ABSTRACT
The politico-economical ties that underlay the mercantile system were to an ever-increasing extent unloosed by the victorious advance of individualism in the field of political theory and of rationalism and empiricism in the field of philosophy. The economic trend that was the outcome of the aforesaid intellectual forces, worked in the same direction. The bourgeoisie, gaining strength, did all it could to liberate itself from the tutelage of the absolute State, and the landed interest had to take up arms in its own defence. Of outstanding importance in France, moreover, was the continual menace of a collapse of the State finances; and there was a widespread belief that the methods of State regulation characteristic of mercantilism were in great part responsible for these fiscal difficulties. Outspoken critics of mercantilism speedily appeared.
