ABSTRACT
The name of the religion is still Free Trade. But Mount Sinai is not in Scotland, Adam Smith is no Moses, and the Walrasian Utopia is not the Promised Land. The leading figure in the ranks of the Physiocrats is generally acknowledged to be Francois Quesnay, whose influence at the court of Louis XV owed something to his position as personal physician to Madame Pompadour. Quesnay shows in his Tableau how the annual revenue of the nation is produced and distributed. He then emphasises that it will be achieved only on the basis of certain assumptions. Smith’s conclusion that “every prodigal appears to be a public enemy, and every frugal man a public benefactor” is in direct conflict with Quesnay’s condemnation of “the formation of monetary fortunes. Sir William Petty, like Quesnay, was a physician; and, like Quesnay, he was keen to apply his knowledge of the human body to the economy of society.
