The Writing Workshop of François Quesnay and the

Making of Physiocracy

Christine THÉRÉ (INED)* Loïc CHARLES (Université Paris II/ INED)**

[Very first draft, please do not quote; all translations are ours unless indicated] “M. Quesnay is then the master of the sect that M. de Gournay had formed. There are no

more crippled or sick men coming to him; but apprentices in politics, among which are a few schemer who would have been happy to please a man who had credit on the mind of Mme de

Pompadour”. “M. Quesnay se trouve donc le chef de la secte que M. de Gournay avait formée. Ce ne

sont plus des estropiés ou des malades qui remplissent sa chambre ; mais des apprentis politiques, parmi lesquels il se glisse quelques intrigants, qui n’auraient pas été fâchés de

plaire à un homme qui avait du crédit sur l’esprit de Mme de Pompadour”.1

1. Introduction

Three periods can be distinguished in the carreer of Quesnay as an economic writer. In

his first two economic texts published in 1756 and 1757, he signed with a pseudonym –

Quesnay the son – that hid very little to the public.2 But, from the end of 1757 to 1765,

Quesnay published not a single individual text. This hiatus stopped in October 1765 when

Quesnay published his first article on Natural rights in the Journal de l’Agriculture, du

Commerce et des Finances. It opened the most florishing period as an individual economic

author. For two years, he published a host of articles included in either the Journal de

l’Agriculture or the Ephémérides du citoyen, the two journals successively managed by the

physiocrats. This last period ended with the publication in two volumes of a revised selection

of his articles under the title Physiocratie by Du Pont de Nemours, his disciple i the early

monthes of 1768. After that time, if we except a few anonymous notes to a short article

printed in 1770 the Ephémérides du citoyen, Quesnay did not published anymore economic

texts.

* ch_there@ined.fr ** charles@ined.fr 1 Mably, Du commerce des grains, in Œuvres, tome XIII, p. 296-297, cité par Weulersse p. 60. 2 “Farmers” and “Grains” were published in the volume VI and VII of the Diderot/d’Alembert’s

Encyclopédie.

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Another odd feature is that during all these years, and if we except his texts for the

Encyclopédie, Quesnay never signed or endorsed publicly any of his writings. As Du Pont put

in his introduction of Physiocratie, he was “this simple and modest man that never permitted

anyone to name him [publicly]” (Du Pont ed. 1767-1768: xcvii-xcviii). Indeed, in

Physiocratie, while Du Pont listed all the major physiocrats by name, he remained silent as to

that of the “author of the Tableau économique” (id.). François Quesnay, economist, did not

exist for most of his contemporary readers. This choice made by Quesnay may appear as the

fancy of an author: anonymity was a current practice of men of letters of the Enlightenment.

We believe, however, that it introduce to important issues on the nature of Quesnay’s

economic works and their interpretation.

During the preparation of a new edition of Quesnay’s writing, Œuvres économiques

complètes de François Quesnay et autres textes, we became aware that Quesnay, far from

slowing down his theoretical work between 1757 and 1764 had in fact, left a considerable

amount of materials. These materials – most of them are now stored in the French National

Archives along with the marquis de Mirabeau’s papers –, were, for a large part, published in

his time and were widely read. However, they have been almost completely neglected by

commentators up to this day because these materials were integrated into works attributed to

other authors, mostly Mirabeau.

In this paper, we will argue that these material are a direct testimony of the methods of

work Quesnay used during the period 1757-1764, a period during which he built what Du

Pont de Nemours named the “science nouvelle” (“new science”), that is political economy. At

this time, Quesnay created a scientific organization of the process of writing. This

organization, centered upon himself, was designed to accelerate the foundation of what he

called “oeconomie politique” and its diffusion in contemporary French public. We have

chosen to name this division of labour and the type of relationships that were built between

the individuals who collaborated with Quesnay “the writing workshop of François Quesnay”

rather than using the generic label of “physiocratic school”. In our point of view, the

expression “working workshop” captures best several features genuine to this period of

Quesnay’s activity as en economist and the relationships he had with his collaborators. First,

it affords us to underline the collective nature of physiocratic texts. Hence, the research

undertaken in different archives allowed us to show the division of tasks that took place

between several individuals linked to Quesnay that organize and supervise the work of each

of them in a manner clearly reminiscent of that of several workshop of artists from the

Renaissance and early modern Europe, such as Rembrandt (Alpers 1988 ; Bruyn 1991).

2

Second, by using the notion of “workshop” to caracterize the scientific activities of Quesnay

at this period, we are able to take measure of the complexity of Quesnay’s work as an

economist. He, like some painters such as Rubens, conceived and participated to works,

which were made collectively: each participant from the workshop brought his own skills

under the command of the master. Third, our interpretation can also be justified by the

biography of Quesnay, then a young man, who worked during five years (1711-1716) as an

apprentice in the workshop of an engraver, Pierre de Rochefort. Lastly, we will show that this

workshop gradually dissolved after the death of Madame de Pompadour in May 1764 and was

replaced the physiocratic school. This evolution resulted in important changes both in the type

of relationships that linked together the collaborators of Quesnay (the physiocrats) and the

type writing output produced by the school as compared to that of Quesnay’s workshop.

In the second section, we will investigate Quesnay personnality and his connections in

Versailles. The third section will detail how one was recruited in the workshop. The fourth

section will described division of tasks that existed inside Quesnay’s writing workshop and

how it functioned. The fifth discussed the nature of the writings produced by the workshop,

focusing on a few examples. In the sixth section, we will present the transition between

Quesnay’s workshop and the physiocratic school. Finally, we will give some concludin

remarks.

2. The master of the workshop: François Quesnay

The usual descriptions of Quesnay’s life and works minimize his social and mondane

activities and tend to dissociate them from his intellectual life. In particular, his life in

Versailles and his standing at court have been misunderstood. On a very small and partial set

of evidences, Quesnay have been described as detached from the Court life and from its

intrigues. Conversely, we think that these aspects of his biography have a direct bearing on

how he recruited his collaborators and the type of relations which were going to take shape

within his "workshop".

The essential character of the social trajectory of Quesnay is its progression: born in

1694 as the son of a simple plowman, he is, at the end of 1750s, one of the court physicians of

the king, Louis XV, at the personal service of Madame de Pompadour, the favourite of Louis

XV. Ennobled in 1752, his life is an example of social success story under the Ancien Régime.

3

When Quesnay arrived at Court, he had, indeed, already acquired in the service of the duke of

Villeroy, the essential qualities of the courtier – judgement, caution, temperance and secrecy –

, which allowed him to respect the rules of polite society without efforts (Hours 2002: 17).

Quesnay knew how use to appeal through the art of conversation. He rapidly gained a

reputation of man of wits. The “thinker” of the king had “mind as a demon” wrote the brother

of the marquis de Mirabeau3. Quesnay’s company turns out to be very nice owing to his

natural cheerfulness, his wits and his gentleness, according to several sources (du Hausset

[1809]: 85; Schelle, 1907: 139). He embodied both culture and modesty. Aware of these

qualities, Madame de Pompadour used the wits of her personal physician to strenghten her

hold on the monarch.4 Quesnay was perfectly aware of the origins of his social success and he

was cautious not to let his publications endanger his status in the Court. This prudent attitude

was not to the taste of some of his collaborators less informed of court manners. For instance,

Mirabeau had to explain to his brother what the latter interpreted as a servile attitude on

behalf of Quesnay:

« His philosophical body is nourished, dressed, lodged, and his instinct is timid and

subordinated, but his vast, relentless, and always active genius works continuously, stirs up a

flock of citizens and gains to his views, even the talents of madmen. In this regard, he is not

timid, and he often says softly, event to the most important [people], one of his inquisitive and

powerful words, in a manner even more conclusive and dry than what he said in the entresol »

(in Schelle, 1907: 127-8).

In effect, while Quesnay showed an extreme caution with the high nobility and the king,

he was no fool. Numerous anecdotes counted by Du Pont de Nemours, Marmontel, Mrs du

Hausset in their respective life’s memoirs showed that Quesnay, by means of epigrams in the

course of casual discussions, manage incidentally to gain the king and to the Pompadour to

some of his views.5

Because, if Quesnay knew how to deal with people and to entice them, he also knew

how to size them up. This other skill frees from portraits that his contemporaries left of him,

3 Letter from the knight of Mirabeau to his, the marquis (31 July 1757), in Mirabeau (1753-1789: iv,

303-304. 4 The marquis d’Argenson wrote in his diary : « She was acting as a philosopher (esprit fort) in front of

the King to strenghten her reign ; She bring sir Quesnel [sic], her physician, to her conversations with the King ; he was a man of wits and pretend to be a philospher. », ([1858] : T. 4, 262). Other testimonies confirm Quesnay’s impact on the king and its use by the Pompadour (Du Pont de Nemours, 1906: 218 ; du Hausset [1809] ; Moufle d’Angerville 1788 : iv, 93).

