Note 8 — Chapter I · : THE PHYSIOCRATS

“The genuine economists are easily depicted. In Dr. Quesnay they have a common master; a common doctrine in the Philosophie rurale and the Analyse économique. Their classical literature is summed up in the generic term Physiocracy. In the Tableau économique they possess a formula with technical terms as precise as old Chinese characters.” This definition of the Physiocrats, given by one of themselves, the Abbé Baudeau (Éphémérides, April 1776)—writing, we may be sure, in no malicious spirit—shows us that the school possessed not a little of the dogmatism of the Chinee.