GRAMONT, Scipion de.

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Le Denier Royal. First edition of an extremely rare and important early economic text, containing the first detailed history of money and an early elucidation of the psychological theory of value. Although overlooked by most commentators, Le Denier Royal ranks with ease alongside Montchrétien's Traicté de l'Oeconomie Politique (1615), Emeric Crucé's Le Nouveau Cynée (1623) and Saint-Jean d'Eon's Commerce honorable (1646), the traditional triumvirate of 17th-century French texts of major importance for the history of political economy.Little is known of the author. Born in Provence, Gramont served as ordinary secretary of the royal closet under Louis XIII and earned the confidence of Richelieu, who charged him with compiling an Histoire des expéditions qui se sont faites sur mer, now lost. It is believed he died in Venice around 1638. "In 1620 he handed to the superintendent of finance, Schomberg, a work entitled Le denier royal, traicté curieux de l'or et de l'argent (Paris). Although this treatise was ignored or discredited by his contemporaries and has since fallen into oblivion it presents an extraordinary originality. It constituted a theory of money which can be designated psycho-sociological since Gramont finds in "human judgement," in the habits of the public, the cause of fluctuations in the value of money; one of the first psychological theories of value based on the two cardinal concepts of utility and scarcity; a definitive explanation of the rise of prices in the

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