5 For example, Marmontel ([1804]: 171) wrote : « His way of serving my interests Sa manière de me servir auprès de la marquise était de dire çà et là des mots qui semblaient lui échapper et qui cependant laissait des traces ». Il faut également lire le récit fascinant que Du Pont de Nemours (1906: 229-233) fait sur la manière dont Quesnay parvint à intéresser Louis XV et la Pompadour à l’impression du Tableau économique.

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such as Grandjean de Fouchy: « He had to the supreme degree the art to know the men ... also

he put his trust without reservation in those who deserved it, and the long usage of the court

had put him to speak without letting the others heard anything » (Grandjean de Fouchy

[1774]: 37). Such knowledge of mankind constituted undoubtedly a major trump to direct a

“workshop”: Quesnay knew how to acknowledge the potential qualities and the motivations

of authors and individuals he met and work with. Besides, the stern control that the master

had imposed onto himself, controlling his words, his movements and even his feelings in

court, was called upon his pupils. He could be a very harsh critic when required. Du Pont de

Nemours (1906: 215) testified that « his strong will and his deep mind did not easily let tender

and gentle feelings transpired ».

At Court, one’s credit depended on one’s access to the company of the king. Now,

Quesnay was accepted in the privacy of the informal couple which governs French kingdom.

Personal physician of Madame de Pompadour, he belonged to the inner circle of the favourite

as Louis XV; he benefits from such an favoured company to gain royal protection and favours

(Du Pont de Nemours 1906: 218). Therefore, the credit he was eventually granted relied

mainly on the power of his patroness, the favourite of the king, and happily it rose

considerably during the 1750s. Strategies of courtiers, of candidates to ministerial positions

and of ministers in charge converged more and more on the Pompadour. Louis XV began to

use her to undertake steps without appearing publicly and to inform himself about the state of

the kingdom (Hours 2002: 105). The residence of the Marquise constituted a location of

political power, not official but perfectly identified as such. In the eyes of informed

contemporaries, Quesnay appeared as « a kind of favourite », close to the corridors of royal

power and the entresol where the marquise lodged him in Versailles looked like an

antechamber to the king (Goncourt 1879: 236). Du Pont de Nemours (1906: 241) left us a

very vivid picture of Quesnay’s life in Versailles during this time (at the end of 1763): « He

was lodged very narrowly, his room was also his office. He left me when he went to Madame

de Pompadour and the king’s appartments. The rest of the time, particularly after dinner, he

was overwhelmed with visitors, like everymen in [royal’s] favour. He then put me at his desk

and often told me: « Do not put yourself out », so that they should not upset me. The courtiers

who came and go bored him with a multitude of platitudes, most of them said to please him,

he answered them by sharp epigrams ».

The environment of Mrs de Pompadour is of course a privileged source of contacts for

Quesnay. Among the most important ones, let us name the brother of the favourite, Mr de

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Marigny, with whom he discusses very regularly and exchanges information, and Mrs de

Marchais, friend of the favourite.6 We also know that the famous financier and patron of

Madame de Pompadour, Joseph Pâris-Duverney, readily visited the doctor when he came to

see her and that, at least in one instance, he took opportunity to have a discussion with

Quesnay on the best means to conduct war (du Hausset [1809]: 139).

However, the rooting of Quesnay in court life goes well beyond the person of the

marquise de Pompadour. Quesnay kept links with his first patron, the marshal of Noailles and

his two sons Louis, count then duke of Ayen and Philippe, count of Noailles and later duke of

Mouchy.7 Moreover, the marshal of Noailles belonged to the party of the Pompadour. The

doctor also stayed in touch with the duke of Villeroy, intimate friend of the monarch, and a

worthy member of the high nobility of sword. So the army, particularly the military home of

the king, appear to have constituted one of main networks that Quesnay frequented at Court. It

is further certified by the presence among his close relations of the count of Angiviller and

Mrs de Montmort, who accomodated Du Pont at Quesnay’s request in 1763.8 Quesnay will

recruit in this body one of the closest collaborator, Charles de Butré (cf. infra). Conversely,

Quesnay had more superfical relationships with the medical personnel of Versailles, except

for his son-in-law Prudent Hévin. The latter, first surgeon of the Dauphine, was very close to

his stepfather and remained so once a widower in 1761.9

According to Du Pont de Nemours, « all the ministers were courting Mr Quesnay, who,

having the private trust of Mrs de Pompadour, was more than minister, with perseverance »

(Du Pont de Nemours 1906: 213). In autumn 1763, the credit of the doctor was in its heyday.

Among the ministers with whom Quesnay maintained rather regular relations was Bertin, the

minister of finances of October 21st, 1759 until December, 1763. For example, Quesnay did

6 Mme de Marchais (1725-1808), daughter of the farmer general Jean-François de La Borde, had

married Gérard Binet, baron of Marchais, a first steward of the chamber of the king. She held a salon during the 1760s where physiocrats were most welcomed and economic subjects were on the agenda (Marmontel [1804]: 507 ; Weulersse 1910: i, 84, et 216-7).

7 Adrien-Maurice de Noailles (1678-1766) called for Quesnay, at that time surgeon in Mantes, when he received the queen in his castle of Maintenon in 1732 (Hecht 1958: 223). On the 30th March 1761, the duke of Ayen was made godfather of the fourth child of Quesnay’s son-in-law, Hévin ; the godmother being the marquise de Pompadour (Lorin 1900: 160-1). His brother, Philippe, was governor of Versailles, Marly and its dependencies. In this instance, he supervised Charles Georges Le Roy, the first economic collaborator of Quesnay (cf. infra).

8 Charles-Claude Flahaut de la Billarderie, comte d’Angiviller (1730-1809) joined the regiment of the bodyguards of the king in March 1746. He later became the tutor of the children of the heir of the kingdom (including the future Louis XVI) in September 1759 (Anderson, 1994: 8). Mme de Montmort was the spouse of a general major of bodyguards of the king of whom the duke of Ayen and the duke of Villeroy ordered each a company.

9 Hence, there seems to have been no collaborators of Quesnay, save Hévin, coming from this network.

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not hesitate to upset Bertin to inquire about the name of the author of a booklet which he

considered satisfactory (Id.). More interesting still, Bertin sometimes discussed economic

theory with Quesnay who made a text for him in June, 1761. 10 In 1761, he also exchanged

several letters on economic matters with the intendant of Soissons, Méliand, after Bertin puts

them in touch (INED 2005: 1244). For the rest, it seems that Quesnay attracted mostly civil

servants in search of a position that fitted their ambition, such as Turgot, maître des requêtes

until 1761, Le Mercier de la Rivière, Counsellor in the Parliament of Paris, or still La

Chalotais, general prosecutor of the Parliament of Brittany.

All these relationships gave to Quesnay a prestigious status vis-à-vis his peers, men of

letters and philosophers. For them, Quesnay was one man to court in the hope of earning

favours from him and to benefit from his network in Versailles. In the middle of 1750s, his

entresol looks like a philosophical salon where the encyclopedists come to have dinner. It

was, according to Marmontel, a « flock of philosophers » whom Madame de Pompadour

sometimes comes to greet, composed of the Diderot, D’Alembert, Duclos, Helvétius, Turgot

and Buffon (Marmontel [1804]: 173). It seems that the condemnation of the Encyclopédie

restricted these direct contacts with the marquise. Nevertheless, Quesnay remains an necssary

gobetween for men of letters to approach the favourite of the King. Diderot, D’Alembert,

Voltaire or La Condamine made, between others, call to him to have access to the

Pompadour. 11 The testimony of Marmontel remains one of the most significant to appreciate

the attraction which exercised the strategic position of the doctor. Marmontel lines up their

relation among the rare « particular linkage », which he had in the Court, but he qualifies their

personal relationship as one « of simple expedience », in other words, devoid of true feelings.

He wanted Quesnay to act as « a mediator to Madame de Pompadour », that is he wanted

Quesnay to present his best profile to the marquise, to transmit messages and to solicit

audiences when needed (Marmontel, [1804]: 171-2). Later, it seems that it is also for these

reasons that Mirabeau linked with Quesnay, at least in the beginning. So, he wrote to his

brother days after his meeting with the doctor : « I know well that the main obstacle is Mr

Dubourg, but if you want it, you can jump over it. To do so openly, you have our friend [the

abbé de Bernis] and for the underhand (l’endessous), don’t you remember my conquest from

the faculty [Quesnay]. Make friends with these people, it is the first step, and then show

10 This text titled « Le luxe est un superflux de depense prejudiciable a la reproduction » is included in

the forthcoming INED edition. For more détails about this text see INED (2005: 717-26). 11 Voltaire asked Quesnay’s help for the Calas’s affair (Hecht, 1958, 242). La Condamine asked him to

intervene to the Pompadour on the behalf of his friend La Beaumelle, imprisoned in 1757 (Lorin 1900: 147). For Diderot and d’Alembert, see Charles (1999: 243).

