The Economic Table

PREFACE.

THE Economic Table original: Tableau Oeconomique now printed in facsimile from an original copy of 1759 with Quesnay's manuscript notes, has only recently been rediscovered by Dr. Stephen Bauer, Austrian correspondent to the British Economic Association. In his well-known edition of the works of Quesnay in 1888, Prof. August Oncken of Berne, the Association's correspondent for Switzerland, was forced to refer to the first edition of the Tableau French: "Table" or "Chart" as lost beyond hope of recovery. The professor of history at Zürich, Dr. Alfred Stern, in his review of Oncken's Quesnay hazarded a conjecture that the Tableau might perhaps be found among the papers of Quesnay's chief disciple—the elder Mirabeau Victor de Riqueti, Marquis de Mirabeau (1715–1789), a central figure in the Physiocratic movement—in the National Archives original: Archives Nationales at Paris. Upon this hint Dr. Bauer examined the papers, and was fortunate enough to find the document now reproduced.

Editions of the Tableau with some alterations were published by Mirabeau in 1760 and 1763 and by Dupont de Nemours Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739–1817), a French economist and writer who later emigrated to the United States in 1766 and 1767. The original edition, however, privately printed at the palace of Versailles, was issued in exceedingly small numbers and these appear to have been very carefully suppressed.

The manuscript of this first edition is still extant among the papers of Mirabeau. In 1759 this edition was reprinted with some slight modifications, for Quesnay's private use, only three copies being struck off, of which one, with Quesnay's annotations, was sent to Mirabeau. Making use of this copy Mirabeau composed his Economic Table with its Explanations original: Tableau économique avec ses explications, as an appendix to his prize-essay on agriculture for the economic The text ends mid-sentence at the bottom of the page.