1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Carli-Rubbi, Giovanni Rinaldo, Count of

CARLI-RUBBI, GIOVANNI RINALDO, Count of (1720–1795), Italian economist and antiquarian, was born at Capo d’Istria, in 1720. At the age of twenty-four he was appointed by the senate of Venice to the newly established professorship of astronomy and navigation in the university of Padua, and entrusted with the superintendence of the Venetian marine. After filling these offices for seven years with great credit, he resigned them, in order to devote himself to the study of antiquities and political economy. His principal economic works are his Delle monete, e della instituzione delle zecche d’ Italia; his Ragionamento sopra i bilanci economici delle nazioni (1759), in which he maintained that what is termed the balance of trade between two nations is no criterion of the prosperity of either, since both may be gainers by their reciprocal transactions; and his Sul libero commercio dei grani (1771), in which he argues that free trade in grain is not always advisable. Count Carli’s merits were appreciated by Leopold of Tuscany, afterwards emperor, who in 1765 placed him at the head of the council of public economy and of the board of public instruction. In 1769 he became privy councillor, in 1771 president of the new council of finances. He died at Milan in February 1795. During his leisure he completed and published his Antichità Italiche, in which the literature and arts of his country are ably discussed. Besides the above, he published many works on antiquarian, economic and other subjects, including L’ Uomo libero, in confutation of Rousseau’s Contrat Social; an attack upon the abbé Tartarotti’s assertion of the existence of magicians; Observazioni sulla musica antica e moderna; and several poems.