HERBERT, Claude-Jacques.

£650 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Essai sur la police générale des grains, Later and best edition of this valuable work on the grain trade, in the format praised by Adam Smith, which includes the "Arrêt du Conseil d'Etat du Roi" referenced in the Avertissement. First published in London in 1753, the Essai began as a 53-page pamphlet. Here it appears considerably enlarged, with the inclusion of the Essai sur les prix (pp. 197-296) and the Essai sur l'agriculture (pp. 297-435).The Essai refers to the works of Boisguilbert, Forbonnais, Hume, Locke, Melon, Newton, Saint-Pierre, Ustariz, Vauban, and the Roman authorities on agriculture. McCulloch calls the work "in all respects, an excellent treatise; and may, indeed, be safely placed at the head of the works on commerce that had appeared in France, or anywhere else on the Continent, previously to the era of Quesnay and the Economists. It is clearly and ably written; and contains every argument that could be advanced to show the pernicious consequences of restrictions on the corn trade, and the advantages of freedom, with the exception of those that may be deduced from the new doctrines as to rent and profits".It is the 1757 Berlin edition of Herbert's Essai that Smith read and owned (Bonar, p. 82), and which is cited in the Wealth of Nations, where Smith described Herbert as "the elegant author of the Essay on the Police of Grain". Smith also recommended Herbert's Essai to the Scottish lawyer Lord Hailes in a letter dated 15 January 1769, alongside works by Dupré

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