Everything about Fran Ois Quesnay totally explained
François Quesnay (
June 4,
1694 -
December 16,
1774) was a
French economist of the
Physiocratic school.
Life
Quesnay was born at
Merey, in today's
Eure département, near
Paris, the son of an advocate and small
landed proprietor. Apprenticed at the age of sixteen to a surgeon, he soon went to Paris, studied
medicine and surgery there, and, having qualified as a master-surgeon, settled down to practice at
Mantes. In
1737 he was appointed perpetual secretary of the academy of surgery founded by
François la Peyronie, and became surgeon in ordinary to the king. In
1744 he graduated as a doctor of medicine; he became physician in ordinary to the king, and afterwards his first consulting physician, and was installed in the
Palace of Versailles. His apartments were on the
entresol, whence the
Réunions de l'entresol received their name.
Louis XV esteemed Quesnay much, and used to call him his thinker; when he ennobled him he gave him for arms three flowers of the
pansy (
pensée in
French, also meaning
thought), with the motto
Propter excogitationem mentis.
He now devoted himself principally to economic studies, taking no part in the court intrigues which were perpetually going on around him. About the year
1750 he became acquainted with
Jean C. M. V. de Gournay (1712-1759), who was also an earnest inquirer in the economic field; and round these two distinguished men was gradually formed the philosophic sect of the
Économistes, or, as for distinction's sake they were afterwards called, the
Physiocrates. The most remarkable men in this group of disciples were the elder
Mirabeau (author of
L'Ami des hommes, 1756-60, and
Philosophie rurale, 1763),
Nicolas Baudeau (
Introduction a la philosophie économique, 1771),
G. F. Le Trosne (
De l'ordre social, 1777),
André Morellet (best known by his controversy with
Galiani on the freedom of the grain trade during the
Flour War),
Mercier Larivière and
Dupont de Nemours.
Adam Smith, during his stay on the continent with the young
Duke of Buccleuch in
1764-
1766, spent some time in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Quesnay and some of his followers; he paid a high tribute to their scientific services in his
Wealth of Nations.
Quesnay died on December 16, 1774, having lived long enough to see his great pupil,
Turgot, in office as
minister of finance. He had married in
1718, and had a son and a daughter; his grandson by the former was a member of the
first Legislative Assembly.Well skilled concerning surgery.
Works
In
1758 he published the
Tableau économique (Economic Table), which provided the foundations of the ideas of the Physiocrats. This was perhaps the first work to attempt to describe the workings of the economy in an analytical way, and as such can be viewed as one of the first important contributions to economic thought.
The publications in which Quesnay expounded his system were the following: two articles, on "Fermiers" and on "Grains", in the
Encyclopédie of
Diderot and
D'Alembert (
1756,
1757); a discourse on the law of nature in the
Physiocratie of Dupont de Nemours (
1768);
Maximes générales de gouvernement economique d'un royaume agricole (
1758), and the simultaneously published
Tableau économique avec son explication, ou extrait des économies royales de Sully (with the celebrated motto,
Pauvres paysans, pauvre royaume; pauvre royaume, pauvre roi);
Dialogue sur le commerce et les travaux des artisans; and other minor pieces.
The
Tableau économique, though on account of its dryness and abstract form it met with little general favor, may be considered the principal manifesto of the school. It was regarded by the followers of Quesnay as entitled to a place amongst the foremost products of human wisdom, and is named by the elder Mirabeau, in a passage quoted by Adam Smith, as one of the three great inventions which have contributed most to the stability of political societies, the other two being those of writing and of money. Its object was to exhibit by means of certain formulas the way in which the products of
agriculture, which is the only source of wealth, would in a state of perfect liberty be distributed among the several classes of the community (namely, the productive classes of the proprietors and cultivators of land, and the unproductive class composed of manufacturers and merchants), and to represent by other formulas the modes of distribution which take place under systems of Governmental restraint and regulation, with the evil results arising to the whole society from different degrees of such violations of the natural order. It follows from Quesnay's theoretic views that the one thing deserving the solicitude of the practical economist and the statesman is the increase of the net product; and he infers also what Smith afterwards affirmed, on not quite the same ground, that the interest of the landowner is strictly and indissolubly connected with the general interest of the society. A small edition de luxe of this work, with other pieces, was printed in
1758 in the Palace of Versailles under the king's immediate supervision, some of the sheets, it's said, having been pulled by the royal hand. Already in
1767 the book had disappeared from circulation, and no copy of it's now procurable; but, the substance of it has been preserved in the
Ami des hommes of Mirabeau, and the
Physiocratie of Dupont de Nemours.
His economic writings are collected in the 2nd vol. of the
Principaux économistes, published by Guillaumin, Paris, with preface and notes by
Eugène Daire; also his
OEuvres économiques et philosophiques were collected with an introduction and note by
August Oncken (Frankfort, 1888); a facsimile reprint of the
Tableau économique, from the original MS., was published by the British Economic Association (London, 1895). His other writings were the article "Évidence" in the
Encyclopédie, and
Recherches sur l'évidence des vérites geometriques, with a
Projet de nouveaux éléments de géometrie, 1773. Quesnay's Eloge was pronounced in the
Academy of Sciences by
Grandjean de Fouchy (see the Recueil of that Academy, 1774, p. 134). See also
F.J. Marmontel,
Mémoires;
Mémoires de Mme. du Hausset;
H. Higgs,
The Physiocrats (London, 1897).
Chinese influences
The influence of
Chinese ideas and concepts on Quesnay shouldn't be forgotten: in his lifetime he was known as the European
Confucius. The doctrine and even the name of "
Laissez-faire" may have been inspired by the Chinese concept of
Wu wei.
Further Information
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