7

yourself » 12. Hanec, his brother had dinner at Quesnay on the following day (Mirabeau 1753-

1789: iv, 297)

3. The recruiting

From the time of his first works in political economy, Quesnay have tried to make

contacts with other individuals interested in this new science and, rapidly, he would start

collaboration with several authors. Why such a choice? First of all, owing to his service to

Mrs de Pompadour, Quesnay had no control on his agenda and his travels. His professional

and social obligations at Court hindered the writing of long texts, his researches being

continuously interrupted. Such problems played less for less time-consuming tasks such as

rereading, correcting, the drafting of plan and the writing of short and definite pieces.

Quesnay was not either capable of collecting directly a great number of materials and data: he

cannot travel in his liking, in province or abroad, and he needs informants. He was a man of

office, but a moving office: Madame de Pompadour and the Court left Versailles regularly to

other domains of the king (Compiègne, Fontaineblau, Marly) and these stays far from his

entresol disrupted his scientific work. Another problem is that the social strategy of Quesnay,

crowned by its accession in the status of courtier, imposed secrecy on him. Indeed, Quesnay

has developed for a long time a taste for secret as regards its most polemical works as a

surgeon. Though being “the surgeons’ foremost strategist and spokeman”, Quesnay signed

none of the numerous texts he wrote as part of the polemic between surgeons and physicians

which lasted from the beginning of 1730s to the end of 1740s (Gelfand 1980: 71).13 In a letter

where he recalls the unhappy fate of his friend la Mettrie, accused of materialism and made to

escape the French territory, to a fellow physician, Quesnay explained his strategy as an author

quite clearly:

« The freedom of anonymous writing is rather important in France, but secret is

needed, and it [freedom] must not be carried to the point that one out himself under the

burden of laws [.] This caution aside, it is relatively easy to satisfy his taste for an absolute

sincerity (sincérité outrée); such is that of our friend [la Mettrie], but this inclination if

12 Mirabeau (1753-1789: iv, 297 [29 July 1757]). The abbé de Bernis was promote Secretary of Foreign

Affairs on 26th June 1757. The brother of the marquis de Mirabeau was at time eargerly looking for a position in the French government.

13 It is only because of the papers deposited at the French National Library by Hévin’s heirs where the nales of all these pamphlets are written down (by Hévin himself) that we now know of the role played by Quesnay in this debate.

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agreable and often very much useful to the public attracts many harmful enemies; that is why

the men who look after their interest never devote themselves to it; or at least they hide so

well that no one can carry on them suspicions that can be proven … » (Ined 2005: 1158-61).

Now, what better hiding place can one have than that of the name of another author,

especially when the latter is the universaly known Friend of Mankind? It is him who would

suffer the disgrace of going to prison for the boldness of the Théorie de l’impôt in December

1760, Quesnay was never worried.

The recruiting of the workshop of Quesnay spread out in the course of time and most of

the recruits remained only for a time beside Quesnay. As to the first recruits, Quesnay mainly

used its Court’s network, and relied particularly on the civil and military officers in service at

Versailles. His first publications, "Farmers " and "Grains", appear in the Encyclopédie in 1756

and 1757. His incorporation in the Encyclopedie was favoured by a lesser known

encyclopedist who belonged to its Versailles’s network : Charles-Georges Le Roy (1723-

1789), first lieutenant of the hunting of the park of Versailles and chief-guard of the royal

fields since 1753. 14 His hierarchic superior was the governor of Versailles, the count of

Noailles, and he was the friend of the count of Angiviller; two men that Quesnay knew well.

By Le Roy, Quesnay was going to meet Pierre-Michel Hennin (1728-1807), who

worked in the Secretary of Foreign Affairs since 1749 and cousin of the first.15 The

correspondence of Hennin is an important source to reconstruct the life of the workshop at the

end of 1750s. Having been employed in one of the offices of Versailles, in 1751-1752, the

young diplomat domiciled in Poland, as second secretary of embassy until March, 1757. After

his comeback, he spent a year in Versailles. There, through Le Roy, his cousin, he met

Quesnay whom he court diligently to move forward his career. Between March, 1758 and

April, 1759, he left again and travelled in Netherlands, in Switzerland and in Italy.

In Versailles, Quesnay constituted a small society which supports him in his economic

work. It is another member of this circle, Etienne-Claude Marivetz, who was to co-wrote the

Questions intéressantes..., a text published in the fourth part of the Ami des hommes (May

1758). This obscure personage – for a long time only his name was known to us through the

testimony of Du Pont de Nemours (Du Pont de Nemours 1769: T. I, xxxviii) – is another civil

officer, acquaintance of Hennin and Roy. Born in Langres, the baron Etienne-Claude

Marivetz settled in Paris and he acquired a Court office of equerry of Mesdames de France at

14 On Le Roy, see Charles (1999: 243-249) and Anderson ed. (1994). 15 For a short biography of and his relations with his cousin, see E. Anderson, 1994, most notably p. 4.

9

an unknown date (after February 1752). The equerries accompanied the princesses in all their

displacements, in particular during the hunting. His contacts with Quesnay are testified only

for the years 1757-1758. It does not seem that their relation lasted since Marivetz left, as it

seems, the Court around this time. It is also through this small society that Quesnay made

contact with François Véron de Forbonnais (1722-1800). The latter was then a major figure in

French political economy. Linked to the intendant of trade Vincent de Gournay, he was an

acknowledged specialist in monetary and financial matters within the French administration.

He was also a renowned economic author and a significant collaborator by the Encyclopédie

(14 articles in volumes III to V – 1753 to 1755). In 1758, he was the main economic

collaborator of the new controller-general, Etienne de Silhouette. Hennin and Le Roy knew

Forbonnais, whom they hoped would marry the Hennin’s sister – the affair eventually failed.

It was in this context that Quesnay and Forbonnais exchanged letters in September 1758.

Quesnay remained in contact with Forbonnais a while – it sent him the famous ‘third edition’

of the Tableau économique in 1759 – but Forbonnais was too independent a character and his

economic views too different from those of Quesnay so that he joined his workshop.

Others recruited still illustrates the importance of Versailles’s networks in the birth of

Quesnay’s workshop, and the part taken by men interested in “practical agriculture”

(agriculture pratique) according to the expression of the time. One example is Charles de

Butré (1724-1805), gentleman from Poitou, who belonged, at that time, to the Bodyguards of

the king, a prestigious regiment in which the duke of Ayen and the duke of Villeroy, the

protectors of Quesnay, commanded each a company (cf. supra). His service made him

domicile in Versailles most of the year, however he also had to survey the lands that he

owned in Poitou [Western France] (Weulersse 1910: 51; R Reuss 1887: 10-13). His interest

for agriculture and arboriculture undoubtedly explained how he made contact with Quesnay,

around 1757 it seems. He was an active and useful collaborator to Quesnay’s workshop up to

the completion of Philosophie rurale. In 1763, Butré acquired a land in Chevalet, in Touraine,

and he left Versailles to live there. But he stayed in contact with Quesnay who appreciated it a

lot. He left will eventually left France in 1775 to join Germany on the recommendation of

Mirabeau and Du Pont, whom he replaced as economic adviser to the margrave of Baden.16

Henry Pattullo, the Scottish agriculturist, is another inhabitant of Versailles in the

1750s. Partisan of Prince Charles-Edouard, he left Scotland after the defeat of Culloden, on

April 16th, 1746, with a group of Jacobites who accompanied the baron of Ogilvy (Voisine

16 In 1767, Butré also contributed several interesting articles on the distinction between ‘Grande

culture’ and ‘Petite culture’ in the Ephémérides du citoyen.

10

1968: 55). Sheltered in France, Pattullo was naturalized French by 1748. It is probable that he

benefited then from the patronage of the baron of Ogilvy, to which Louis XV granted the

command of a regiment of infantry in 1747. In the preface of the Essai sur l’amélioration des

terres (1758), Pattullo thanked the king of France for the favours he had benefited. We know

very little outside his scientific activity. He became member of several academies, notably of

prestigious Society of agriculture, trade and arts of Brittany (1759) and Royal Society of

Agriculture of Paris (1761). His meeting with Quesnay would go back up in 1756, and they

remained on close terms for several years (Charles 2000). He was also friend to Mirabeau

whom he visited on his land of Provence in 1762. We lost his trace in the middle of 1760s, it

seems that he had been granted amnesty and left for England: in 1772, he published a work, in

London, on the culture of Bengal. He would have died in 1784.

Jean François Marmontel (1723-1799) had also know Quesnay in Versailles through

Court life. In effect, the abbé de Bernis and Duclos took him, from 1752, on Sundays in

Versailles to visit Madame de Pompadour. In 1753, he had was made secretary of the

Constructions of the king, at the service of Mr de Marigny, the brother of the Pompadour.

Their relation indeed consolidated with their common participation to the Encyclopédie. In his

life story, Marmontel affected a certain cynicism regarding Quesnay, he was, according to his

statement, one of the first students of the master (Marmontel [1804]: 172). Not very gifted for

economic theory, Marmontel however contributed in the workshop in other ways. He wrote

the dedication of the Essai sur l’amélioration des terres, a treatise to which Quesnay

participated. Moreover, when he became editor of the Mercure de France, he opened broadly

the columns of this journal, rather renowned for its society rubrics, to political economy.

