QUESNAY

QUESNAY, François, a physician of considerable eminence, but who is chiefly known in the history of philosophy as a profound and ingenious inquirer into the constitution of society, and as the founder of the sect of the Economists.

The accounts of the life of this distinguished person, which, unlike that of most literary men, abounded in incident and adventure, are exceedingly meagre and contradictory. Neither the place of his birth nor the condition of his parents has been well ascertained; but the accounts apparently most entitled to credit state that he was born at the village of Equivilly, in the Isle de France, in 1694; and that his father was either a common labourer, or a small proprietor who cultivated his own little property.¹ His humble origin is indeed evident from the fact mentioned by all his biographers, of his early education having been almost entirely

neglected, and of his being constantly occupied, until his fourteenth or sixteenth year, in the sports or labours of the fields, without being either sent to school or taught to read. But although placed in such unfavourable circumstances, young Quesnay was imbued with an ardent love of knowledge, and with a strong desire to emerge from the obscure station in which he had been brought up. The Maison Rustique of Liebaunt was the first book that came into his hands; and he is said to have learned to read it by the assistance of lessons given him by a gardener of the village. The perusal of this book, which seems to have had a material influence over his future studies, awakened his latent powers, and stimulated him to make further efforts to extend his information. Having acquired a competent knowledge of his vernacular tongue, by the eager reading of such French books as came into his hands, he next applied himself to the study of the dead languages; and speedily attained, partly by the slender assistance of a self-dubbed surgeon of the village, but chiefly by his own extraordinary industry and sagacity, to a tolerable proficiency in Latin and Greek.

Quesnay now resolved, in opposition to the wishes of his parents, and especially of his mother, to devote himself to the profession of surgery, and received the rudiments of his instruction in that art from the village-doctor who had assisted him in his philological studies. But the pupil very soon surpassed the master; and when the latter applied to be admitted into the Maitrise, or Corporation of Surgeons, he presented, as testimonials of his skill in his profession, and of his capacity to practise it with advantage, some Essays written by Quesnay, and which were received with very great applause. Quesnay was not privy to this ruse; but soon after its occurrence he left his paternal village, and set out to prosecute his studies at Paris. We are not informed by what means he supported himself in that city, nor how long he remained there; but his indefatigable industry and zeal enabled him to make great progress in his studies, whilst his merit and modesty procured him several friends. Besides attending prelections on the various branches of surgery, and the different hospitals, he found leisure to devote some portion of his time to metaphysical researches, and the study of philosophy, for which the perusal of the Recherche de la Vérité of Malebranche had given him a very decided taste. Nay, such was the almost unparalleled activity and vigour of his mind, that having accidentally met, during his stay in Paris, with the celebrated M. Cochin, of the Royal Academy of Painting, he put himself under his tuition; and we are told, that he profited so well by the few lessons he received, as to be able not only to take remarkably good likenesses, but to design and engrave, with his own hand, the various bones of the human skeleton, in a manner which would not have disgraced the most skilful artists.

On finishing his studies at Paris, Quesnay formed the design of establishing himself as a surgeon in Mantes, a considerable town of his native province, and presented himself to the surgeons of its Maitrise for examination. But they refused, from jealousy, as is alleged, of his talents, to admit him to trial. He was thus laid under the necessity of returning to Paris, where he passed his examinations with felicity; and in 1718 received letters ordering him to be admitted into the Maitrise of Mantes.

Having established himself at Mantes, his reputation soon extended itself. He was employed by some of the first

Quesnay, families of the neighbourhood, and, amongst others, by that of the Marshal de Noailles, Duc de Villeroi, who persuaded him to leave his residence in the country, and to accompany him to Paris as his surgeon, as nearly as we can collect in 1729 or 1730. An incident not long afterwards occurred, which had the most material influence over his future prospects and life. Having accompanied the Duc de Villeroi to the house of the Comtesse d'Estrades, Quesnay remained behind in the carriage whilst the duke went in to visit that lady, who, during the interview, was suddenly seized with an epileptic fit. Quesnay being called in, and perceiving the nature of the attack, with singular presence of mind ordered the duke and the other attendants out of the room, and managed so well as to succeed in concealing the nature of the malady. The comtesse was so much pleased with this dexterity and address, that she lost no time in recommending Quesnay to her all-powerful friend, Madame d'Estrades, afterwards Madame de Pompadour, who made him her physician; and, besides obtaining for him apartments at Versailles, procured him, in 1737, the place of surgeon in ordinary to the king.¹

