Vues Politiques sur le Commerce, Ouvrage dans lequel on traite particulièrement des Denrées, & où l'on propose de nouveaux moyens pour encourager l'Agriculture & les Arts, & pour augmenter le Commerce général du Royaume.

A Amsterdam, Aux depens de la Compagnie, 1759. Title printed in red and black. viii, 296 pp. 8vo. Contemporary blind marbled covers, paper shelf number to spine, uncut. Kress 5781; Goldsmiths 9441; Einaudi 2671; Mattioli 1484; Higgs 1978; INED 2119; Conlon 59:827; Spengler, French Predecessors of Malthus, pp. 86-90. First edition. The copies catalogued in Kress and Higgs have 535 pages and the title ends after the words 'Commerce général', lacking the additon 'du Royaume'. No priority has been established, either of these editions is very rare. The author, one of the editors of the Journal Économique, philantropist and utopian socialist, proposes in this work to 'faire entrer tous les moyens de mettre en exécution les projets les plus grands pour le bonheur de la nation': the founding of a state-owned agricultural company for the sale of its products with the purpose of maintaining price stability, the foundation of 'sociétiés de crédit', development of the use of machines, etc. The whole of his socialist and utopian ideas is also elaborately dealt with in J.-C. Perrot's work 'Histoire intellectuelle de l'Économie Politique', chapter entitled Le despotisme de la raison dans l'utopie économique de Goyon de la Plombanie, pp. 284-304. See also A. Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme au XVIIIe siècle, pp. 329-334. - Occasional faint dampstain, a very good copy.