The Macclesfield copy of the uncommon second edition of this “classic of English Mercantilism” (Carpenter) and the earliest exposition of the theory of the balance of trade. Originally published in 1664, the first edition is of the utmost commercial scarcity.
“For those who want to read a single example of mercantilist writing, it is difficult to better Thomas Mun’s England’s Treasure By Forraign Trade, completed in 1628 and published posthumously in 1664. Adam Smith at any rate regarded it as perfectly representative of a vast body of similar literature: ‘The title of Mun’s book,’ he said, ‘became a fundamental maxim in the political economy, not of England only, but of all other commercial countries’” (Blaug).
“Mun argued that the balance of trade was the principal determinant of specie flows and the exchange rate. England’s Treasure demolished the previous mercantilist literature which advocated detailed interventionist policies to sustain the English money supply and the exchange rate, such as banning gold exports, currency appreciation, lowering the metallic content of the currency, and encouraging the domestic circulation of foreign coin. Mun reiterated the fundamental balance of payments equation that specie flows must be determined primarily by the excess of exports over imports, and therefore insisted that there could not be a sustained loss of gold and silver while there was a trade surplus, while none of the above expedients could prevent a monetary outflow in the face of a sustained deficit. His book hammered home the significance of the balance of payments equation, with numerous examples to demonstrate the impotence of detailed interventionist policies to hold or attract bullion while trade was in deficit” (New Palgrave).
According to McCulloch’s 1847 Edinburgh Review article, “Mun’s book was received as the gospel of finance and commercial policy; and his principles ruled for above a century the policy of England, and much longer that of the rest of Europe”.
Provenance: from the celebrated library of the Earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle, Oxfordshire, South Library bookplate to front pastedown and armorial blindstamp to the title page and p. 1; Sotheby’s, Macclesfield Sale VIII, 25/10/2006, Lot 2856.
Carpenter, The Economic Bestsellers Before 1850, IV (2); Goldsmiths, 1905; Kress, 1244; PMM, 146 (first edition).