Quesnay was shortly afterwards appointed secretary to the Royal Academy of Surgery, established in 1731; and, besides several articles on particular branches of surgery, he contributed the preface to the first volume of its Mémoires, which has always been reckoned peculiarly valuable for its profound and discriminating observations on the respective uses of theory and observation in the physical sciences, and on the assistance they reciprocally lend to each other.

Having from an early period been much subject to the gout, and becoming in consequence less able to discharge his duties as surgeon, Quesnay took the degree of doctor of medicine in 1744; and was soon afterwards appointed, through the influence of his powerful patroness, to the important place of consulting physician to the king. In this capacity he attended Louis in the campaigns of 1744 and 1745, and, amid the distractions of a camp, collected and prepared the greater part of the materials for his Traité de Fièvres, published in 1753.

His appointment as physician to the king was preceded by the grant of letters of nobility, issued on the recovery of the dauphin from an attack of small-pox. Louis, who was much struck with the justice and solidity of Quesnay's remarks, familiarly called him son penseur, and gave him, in allusion to this title, three pansey flowers (in French, pensées), for his arms, with the motto Propter cogitationem mentis.

The leisure Quesnay now enjoyed enabled him to prosecute his studies with greater assiduity. In 1747 he republished an enlarged edition, in three tomes 12mo, of his Essai Physique sur l'Economie Animale, originally published in 1736; in 1748 he published an Examen Impartial des Contestations des Médecins et des Chirurgiens de Paris; in 1749 he published a Mémoire sur la Sagesse de l'Ancienne Législation de la Chirurgie en France, and two separate treatises in 12mo, the one on Suppuration, and the other De la Gangrène; in 1750 he republished his Traité des Effets et de l'Usage de la Saignée, written during his residence at Mantes, and originally published in 1730; and in 1753 he published his Traité des Fièvres Continuées, two tomes 12mo.

These works have all been held in very high estimation; and an excellent judge has given it as his opinion, that

"the Traité de la Gangrène is by far the most valuable publication which we yet possess upon this subject." Every page of this work, he adds, "is distinguished by the same talent for accurate observation and perspicuous arrangement, which are so remarkable in all the other writings of this celebrated author." (Thomson's Lectures on Inflammation, p. 502.)

The Traité des Fièvres was the last of Quesnay's professional works. He appears to have thenceforth comparatively abandoned his medical studies. At no period, indeed, had he allowed them to occupy exclusively his attention; and he now devoted himself, in preference, to other, and, if possible, still more interesting inquiries. He had always entertained a strong predilection for agricultural pursuits, the effect, perhaps, of his situation in early life; and this, combined with the speculative and metaphysical cast of his mind, seems to have led him to those peculiar notions respecting the paramount importance of agriculture as a source of wealth, and the constitution of society, which have rendered his name so justly celebrated in the history of economical science. The articles Fermier and Grains in the Encyclopédie, published in 1756 and 1757, contain the earliest development of his views on this subject. They are both written with great ability, and display an intimate acquaintance with the subject, considerable reading, and great powers of analysis. In the article Grains the distinction between the produit total and the produit net; between the productiveness of agriculture and the supposed unproductiveness of other employments, with the doctrine of the unrestricted freedom of commerce, and most of the other leading principles in the theory of the economists; are distinctly stated, and illustrated with much ingenuity. The Tableau Economique, and the Maximes Générales du Gouvernement Economique, annexed to it under the title of Extractions Economiques Royales de M. de Sully, were printed, by command of the king, at Versailles, in the year 1758, with the following very remarkable epigraph for a work brought forth under such auspices, Pauvres paysans, pauvre royaume; pauvre royaume, pauvre souverain. The Maxims, which contain a short but comprehensive abstract of Quesnay's system, were reprinted, together with an analysis of the Tableau, and a selection from various articles contributed by Quesnay, in explanation and defence of his peculiar doctrines, to the Journal d'Agriculture, and the Épistémérides du Citoyen,² in the collection of Quesnay's economical works, entitled Physiocratie, ou Constitution Naturelle du Gouvernement le plus Avantageux au Genre Humain, edited by his friend and scholar Dupont in 1767.

