[HERBERT (Claude Jacques).]
Essai sur la police générale des grains, sur leurs prix & sur les effets de l'agricutlure.
The greatly expanded edition of Herbert’s work on the grain trade, a significant pre-Physiocratic French economics text that was approvingly cited by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations. The first edition was originally published in 1753 as a fifty-three page pamphlet and is of the utmost rarity. The text was considerably expanded in the present edition with the inclusion of the ‘Essai sur les prix’ (pp. 197-296) and the ‘Essai sur l’agriculture’ (pp. 297-435).
McCulloch described the work as ‘in all respects, an excellent treatise; and may, indeed, be safely placed at the head of the works on commerce that had appeared in France, or anywhere else on the Continent, previously to the era of Quesnay and the Economists. It is clearly and ably written; and contains every argument that could be advanced to show the pernicious consequences of restrictions on the corn trade, and the advantages of freedom, with the exception of those that may be deduced from the new doctrines as to rent and profits’ (The Literature of Political Economy).
Kress, 5443; Goldsmiths’, 9010; Carpenter, The Economic Bestsellers Before 1850, XVI (4).
