STEUART, Sir James.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Works, Political, Metaphysical, and Chronological. First collected edition of the works of Scotland's leading proponent of mercantilism, a Jacobite ambassador, and a key opponent of Adam Smith, who wrote the Wealth of Nations in part to refute Steuart's theories. With the 1767 publication of the Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, James Steuart (1712-1780) produced perhaps the first systematic treatise on economics in English. For Carpenter, it was only the publication soon after of the Wealth of Nations that prevented Steuart's work becoming "the standard English economic text" (p. 20), and for much of the 1770s and 1780s it was more widely cited than Smith's work. It was read carefully by Smith himself, as well as Marx, Hegel, and Alexander Hamilton, who shaped his protectionist policies largely in line with Steuart's analysis. Volumes I-IV contain the Inquiry itself, while the remaining two collect Steuart's writings on money, coinage, and philosophy, together with his autobiographical notes. The editor was George Chalmers (1742-1825), a prominent antiquarian. Steuart was deeply involved in the Jacobite cause: at the time of Culloden he was serving in Paris as the Jacobite ambassador, and it was not until 1763 that it was safe for him to return to Scotland. The engraved armorial bookplate of the Strathallan viscounts is present in all volumes, possibly that of William Henry Drummond, 7th Viscount (1810-1886). Like Steuart, the Drummonds were heavily invol

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