LINGUET, Simon Nicolas Henri.

£2,750 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Du Plus Heureux Gouvernement, ou parallele des constitutions politiques de l'Asie avec celles de l'Europe; Servant d'introduction à la Théorie des Loix Civiles. First edition of this incisive attack on physiocracy by the habitual contrarian (and one-time physiocrat), published as the first two parts of this six-part collected edition of his works. This set also includes the first edition of Linguet's Du Pain et du Bled, and a revised edition of the Théorie des loix civiles (first published in 1767), his critique of Enlightenment liberalism.Simon Nicolas Henri Linguet (1736-1794) was among the most renowned lawyers in France during the 1760s and 1770s, until his attacks on colleagues led to his expulsion from the bar in 1775. Voltaire observed of his streak of nonconformity that "Paris too has its Jean-Jacques [Rousseau]" (quoted in Vyverberg, p. 476). The works published here inveigh against multiple aspects of the pre-revolutionary status quo, including physiocratic notions of liberty and the dependence of the French upon bread. The Théorie des loix civiles opened Linguet's campaign again the physiocrats but did not target them by name: the Plus Heureux Gouvernement, by contrast, directly charged that physiocratic concepts of liberty were opportunistic shams designed to enrich the elite. Linguet's Du Pain et du Bled (On Wheat and Bread) tackles the systemic dependence of the French peasantry on bread, contending - perhaps hyperbolically - that it was a fundamentally harmful

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