ABSTRACT
Although the mercantile system was so abundantly criticised, a long time elapsed before the opposition to mercantilism crystallised into a coherent body of new doctrines. Such a new system of economic thought was first formulated by François Quesnay, the real founder of political economy as a systematised science, and also the originator of politicoeconomic individualism, to which he gave the descriptive name of physiocracy (the rule of nature).