These recruitments share the common characteristic of being strongly linked to the

social environment where they are made. Rather than a deliberate strategy from the part of

Quesnay, they flowed from society relationships, even friendly links (Le Roy, Marivetz,

Butré, perhaps Pattullo) or links of interest (Hennin, Marmontel), between Quesnay and these

men whom he met regularly in the antechambers of his protectors – Villeroy, Noailles and, of

course, the marquise of Pompadour. This collaborators’ circle, if he was the first to be formed,

lasted little and only Butré and, in a lesser measure, Le Roy, continued getting involved in the

workshop when the theoretical ambition of the Doctor became more obvious, with the

creation of the Tableau économique at the beginning of 1759. As Quesnay moved away from

practical agriculture, a less intellectually demanding kind of knowledge, he was going to have

to rely on other men to nourish his plan of founding a new science, political economy.

11

If the workshop, at least in the first years (between 1756 and 1758), was closely linked

to the context of Versailles, Quesnay tried very early to spread its network towards the literary

world. Much more than for the mentioned above authors, it appeared that Quesnay took the

initiative of these meetings. The first trace of such contact is difficul to date with precision

(1754 or 1755) : it concerned a letter, we now know only have a short summary of it, Quesnay

would have sent to the translator of Hume, the abbé Jean-Bernard Le Blanc (1707-1781),

another protégé of the Pomadour (Hecht 1958: 252). However, the abbé Le Blanc was close to

Vincent de Gournay, and it did not seem that he followed up the approach from Quesnay

(Charles, 2005). Quesnay had better luck with another literary man, the then universaly

praised “friend of mankind”, the marquis de Mirabeau. The Ami des hommes which was going

to make the literary fame of its author appeared in June, 1757 and was an instant success. 17

Quesnay invited him in Versailles and Mirabeau came with good grace. Although he had read

or heard nothing of Quesnay as an economic writer, his credit at Court was sufficiently

reknown to persuade him that it was an opportunity not to miss (Loménie on 1879: T. II, 171).

The meeting took place at the very beginning of July 1757, the Court and Madame de

Pompadour, with her physician on her sides as usual, leaving Versailles to Compiègne, where

they stayed from July 6th. 18

The conversion of Mirabeau was going to enlarge considerably the human resources of

Quesnay’s workshop. The younger brother of the marquis, Jean-Antoine (1717-1794), was

one to be mobilized. Naval officer and governor of Guadeloupe from December, 1753 till

September, 1755, an office he had to left because of sickness, the Knight of Mirabeau had

great ambitions in 1757. He looked forward the secretary of Navy but did not get it. Closely

linked to his brother, the Knight of Mirabeau played a significant, but unknown, role in the

the literary career of his brother. Thus, in August, 1758, kept in Brittany by his military tasks,

he asked his brother to get in touch with Pierre-Paul Mercier de La Rivière (1719-1801) who

had just been named intendant of the ‘Iles sous le vent’ (the actual French Carribean

Islands).19 It is therefore through him that the young magistrate was introduced to the marquis

de Mirabeau and Quesnay. Le Mercier de la Rivière tied lasting links with the doctor, in spite

17 For the date of publication, see Journal de la Librairie, Bnf, Ms 22160, f. 40. The Ami des hommes

was the biggest selling economic book of its time. 18 The common datation of the meetin, July 27th is grounded on a superficial interpretation of the

correspondence exchanged between the marquis and his brother. As the brother of Mirabeau arrived at Compiègne July 24th and they exchanged letters on a daily basis from this date, the marquis can not have left Paris to meet Quesnay after the 24th. And, as the marquis remind his meeting with Quesnay to his brother in a letter dated July 29th, it ment that Mirabeau had met Quesnay before the Court left Versailles on the 6th of July. Cf. Mirabeau (1753-1789 : T. IV, 297-304.

19 Cf. Charles, 1999, p. 319-320 and Mirabean (1753-1789: T. IV).

12

of his departure for the Carribeans in February 1759. If he was of no usefulness until his

definitive comeback in 1764, he then became one of the closest collaborators of the master

who was particularly fond of him.20

I parallel with these recruiting, Quesnay also canvassed in other directions. Marmontel

and du Hausset, the chambermaid of Madame de Pompadour, signal Turgot among the regular

guests of Quesnay’s philosophical dinners. Their evidence did not allow us to date precisely

their meeting, although it was before he left to Limoges (1760). Though Turgot has never had

with Quesnay the sort of close relationshion he had once with Gournay, he readily

acknowledged his intellectual debt towards him 21. Turgot was certainly close to Quesnay at

the end of 1750s, as the following indications certify. First, in his ‘Praise of Gournay’ written

in 1759, his master and missing friend, Turgot largely borrowed the conceptual vocabulary of

Quesnay to present Gournay’s economic thinking (“fundamental price”, “net product”).

Secondly, Turgot had a copy of the article “Impôts”, the only known one indeed, envisaged

for the Encyclopédie and that Quesnay finally refused to publish (Charles 2000: 14-19).

Apart from Turgot, another member of Gournay circle had a signifcant implication in

Quesnay’s workshop and was frequently seen at the entresol during some years: Louis-Paul

Abeille (1719-1807). According to Du Pont de Nemours, in 1763 he occupied « one of the

first ranks among his most favoured disciples » (1906: 236). Lawyer in the Parliament of

Brittany until 1756, he then became Prosecutor in mounted police dress rehearsal of Brittany,

located in Rennes. Abeille was also secretary of the royal Society of agriculture, trade and arts

of Brittany since its foundation in 1757. Ambitious provincial, protected by the Prosecutor La

Chalotais, being part of Gournay circle favoured his promotion. After the death of Gournay,

he entered the royal administration thanks to the protection of the Trudaine family, also part

of Gournay circle. His first contacts with Quesnay seem to date from the beginning of 1760s,

perhaps through Chalotais.

From the beginning of 1760s, the recruitment was conducted via the marquis de

Mirabeau, whose reputation offered a unique publicity, though indirect, for Quesnay’s work.

One example was George-Marie Butel-Dumont (1723-1788), another member of Gournay

circle, who made contact with Mirabeau in 1760 (INED 2005: 699, 1188 and 1206).

Nevertheless, divergences of views were too deep and rupture soon followed in the beginning

20 According to du Hausset ([1809]: 85) : « The men he estimated the most was M. de La Rivière,

councellor to the parliament of Paris, who had been intendant of Martinique ; he saw in him a man of the highest intelligence, and thought that he was the only man able to manage the French finances ».

13

of 1761. The recruiting of Pierre-Samuel Du Pont (1739-1817), future Du Pont de Nemours,

one of the most important recruits for Quesnay’s writing workshop, is the one for which we

have the best evidence, for he narrated himself its recruiting in a Memoir written during

Revolution (1906: 200-21). In September, 1763, after his comeback from Compiègne

Quesnay pointed out two interesting booklets on taxes, signed « D. P. ». He tried to identify

their author and enquired at Court: Bertin having put him on the tail of a young man of

Soissons, he wrote to the mayor of the city to have a list of possible persons from his locality

that.22 His move was vain, the author remained untraceable. Some weeks later, Mirabeau was

going to solve mystery for Quesnay: the young author had written him, having devoured the

Ami des hommes and the Théorie de l’impôt. Both men had started a correspondence then (Du

Pont 1906: 207). By this bias, Quesnay could get into contact with Du Pont de Nemours who

was consequently going to work under his command.

4. The division of tasks in the workshop

The workshop was primarly organized to producte texts and disseminate them, in

general on printed form. The organization of tasks and roles of each individuals can be

separated into four functions: the apprenticeship of collaborators, the collection of

information, the fonction of calculus and the writing itself.

The first of these functions is the prerogative of the master of the workshop, Quesnay. It

is him who took under his arm the authors who join him to instill in them the principles of

political economy.23 With the evidence of the marquis of Mirabeau and especially Du de

Nemours, we know rather precisely in what consisted this apprenticeship. The first element to

be noted is the hardness of the work imposed by the master on his apprentices. In his

autobiography written in 1792, Du Pont remembered how thirty years earlier Quesnay made

him work whole evenings, often forgetting to serve dinner to the poor lad (Du Pont 1906:

240-1). What was the content of this study? It seems that Quesnay adopts different techniques

according to his students. In the case of Mirabeau, a mature individual and an already popular

author, Quesnay seems to be have relied on literary exchanges as testified by Mirabeau’s

21 In a letter to Du Pont de Nemours (20 février 1766), Turgot wrote, speaking of Gournay and

Quesnay : « I will always feel honored to have been the disciple from each onefor the rest of my life », cited in Weulersse (1910: T. I, 108).

22 The intendant of Soissons, Méliand, had shown Du Pont to the controller general of finances a few monthes before (Du Pont de Nemours 1906: 210).

