François Quesnay Life Works See Also

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 Francois 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 XVLouis XV ( February 15, 1710 May 10, 1774) was king of France from 1715- 74. He was born at the Palace of Versailles. Until the royal legal age of maturity at fourteen, his uncle, Philippe d'Orleans, acted as Regent. Cardinal Fleury, until his death ( 174 esteemed Quesnay much, and used to call him his thinker; when he ennobled him he gave him for arms three flowers of the pansyPansy Scientific classification Kingdom: Plantae Division: Magnoliophyta Class: Magnoliopsida Order: Violales Family: Violaceae Genus: Viola Species tricolor wittrockiana Binomial name Viola tricolor hortensis ''Viola wittrockiana The Pansy or Pansy Viole (pensée in FrenchFrench le francais la langue francaise is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered only by Spanish and Portuguese. French is the 11th most spoken language in the world, spoken by about 77 million people (called Francophones) as a mother to, also meaning thought), with the motto Propter excogitalionem 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 1750Events March 2 Small earthquake in London April 4 Small earthquake in Warrington, England August 23 Small earthquake in Spalding, England September 30 Small earthquake in Northampton, England November 16 Westminster Bridge officially opened Jonas Hanway i 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 MirabeauJoseph Boze Honore Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau (often referred to simply as Mirabeau ( March 9, 1749 April 2, 1791) was a French writer, popular orator and statesman. During the French Revolution, he was a moderate, favored a constitutional monarch (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 MorelletAndre Morellet ( March 7, 1727 January 12, 1819) was a French economist and writer. He was one of the last of the philosophes and in this character he figures in many memoirs, such as those of Madame de Remusat. He was born at Lyons, and educated by the J (best known by his controversy with GalianiFerdinando Galiani ( December 2, 1728 October 30, 1787) was an Italian economist. He was born at Chieti, and carefully educated by his uncle, Monsignor C. Galiani, at Naples and Rome with a view to entering the church. Galiani showed early promise as an e on the freedom of the corn trade ), Mercier Lariviere and Dupont de Nemours . Adam SmithThis article is about the 18th-century economist. For other people of the same name, see Adam Smith (disambiguation). Adam Smith Date of birth June 5, 1723 (baptism) Kirkcaldy Fife, Scotland Date of death July 17, 1790 (illness) Edinburgh, Scotland Occupa, 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.

2 Works

In 1758 he published Tableau économique, 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 {alace of Versailles under the king's immediate supervision, some of the sheets, it is said, having been pulled by the royal hand. Already in 1767 the book had disappeared from circulation, and no copy of it is 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 Eugene Daire ; also his OEuvres économiques et philosophiques were collected with an introduction and note by Aug. 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).

3 See also

History of Economic Thought

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911 Britannica

Quesnay, François Quesnay, François

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