crats, and they are generally regarded as the real founders of SOCIAL SCIENCE (q.v.).

The physiocrats were in fact the first who employed scientific method in directing the movement, which took place in the middle of the 18th century, of research into social phenomena-a movement comparable to that which, a little later on, led to the development of chemistry as a science.

The encyclopædists discussed the functions of government both from the political and the religious point of view. But most of them accepted witty or declamatory phrases as arguments, and abstractions as realities.

Thus ROUSSEAU, whose system also had a widespread but disastrous influence, based the origin of society on agreement among men and the social contract, and could find the source of law only in the caprice of the legislator, and railed against individual property, and inequality among

men.

The method of the physiocrats was entirely different. MONTESQUIEU had asserted, in 1749, without carrying his discovery to its farthest limit, that everything in the world was governed by law that man was governed by his laws, just as matter was governed by its laws. Gournay was drawn on by his own observations to recognise that commerce has its laws "the same over the whole of the universe," and demonstrated the advantages of freedom of labour. Quesnay went far farther, and sought to determine the laws of the principal social phenomena.

The MERCANTILE SYSTEM, the theory of which D. HUME had commenced to attack in England, was still unanimously accepted in France. There industry was in bonds, fettered by corporations of trades (see CORPORATIONS OF ARTS AND TRADES ; GILDS; JURANDE), hindered by regulations which fixed minutely the method of manufacture; the provinces were separated from each other by INTERNAL CUSTOMS AND TOLLS (q.v.); commerce was hampered at the frontier by duties on imports and exports, and by prohibitions; trade in corn was subject to strict supervision; the exportation of cereals was forbidden; the peasant was overwhelmed by unequal and arbitrary taxation.

The lawfulness of lending money at interest was not recognised. Property was only regarded as a gift of the monarch; in law, and often in fact, the monarch was absolute master both of person and property. He interfered with everything, and under the pretext of protection created and supported a mass of privileges.

The physiocrats had to combat simultaneously the ideas then generally in vogue and official routine. The physical world is subject, said they, to laws which secure the equilibrium of the universe; humanity also has its laws, which ought to insure social order, and social order is only a part of universal order. If men knew these laws accurately and conformed to them, their mutual relations would regulate themselves according to justice, that universal and sovereign rule, recognised by the light of reason, which determines incontestably what belongs to one's self and what belongs to others" (Quesnay).

The knowledge of these laws, they said further, should form a science entirely new and absolutely

distinct from existing legislation, which, as shown by the contradictory and absurd laws successively enacted among nations, is only the eclectic work of the legislator.

This being so, the physiocrats demonstrated that societies are not formed by chance; that they spring from the nature of man; that far from destroying our liberty, they have allowed us to make use of it, since we cannot live and secure the continuance of our race without the help of our fellow-creatures. Our liberty and our power of action are, without question, relative; they find limits within ourselves, and limits outside ourselves. (see RELATIVITY). To suppose that we all have a right to everything, as HOBBES imagined, is as fallacious as to admit that "the swallows have a right to all the gnats that hover in the air" (Quesnay). Our rights spring from our necessities, but are limited by the rights of others. The desire for association draws us together; personal interest impels us on-these are the two forces which, apparently antagonistic, induce harmonious action; they produce order from which societies cannot deviate "without being less societies, without rendering their condition less stable" (Du Pont).

The theory of natural laws was thus set in opposition to the idea upheld by Rousseau, of the all-powerful legislator according to Lycurgus and Plutarch. This is the most interesting part of the work of the physiocrats. The language they employed had not, however, the necessary precision. Quesnay said that natural laws should procure a man whatever he needed without defining clearly what this meant. He and his disciples, identifying the effect of purely physical law with that of natural social law, maintained that every action contrary to these laws, being destructive of order, would draw down inevitable suffering on the culprit. They did not perceive that in social phenomena, actions produce repercussion which recoils on others than their authors. Besides, instead of being content with speaking of natural laws, they employed the inadequate expression of natural right, claiming that every man who comes into this world has a natural right, varying according to circumstances and ability, the right of the individual to do what is to his advantagewhence it would have been easy to deduce the right to live and the right to work, a phrase so much abused by the socialists.