14

papers to improve his understanding of political economy. Thus, Mirabeau having not

succeeded in understanding the Tableau économique, Quesnay wrote him a letter countaining

a detailed explanation of it (translated in Meek on 1962: 115-7). In other instances, he added

numerous notes and remarks to the texts Mirabeau passed him, pointing out his mistakes or

suggesting him of topic to be developed.24 However, as we know nothing of the numerous

working sessions of Mirabeau and Quesnay, Mirabeau remaining extremely elusive on this

subject, we have to call upon another piece of evidence.

Du Pont de Nemours, a young man of 23 at the time he met François Quesnay, left us

more information on this point. According to his evidence, Quesnay seems to have combined

several methods. First of all, he gave him books to read with marginal commentaries of his

own to orientate the reading of his student. The latter recalls the “notes which he [Quesnay]

made on the Treaty of public law of Mr the abbé de Mably ... these notes which this

respectable man had made only for me, for my purpose, for my education, for my use, to

make a work of which I was then in charge easier for me, to guide me in this”. 25 The archives

of Du Pont de Nemours contain besides a work annotated by Quesnay showing as well as it

was a technique which the master would use regularly.26 Quesnay also made Du¨Pont work on

his own achievements, like the Tableau économique (Charles 2005 : 467). Quesnay also

encouraged Du Pont to finish his apprenticeship with practical exercices. He enticed him to

accompany the intendant Méliand to raise and measure the wealthes of his province, “judging

that the education which I could draw from this trip would have no price” (Du Pont de

Nemours 1906: 241-2). Moreover, Quesnay granted a great importance to the education of

apprentice, since he called Du Pont in Versailles and he lodged him at his friend’s (Mme de

Montmort’s) house, to have a better control on his studies. There, said Du Pont, « I went to

him every morning; we worked with an extreme ardour » (1906: 240-1).

The second function of the workshop is more directly linked to literary production. Due

to his service to the maquise de Pompadour, Quesnay can acquire the information and data

necessary to his scientific work only in a indirect way. According to Du Pont (1906: 213), he

23 Du Pont testifies that Quesnay had several apprentices : « He said to the apprentices which where

there … » (1906 : 236). However, he gave only two names besides his : Mirabeau and Abeille. 24 See for example Quesnay’s notes to two texts of Mirabeau from the end of the 1750s: the Traité de la

Monarchie and the “Bref état des moyens pour la restauration de l’autorité du Roi et de ses finances par le Marquis de Mirabeau” (Longhitano ed. 1999 ; Weulersse ed. 1913).

25 “Lettre de Du Pont à M. Abeille”, sd [1768], in Eleutherian Mills Historical Library, Papers of Pierre Samuel Du Pont and his two wives, Series A. The book of Mably is probably Le Droit public de l'Europe fondé sur les traitez conclus jusqu'en l'année 1740, first published in 1746.

15

read all the booklets which appeared on the question of taxes and kept the most interesting. It

is probable that he also made the same thing for other economic issues. Before 1760, most of

the economic data of Quesnay came from printed sources. Nevertheless, Quesnay had already

seen their limits: these figures were often arbitrary, sometimes wrong, and in a general way

their origin were hollow. It is precisely this problem which the Questions intéressantes...,

written with the baron of Marivetz, tried to solve. As its title points it out, this text is a list of

questions to which the readers were asked to answer via the Journal œconomique, the only

economic journal at that time.27 Moreover, Quesnay received help from members of his

workshop who travelled. One example is Hennin who distributed copies of the Questions

intéressantes... in French provinces, trying to find economic correspondents for Quesnay.

Hennin also endeavoured to send him a memoir on Holland countaining his own

observations.28

The enlargement of the workshop with the recruiting of Mirabeau and Butré allowed the

installation of a more elaborate network for collecting data and materials. The extraordinary

success of the Ami des hommes caused the name of his author to resonate in all France.

Mirabeau received reports, works, solicitations and projects from everywhere. Among these

documents, a few some of them contained useful informations for scientific work. Thus, the

brother of Mirabeau send to the Marquis a memoir the intendant of Caen had written and sent

to the controller general of finances and that he wanted to share with the Friend of mankind.

The latter immediately forwarded it to Quesnay who commented on it: Quesnay and Mirabeau

then in the process of writing of the Théorie de l’impôt were clearly interested by such

original material on the French fiscal system.29 For this last work, Quesnay also benefited

from the aid of Butré and a certain Le Grand who provided specifics on the figures of French

incomes and taxes.30 Quesnay seemed not to have been satisfied with le Grand’s job, his

tables of data being too complicated to his taste, only Butré was used for the following work,

the Philosophie rurale (INED 2005: 1183; see fig.). Among the drafts of the Philosophie

rurale, we find several tables made by Butré (see fig.), as well as mentions to others which he

26 Il s’agit de la Lettre à Monseigneur l’Archevêque de Lyon dans laquelle on traite du prêt à

l’intérêt… d’Antoine-François Prost de Royer qui parut en 1763, c’est-à-dire à l’époque même où Du Pont faisait son apprentissage avec Quesnay.

27 This try seemed not to have been successful since the Journal œconomique has ever published an answer of such.

28 Cf. Bibliothèque de l’Institut, MS 1274, ff. 394-6. 29 These exchanges took place during the summer 1760, see Mirabeau (1753-1789 : T. V, 272-299).

Mirabeau and Quesnay had already published a text discussing the problem of French fiscal system, Réponse à l’Essai sur la voirie, included in the sixth part of the Ami des hommes published in mid-1760.

30 See the manuscripts held at the French National Archivesunder the cotations M 784, n° 72-31 to 72-36.

16

provided to Quesnay and Mirabeau.31 The recruiting of the young Du Pont gave still new

opportunities of enlarging the collect of data. When he departed to tour with Méliand,

intendant of Soissons, Quesnay gave him a list of questions to orientate his work. There

remained from this venture some very interesting unpublished fragments of what constituted a

first draft of economic inventory using the conceptual categories defined by the economic

analysis of Quesnay (see. fig.).

The third function of the workshop set up by Quesnay is essential to his theorizing.

From his point of view, and he never get tired of repeating it, the superiority of his political

economy over that of his contemporaries rested on its calculability (Steiner 1998, 18-20). In

other words, Quesnay pretended to reduce economic reasoning in arithmetical form, and so to

be able to give mathematical proof of the correctness of his conception. Because of this, it

was essential for him to be able to give to his readers a dependable and detailed arithmetical

model of the French economy. His performance in this area in his first articles, “Fermiers”

and “Grains” were hardly satisfactory. Except the errors of the editor, numerous

approximations and mistakes of counting manifest the very limited abilities of Quesnay in the

handling of figures.32

So, Quesnay turned to his workshop to palliate his limits. Nevertheless, those who had

sskills in this field were not numerous. Mirabeau had none of it and, moreover, expressed

strong reservation about the use of detailed calculations and tables of figures the Doctor

imposed on him.33 We have identified three collaborators, Le Grand, Morin and Charles de

Butré, who contributed to economic calculus inserted in the publications produced by

Quesnay’s workshop. Of the first, we know very little, besides the fact that they participated

in the writing of the Théorie de l’impôt, as clears from the following extract: “Mister

31 In the page 297 of the draft with the cotation M 779 n° 3-1, Mirabeau let an empty space with the

following note : « Here the details that Mr of Butré have us waiting ». 32 See the editors’ notes to these two texts in the fothcoming edition of his writing. On the abilities of

Quesnay regarding calculus, see Charles (2004 : 464). 33 As showed the following letter where Quesnay had to correct Mirabeau’s views on this issue : “Your

distaste for arithmetical calculus is very wrong. The huge amount of calculus strains, it is true, the intelligence of the readers, but the most common from them took interest only in the results, which made them very learned in an instant, but those who studied seriously and deepens [economic matters] do not stop at this point. They detail, they verify, they compare all the figures of such a complex science. It is for them that one has to work because it is they who are the true depositories and apostles of the sciences and the real support of books. The others read only for fun or to talk lightly and without having able to judge [what is true]. They have no weight in society and I have no interest in them. They look only once to a book and, then, forget it forever. We do not make scientific books to have them last only for a moment. Scientific books, which prove by calculus are the most long-lasting, the most re-read wwhen they fulfill their aim, because one is always forced to go back to them to freshen up

17

[Mirabeau] it will be necessary to give the tables of M. Le G[rand] to M. Butré or M. Morin

for examination, there are arithmeticians who know how to calculate figures and others who

know how to calculate things” (Ined 2005 : 1183). Le Grand seemed to have contributed

rather before the phase of writing per se: he subjected tables of data to Mirabeau and

Quesnay, from which he assessed the incomes of actual taxes. Some of these documents are

small memoirs of several pages. Morin seemed to intervene later, at the stage of the reading of

the proofs.34 The third man, Butré, is better known (cf. supra) and he seemed to have had

Quesnay’s trust to a point the other two never approache. In effect, the writing of Butré

appeared in the draft of the Tableau œconomique with its explications (see fig.). His

interventions are concentrated on parties dedicated to calculus and, particularly, the Tableaux

économiques. He continued playing his role of calculateur in the Théorie de l’impôt, but it

was in following work, Philosophie rurale, that his contribution was the most significant. He

provided numerous data to Quesnay and Mirabeau and reviewed systematically the chapter

VII, the most important for the theoretical plan, but also the most demanding regarding

calculus (see fig.). Besides, Butré intervened, and it is a bit new side in his job, from the first

stages of writing of the draft of this work. As Quesnay worked on a complete review of his

figures of French economy, he called to Butré many times to solve his arithmetical problems.

