SAY, Jean-Baptiste.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Traité d'économie politique, First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on each half-title, "Offert à Messieurs d'Arnal de la part de l'auteur". The recipients were Jacques-Francois d'Arnal (1750-1830), whose bookplate is on the front pastedowns, and his brother Jean Baptiste-François (1754-1826), together merchant bankers who represented Lyon, Say's birthplace, in the assemblée de la noblesse at the États Généraux in 1789.The Traité d'économie politique is one of the core books in the modern discipline and established "Say's law", that production creates demand. The work was not republished until 1814, partly due to Napoleon's hostility to Say, but thereafter went through many editions. Besides Smith's Wealth of Nations, whose doctrine Say expounded from an early age, it proved the most popular work on economics in the first half of the 19th century. "It was the first really popular treatise on political economy ever published in France; his main divisions and his terminology have become classical and have served as a model for innumerable subsequent treatises" (Palgrave, III, p. 357).

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