Finally, they laid down the principle that every right involves a correlative and reciprocal duty, "No rights without duties, and no duties without rights" (LE MERCIER DE LA RIVIÈRE). Thus they confused the merely relative relations which constitute law with moral obligations.

But these faults only slightly impair the high value of their researches. The assertion of the existence of social order is in reality the recognition of the law of SOLIDARITY-the term is not met with in the works of the physiocrats, but the statement that man, whose needs seem special and individual, can satisfy none of them without the help of his fellow-creatures, is constantly to be found, as also that the labour of each,-that the modifications and movements (see J. S. MILL) of matter-are of advantage to all, that individual utility creates general utility by the co-operation

of all, and that the latter in its turn secures the maintenance of the former. The physiocrats were optimists, they had absolute confidence in continuity of progress. The formula "LAISSEZ FAIRE, LAISSEZ PASSER," adopted by Gournay, is one manifestation of optimism. The avowal of Quesnay and his disciples that the natural laws lead to the advantage of man is another. It was in studying the question of population that they displayed their optimism most clearly. The Marquis de MIRABEAU had said that means of subsistence are the limit of population,—that if the increase of a race depended on its fecundity, there would be no limit to its multiplication,-that the strength of a state is bounded by its population. Quesnay had made his disciple perceive that the movements of population do not necessarily follow those of the means of subsistence, and that a country is not rich if the inhabitants are not comfortable, that is to say, if the population increases more rapidly than the means of subsistence.

After him, Du Pont remarked that in the North American colonies, the population doubled itself every twenty-five years, because the amount of consumable products increases there every day, and he added, “the further one advances in the study of the order of things, there the more one is compelled to admire the reciprocal relations which unite the different portions of this immense community. Nothing stands alone there; everything holds together. Every cause is an effect, every effect is a cause. From wealth springs culture; culture increases wealth; this growth of wealth increases population; the increase of population keeps up the value of wealth itself" (1771). Again the physiocrats said that man daily makes new inventions which allow the poorest peasant in Europe to be better clothed, better lodged, and better fed than the savage; they thus refuted the supposed benefits of the "state of nature" described by J. J. Rousseau and other rhetoricians.

Thus it is through the power of individual interest, and of competition arising from it, that the physiocrats explained the continuity of progress. Gournay, in his correspondence, had often described the moral effect of competition. The disciples of Quesnay said in their turn: "Individual interest is the primary bond of society, which will be the more solid in proportion as private interest is secure. The struggle between private interests is only dangerous if accompanied by violence, whether the law permits or facilitates it, or finds its repression impossible. Governments have no right to destroy order by making war; their only duty, at home, is to repress encroachments on persons and property. Authority is not established to impose laws, they all emanate from the hand of Him who created rights and duties; positive laws ought only to be declaratory of the essential laws of social order. If the ordinances of sovereigns were opposed to the laws of nature, they would be unreasonable, and binding on no one. Authority should only employ the force of the community to compel madmen and depraved men to make their conduct conform to the principles of justice." The duties of government being thus reduced to the protection of person and property, the maxim according to which general interest ought to out

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weigh individual interest should be rejected as being profitable only to monopolists and to privileged persons who wish to pass off "their special individual interests" as the general interest. The physiocrats therefore demanded the abolition of every privilege connected with classes, individuals, societies, provinces, and towns, with industry and with trade. These privileges were numerous in France-"They are of every class, of every form, and of every colour," said LETROSNE -and he drew up a long list of them.

If, the physiocrats further explained, man has a right to do whatever is to his advantage, he has the right to employ himself to his own best interest, on the sole condition that he does no injury to the person and property of others. As

a free being, master of his own actions, he should be master of his own work, and of the fruits of his work; he should thus be absolute owner of the soil on which he works and with which his labour is incorporated. The three pivots of society are, property-liberty-security. this justification of property, borrowed from LOCKE, the physiocrats deduced the right of every one to sell or buy where he pleased, and trade with whom he pleased, the objects he disposed of or needed.

From

Quesnay may be regarded as the first defender of free trade, the necessity of which he recognised, not only on account of considerations of right, but also for economic considerations; remarking that the greater the competition the more every one strives to economise the cost of his labour for the

advantage of all. "To obtain the greatest possible increase of enjoyment with the least expense, or, better still, the least painful labour with the greatest enjoyment," is, said he, "the perfection of economic conduct."

