J'llli WK.AI.TII OK NATION'S.

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guishes l>y the name of the Economical Table, representsthe manlier in which he supposes this distribution takes place,in a state of the most perfect liberty, and therefore of thehighest prosperity; in a state where the annual produce issuch as to afford the greatest possible neat produce, and whereeacli class enjoys its proper share of the whole annual pro-duce. Some subsequent formularies represent the manner,in which, he supposes, this distribution is made in differentstates of restraint and regulation ; in which, either the classof proprietors, or the barren and unproductive class, is morefavoured than the class of cultivators, and in which, eitherthe one or the other encroaches more or less upon the sharewhich ought properly to belong to this productive class.Every such encroachment, every violation of that naturaldistribution, which the most perfect liberty would establish,must, according to this system, necessarily degrade more orless, from one year to another, the value and sum total ot theannual produce, and must necessarily occasion a gradual de-clension in the real wealth and revenue of the society; a de-clension of which the progress must be quicker or slower,according to the degree of this encroachment, according asthat natural distribution, which the most perfect liberty wouldestablish, is more or less violated. Those subsequent for-mularies represent the different degrees of declension, which,according to this system, correspond to the different, degreesin which this natural distribution of things is violated.

Some speculative physicians seem to have imagined thatthe health ot the human body could be preserved only by acertain precise regimen of diet and exercise, of which every,the smallest, violation necessarily occasioned some degree ofdisease or disorder proportionate to the degree of the violation.Experience, however, would seem to shew, that the humanbody frequently preserves, to all appearance at least, themost perfect state of health under a vast variety of differentregimens ; even under some which are generally believed tobe very far from being perfectly wholesome. But the health-ful state ot the human body, it would seem, contains in itselfsome unknown principle of preservation, capable either ofpreventing or of correcting, in many respects, the bad effectseven of a very faulty regimen. Mr. Quesnai, who was him-self a physician, and a very speculative physician, seems tohave entertained a notion of the same kind concerning thepolitical body, and to have imagined that it would thrive and

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