Critique of the “systeme des commerςants"
The defence of free international competition is obviously a plea pro patria and, more generally, in favour of large agricultural States. The article “Grains” takes up the common distinction between large and small States, the size of the territory specifying the type of commerce that can be sustained there.
The interest of the large States is to promote their agriculture and the trade in its products and, on this basis, to establish manufacturing, transforming these products, but in no case to replace this necessary and useful manufacturing by luxury manufacturing, which transforms materials that they do not produce. The logic of small States is different: condemned by their meagre territory to live at the expense of the territory of others, all that remains is to engage in the “commerce de traffic” [carriage trade] (1757a, 197). A large agricultural State must therefore avoid two dangers: that of transforming itself, like Holland, into a trading post, and that of considering that the luxury trade is the most appropriate to its political constitution, as Montesquieu maintained.It is therefore not surprising to find harsh criticism of what Quesnay calls the “systeme des commer^ants” in the “Hommes” and “Impots” articles. In these, Quesnay castigates the defenders of the English Navigation Act:
Most of our authors who deal with trade, and especially with trade in denrees de notre cru [grown on the national soil], believe that in order to promote our navigation, the export of our commodities by sea must be exclusively reserved for the nation; but this monopoly could only be suggested by a particular interest of traders.
(Quesnay 1757b, 269)
When the Seven Years’ War began, Quesnay saw the link between wealth and power in another way: it was by relying on the agricultural net product that the kingdom could have the means for a politics of strength, especially vis-a-vis Great Britain (Steiner 2002).
Indeed, criticism of the Navigation Act led to that of English domination of the seas and justified the imperative of having a French navy as powerful as that of its English rival. Quesnay argues here in terms of the balance of power. He accepts the idea that the balance of nations is in favour of England, which controls the seas militarily and commercially, and maintains that a return to equilibrium can only be achieved by setting against the English naval power a power that is a counterweight to it, like that of France. It is therefore necessary to strengthen the navy of this nation which, unlike England, would be a force for peace and balance, conceiving trade not as antagonism, but as a competition in which each nation would find an advantage through profitable reciprocal trade. France would thus re-establish an equality of competition, which would not, however, be an “equality of wealth between trading nations” (Quesnay 1757-1758, 291):
Maritime forces ensure the establishment and advancement of foreign trade, which sustains revenues from land; because with the support of a military navy, formidable to other maritime powers, our trade and the population of the kingdom would expand everywhere. It would no longer accept the law of others in foreign trading posts, trade would be established unanimously and freely, between commercial and rival powers. Hindrances, prohibitions, the exaction of costly and prejudicial rights, would disappear: navigation would be established universally in all ports, on both sides; and trade would return to the natural order to the advantage of all trading nations!
(Quesnay 1757-1758, 269)
Quesnay therefore continues to accept one of the commonplaces of the science of trade, the rivalry of nations, with the limit, however, that this rivalry remains a competition and does not turn into jealousy. He maintains that, by its foreign trade in agricultural commodities, a large territory “is always guaranteed to surpass others” (Quesnay 1757-1758, 291) and to seize part of the revenue of other trading nations.
He thus puts forward a dual proposition, that by which foreign trade must satisfy the respective interests of the buyer and the seller, and the other, that it is a means for an agricultural kingdom to derive part of its revenue from abroad. Quesnay is then led to consider the wealth extracted by foreign trade in agricultural commodities as “productive wealth”:Let us add to the ploughman [laboureur] the merchant, who transports our [agricultural] commodities to foreign nations, where they can be sold at a ‘bon prix’, and which increases their production by increasing their utterance and their value. This wealth, which removes that from abroad, is also the source of wealth for the nation.
(Quesnay 1757b, 222)
In contrast, works of industry “that are only worth the expenditure that they require” (1757b, 219), however useful they may be, are “sterile wealth” (1757b, 220). However, Quesnay (1757b, 221, 1757-1758, 291) recognises that, through its foreign trade in works, a trading nation “can attract to itself some part of the wealth from abroad” if the trade is not reciprocal, and achieve a “small net product”, small compared to the revenue of an agricultural nation (Steiner 1997). Here, we find again the distinction between the “agricultural kingdom”, whose wealth and power depend on the net product of agriculture, and the “trading republic”, which is only enriched by offering a service (maritime transport) at an advantageous price. Criticism of the “systeme des commer^ants” is therefore essentially aimed at the error that consists in believing that what applies to a trading republic also applies to an agricultural kingdom.
The distinction does not exclude the complementarity of these two types of societies if they are administered in accordance with their productive situation (Steiner 1997). Indeed, Quesnay (1767-1768b, 592-3) recognises that an agricultural nation may find it advantageous to entrust certain parts of its trade to a small trading nation rather than to exercise it entirely itself, since it participates in this trade without bearing all the costs of this. But beyond this complementarity, it should be noted that Quesnay introduced the concept of the “small net product” of trade, an idea that is understated in his work but present in central texts, such as the second and third versions of the Tableau Economique (Quesnay 1759a, 410n. and 1759b, 430n.) and the “Maximes generales d’un gouvernement economique” (Quesnay 1767-1768b, 579). This “small net product”, drawn from foreign trade, to which
Quesnay hastens to add that free competition will make it disappear, occurs when manufacturers and traders can, thanks to the low price of labour and subsistence, “save”, namely offer their works and services at a lower price.
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