CARY, John.

£4,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

An Essay on the State of England, First edition, presentation copy, with an inscription on the front free endpaper "Ex dono Johannis Cary armiger 30th November 1703". The work, the first book printed in Bristol (Woolrich, p. 2), is an important contribution to mercantilist economics and was said by John Locke to be "the best discourse I ever read on that subject" (Palgrave). Cary (1649-1720) was a Bristol merchant. His treatise, arguing for manipulating English foreign trade to secure an incoming stream of bullion, is wide-ranging and recognized as seminal in several fields. Scholars "have singled him out as a pioneer in regarding the economy as a separate field of 'scientific' inquiry; historians of political thought have similarly argued he precociously conceived of England's empire as a colonial system; and he has been mentioned by economic historians as an early proponent of technological change as an engine of development" (Reinert, p. 74).The work was popular and republished several times under different titles (1696, 1717, 1719, 1745). In Cary's inscription, "armiger" is similar to esquire, meaning the right to bear arms.

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