The Agricultural System Debate — The Wealth of Nations

After mercantilism, Smith turns to French thinkers who said only farming creates real wealth. No nation actually ran its economy on that theory, but a few learned French writers took it seriously. Colbert, Louis XIV's minister, had already sorted society into productive farmers, sterile manufacturers, and the king's revenue class.

That division was neat on paper and wrong in practice. Smith will explain the physiocratic system because it is ingenious, not because it ever governed a country. Its errors still teach how a single-industry obsession can distort policy. Colbert depressed the countryside with corn export bans and provincial grain restraints to cheapen town provisions, provoking the overcorrection Smith will dissect. If the rod is bent too far one way, proverb says, straighten it by bending the other; physiocrats bent toward land alone. Provincial grain barriers and export bans had beggared French cultivators while towns ate cheap bread; the Economists read that injury and overcorrected.