We have elsewhere entered at considerable length into an examination of the speculations of Quesnay and his followers, with respect to the constitution of political societies and the sources of public wealth. (See ECONOMISTS and POLITICAL ECONOMY.) That there is a good deal of error in them must be allowed; but this is far more than counterbalanced by the many just, discriminating, and original views and important discoveries which they contain. Perhaps, however, the principal merit of Quesnay and his followers does not consist so much in the discoveries they made, as in their having been the first philosophers who distinctly perceived that the institutions of society should always harmonize with the natural principles on which it is founded, or, as they termed it, with the ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques. According to them, econo-

Quesnay. mical science is "L'étude et la démonstration des lois de la nature relatives à la subsistance et la multiplication du genre humain. L'observation universelle de ces lois est l'intérêt commun et général de tous les hommes. La connaissance universelle de ces lois est donc le préliminaire indispensable et le moyen nécessaire du bonheur de tous." (Éphémérides du Citoyen, 1769, No. II. p. 13.) It is to be regretted that, in investigating these laws, they proceeded too much upon abstract and speculative principles, without sufficiently attending to the effects of particular institutions, and to the various phenomena manifested in the progress of society. But notwithstanding the defective mode in which they conducted their researches, they succeeded in establishing and elucidating many important principles; and there is certainly much more reason to wonder at the general correctness of their conclusions, than to feel surprised at the errors into which they fell. Quesnay and his disciples established, that society either is or should be formed to secure the greatest possible advantage to its members; that the security of property and the freedom of industry are its essential bases; and that, instead of interfering to regulate the pursuits of individuals, the proper business of the politician is to protect the equal rights and liberties of all, and to secure the utmost freedom of competition in every department of industry. And though it be undoubtedly true that most of these principles had been pointed out by previous writers, Quesnay and his school have the merit of being the first who showed their dependence on each other, and who, by presenting them in a systematic and consecutive form, were enabled to give a scientific demonstration of the injustice and impolicy of such institutions as ignorance or mistaken views of national interest had established in opposition to them.

In the article POLITICAL ECONOMY an attempt has been made to show the fallacy of Quesnay's opinion with respect to agriculture being the only source of wealth; and the experience of all ages sufficiently proves that the despotisme légal, in the hands of an hereditary monarch, without contreforces of any kind, which he strangely supposed was the best of all possible governments, is about the very worst.¹

Notwithstanding his great age, and the sufferings he experienced from almost incessant attacks of the gout, the activity of Quesnay's mind continued unimpaired. "Il a," said one of his friends, "une tête de trente ans sur un corps de quatre-vingts." He contributed subsequently to the publication of the Physiocratie, many acute and able articles to the Éphémérides du Citoyen, and continued wholly occupied with these studies, and with mathematics, to which he latterly began to pay considerable attention, until his death, which took place at Versailles in December 1774, in the eightieth year of his age.

Quesnay possessed inflexible integrity, a nice sense of honour, and great prudence and discretion. Though highly esteemed by the king, and long resident at court, he never intermixed in the intrigues of which it was the constant theatre. No one ever scrupled to express himself freely in his presence; nor was this confidence ever betrayed. "Il recevoit chez lui des personnes de tous les partis, mais en petit nombre, et qui toutes avoient une grande confiance en lui. On y parloit très hardiment de tout; et ce qui fait leur éloge et le sien, jamais on n'a rien répété."² To the utmost frankness and sincerity he added the easy address and polish of a courtier, and the intelligence of a philosopher. No man could be less solicitous of distinguishing himself, or more careful not to offend the self-esteem of others.

