François Quesnay

François Quesnay (1694-1774), French economist, the principal founder of the Physiocratic school.

Quesnay, son of a landed proprietor, was born June 4, 1694, near Paris. He studied surgery in the French capital and became a doctor of medicine in 1744, subsequently being made physician in ordinary to Louis XV. Deeply interested in economics, Quesnay wrote (1756-57) articles on the subject for the renowned Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot. In his Tableau Économique (Economic Table), Quesnay presented what he considered the “natural law” of economics. Quesnay and his followers, who included Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours and Victor Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, maintained that commerce and industry were essentially nonproductive and only agriculture could increase wealth. Economic law, they asserted, must be allowed to act without interference for the prosperity of the nation.