This conclusion might have led the physiocrats very far on in economic discovery, had they not, adopting the opinion of CANTILLON, that land is the sole source of wealth, completely deceived themselves both as to the nature of wealth and the laws of its distribution. Their views on this subject may be summarised thus:-Agriculture holds a dominant place in human industry, because food is more necessary to life than anything else. Besides, agricultural labour is the only labour which increases the wealth of a country. When the expenses of cultivation, of the renewal of the working capital, the profit of the cultivator, and the seed for the following year, are deducted from the raw produce of the ground,, the owner still clears an income or produit net. Nothing similar exists in any other industry, particularly not in those connected with articles of luxury; the purchasers of manufactured goods repay the sellers the cost of production and the profit of the traders. These goods yield nothing further, their value is approximately equal to the value of the raw materials used by the workmen and traders either for carrying on the business or for their own support -this does not yield a produit net. Manufactures then do not increase wealth; they exist only through the wealth of those who pay for them; that is to say, through the existence of a produit net arising from agriculture. Hence the inhabitants of a country may be divided into

three classes-proprietors, who hold the produit net; cultivators who assist its formation; other citizens, like officials, traders, and manufacturers, who do not produce self-renewing wealth, and therefore form a "sterile class." On the ground that the proprietors of the soil hold through the produit net all the available revenue of the nation, Quesnay concluded that the state should claim from them, and them only, the sums necessary for the support of the government and the maintenance of public order. Every other form of taxation was, in his opinion, faulty. When a tax charged on the consumer, his disciples repeated, the conditions of exchange are altered, and restraint is put on the liberty of every one, taxpayers are caused to include in the selling price of their products which are subject to taxation not merely the tax but the amount of their losses, of the restrictions, of the inconveniences which they have undergone. Finally as these products are bought almost entirely by the cultivators or by the landowners, the produit net is diminished by the sums added to the tax. Taxation diverts a number of workers from productive labour: this, again, diminishes production, and, in consequence, the produit net. The conclusion is that there was only one rational tax; the tax on land direct, single. "Indirect taxation, poor peasants; poor peasants, poor kingdom; poor kingdom, poor monarch," said Quesnay.

By naming the last class of the three "sterile," the physiocrats aroused the indignation of the manufacturers and traders. However, they did not intend by any means to maintain, as they have often been made to say, that manufacturers were useless. They held that this class did not help to make up the gross income which a nation needs to provide for its ever-growing necessities. In the Tableau Economique, Quesnay explained this. According to him the cultivators deduct yearly from the gross product of cultivation a first charge— what is necessary for their own support and that of their labourers, and for the reproduction of the crops. The landlords receive the produit net; they buy from the cultivators the provisions they need, giving them back thus part of the produit net which enables them to buy articles from the "sterile class"; the landlords on their part employ another portion of the produit net in purchases of the same kind. By the aid of the portions of the revenue which are thus made over to it, the "sterile class" is enabled to support itself and to work up raw material; they manufacture from this useful goods, by giving new forms to natural productions, but they do not create new wealth. "I give a length of cloth to a tailor; he will never be able to increase it so as to make out of it a coat for himself as well as for me" (Marquis de Mirabeau).

It is here that the great error of the physiocrats lies. By regarding the products drawn directly from the soil as the only wealth, they set themselves in opposition to their own justification of property. They admitted, however, that man can only avail himself of the fertility of the soil by employing labour and capital; that the "advances sunk in the land," whether for clearing the ground, for buildings, improvements as well as

the "original advances" of seeds, implements, and food for man and beast-are necessary in order to make the land profitable; that, further, "annual advances" must be carried over from one harvest to another to perpetuate the pay of the workers, and to keep up the "advances made on the land." But, according to the hypothesis of the produit net, it was illogical to base property on labour alone, whether present or accumulated, and Turgot was more consistent when he said that the soil returned something as a pure gift beyond what was due to the labour of man. In the same way, by maintaining that the tax on the land is the only rational tax, they urged on the absorption of all property in the land by the government, because they recognised that the government becomes, through the land-tax, co-proprietor in the property of its subjects. Hence Henry GEORGE, the modern opponent of private property in land, dedicated one of his books, Protection or Free Trade "to the memory of those illustrious Frenchmen of a century ago-Quesnay, Turgot, Mirabeau, Condorcet, Du Pont, and their friends, who, in the night of despotism, foresaw the glories of the coming day."