The following manuscript gives evidence of this. In it, we can see distinctly that Quesnay

tried to perform a calculation, and that having failed to do it (he crossed out his first tries), he

passed the task to Butré. This last then took over and supplemented the calculation which is

then copied by Mirabeau to be inserted into the manuscript of the Philosophie rurale (see

fig.).

The fourth function of the workshop is directly linked to the writing and to the form in

which the works from Quesnay’s workshop were published. Of course, the differentiation

with the two previous stages is somewhat arbitrary since the collect of information and

calculus, as some of the examples we gave, illustrated was part of the process of writing.

Nevertheless, it can be supported without true ambiguity in the case of the writing workshop

of Quesnay. Indeed, the individuals used by Quesnay to collect the information or to calculate

participated only marginally to literary tasks, their provision was almost exclusively confined

one’s memory, which can not recall all the figures of sciences in which calculus is always what is more decisive and more precious for one’s instruction.” (INED 2005 : 1205).

34 We can read on a copy of the proofs of the Théorie de l’impôt : “Give these proofs to M. Morin to revise the calculations” (see A. N. M 781, n°2-5, p. 137).

18

to the establishment and verification of the figures. This contrated with the kind of

collaboration Quesnay had with individuals such as Charles-Georges Roy. Le Roy began his

collaboration in the Encyclopédie before Quesnay, his first article “Engrais” being published

in the volume V and he would continue to contribute to it long after Quesnay had left the

project. 35 The economic ideas we found in the articles of Le Roy published before, or at the

same time as those of Quesnay, reflected a clear indendity of views with Quesnay’s. It is Le

Roy who, before Quesnay, put forward in the article “Engrais” the importance of capital

investments in agricultural production, and established a relation between the amount of

advances in capital and the output produced. Besides, the article “Ferme” contains at least two

important ideas routinely attributed to Quesnay: the identity of interests of the landowner and

of the farmer, and the idea of a process of depredation owed to the lack of wealth of the

farmer (see Charles 1999: 243-249). Moreover, among the five articles which Quesnay

originally prepared for the Encyclopédie, two were twinned with articles of Le Roy,

“Fermiers” and “Hommes”.36 So, long before the meeting with the marquis of Mirabeau, Le

Roy appeared as the companion of theoretical discussions of Quesnay. The chronology of

their publications suggests that his role was decisive in elaborating and having the ideas of

Quesnay on agricultural production printed.

Later on, relations between Quesnay and his collaborators were much less balanced.

The first collaboration of this type took shape between Quesnay and Pattullo, who included in

the last chapter of his work, Essai sur l’amélioration des terres, several long extracts from the

pen of Quesnay (Charles 2000). The work having enjoyed a success and secured some

influence on French agriculturists (Bourde 1953: 78), it was the first time that the economic

thought of Quesnay may have some influence on his contemporaries.37 As, unfortunately, no

manuscript of the Essai remains, we are reduced to guess how both authors collaborated.

However, from the existence of a short manuscript from the pen of Quesnay let us think that,

as with Mirabeau, Quesnay subjected short texts to his collaborator who then included them in

35 18 articles in total have been identified to be from Le Roy : Engrais, Faisanderie, Fauconnerie, Ferme

(économie rustiq.), Fermier (œconomie rustiq.), Forêt (botan. & économ.), Froment, Fumier, Fureter, Garde-Chasse, Garenne, Gibier, Hommes (morale), Instinct (métaph. & hist. nat.), Piège, Sanglier (chasse du), Vénerie et Vol (chasse du vol).

36 “Fermiers (Économie politique)” from Quesnay follows “Fermiers (œconomie rustique)” from Le Roy ; “Hommes”, would have followed “Hommes (Morale)” from Le Roy, as does the short article “Hommes (Politique)”, that Diderot wrote to replace the one Quesnay finally withdrew from the Encyclopédie.

37 It seems that the Quesnay’s two economic articles printed in the Encyclopédie, “Fermiers” et “Grains”, were not widely read. Pattullo’s book is, indeed, the only published text of the 1757-1764 period to cite them explicitely.

19

his own manuscript, sometimes rewriting them lightly. It is with indeed with the marquis de

Mirabeau, that the collaboration was the richest and the longest.

The manuscripts of the Marquis having, at least partly, been preserved, we can

reconstruct the type the collaboration of Quesnay settled with one of the pillars of his

workshop. First of all, Quesnay profited from the literary reputation acquired by the marquis

to give to the Questions intéressantes, co-written with Marivetz, a much wider public than he

could have dreamt of before meeting the marquis. We may note, however, that at that point

of their collaboration, Mirabeau feel the need to warn his reader that the text is not his in the

preface of the fourth part of the Ami des hommes. In the rest of the volume, the provision of

Quesnay was insignificant.38

The study of Mirabeau’s papers enables us to distinguish three levels of interventions

from the master, whose volume and nature have varied accross time. Some manuscripts of

Mirabeau, the earliest and the latests collaborations, comprise only minor corrections.

However, the others carry on traces of a much more important participation from Quesnay to

the point that, for some of them, Quesnay can be qualified as their main author (see infra).

Quesnay and Mirabeau proceeded like this. The Marquis had a copy made by his secretary on

which he left a wide margin and passed it to Quesnay. The latter wrote his corrections and

suggestions in this margin. One of the first examples of the working method which will then

be systematized is given by the Mémoire sent by Mirabeau to compete to the price set by the

Agricultural Society of Bern (1759). On it, we see how Quesnay intervened broadly on the

margin of the copy provided by Mirabeau, sometimes at the request the latter, to supplement

or change the text of his collaborator (see fig.). According to the texts, there is one, two or

even three copies annotated by the master, sometimes profusely. The making of his De

l’importation et de l’exportation des grains (1763-1764) seemed to have followed the same

pattern. Having written a first version that he introduced in front of the Society of agriculture

of Soissons, Du Pont rewrites it a first time before passing the text to Quesnay who pointed

out to to him “a lot of corrections and addenda” to be made. Du Pont took back his text then

before subjecting it again for approbation of the master.

5. The nature of the workshop productions

38 His part is limited to a few commentaries and rare corrections on three of the texts published in the

volume : Réponse aux objections contre le Mémoire sur les Etats provinciaux, Dialogue entre le Surintendant d’O et L.D.H. and the « Introduction » that Mirabeau add to the reprinting of his Mémoire sur les Etats

20

For the most important books published by the writing workshop – the Tableau

œconomique avec ses explications (1760), of the Théorie de l’impôt (1760) and Philosophie

rurale (1763) –, the involvement of Quesnay is beyond question. This clears from the

manuscript but it was also the feeling of those who had participated to these undertakings (see

citation given below for the Théorie de l’impôt). Quesnay intervened in the making of these

texts at a very early stage.

The Tableau œconomique avec ses explications was an extension of Quesnay’s own

version of the Tableau and, if Mirabeau is still widely considered as the author of this text

rather than Quesnay, the reading of manuscripts alters this point of view.39 Three different

complete manuscripts of the Tableau œconomique avec ses explications still exists today.

Theiy provides a lot of materials to appreciate the respective parts of Quesnay, Mirabeau, and

also of Butré. The original manuscript of Mirabeau kept in National Archives is the earliest. It

contains only one Tableau which is in fact a copy of the so-called ‘Third edition’ or version.

In all respects, the text of Mirabeau is a simple rearrangement of the third version of the

Tableau économique: whole paragraphs are purely and simply copied out by Mirabeau and,

when the borrowed passage covered several paragraphs in succession, he points out to his

secretary the passage of the printed text of Quesnay to be reproduced, by an uppercase letter.

Here, Mirabeau used the same method of writing he had experienced his in the writing of the

Ami des hommes. As is well-known, the latter was much influenced by Cantillon’s Essai sur

le commerce en général that Mirabeau had in manuscript. In the first drafts of the Ami des

hommes, Mirabeau reproduced whole chapters of Cantillon with with a short commentary

added. As draft versions succeded, the commentary developed considerably and the printed

work is quite different to its source of inspiration, even if it borrows from him numerous

passages (Cantillon [1755], p. LXVI - LXXIII). From this point of view, the comparison with

the Tableau œconomique avec ses explications is interesting because in the latter case, the

author of the source, Quesnay, had the opportunity to control the process of revision of his

own text by Mirabeau, and used it.

provinciaux. He did not take any part in the Mémoire sur les Etats provinciaux. For more details, see Ined 2005: 1229-1232 et 1270.

39 Thus, it is under the name of Mirabeau only that this text has been recently reprinted by G. Longhitano (Victor de Riqueti Marquis de Mirabeau, Tableau œconomique avec ses explications (1760), Catania, CUECM,1990).

