Turgot was the only literary person among them, but like his _confrères_ he was devoid of wit, though the age was noted for its humorists. On the whole they were a sad and solemn sect, and their curious habit of insisting upon logical consistency—as if they were the sole depositaries of eternal truth—must often have been very tiresome. They soon fell an easy prey to the caustic sarcasm of Voltaire.[10] But despite all this they enjoyed a great reputation among their more eminent contemporaries. Statesmen, ambassadors, and a whole galaxy of royal personages, including the Margrave of Baden, who attempted to apply their doctrines in his own realm, the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, the Emperor Joseph II of Austria, Catherine, the famous Empress of Russia, Stanislaus, King of Poland, and Gustavus III of Sweden, were numbered among their auditors. Lastly, and most unexpectedly of all, they were well received by the Court ladies at Versailles. In a word, Physiocracy became the rage. All this may seem strange to us, but there are several considerations which may well be kept in view. The society of the period, _raffiné_ and licentious as it was, took the same delight in the “rural economy” of the Physiocrats as it did in the pastorals of Trianon or Watteau. Perhaps it gleaned some comfort from the thought of an unchangeable “natural order,” just when the political and social edifice was giving way beneath its feet. It may be that its curiosity was roused by that terse saying which Quesnay wrote at the head of the _Tableau economique_: “Pauvres paysans, pauvre royaume! Pauvre royaume, pauvre roi!” or that it felt in those words the sough of a new breeze, not very threatening as yet, but a forerunner of the coming storm. An examination of the doctrine, or the essential principles as they called them, must precede a consideration of the system or the proposed application of those principles. I I: THE NATURAL ORDER The essence of the Physiocratic system lay in their conception of the “natural order.” _L’Ordre naturel et essential des Societés politiques_ is the title of Mercier de la Rivière’s book, and Dupont de Nemours defined Physiocracy as “the science of the natural order.” What are we to understand by these terms? It is hardly necessary to say that the term “natural order” is meant to emphasise the contrast between it and the artificial social order voluntarily created upon the basis of a social contract.[11] But a purely negative definition is open to many different interpretations. In the first place, this “natural order” may be conceived as a state of nature in opposition to a civilised state regarded as an artificial creation. To discover what such a “natural order” really was like man must have recourse to his origins.