172 ADAM SMITH. 



less intermeddling with the distribution of capital, and 

 the employment of labour. He was so often and so 

 powerfully thwarted, that his reforms were anything 

 but complete. All he attempted was in the right 

 direction ; and M. Turgot, his disciple, who afterwards, 

 in his own administration of the higher department of 

 finance, carried the same views farther, has given us a 

 luminous abstract of those sound principles which De 

 Gournay laid down. The duty of government, ac- 

 cording to him, was to give all branches of industry 

 that freedom of which the monopolizing spirit of dif- 

 ferent classes had so long deprived them ; to protect 

 men in making whatever use they please of their 

 capital, their skill, their industry ; to open among the 

 makers and sellers of all goods the greatest competition, 

 for the benefit of the buyers in the low price and good 

 quality of the things sold, and among buyers the 

 greatest competition, that the producer or the importer 

 may have the due stimulus to his exertions ; and to 

 trust the natural operations of men's interests for the 

 increase of national wealth and the general improve- 

 ment of society, when all fetters are removed, and all 

 absurd and pernicious encouragements by the State 

 withheld. 



It was not for some years after these enlightened 

 and rational principles had been adopted, promul- 

 gated, and acted upon by M. de Gournay, that Dr. 

 Quesnay, who had, from his youth upwards, attended 

 to agricultural questions, and even somewhat to farm- 

 ing pursuits, but had been always immersed in the 

 studies of his profession, began to cultivate economical 

 science. He had published several works of the 

 greatest ability and learning on medical and surgical 

 subjects, had acquired extensive practice, and risen to 

 the rank of the King's first physician* before he had 



* A very interesting work was published by my worthy friend Mr. 

 Quintin Crawford, in his ' Melanges d'Histoire et de Litterature,' being 

 the journal of Madame de Hausset, the waiting gentlewoman of Madame 