21

The two other manuscripts kept in the Library of the Arsenal were established by the

secretary of Mirabeau, Garçon. They include annotations of Quesnay, Butré and Mirabeau.40

The interventions of the Doctor are however the most numerous and important ones. The

Tableau économiques of the first manuscript are mostly handwritten and in two versions (one

is a handwritten copy or a print of the third version of the Tableau with annotations by

Quesnay and Butré) and a corrected version (see fig.).41 The interventions of Butré have been

almost all made on this manuscript, they were mostly related to calculus. Quesnay, aided by

Butré, developed the economic theory, it took the shape of the adding of several new

Tableaux, come of them in disequilibrium, figuring the consequences of several economic

legislation (freedom of trade, indirect taxation, etc). Of course, Mirabeau did not take part in

these alterations. On the contrary, Mirabeau wondered about the necessity of all these

arithmetical calculus. On the margin of the manuscripts, he wrote to his master: “I copied

litterally but I do not hear this article: by perfecting its calculus we have made it more obscure

also. Let us not believe clarifying things by adding more calculus, you have cat's eyes, but the

most of the readers who are necessary for us have those of caterpillar [sic]. » (Mirabeau and

Quesnay, 1759-1760b, p. 18, see fig.). In total, the net provision of Mirabeau in this text

appears intellectually insignificant.

The Tableau œconomique avec ses explications was published at the end of June or at

the beginning of July 1760. At that time, Quesnay and Mirabeau, assisted by Butré and two

other calculateurs, Le Grand and Morin, had already started the writing of the Théorie de

l’impôt. The loose state of the remaining manuscripts of this text makes it difficult to give a

definite appreciation of the respective provisions of those who worked on it.42 However, the

work of Butré, Legrand and Morin who provided tables, accounts, sometimes with a

commentary of some extent, was oversaw by Quesnay and Mirabeau felt that the result was to

a large extent Quesnay’s. Hence, Mirabeau wrote to his brother : “I am hounded for a work

[the Théorie de l’impôt] which is under the press and under my pen at the same time. The

40 Il y a également quelques notes d’une cinquième main, un copiste ou un autre calculateur qui apparaît

brièvement sur quelques pages du second manuscrit. 41 In the first manuscript, only the Tableaux from the second part of the book are made from prints of

the ‘Third edition’ (or version) of the Tableau économique. Conversely, all the Tableaux from the second manuscript are made from prints of which the figures and legends had been changed by Mirabeau’s secretary. (see fig.).

42 Some of these short textshave been preserved in Mirabeau’s papers, see the documents M 781 n°2 , M 784 n° 70-7, n° 70-10, n° 72-17, n° 72-23, n° 72-24, n° 72-30 à 36 from the French National Archives.

22

doctor who directed it wants absolutely that it is issued before the lease of the [general] farms

is renewed” (Ined 2005: x).43

At the end of 1760, even before the publication of the Théorie de l’impôt (in the first

days of December), Quesnay had already began working on the next text which he intended to

publish with the aid of his workshop. This work, then called the Grand Tableau œconomique,

would become, when printed, the Philosophie rurale. Quesnay was not satisfied with the

order of exposition chosen by Mirabeau in the Tableau œconomique avec ses explications. He

decided therefore to entertain Mirabeau on writing a new book according to the plan that he

had designed in the first place.44 Quesnay began by recalculating with Butré the stocks of the

Tableau économique and his evaluation of the wealth of the French kingdom (see INED 2005:

689-715). The results, that would be used in all his subsequent works, figures the chapter VII

of the Philosophie rurale. The manuscript fund in the case of the Philosophie rurale is

particularly rich, but its complexity calls for a careful study. There are three complete

manuscript versions of the text. The early one is as usual from the pen of Mirabeau, the two

others were established by his secretary, and contained numerous corrections, notes, and

insertions from Quesnay, as weel as addenda performed by Butré, Mirabeau, and two other

unidentified hands (probably amanuensis). Besides these three manuscripts, the fund contains

a group original small pieces (from 1 to 4 pages) Quesnay wrote to Mirabeau at various stages

of the development of the text. In the end, they are generally inserted, sometimes with

changes, into the printed text. Several of them are true plans of chapters itemizing points to be

developed, others are constructed from a table and its commentary, few of them discuss a

specific topic such as the definition of trade, effects of luxury, etc. (see fig.)

The chapter VII, the most important from a theoretical point of view, illustrates

perfectly the complexity of the making of this work and the limited intellectual contribution

of Mirabeau. In the original manuscript (quotation M 779 n ° 4-1), more half of the text of the

chapter VII (the central part corresponding to sections 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the printed text) was

established by the secretary of Mirabeau, while the rest of the manuscript (corresponding to

sections 1, 2 and 7 of the form) was written by Mirabeau himself. It is therefore very probable

that this part was simply copied from a text sent by Quesnay to Mirabeau. Moreover, the three

other manuscripts of the chapter VII contained many corrections and notes of different sizes

by Quesnay, Mirabeau and Butré. The earliest ones broadly annotated by Quesnay, but

43 At that time, the French state did not levy taxes directly. He leased this task to the company called

“General farms” (fermes générales). 44 This plan appeared in the print of the third version of the Tableau (see fig.).

23

contains also additions of Butré, related to calculus in most cases. This version is a kind of

working copy. There are significant changes made by Quesnay in the first two sections.

Additions in the second version are lighter and almost exclusively of the hand of Quesnay.

The third version contains some significant new additions on behalf of Quesnay. In view of

these different manuscripts, the first two sections of the chapter VII must be jointly allocated

to Mirabeau and Quesnay, the section 7 goes to Mirabeau, the other sections can be allocated

to Quesnay with help of Butré for the calculations.

With regard to these documents, the participation of Quesnay to the Philosophie

rurale should be broadly reevalued. Except for the chapter VIII devoted to population, in

which Mirabeau is left a higher degree of latitude, the contribution of the master greatly

overcome that of the marquis. The fatherhood of work can be allocated to him to a great

extent so much because he conceived general economy, because he considered to be reins

throughout his writing and because he besides wrote an important part directly.

6. The end of Quesnay’s workshop and the rise of the Physiocratic

school

Even though the workshop of Quesnay with the recruiting of the young Du Pont, of

Abeille and the comeback of Le Mercier de la Rivière seemed to be its heyday in 1764, the

mode of organization of tasks within the group of authors reunited around Quesnay changed

deeply from this moment on. After some years when it continued existing on a smaller scale,

it was definitely supplanted by the physiocratic school. Several reasons can be put forward to

explain this major evolution, which was going to affect the physiocratic production of

economic publications. The first of these is undoubtedly the disappearing of Quesnay’s

patroness, Madame de Pompadour. The marquise died on April 15th, 1764. If Quesnay

continued to live in Versailles – he kept his position as ordinary physician of the king –,his

credit at Court did not resist to the disappearing of the favourite and the courtiers ceased

abruptly their visits to him (Du Pont 1906: 255-256). In these circumstances, only a few

friends were faithful to him. Now, as Quesnay choose to stay in Versailles, he was

comparatively marginalized and severed from his own collaborators and feuds who lived in

Paris. The Parisian residence of his main adherent, the marquis of Mirabeau, was going to

replace the entresol as the meeting point of the physiocrats. This fact was ratified in 1767 by

the establishment of “Tuesdays”, in the private hôtel of Mirabeau. These meetings, which

24

began with a dinner, which was followed by readings and discussions. The marquis read the

inauguration speeches of each season and organized the debates with Madame de Pailly, his

mistress. Quesnay sometimes chaired these sessions. They appeared as a means to narrow

links between the physiocrats. Mirabeau wrote to Rousseau in December, 1767 that it was this

year that and a true school was formed. The existence of such a society of partisans of

political economy was now publicly acknowledged: the public papers of Bachaumont

signaled the emergence “of a new sect, called the Economists” precisely at that time, in

December 1767. The change of institutional organization not only answered an internal

objective, it also allowed to make the school more visible.

In parallel of the loss of Quesnay’s social prestige, the consequences of which should

not be underestimated, increment among authors who embraced the doctrine of Quesnay

caused a deep transformation of the relationships that existed between fellow-partisans of

political economy. While the workshop rested ultimately on personal links passing

systematically by Quesnay, whose position at Court was a powerful factor of social attraction,

the functioning of the physiocratic group evolved progressively, signaling the passing from

the workshop’s form to that of the school. The latter used a very different editorial strategy

from that of the workshop. At first, the small number of adherents, the nearness of royal

power, the absence of intermediaries in the administrative machine and in public opinion as

well, encouraged Quesnay to use primarily his personal relations within the Court world to

create and reinforce a group of partisans of political economy. The incorporation of new

energies required other editorial and cultural practices. From the publication of the

Philosophie rurale, at the end of 1763, the rhythm of publications canevassed on the theory of

Quesnay rised from a book a year to more than a dozen. The type of productions changed and

diversified also, from a few founding and highly theoretical writings to pamphlets and

booklets linked to actuality, such as those on the freedom of grain trade that were, after 1764,

the main output of the physiocrats. The most notable modification resided nevertheless in the

diligent participation of new adherents in periodical publications.

