Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/194

Rh 176 Q U E Q U E churches and convents (Santa Clara, worthy of special note), a hospital, and other public buildings ; and it is sup- plied with excellent water from the mountains by a great stone aqueduct erected at the expense of the Marquis do Villar del Aquila whose statue adorns one of the squares. In manufactures it occupies a high place, producing cotton and woollen goods, leather, soap, and wood-carv- ings. The great Hercules cotton-factory, about 2 miles by rail from the town, is enclosed by a high loop-holed wall and defended by a small company of soldiers ; in this way the proprietors have maintained their position since 1840 in spite of all the revolutions that have swept over the country. About 1400 operatives (all Mexicans) are employed, and work is carried on both day and night. Unbleached cotton is the staple product. The population of the city was stated at 38,000 in 1882. Queretaro was captured by the Spaniards in 1536, and made a city in 1655. In 1848 it was the seat of a congress by which peace between Mexico and the United States was ratified, and in 1867 the emperor Maximilian, unable to hold it against the republicans tuider Escobedo, was made prisoner and shot on the Cerro de las Campauas to the north of the town. QUERN. See FLOUR, vol. ix. p. 343-4. QUESNAY, FRANCOIS (1694-1774), was one of the most eminent economists of the 18th century. He was born at Merey, near the village of Montfort 1'Amaury, about 28 miles from Paris, on the 4th of June, 1694, a year memor- able also for the birth of Voltaire. He was the son of a worthy advocate, who had the reputation of ruining his own practice by reconciling the parties who came to consult him about their suits. The modest resources of the family were derived principally from the cultivation of a small landed estate, Quesnay's mother in particular busying herself much with the details of its management, which she thoroughly understood. His boyish years were thus spent amidst country scenes and the occupations of the farm, and he retained to the end a strong predilection for rural life and a special interest in the welfare of the agricultural population. Little attention was given to his early literary instruction; it is said that he could not read till he was eleven years of age, when he was taught partly by the family gardener, who used as the text book the Maison Rustique of Jean Liebault, a work " wherein " (to quote the words of its old English translator, Richard Surflet, 1606) "is conteined whatever can be required for the building or good ordering of a husbandman's house or countrey farme." This book Quesnay is said to have studied with such assiduity as to have almost known it by heart. He learned Greek and Latin and the elements of several sciences with scarcely any aid from masters. He was possessed with an ardent and untiring desire for know- ledge, and we are told that more than once he walked to Paris for a book, which he read on his way back the same day, thus travelling twenty leagues on foot. At the age of sixteen he became apprentice to a surgeon in the neighbourhood of Merey, who was not able to teach him much, and he soon went to Paris to continue his professional education. He there devoted himself with great ardour for five or six years to the study of medicine and surgery, diligently attending the hospitals, and following the courses of anatomy, chemistry, and botany ; he also learned drawing and engraving, in which he acquired considerable skill, and gave some attention to metaphysics, to which he had been attracted by the reading of Malebranche's Recherche de la Verite. About 1718 he established himself at Mantes, and soon obtained a distinguished clientele. He became known to the Marechal de Noailles, who conceived a high esteem for him, and persuaded the queen, whenever she came to Maintenon, which was not very far from Mantes, to consult no physician but Quesnay. A celebrated practi- tioner of the time, named Silva, having published a treatise on bleeding, which, though of little merit, was loudly applauded by his friends, Qucsuay wrote a refuta- tion of it, founded on the principles of hydrostatics, which brought his name much into notice. When La Peyronnie had procured about 1730 the foundation of an academy of surgery with the view of elevating that profession, he selected Quesnay for the post of perpetual secretary. Coming to Paris to fill it, he obtained through La Pey- ronnie's influence the office of surgeon in ordinary to the king. He was the author of the remarkable preface which was prefixed to the first volume 01 the Mcmoires of the academy. He was for a long time much occupied with the controversies between the faculty of medicine and the college of surgery concerning the respective limits of the two professions, and wrote most of the pieces in which the claims of the latter were asserted. Finding that frequent attacks of the gout were rendering him incapable of performing manual operations, he procured in 1744 the degree of doctor of medicine from the university of Pont- a-Mousson ; but, though thus changing the nature of his practice, he continued to defend the rights of the surgical profession. He soon after purchased the reversion to the office of physician in ordinary to the king, and afterwards became his first consulting physician ; in this capacity he was installed in the palace of Versailles, occupying apart- ments near those of Madame de Pompadour. 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 (pensee), with the motto Propter excogitationem mentis. He now devoted himself principally to economic studies, taking no part in the court intrigues which were perpetu- ally going on around him. About the year 1750 he became acquainted with M. de Gournay, who was also an earnest inquirer in the economic field; and round these two distinguished men was gradually formed the philo- sophic sect of the Economistes, 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 Homines, 1756-60, and Philosophic Rurale, 1763), the Abbe Baudeau (Introduction a la Philosophic Economique, 1771), Le Trosne (De VOrdre Social, 1777), Morellet (best known by his controversy with Galiani on the freedom of the corn trade), Mercier Lariviere, and Dupont de Nemours. Of the writings of the last two, as well as of the general doctrine of the physio- crats, some account has been given in the article POLITICAL ECONOMY (see vol. xix. pp. 359 sq.). The principal econo- mic work of Quesnay himself was the Tableau Economiqut, which Laharpe called V Alcoran des Economistes. 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 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 is has been preserved in the Ami des Homines of Mirabeau, and the Physiocrat* of Dupont de Nemours. In Quesnay's Maximes General^ du Gouvernement Economique d'un Royaume Agricole, which was put forward as an Extrait des Economies Royales de Sully, and was printed along with the Tableau in 1758, besides stating his economic doctrines, he expresses his opinion in favour of a legal despotism as the best form of government. " Let the sovereign authority be single, and superior to all the individuals of society and all the unjust enterprises of private interest The system of counter-forces in a government is a harmful one, which produces only discord among the great and the oppression of the weak." He had contributed to the Encyclopedic in