His conversation was animated, without the least effort at brilliancy. So much indeed was he averse from every appearance of pretension, that he was in the habit of veiling the most profound remarks and observations under the form of apologues, which generally referred to some subject connected with rural affairs, to which he was always particularly attached. He was most indulgent to the faults and errors of others, provided they were unalloyed by any taint of artifice or baseness, for which he never hesitated, whatever might be the rank of the party, to express the utmost contempt. Quesnay was truly a patriot and a philosopher; and it would be difficult to produce another instance of one who, having lived long in a profligate and luxurious court, unsullied by its vices, and aloof from its contentions, preserved to an extreme old age all those generous and kindly feelings, with that unobtrusive but ardent zeal in the cause of humanity, and that love of speculation and profound inquiry, which distinguished his earlier years.

"Quesnay," says Madame du Hausset, "était un grand génie, suivant l'opinion de tous ceux qui l'avoient connu, et de plus un homme fort gai. Il aimoit causer avec moi de la campagne; j'y avois été élevée, et il me faisoit parler des herbes de Normandie et du Poitou, de la richesse des fermiers, et de la manière de cultiver. C'étoit le meilleur homme du monde, et la plus éloigné de la plus petite intrigue. Il étoit bien plus occupé à la cour de la meilleure manière de cultiver la terre que de tout ce que s'y passoit." (Mélanges, p. 343.)

"Tandis," says Marmontel, "que les orages se formoient et se dissipoient au-dessous de l'entresol de Quesnay, il griffoirnoit ses axiomes et ses calculs d'économie rustique, aussi tranquille, aussi indifférent à ces mouvemens de la cour, que s'il en eût été à cent lieues de distance. Là bas, on décidoit de la paix, de la guerre, du choix des généraux, du renvoi des ministres; et nous, dans l'entresol, nous raisonnions d'agriculture; nous calculions le produit net, ou quelquefois nous dinions gaieement avec Diderot, d'Alembert, Duclos, Helvétius, Turgot, Buffon; et Madame de Pompadour, ne pouvant pas engager cette troupe de philosophes à descendre dans son salon, venoit elle-même les voir à table, et causer avec eux."

Dr Smith was well acquainted with Quesnay. He frequently met him during his residence at Paris in 1766; and whilst he bears the most honourable testimony to the "modesty and simplicity" of his character, he has pronounced his system to be, "with all its imperfections, the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published on the subject of political economy." (Wealth of Nations, p. 307.) So highly, indeed, was Smith impressed with a sense of his merits as a man and a philosopher, that it was his intention, had he not been prevented by Quesnay's death, to have inscribed to him the Wealth of Nations. (Dugald Stewart's Account of the Life and Writings of Dr Smith.)

Quesnay had a son by his wife, to whom he was united when at Mantes. He gave him an excellent education; and exhibited a striking proof of his disinterestedness, by constantly refusing to solicit for him any place or situation under government. This son ultimately settled in the country, on an estate near Beauvoir. Turgot gave one of Quesnay's grandsons a place in the administration; and another entered the army, and acted as captain of infantry at the battle of Jemmapes.

Few men have been more esteemed by their friends than Quesnay, or more ready to do all in their power to advance their interests. Mercier de la Rivière, the author of the

Quesne work Sur l'Ordre Naturel et Essentiel des Sociétés Poli-
Quevedo. tiques, seems to have occupied the chief place in his esteem,
and was looked upon by him as the only person in France
qualified to conduct the administration of the finances.
He was also much attached to the Marquis de Mirabeau,
Turgot, Dupont, the Abbé Baudeau, St Péray, and
other leading economists, who willingly acknowledged him
for their master, and enthusiastically exerted themselves to
defend and to propagate his doctrines. "The economists
were in reality, and not merely in appearance, a sect of
philosophers.

Secuta fuit servare modum, flammique tueri
Naturamque sequi, patriaeque impendere vitam,
Nec sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo.

They acted from an honest zeal for the truth, and not from
fashion, eccentric tastes, or the love of singularity; their
sole object was to enlighten and improve mankind; and to
them, amongst political inquirers, belongs the rare praise of
having first pointed out the natural order of things, or the
observed course of nature in the conduct of the world, as
the example and guide of human policy." (c. c.)