that insufficient advantage had been taken of the best sources said to be' Melon, Cantilion, Hume, Child, De XVitt, Le Negociant Anglois, and the English works.' In more recent tim. es the extent and effect of Cantillon's influence have been recognlsed on the Continent mainly by Daire 2 and Lavergne, s as historians of the Physiocrates, by Dr. yon Siv.ers 4 in his estimate of Turgot's position in the history of economics, and by Dr. Stepha. n Bauer's in connection with a study of the Economistes. The last-mentioned writer has imparted an interest of actuality to the subject by discovering what is described as ' a manuscript copy of Cantillon's EssaY' among the papers of the elder Mirabeau in the National Archives at Paris. The lives of Cantilion written for the Dictionary o.f National Biography 7 and the forthcoming Dgctonary o.f Political Economy's revive the problems of his personality and career. And Professor Marshall arouses the curiosity of students by the incidental expression of an opinion that Cantilion, though ' very acute, and in some respects much ahead of his time,' seems to be 'wanting in solidity.'[1]
There is reason to think that the direct influence of Cantilion upon Adam Smith was not unimportant. � The mere publication at Amsterdam of Cantillon's Essai in De Mauvillon's edition of Hume's Discours Politiques (vol. iii. 1755), must have brought it to Adam Smith's notice. And, having regard to the fashion of the time and the habit of Adam Smith himself, the easy way in which he names'Mr. Cantilion,' without the ceremony of an introduction to the reader, points to a familiarity which he assumed would be shared by those for whom he wrote. He probably, however, owed still more to Cantilion indirectly through the Physiocrates. And the man who made Cantilion a force among the Physiocrates, was, it can hardly be doubted, the Marquis de Mirabeau. u The Essai was published in 1755. In
Copenhagen, 1765, preface to vol. v.
Physiocrates, 1846, p. 74.
Les Econonistes francais du xviii' sicle, 1870, p. 167.
Jahrbuch (Hildebrand and Conrad), Jena, 1874, p. 145.
Conrad's Jahrbuch, August 1890, p. 145.
Harvard Quarterly Journal of Economics, October 1890, p. 101.
Art. Cantilion, by H. R. Tedder; ed. L. Stephen and Sidney Lee.
Ed. It. H. Inglis Palgrave.
See the passages quoted by Jevons, op. cit.
Gournay, too, had induced his friends to make special study of Essai, ' an excellent work,' says Morellet, ' which was iing neglected.' Mémoires, ubi sup. Morellet included it in the catalogue of an economic library, appended to his Prospectus d'ut hOUreau Dictionnaire de Commerce, Paris, 1769. Turgot thought Melon eclipsed by Montesquieu, Hume, Cantilion, Quesnay, Gournay. (Eurres, d. Daire, 1848, ii. 819.
- ↑ Principles of Economics, 1890, i. 53 n.
