing
The source identifies Quesnay as a French economist and physician of the Physiocratic school, born 4 June 1694 and died 16 December 1774. It credits him with publishing the Tableau économique in 1758, which provided the foundations of Physiocratic ideas; the source describes that work as perhaps the first attempt to describe the workings of the economy in an analytical way and as one of the first important contributions to economic thought. It also notes Le Despotisme de la Chine, written in 1767, which describes Chinese politics and society and Quesnay’s own political support for enlightened despotism.
Physiocracy’s Name and Program
The source defines physiocracy as an economic theory developed by a group of 18th-century Age of Enlightenment French economists, with a name derived from the Greek for “government of nature.” It states that agricultural products should be highly priced, that the theories originated in France and were most popular during the second half of the 18th century, and that physiocracy became one of the first well-developed theories of economics. Quesnay, Mirabeau, and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727–1781) dominated the movement, which immediately preceded classical economics as beginning with Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations in 1776. The source also records that physiocratic governments influenced national economies by developing land for agricultural use, building roads and canals for agricultural trade, using trade as a mechanism for benefiting from surplus agricultural produce, and strengthening currencies and balance of payments; it calls this an unintended means to an end. Physiocrats called themselves les Économistes, damned cities for artificiality, praised what they considered more natural styles of living, and celebrated farmers. The source contrasts their emphasis on productive work as the source of national wealth with earlier schools, especially mercantilism, which often focused on the ruler’s wealth, accumulation of gold, or the balance of trade; whereas mercantilism held that value was created at the point of sale when a seller exchanged products for more money than they had previously been worth, the physiocratic school was the first to see labor as the sole source of value.
Natural Order, Self-Interest, and Property
The source states that physiocrats thought there was a “natural order” allowing human beings to live together; men did not come together via an arbitrary “social contract,” but had to discover the laws of the natural order that would allow individuals to live in society without losing significant freedoms. This concept originated in China, where it was believed that good government exists only when a perfect harmony exists between the “Way of Man” (governmental institutions) and the “Way of Nature” (Quesnay’s natural order). The source also says physiocrats, especially Turgot, believed self-interest motivated each segment of the economy; each individual is best suited to determine what goods they want and what work would provide what they want out of life, and although a person might labor for others’ benefit, they will work harder for their own benefit. It states that each person’s needs are supplied by many others, that the system works best when one person’s needs and another person’s desires have a complementary relationship, and that trade restrictions place an unnatural barrier to achieving one’s goals. Laissez-faire was popularized by physiocrat Vincent de Gournay, who is said to have adopted the term from Quesnay’s writings on China.
The source says none of the theories concerning land value could work without strong legal support for private property ownership, and that combined with individualism, private property becomes a critical component of the Tableau’s functioning. Physiocrats believed in private property and saw property as a tree and its branches, as social institutions. They stated landlords must enjoy 2/5 on land surpluses and advocated that landlords be given dues, otherwise they would take land away from cultivators. Turgot recognized that successive applications of a variable input cause the product to grow first at an increasing rate, later at a diminishing rate until it reaches a maximum; this recognized that productivity gains required for national wealth had an ultimate limit, and therefore wealth could not be infinite. Both Quesnay and Turgot recognized that capital was needed by farmers to start production and were proponents of using some of each year’s profits to increase productivity; capital was also needed to sustain laborers while they produced. Turgot recognized opportunity cost and risk involved in using capital for something other than land ownership and promoted interest as serving a “strategic function in the economy.”
Grain-Trade Precedents and Physiocratic Networks
Pierre Le Pesant, sieur de Boisguilbert served as a member of Louis XIV’s local administration of Paris and wrote pamphlets and booklets on taxation, grain trade, and money. He asserted that wealth came from self-interest and that markets were connected by money flows—an expense for the buyer is revenue for the producer. He realized that lowering prices in times of shortage was dangerous economically, as it acted as a disincentive to production. Generally, he advocated less government interference in the grain market, as interference would generate “anticipations” that would prevent the policy from working; for example, if the government bought corn abroad, some people would speculate that there was likely to be a shortage and would buy more corn, leading to higher prices and more of a shortage. The source calls this an early example of advocacy of free trade. In anonymously published tracts, Vauban proposed la dîme royale (“the royal tithe”), involving a major simplification of the French tax code by switching to a relatively flat tax on property and trade; Vauban’s use of statistics contrasted with earlier empirical methods in economics. The event that led Mirabeau to devote himself to political economy was his work on a manuscript of Richard Cantillon’s Essai sur la nature du commerce en général, which he had in his possession as early as 1740; he elaborated a commentary that gradually became his Ami des hommes.
Around the time of the Seven Years’ War between France and England (1756–1763), the physiocracy movement grew. Several journals appeared, including the Journal Œconomique (1721–1772), which promoted agronomy and rational husbandry, and the Journal du commerce (1759–1762), which was heavily influenced by Richard Cantillon (1680–1734); both were dominated by physiocrats. The source also lists the Journal de l’agriculture, du commerce et des finances (1765–1774) and the Ephémérides du citoyen (1767–1772 and 1774–1776). Vincent de Gournay (1712–1759), the Intendant du commerce, brought together a group of young researchers including François Véron Duverger de Forbonnais (1722–1800) and Turgot. Quesnay was among those writing prolifically in contemporaneous journals.
Later Influence
The source states that the ideas of the Physiocrats influenced Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Henry George, and Silvio Gesell, who appear to have come to similar beliefs independently. George was the driving force behind what became known as the Single Tax movement, a proposal for the use of the annual rental value of land as the principal or sole source of public revenue. The New Physiocratic League is a modern Georgist political movement that seeks to revive elements of physiocracy.
