The Physiocrats and the Encyclopedists

T h e P h y sio c ra ts a n d th e E n c y c lo p e d ists J E A N A . P E R K I N S rqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA To the ir contemporaries, the juxtaposition of the Physiocrats and the Encyclopedists would not have been as shocking as it is to us. In the swirling waves of opinion which inundated Paris in the last half of the eighteenth century, the E n c y c lo p e d iste s and the E c o n o m iste s, as the Physiocrats were then called, were often taken to be two branches of the same tree (the image used by Linguet in 1774) or different genera* tions of the same family (the image used by Le Gros in 1787).1 The two groups were perceived to overlap both in time and approach. M ost of the public controversy over the E n c y c lo p e d ic dates from the 1750’s. After its supposed suppression in 1759, the public lost track of the publication until the final ten volumes of text were distributed in 1765, after which there was a seven-year gap until the eleven volumes of plates were published in 1772. In view of this long history of publication, interrupted twice by official edicts condemning the en* terprise, it is no wonder that critics of its content assumed that there existed a clandestine group behind the E n c y c lo p e d ic responsible for its critical tone. There was never any clear definition of who belonged to this group, but most of the critics of the ancien regime were habitually placed within its fold. The Physiocrats moved into public view just as the E n c y c lo p e d ic was forced to go underground. Quesnay actually pub* lished his first economic investigations in volumes 6 and 7 of the E n c y c lo p e d ic , while M irabeau’s popular L ’A m i d es h o m m e s dates from 323 324 / J E XWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA A N A . P E R K I N S 1 7 5 7 . The Physiocrats also suffered from the tightened censorship imposed on publications in the wake of the condemnation of Helvetius ’s D e I’e sp rit and the E n c y c lo p e d ie . M irabeau himself was impris­ oned at Vincennes for a week before beginning a period of exile at his country estate after his T h e o rie d e I’im p o t had also been condemned in 1760. This sufficiently frightened the newly formed nucleus of the e c o n o m iste s so a s to discourage them from any further publication until 1763, at which time M irabeau produced his P h ilo so p h ic ru ra le , written in close collaboration with Quesnay. After this the number of disciples in the group increased, as did the number of works published. To their opponents, the Encyclopedists and the Physiocrats were cut from the same cloth; they were critical of the basic structure of French society and suggested various schemes to improve the economic and political conditions of the country. As one group faded from public view, the other came forward. W hen Bachaumont’s M e m o ire s se c re ts were published for the first time in 1777, the editor noted that there had been a three-stage evolution of the philosophic spirit since the mid-fifties: first came the p h ilo so p h es e n c y c lo p e d iste s, then the p h ilo so p h e s e c o n o m iste s, and finally the p a trio te s, the group which formed about 1770 to uphold the con­ cept of sovereignty.2 W riting in 1787, the abbe Le Gros carefully delineated the historical background of the remarkable success of the...