The doctrine of the produit net has had, however, some useful results. It attracted capital to agriculture, and helped to improve it in France. It enabled the physiocrats to disprove the system of the BALANCE OF TRADE. If Quesnay was deceived as to the nature of wealth, he saw clearly that it does not consist of money. He held up the example of Spain, exhausted, in spite of the treasures of Peru; of England, wealthy through the development of her commerce and her agriculture. Following his teaching, it is impossible, his disciples said, to create something out of nothing; in an exchange no wealth is formed, but value is given against an equal value; each party profits by the exchange, and without this the exchange would not have been made. To suppose that the balance of trade is the measure of the wealth of a country is absurd, for this balance is often met by goods and not by money, and a nation that has bought more of the precious metals than it needs will be obliged to resell, in order to buy more useful articles.

Finally, the theory of the produit net has called attention to the manner in which those taxes were assessed, which, like the DÎME ROYAL, were imposed merely on gross income, without taking cost of production into account, and facilitated the substitution of taxes relating to things for personal taxes. The success that the doctrine obtained was greatly due to this. In France the IMPÔT UNIQUE on land, that is to say, the direct tax on land, was accepted even by those who denied the doctrine of the produit net. Abroad, KARL FRIEDRICH, the Margrave of Baden, and Leopold, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, made experiments in it, with more or less successful results.

The analysis of some other economic questions was almost completed by the physiocrats. They carried some way the theory of VALUE, which Morellet clearly distinguished from UTILITY. They laid the foundation of freedom of labour, and, in a host of writings dealing with free trade in corn, examined the greater part of the phenomena of exchange. They insisted, even super

fluously, on the dangers of prohibitions, and of protection through CUSTOMS DUTIES.

To sum up, their theories contained the germ of the whole liberal doctrine in its entirety, as they insisted before everything on the rights of the individual, in his personal liberty, in the disposal of his labour and his property. However, by a curious contradiction, while maintaining resolutely that authority ought to use force only to compel insane or depraved citizens to conform to the law, they proposed to give this authority absolute power-sole, despotic, and hereditary.

The "system of counter-balancing forces in the state," the representative system whether under a monarchy or a parliamentary republic, appeared to them to give the citizens no guarantee of liberty, because of the facilities which this system offers to the ambitious and to monopolists to further their own interests, and to legislate for their own advantage. An absolute prince, on the contrary, must always, according to the physiocrats, have a personal interest in conformity with the private interests of his subjects, if, through the single tax on land, he was induced to assist the development of the produit net. As a counterpoise to his power, it would be sufficient to institute an independent judiciary authority charged both with the administration of justice and with the duty of ascertaining that the commands of the sovereign were in agreement with natural laws, besides this to establish a system of public instruction sufficiently wide to enable each citizen to understand the laws of social order. The more or less veracious descriptions of China made at the time by travellers helped to confirm the physiocrats in this part of their system, defined by LE MERCIER DE LA RIVIÈRE as despotisme légal. Turgot always refused to accept this expression, but almost all the other physiocrats adopted it. The acceptance of this phrase, together with the doctrine of the "sterile" class, separated them from many men of sound judgment who were inclined to follow them. In the expression despotisme légal, no one undertook to understand what method was to be pursued to prevent government from being the means of exploiting the many in favour of private interests; they only employed a clumsy expression.

In the doctrine of the physiocrats, error constantly stood close to the verge of truth; this explains why the labours of Smith and of the ENGLISH SCHOOL caused it so soon to pass out of memory.

The author of the Wealth of Nations had, however, greatly profited by the labours of his predecessors; if his method was very superior to theirs, and if he was more judicious in his conclusions, it should be remembered that he applied the principle of division of labour too strictly to social phenomena, separating completely the study of wealth from the study of other social phenomena; the attempt of the physiocrats to generalise is the first essay made in the development of social science. When it is looked at carelessly, all that appears is the single tax, the "sterile" class, produit net, and "legal despotism," but on examining it more carefully it is seen to include a vast conception. It was worthy of being taken up again and amended; this was done by several

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economists of the FRENCH SCHOOL, particularly by BASTIAT.

