France has known two famous men named Mirabeau, a father and a son, but it was the son who truly made history. A revolutionary tribune and one of the central figures in the events of the French Revolution, he remained famous.

Through his talent and his place in French history, he overshadowed his father, an economist and pillar of François Quesnay's school, who had been its first member as early as 1758.

The Marquis de Mirabeau had, in fact, already achieved immense fame even before his adoption of Physiocracy thanks to a book entitled "The Friend of Mankind. Treatise on Population FR: L'ami des hommes, ou, Traité de la population. Even though the first edition was published in 1756, it became famous around 1757, a year before his meeting with Quesnay.

More than 20 editions were published between 1757 and 1760, which probably makes it the most successful economics book in history. Some readers even thought the book had been written by Montesquieu because of its sharp reasoning. The Dauphin, father King Louis XVI, even claimed to have memorized it. For a time, it was the book everyone at Versailles was reading.

Today it's a book that's no longer read, but many still reference it. Even by the 19th century, Edmond Roussel said:

At the start of his career as an economist, Mirabeau drew inspiration from Richard Cantillon. He had owned a manuscript of Cantillon's Essay on the Nature of Commerce in General for 15 years and had patiently analyzed and commented on it.

L'Ami des Hommes was originally conceived as a simple commentary on Cantillon's Essay. But since Mirabeau had a somewhat eclectic mind, which is to say, frankly, a bit mad, he quickly strayed from his original plan. The book simply discusses all the economic questions he knew, occasionally moving away from Cantillon. It is a difficult book to read, with a bizarre plan and digressions in every chapter. Mirabeau himself admitted that it was chaos and that his style was apocalyptic.

Despite the chaos that it is, some ideas are worth noting:

It's hard to label Mirabeau's views as either liberal or anti-liberal. He often drifted back and forth, sometimes without realizing it, between one vision and the other. Still, liberal ideas frequently dominated his writing. One of his most famous lines was:

With his greatest success behind him, Mirabeau was courted. François Quesnay, who had just taken an interest in economics, invited him to his entresol at Versailles.

They debated furiously and finally, something that normally never happens in debates, happened: Mirabeau flatly admitted that he had been wrong. He agreed with Quesnay's ideas and said he was ready to spread them.

Together, they formed the core of what would become the Physiocratic school, strengthened by the regular recruits they brought in. Shortly after Mirabeau's conversion, Quesnay enlisted him to defend his his ideas on taxation. This led to the "Theory of Taxation", for which Mirabeau was sent for a few days to the Vincennes prison and then exiled to Bignon.

Mirabeau also played a crucial role in recruiting new members for Quesnay's school. He even convinced the young Dupont de Nemours.

It was also at Mirabeau's house that the Physiocrats met every Tuesday. Personalities such as Turgot and Adam Smith appear to have attended these meetings once or several times.

Throughout his life, Mirabeau remained a tireless writer. He authored numerous economic works defending Quesnay's doctrine. However, toward the end of his life, his influence waned. His writing style deteriorated to the point that his own brother wrote to him saying he could no longer understand his prose. His ideas, having become fully liberal, clashed with the socialist or proto-communist reaction of thinkers like Mably and even Rousseau. He struggled to find readers and publishers, and died largely unnoticed in 1789, on the eve of the storming of the Bastille.