DAVENANT, Charles, and Walter Moyle.

£3,250 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Discourses on the Publick Revenues, and on the Trade of England. In Two Parts. First edition of this important early work on public finance, by "one of the first authorities of his time" (Schumpeter, p. 211), complete with the four folding tables in particularly nice condition. Sir Charles Davenant (1656-1714), MP and civil servant, outlines an incisive analysis of the economic policy of the Williamite regime. Davenant, a follower and collaborator of Gregory King, took many years to become recognized as an economist of the first rank. Schumpeter classifies the "impressive total" of Davenant's contributions to economic analysis under four heads: "(1) there is, implicit but clear, behind all his writings the awareness of the logic of the relations by which things economic hang together;... (2) he substantially improved... his epoch's acquirements in the theories of money and of international trade and finance; (3) he was one of the first authorities of his time on public finance - taxes, debts, and so on; (4) he was one of the few who understood, and co-operated in, the work of Political Arithmetick" (History of Economic Analysis, p. 211).The Discourses includes the first use of Davenant's famed definition of political arithmetick as "the art of reasoning by figures, upon things relating to government" (Part I, p. 2). The New Palgrave notes that this definition "provides a further claim to fame, partly because it made more readily available the fairly sophisticated national inc

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