property included the right to dispose of it freely at home or abroad, unrestricted by the state. This doctrine was formulated in the familiar expression, “Laissez faire, laissez passer.”19 Condorcet and Condillac favored the new ideas. The “Economists” became the fashion in France; and even included in their number Joseph II of Austria, the Kings of Spain, Poland, Sweden, Naples, Catharine [pg 010] of Russia, and the Margrave of Baden.20 Agriculture, therefore, received a great stimulus.
Quesnay had many vigorous supporters, of whom the most conspicuous was the Marquis de Mirabeau21 (father of him of the Revolution), and the culmination of their popularity was reached about 1764. A feeling that the true increase of wealth was not in a mere increase of money, but in the products of the soil, led them naturally into a reaction against mercantilism, but also made them dogmatic and overbearing in their one-sided system, which did not recognize that labor in all industries created wealth. As the mercantile system found a great minister in Colbert to carry those opinions into effect on a national scale, so the Physiocrats found in Turgot22 a minister, under Louis XVI, who gave them a