At the present time the name of physiocrats is applied both to the disciples of Quesnay and to those of Gournay. Among the former should be named MIRABEAU, LETROSNE, LE MERCIER DE LA RIVIÈRE, BAUDEAU, ABEILLE, DU PONT DE NEMOURS, ROUBAUD, ST. PÉRAVY, De Vauvilliers, KARL FRIEDRICH the margrave of Baden. Among the latter, HERBERT, MORELLET, ClicquotBlervâche, Bigot de Ste. Croix, l'abbé Coyer, TURGOT. But Turgot adopted many of Quesnay's views, particularly that of the produit net, whilst the three others devoted themselves exclusively to claiming freedom for labour, and for internal commerce as Gournay had desired (see INTERNAL CUSTOMS AND TOLLS). Finally the members of the physiocratic school did not always agree among themselves, and modified their individual opinions; thus, for instance, Du Pont, in his riper years, rejected the doctrine of legal despotism which La Rivière, Mirabeau, and Baudeau always advocated strongly. Several economists should be added to the above list, as Count GARNIER, GANILH, and DUTENS in France, SCHMALZ in Germany, who, in the 19th century, long after the physiocratic school had disappeared, defended their economic principles.

[No complete bibliography relating to the physiocrats has ever been made. But we possess portions of it, as :

-

Du Pont de Nemours, a short notice of the different modern writings which collectively have assisted to forin the science of political economy in France, 1769; pub lished in the Éphémérides: and Oncken, Euvres de Quesnay.-Morellet, catalogue in the Prospectus d'un Nouveau Dictionnaire du commerce, 1769.- Schelle, "Bibliographie du Du Pont de Nemours," in Du Pont de Nemours et l'École physiocratique, 1888.- Oncken, "Bibliographie de Quesnay," in Euvres de Quesnay, Frankfurt and Paris, 1888. The following should also be consulted:-Blanquí, “Bibliographie raisonnée," in the Histoire de l'Économie politique, 1837.-Stourm, Bibliographie historique des finances au XVIIIe siècle, 1895. Other bibliographies are to be found in M'CULLOCH, Literature of Political Economy. Dictionnaire de l'Économie Politique, Coquelin and Guillaumin, 1864.Nouveau Dictionnaire de l'Economie Politique, Say et Chailley, 1892; and in the present work under the headings-BAUDEAU; DU PONT DE NEMOURS; ÉPHÉMÉRIDES; FRENCH SCHOOL; GOURNAY; LAISSEZ FAIRE, LAISSEZ PASSER; LETROSNE; MERCIER DE LA RIVIÈRE; MIRABEAU; MORELLET; QUESNAY; TURCOT. The most important writings of the physiocrats have been collected by E. DAIRE in the large Collection des principaux Economistes, published by Guillaumin, 2 vols., containing the works of Quesnay, Du Pont, La Rivière, Baudeau, and Letrosne, with introduction, biographical notices, and commentary. In the Petite bibliothèque économique there is also Robineau, "Turgot, Administration et Œuvres Economiques" (the text of the Réflexions sur les Richesses has been revised by Schelle).- Grimaux et Schelle, "Lavoisier" (the introduction by Schelle contains a short history of economic tenets in the 18th century).Yves Guyot, Quesnay et la Physiocratie. The works of Quesnay were collected by Du Pont de Nemours in the Physiocratie and by Oncken; the works of Turgot by Du Pont de Nemours and by Daire. Le journal de l'agriculture, du commerce, et des finances and Les Éphémérides du Citoyen contain many interesting articles.-CONDORCET, La Bibliothèque de l'homme public, 1790-91, 24 vols., contains extracts from writings of the physiocrats. With regard to their teaching in general, the principal works to consult are Quesnay's writings, also those of Marquis de Mirabeau:-L'ami des hommes; Les Éléments de philo sophie rurale; les Économiques; Théorie de l'impôt.-Du Pont de Nemours, De l'Origine et des Progrès d'une science nouvelle; Table raisonnée des principes de l'économie poli tique: Instructions de la paroisse de Ghe vaunes. - Le Mercier

