Quesnay

Quesnay, FRANÇOIS, a great French economist, was born at Mérey, near Montfort-l'Amanry, June 4, 1694, studied medicine and surgery at Paris, and in 1718 commenced practice at Mantes. He acquired a high reputation in his profession, and at his death on 14th December 1774 was first physician to the king. But the fame of the 'European Confucius,' as he was called by his followers, depends upon his speculations in political economy, in the pages of the famous Encyclopédie (articles 'Fermiers' and 'Grains') and various serials. Around him and his friend, M. de Gournay, gathered the famous group of the Economistes, also called the Physiocratic School (q.v.; and see POLITICAL ECONOMY, p. 288). Quesnay's views were systematically set forth in a little treatise, entitled Tableaux Économiques. Only a few copies of this work were printed about the end of the year 1758, and these have now all disappeared; yet the principles maintained by Quesnay are well known, both from the sources above mentioned, and from other treatises that have met with a better fate—his Maximes Générales du Gouvernement Économique d'un Royaume Agricole, the notes to which occupy more space than the text; Le Droit Naturel, included in the Physiocratic of Dupont de Nemours; Analyse du Tableau Économique; Problèmes Économiques; and Dialogues sur le Commerce et sur les Travaux des Artisans—collected in Oncken's edition of his Œuvres Économiques et philosophiques (Frankfort, 1888).