The Economic Table

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society in Berne (1760) and later on, in co-operation with Quesnay, the chapters on the distribution of income in the Rural Philosophy original: Philosophie rurale (1763). In a more systematic manner it was recast by Quesnay in his celebrated Analysis and Formula of the Economic Table original: Analyse et Formule du Tableau Économique (1766 and 1767). It is from the work here reprinted in the shape and type of the original document that all the later theoretical work of the Physiocratic school The Physiocrats were a group of 18th-century French economists who believed that the wealth of nations derived solely from the value of "land agriculture" or "land development." took root.

Though the Economic Table original: Tableau is followed by its own explanation, a few prefatory remarks may be found helpful in making clear its purpose and significance.

The French finances which had been drilled into some regularity by Sully Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully (1560–1641), a trusted minister to Henry IV known for his fiscal reforms., the great minister of Henry IV, had fallen into hopeless disorder during the long reign of Louis XIV (1643--1715), whose ambitious foreign policy, reckless magnificence, and costly administration created a burden of expense utterly disproportionate to the resources of the taxpayers. Matters were not much mended under the voluptuaries who succeeded him—the Regent Philippe, Duke of Orleans original: Philippe duc d'Orléans, and Louis XV (1715—1774). But even before the accession of the well-intentioned, though weak, Louis XVI, reformers took heart, and Quesnay, the physician of Louis XV, endeavoured to prove that the economic misery of the people might be relieved by measures which should at the same time improve the royal finances. The wealth of the king, he saw, depended upon the wealth of the people—the source whence it was drawn; and the wealth of the people, he thought, depended chiefly upon the profitable pursuit of agriculture—its principal industry. The most urgent needs of agriculture were capital and freedom. It had been starved of the first by the unprofitable consumption, year by year, of an unduly large share of the national wealth: it needed the second because it was impeded not only by its own burdens (aggravated as they were by the exemptions of privileged nobles and clergy) but also by the numerous and harassing taxes imposed upon commerce,