MORELLET, André.

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Refutation de l'ouvrage qui a pour titre Dialogues sur le commerce des bleds. First edition of this defence of physiocracy. Morellet, called "Abbé Mord-les" ("bite them") by Voltaire for his incisive rhetoric, attacks Ferdinando Galiani's conservative stance on corn laws, which Galiani published in his Dialogues in January 1770. Morellet instead promotes free trade as the stimulus to better, competitive farming and thereby the solution to the poor harvests France was suffering in the late 1760s.The "nouvelle advertisement", dated 1774, explains that the Refutation de l'ouvrage was printed in 1770, four months after Galiani's Dialogues. Due to extended censorship, it remained unpublished until 1774.This copy is from the library of the Chateau de la Roche Guyon, the ancestral seat of the Rochfoucaults, with their 20th-century library stamp on the title page. Turgot retired to the chateau for a time in 1776 after his political fall from grace, and his host, Louise Élisabeth de La Rochefoucauld, Duchesse d'Enville (1716-1797), designed a garden there inspired by physiocratic principles. The library was sold at Sotheby's on 24 and 25 March 1988.

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