The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface
• I. Rise of the School
• II. The School and Its Doctrines
• III. The School and Its Doctrines (contd.)
• IV. Activities of the School
• V. Opponents of the School
• VI. Influence of the School
• Appendix
• Note a
• Note B
• Note C
• Authorities
• Lecture I
• Lecture Ii
• Lecture Iii
• Lecture Iv
• Lecture V
• Lecture Vi

PREFACE

This little volume consists of lectures delivered before the London School of Economics in May and June of the present year. Impossible though it was found to give a truly adequate account of the Physiocrats in these six lectures, it lias been thought that they may perhaps furnish a useful introduction to a subject upon which no book has yet been written in the English language, though its study has, during the last seven years, been deemed worthy to engage the active attention of many leading economists on the Continent of Europe. In Switzerland, Professor Oncken of Berne, and Professor Stern of Zurich; in Germany, Professor Knies of Heidelberg, and Professor Hasbach of Kiel; in France, M. Schelle; in Austria, Dr. Bauer of Brünn, and Dr. Feilbogen of Vienna, are the most noteworthy recent contributors to our knowledge of this important chapter of economic theory. More hesitation would have been felt in publishing these lectures if M. de Lavergne's charming essays on the French economists of the eighteenth century had been translated into English. But the materials brought to light since 1870 by the researches of Professor Oncken, and the brilliant discoveries of Dr. Bauer, would have made it necessary to bring his work up to date, while it is evident that in choosing the subjects for his cabinet of cameos Lavergne was influenced rather by the fact that two of them (the Abbe de St Pierre and the Marquis de Chastellux) were once, like himself, members of the French Academy, than by their intrinsic importance as economists, while they cannot, in any case, be ranked among the Physiocrats. The French writer's example has been followed in the effort to make the lectures interesting. To this end gleanings of research and minuter points of difference among authorities have been deliberately sacrificed where they appeared to be of secondary importance. For the same reason critical and doctrinal comment has been restricted within the narrowest limits. The reader who desires fuller information will turn to the monographs mentioned in the lectures, and, above all, it is hoped, to the original works of the Physiocrats themselves.

Hampstead, London, 1896.