Governments would gladly have increased the mer chant's profit, on condition of obtaining a share of it. Ima gining that nothing more was necessary than to second each other's views, they offered him force to support in dustry ; and since the advantage of the merchant consists in selling dear and buying cheap, they thought it would' be an effectual protection to commerce, tne means were afforded of selling still dearer and buying still cheaper. The merchants whom they consulted eagerly grasped at this proposal ; and thus was Founded the mercantile system. Antonio de Leyva, Fernando de Gonzago, and the Duke of Alva, viceroys of Charles V. and his descendants—the rapacious inventors of so many monopolies—had no other notion of political economy. But when it was attempted to reduce this methodical robbery or consumers into a system; when deliberative assemblies were occupied with it; when Colbert consulted corporations ; when the people at last began to perceive the true state of the case, it be came necessary to find out a more honourable basis for such transactions ; it became necessary not only to study the ad vantage of financiers and merchants, but also that of the nation: for the calculations of self-interest cannot show themselves in open day, and the first benefit of publicity is to impose silence on base sentiments.
Under these circumstances the mercantile system was moulded into a plausible form ; and doubtless it must have been plausible, since, even till our own times, it continued to seduce the greater part of practical men employed in trade and finance. Wealth, said those earliest economists, is money : the two words were received into universal use as almost entirely synonymous; no one dreamed of ques tioning the identity of money and wealth. Money, they said, disposes of men's labour and of all its fruits. It is money which produces those fruits; it is by means of mo ney that industry continues in a nation ; to its influence each individual owes his subsistence and the continuation of his life. is especially necessary in the relation of one state to another. It supports war and forms the strength of armies. The state which has it, rules over that which has it not. The whole science of political economy ought, therefore, to have for its object the increase of mo ney in a nation. But the money possessed by a nation can not be augmented in quantity, except by the working of mines, if the nation has any; or by foreign trade, if it has none. All the exchanges carried on within a country, all the purchases and sales which take place among English men, for instance, do not increase the specie contained within the shores of England by a single penny. Hence
it is necessary to find means of importing money from other countries; and trade alone can do this by selling much to foreigners and buying little from them. For in the same way as each merchant in settling with his corre spondent, secs at the year's end whether he has sold more than he has bought, and finds himself accordingly creditor or debtor by a balance account which must be paid in mo ney; so likewise a nation, by summing up all its purcha ses and all its sales with each nation, or with all together, would find itself every year creditor or debtor by a com mercial balance which must be paid in money. If the country pay this balance, it will constantly grow poorer; if it receive the balance, it will constantly grow richer.
For a century, the mercantile system was universally adopted by cabinets; universally favoured by traders and chambers of commerce; universally expounded by wri ters, as if it had been proved by the most unexceptionable demonstration, no one deeming it worth while to establish it by new proofs; when, after the middle of the eighteenth century, Quesnay opposed to it his Tableau Economique, afterwards expounded by Mirabeau and the Abbe de Ri viere, enlarged by Dupont de Nemours, and adopted by a numerous sect which arose in France, under the name of •Economists. In Italy too this sect gained some distin guished partisans. Its followers have written more about the science than those of any other sect; yet they have admitted Quesnay's principles with such blind confidence, and maintained them with such implicit fidelity, that one is at a loss to discover any difference of principle, or any progress of ideas in their several productions.
Thus Quesnay founded a second system in political eco nomy, still named the territorial system, or more precisely the system of the economists. He begins by asserting that gold and silver, the signs of wealth, the means of ex change, the price of all commodities, do not themselves constitute the wealth of states; and that no judgment can be formed concerning the prosperity of a nation, from the abundance of its precious metals. He next proceeds to survey the different classes of men, all of whom, occupied in gaining money, and causing wealth to circulate, even when acquiring it for themselves, are not, according to him, occupied with any thing besides exchange. l le en deavours to distinguish the classes possessed of a creative power; it is amongst them that wealth must originate, all the transactions of commerce appearing to be nothing else but the transmission of that wealth from hand to hand.