Yet we need not limit the scope of his statement when we remember that as a sect the Economists assumed as their first principle the eudaemonic value of civilisation, declared that temporal happiness is attainable, and threw all their weight into the scales against the doctrine of Regress which had found a powerful advocate in Rousseau.
7.
By liberty the Economists meant economic liberty.

Neither they nor the philosophers nor Rousseau, the father of modern democracy, had any just conception of what political liberty means.

They contributed much to its realisation, but their own ideas of it were narrow and imperfect.

They never challenged the principle of a despotic government, they only contended that the despotism must be enlightened.

The paternal rule of a Joseph or a Catherine, acting under the advice of philosophers, seemed to them the ideal solution of the problem of government; and when the progressive and disinterested Turgot, whom they might regard as one of themselves, was appointed financial minister on the accession of Louis XVI., it seemed that their ideal was about to be realised.