ABSTRACT
‘That system,’ Lauderdale noted in 1805, ‘which represents the produce of land as the sole source of the revenue, and the wealth of a nation, has long had its disciples in this country’. 575 Lauderdale and his contemporaries found little difficulty in tracing many instances where earlier British writers had substantially anticipated certain of the basic doctrines of Quesnay. In the early years of the nineteenth century, indeed, it would have been virtually impossible for any British economist to regard Physiocracy as an eccentric, ephemeral, and peculiarly French body of thought. For these were the years of the great debates over the validity of Physiocratic economic principles. Attempts were being made by numbers of publicists to popularize Physiocratic doctrines in various forms; polemics were being written in reply, some of them by men of considerable ability; and there was scarcely an economist writing in Britain at this time who did not feel impelled to give his opinion on the issues at stake.