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de la Rivière, Ordre naturel et essentiel des Sociétés politiques; l'Intérêt général de l'État.-Baudeau, Erposition de la Loi naturelle; Première introduction à la philosophie économique: Explication du tableau économique.— Letrosne, Utilité des Discussions économiques: l'administration générale et la réforme de l'impôt: De l'ordre social: De l'intérêt social.-St. Péravy, Mémoire sur les effets de l'impôt indirect sur le revenu des propriétaires de biens fonds.— Abeille and Montaudouin, Corps d'observations de la Société d'agriculture de Bretagne.- Turgot, Eloge de Gournay and Reflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses.-Herbert, Essai sur la police générale des grains.-Morellet, Prospectus d'un nouveau Dictionnaire du Commerce.-The Margrave of Baden, Abrégé des principes.-Comte Garnier, Abrégé élémentaire des principes de l'économie politique, 1796.-Schmalz, Staatswirthschaftslehre in Briefen an einen deutschen Erbprinzen, 1818, and Economie politique, French edition, 1826.-Dutens, Philo sophie de l'économie politique, 1835. Dutens defended Quesnay's economic teaching in a series of pamphlets: -Défense de la philosophie de l'économie politique, 1837.— Appendice à la défense de la philosophie de l'économie politique, 1839.- Des prétendues erreurs dans lesquelles, au jugement des modernes économistes, seraient tombés les anciens économistes relativement au principe de la richesse nationale, 1846. These were the latest physiocratic writings. The physiocrats had many adversaries. The following are the most interesting of their works:Voltaire, l'Homme aux quarante écus, 1768, directed against La Rivière; Diatribe à l'auteur des Éphémérides, 1775, favourable.-FORBONNAIS, Principes et observations économiques, 1767. In the second part of this work, Quesnay's articles" Fermiers and Grains" are discussed. Graslin, Essai analytique sur la richesse et sur l'impôt, 1767; and Correspondance sur un des principes fondamentaux de la doctrine des économistes, 1779, with Baudeau, on the productivity of manufactures.-MABLY, Doutes proposés aux philosophes économistes, 1768.- GALIANI, Dialogues sur le commerce des blés, 1770.-NECKER, Éloge de Colbert, 1773, and De la législation et du commerce des grains, 1775.-Béardé de l'Abbaye, Recherches sur les moyens de supprimer les impôts, précédées de l'examen de la nouvelle science, 1770.-Tifaut de la Noue, Réflexions philosophiques sur l'impôt, 1775.-LINGUET, Théorie des Lois civiles, 1767; La pierre philosophale, discours économique par le lettre Koung Kia, 1768; Réponse aux docteurs modernes, avec la réfutation du système des philosophes économistes, 1771; Du Pain et du Blé, 1774; Théorie du libelle, ou l'art de calomnier avec fruit, a reply to the Théorie du paradoxe (by Morellet), 1775; Línguet also edited the Journal de politique et de littérature, 1775-1778; and in conjunction with MALLET DU PAN, Annales politiques civiles et littéraires, 1777-1791.- Isnard, Traité des richesses, 1781.-Pesselier, Doutes proposés à l'auteur de la théorie de l'impôt, 1761.-Blonde, Lettre d'un profane à l'abbé Baudeau, 1775.-La Gazette du Commerce contains articles by Forbonnais and the Abbé Yvon in opposition to the doctrine of the physiocrats. Finally, almost all treatises on political economy, from the Wealth of Nations onwards, include a notice of the tenets of the physiocrats. The writings of the opponents of the physiocrats have in their turn provoked many replies to their attacks, which are for the most part published in the Ephémérides du citoyen. The physiocrats derived some of their principles from Boisguillebert, Le Détail de la France sous le règne présent augmenté de plusieurs mémoires et traités sur la même matière, 1697, and from Cantillon, Essai sur la nature du commerce en général, 1755. The doctrine that the earth is the only source of wealth is also found in ASGILL, Several assertions proved in order to create another species of money than gold, 1696, and there are many opinions quite in accordance with physiocratic teaching in BANDINI, Discorso economico; but this work, written in 1737, was only published in 1775, and has been reproduced in Custodi, Scrittori classici italiani di economica politica, parte moderna, vol. i., with a favourable notice of Bandini by Giuseppe Gorani. With regard to the history of the physiocrats, all French histories contain an account of the influence they exercised on their country. The following may be specially noticed :-TOCQUEVILLE, L'ancien régime et la Revolution, ch. iii. -Taine, Les origines de la France contemporaine, vol. i.-Stourm, Les finances de l'ancien régime et de la révolution, 1885. Monteil, Histoire financière de la France, with supplement by Ch. Louandre, 1872.-Biollay, Le pacte de famine, 1885.Lacretelle, Histoire du XVIIIe siècle.-DROZ, Histoire du règne de Louis XVI.–SENAC de Meilhan, Le Gouverne

