CHILD, Sir Josiah.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

A New Discourse of Trade, Second edition, second issue: first published in 1690 as A Discourse about Trade (developed from a thin pamphlet of 1668), ESTC describes this as a reissue, with a cancel title page, of the second edition (renamed A New Discourse of Trade) of 1693. It includes Sir Thomas Culpeper's A Small Treatise against Usury (pp. 217-36). "In 1690 [Child (c.1631-1699), economic writer and merchant] published under his own name the comprehensive Discourse about Trade, which included his Proposals for the Relief and Employment of the Poor, which had appeared earlier as an undated pamphlet. This work was reprinted in 1693 under the title A New Discourse on Trade to coincide with a new attempt in parliament to reduce the legal maximum rate of interest... Child acquired considerable fame as an economic writer in his own day and was both widely read and frequently quoted. His works were reprinted continuously during the eighteenth century and published in French in 1754. He exerted influence because of his fluent and persuasive pen, his debating skills, and his obvious success in and experience of business" (ODNB). As Geoffrey Poitras notes "Child is another of the truly remarkable individuals populating the early history of financial economics. Child has some status as a noteworthy, pre-Smithian economist... His status as Governor of the East India Company was matched by his stock trading acumen" (The Early History of Financial Economics, 1478-1776, 2000, 322).

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