RICHARD CANTILLON
In any comparative study of writings upon the early history of economics, it is curious to observe to what a degree Cantillon remains relatively unnoticed in his own country—the remarkable paper of Jevons always excepted.[1] He exercised, notwithstanding, so powerful an influence upon the best intellect of the time in his own department of knowledge, that he may fairly be called, prior to Adam Smith, the economist's economist. His posthumous Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en général, 1755, was studied in France by philosophers like Condillac,[2] by publicists like Condillac's brother, the Abbé de Mably,[3] by literary chroniclers like the writers in Grimm's Correspondence,[4] and Fréron's Année Littéraire,[5] and by the leaders of the Physiocrates, Gournay,[6] Quesnay[7] and Mirabeau.[8] In Germany it received the homage of John Philip Graumann,[9] an able writer on currency and a monetary adviser of Frederick the Great. In England it was shamelessly rifled by Malachy Postlethwayt in his Great Britain's True System, 1757; was utilised without acknowledgment by Harris, in his Essay upon Money and Coins, 1757-8; was referred to by Adam Smith;[10] and, in its English dress, quoted by Sir James Steuart.[11] In Denmark, Savary's continuation of the great Dictionary of Commerce had to defend itself against a charge preferred by rival editors in the Mercure de France for June 1763,
- ↑ Richard Cantillon and the Nationality of Political Economy. 'Contemporary Review,' January 1881, p. 61.
- ↑ Œuvres, 1803, vi. 141.
- ↑ Œuvres, 1789, v. 169; vi. 311-328.
- ↑ 1813 edition, i. 394, 420.
- ↑ Amsterdam, 1755, v. 357.
- ↑ Mémoires de Morellet, 1821, i. 38.
- ↑ Art. Grains, in the w:Encyclopédie of Diderot and D'Alembert, 1757.
- ↑ s See pp. 264 sqq. post.
- ↑ Gesammlete Briefe, Berlin, 1762, p. 114. For this reference I am indebted to Mr. Dana Horton. See his Sir Isaac Newton and England's Prohibitive Tariff upon Silver Money, Cincinnati, 1881, p. 6—a spirited reply to some observations of Jevons in his article upon Cantillon.
- ↑ Wealth of Nations, 1776, i. 5.
- ↑ Works, 1805, iii. 22.