The geographical distance that parted several new recruits, such as Guillaume-François

Le Trosne (1728-1780) and Guérineau de Saint-Péravy (1732-1789) who joined ranks to the

physiocrats in 1763, played an important role. Living in Orléans, it is through the royal

Society of agriculture of this city, of which they were very active members, that they made

contact with the marquis of Mirabeau, who was an associated member.45 They nevertheless

45 His secondary residence, the Bignon, was not very far from Orléans.

25

continued to live in province and came to Paris only on the occasion of their professional

obligations.46 The arrival of Le Trosne and Saint-Péravy also marked a break in the mode of

recruiting: from this time, Quesnay would never again supervise the recruits thoroughly. The

process would be consequently managed in a collegiate way by the physiocrats. Therefore,

Saint-Péravy and Le Trosne never collaborated directly with François Quesnay. Saint-Péravy

and Le Trosne contributed heavily to initiate the physiocrats to invest in new media, such as

economic periodicals which were then flourishing. While Quesnay’s writing workshop was

only marginally interested in periodicals, Le Trosne and Saint Péravy addressed numerous

letters and articles to the Gazette du commerce from the first months of its existence (1763).47

Likewise, Le Trosne would be the main contributor to the Journal d’Agricuture, du

Commerce et des Finances, the first physiocratic periodical (Du Pont is its chief editor from

September, 1765 till November, 1766).

Meanwhile, Quesnay remained active in spite of his great age. His social and

professional obligations distinctly reduced left him more spare time for his intellectual

activities. Recruiting collaborators was not a necessity any more and, at the end of 1765, he

again produced and published his own texts in physiocratic periodicals. Now, master of a

school, Quesnay was the object of a true sacralisation from his disciples. They compared him

with Socrates and Confucius, even though his effective influence on the achievements of his

collaborators dwindled as time was passing. Surely, Mirabeau continued to forward most of

his texts to the Doctor for correction, but these lacked the theoretical breadth of the first

economic writings they wrote together. Mirabeau did not want to burden himself anymore

with the “hiéroglyphes mathématiques” with which Quesnay filled his own texts – the two

“problème économique” and the “analyse de la formule arithmétique du Tableau

économique”. Mirabeau favoured popularization on theoretical researches and directed his

writings for a broader public. Hence, Quesnay was less commited to Mirabeau’s writings: he

still annotated, sometimes profusely, the texts of his collaborator, but mirabeau was at the

outset of these works, not he. The last major collaboration of Quesnay with one of his recruits

was the writing of the Ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques. The book “was made

46 “I have passed the monthes of February, March and April in Paris to close a deal. I have bought a

land in a district where there is only very small and very bad cultivation. During my stay in Paris, I have seen our masters in Economic science a lot : M. Quesné [sic] sole founder of this science, , M. Mirabeau, M. Turgot, M. Dupont et l’abbé Beaudeau auteur des Ephemerides. Mr Mirabeau a etabli un dner tous les mardis auquel sont invités de droit tous les amateurs de la science. J’ai eu l’honneur d’y etere admis pendant mon sejour. » (Le Trosne 1767b: 1)

26

under the eyes of, and conducted by, the founder of our science, to whom the very good

author had high wisdom to bring the docility of a child” (Mirabeau cited in Weulersse 1910:

T. I, 127). Mirabeau would later say that he had seen Le Mercier de La Rivière “working six

whole weeks in dress of room in the entresol of the Doctor, to shape and to reshape his

work”.48 This book was the last major production to be accomplished on these terms. After

1767, the school definitely overtook the workshop of Quesnay.

The publication of the collected writings of the master in two volumes, Physiocratie,

ratified the changes that had occured. For the first time, Quesnay, even if his name was not

mentioned expressly, appeared as the sole author of a book: his contribution was not

concealed under the name of another author and his work was not anymore, to paraphrase

Pattullo (1758: 221) “lost and like drowned in the immensity of the Encyclopédie”, of a

periodical or in publications attributed to others. Besides, Du Pont asserted in his introduction

the incontestable prominence of this author, that is to say Quesnay, on the other physiocrats.

However, this public and symbolic acknowledgement of the authority of the master was made

at a moment when his temporal authority habe been largely undermined. One episode from

late 1768 illustrated that the mode of functioning set up by Quesnay in the end of 1750s had

been replaced.

Mirabeau had, as usual, subjected a first draft of the Leçons oeconomiques to Quesnay

who was not satisfied by it: he crossed whole pages, added new ones and pointed out to

Mirabeau the extent of work which remained to be done to satisfy him. Now, Mirabeau had

also read his manuscript in front of his fellow- physiocrats during his “Tuesdays” and they

had found nothing problematic in it. When the marquis read the comments that Quesnay

forwarded him to the assembly of the “Tuesdays”, not only it did not endorsed them but they

backed Mirabeau, encouraging to challenge Quesnay. Mirabeau, probably made uneasy,

returned to Quesnay giving him an account of what was going on. Quesnay replied

immediately in the following letter:

« You have found the word puerilités (childish) as meaning petitesses (poorly). It is

not right from you and from all the concerto (the assembly) … It does not prevent the form of

catechism [you have chosen] to be against reason, because it is the one who knows who seems

to be instructed by the child whom he is supposed to instruct. It can be justified in the case of

religion where reason has nothing to do with it, even though it is this form of presentation,

47 See Dupont de Nemours (1769: T. III, xix). We have counted more than than 15 articles from Saint-

Péravy and Le Trosne in the 1763-1764 volumes of the Gazette du commerce. 48 Letter to Longo 27th May 1788, cited in Loménie (1879: T. II, 334-335).

27

which makes the catechisms so hard to write properly. I remaked it to you in the margins of

your text. It may be that the concerto was pleased by this text ; one can be pleased by a text he

listen to without thinking to its structure, which is the most difficult part [of writing]. I would

smoother, where reason must be provided, the style of catechism … This certainly deserves a

small discussion in the concerto for the sake of the success of such an important work. [In this

type of books], one must not slavishly imitate […] religious catechisms, in which it is not

permitted to doubt or explain things, and for which only skill but no genious is needed. If I am

wrong it would be only vis-à-vis the concerto, but you have the public to please.” (INED

2005: 1220-1).49

This extract showed two levels of transformations that characterized the passage from

the workshop to the school. On the one hand, the intellectual authority of Quesnay, on which

the workshop was built, was now disputed by that of the “concerto” of physiocrats. On the

other hand, the method of work prevailing in the workshop that was based on the private

relation between Quesnay and his collaborators he had chosen was consequently called into

question by the publicity of debates. From their first exchanges, Quesnay had adopted a very

direct and paternalistic tone in his exchanges with Mirabeau and his other collaborators. Due

to his intellectual superiority and to the symbolic power linked to his position at Court and his

age, the marquis (and the others) had never taken umbrage at him. This tone now posed

problem since these private exchanges were made public in the setting of the assembly of

“Tuesdays”.

7. Concluding remarks

The evidences gathered in this paper allowed us to introduce several new materials for

the interpretation of Quesnay’s, and more largely physiocratic, economic and social thought.

From an historical point of view we have shown how deeply the writing workshop was

immersed in Court life. Not only, Quesnay use his networks at Court to find recruits to aid

him, but also the relationships that existed between Quesnay and his collaborators were to a

large extent influenced by his status and social obligations at Versailles. Another point that we

would like to underline is that the complexity and the breadth of the works produced inside

49 This letter dated from the end of 1768. The manuscript would eventually be deeply reshaped

following Quesnay’s critics and would not be issued until 1770. The drafts of this book are at the French National Archives (cotes M 780 n° 2-1 à 2-6), we can see the breadth of the revisions asked by Quesnay and made by Mirabeau (fig.).

28

the workshop, such as the Philosophie rurale, the Théorie de l’impôt are explained by the

process of writing and the refined division of tasks that took place in Quesnay’s workshop. As

each collaborator added something of its own, the text that resulted is as much a juxtaposition

of several pieces added together rather than one coherent text. For all these works, the

commanding role of Quesnay certainly raises some difficult issues as to their authorship. As

we have argued here, these works are Quesnay’s as much as Mirabeau’s or any other

collaborator’s. Hence, we suggest here that these works are not only useful but simply

essential to understand the evolution of Quesnay’s economic theory from 1757. Finally, we

think that the distinction made in this paper between the writing workshop of François

Quesnay and the physiocratic school is of importance to the interpretation of physiocratic

thought. If there are very good reasons to consider that works from Du Pont de Nemours,

Mercier de la Rivière and Mirabeau undertook on Quesnay’s will and followed by him during

the whole process of writing are part of Quesnay’s economic works, there are also strong

arguments to consider that works that were made outside his direct control are likely to differ

sometimes essentially from Quesnay’s conceptions, at least it is not possible to consider them

on a equal footing with the firsts mentioned.

29

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