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ment, les mœurs et les conditions en France avant la Révolution.-La Harpe, Philosophie du XVIIIe siècle. It would be impossible to quote all the "reminiscences" and correspondence of the 18th century relating to the physiocrats. The following only can be mentioned :Mémoires of Madame du Hausset, relating to Quesnay; of Louis Montigny, relating to Mirabeau; of the Baronne d'Oberkich, relating to La Rivière; of the Comte Beugnot, relating to Du Pont; of Bachaumont ; of the Abbé Terray (Coquereau, Mémoires apocryphes); of Soulavie, on the reign of Louis XVI.; of MARMONTEL; of Dutens; of Garat (on Suard); of Talleyrand; of Morellet; of Condorcet (LA ROCHEFOUCAULD-LIANCOURT, Mémoires apocryphes).-Baron de Gleichen, Souvenirs.-The Correspondances of Grimm and Diderot; of Métra and of La Harpe.-Pidausat de Moirobert, L'Observateur Anglais, containing a chapter devoted to the economists; as in the Gazette littéraire de l'Europe.-Galiani, Lettres.Correspondance de Condorcet et de Turgot, 1882. number of works deal specially with the physiocrats, as:-Du Pont de Nemours, some of the notes to his edition of the Œuvres de Turgot; Introduction au dictionnaire de géographie commerçante.-L. de Lavergne, Economistes français du XVIIIe siècle.-DE LOMÉNIE, Les Mirabeau.-Schelle, Du Pont de Nemours et l'école physiocratique, 1888.-Vincent de Gournay, "d'après sa correspondance," 1897.- The articles Les Physiocrates," Quesnay," "Gournay," "Turgot," "La Rivière," "Forbonnais," etc., in the Nouveau dictionnaire d'économie politique.-Oncken, Introduction to the Euvres de Quesnay.-"Appendice à l'histoire de la Physiocratie," in the Handworterbuch der Staatswissenchaften, 1893."Étude sur Louis XVI. et la Physiocratie," in the Zeitschrift für Litteratur und Geschichte der Staatswissen schaften. Die Maxime laissez faire, laissez passer.-Der ältere Mirabeau und die ökonomische Gesellschaft in Bern, 1886.-Joubleau, "Notice sur la Rivière," in the Annales des sciences morales, 1858.-Batbie, L'homme aux quarante écus et les physiocrates, 1865.-Reuss, Charles Butré, physiocrate tourangeau, 1887.-De Vroil, Etude sur Clicquot Blerviche, 1870.- Knies, Karl Friedrich's von Baden Brieflicher Verkehr mit Mirabeau und Du Pont, Heidelberg, 1892. Emminghaus, "Karl Friedrich's von Baden physiocratische Verbindungen, Bestrebungen und Versuche," in the Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie, vol. xix. p. 72.-Erdmanndöffer, Politischer Briefwechsel Karl Friedrich's von Baden, 1888.-Bauer, "Zur Enstehung der Physiocratie," in the Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie, Jena.-Blanqui, Histoire de l'économie politique en Europe. -Espinas, Histoire des Doctrines économiques, 1891.Henry Higgs, The Physiocrats, London, 1897.] G. S.

PIASTRE, the 100th part of the Turkish pound (gold medjidie), and a similar fraction of the Egyptian pound. Turkish silver coins of 20 piastres (known as silver medjidies) as well as pieces of 10, 5, 2, 1, and piastres form part of the currency of the Ottoman empire. These coins are all of the fineness of 830. Similar pieces, with the addition of a quarter piastre, are in circulation in Egypt, but as the sterling value of the Egyptian pound is 20s. 3.7d., as against 18s. 03d., the value of the Turkish medjidie, the Egyptian piastres are of a somewhat higher nominal value than those of Turkey. Their millesimal fineness