GRAY (John).
Lectures on the Nature and Use of Money.
The copy of the antiquary and genealogist Evelyn Philip Shirley (1812-1882), with a presentation inscription from the author to the dedication leaf, and Shirley’s engraved Ettington Park bookplate to the front pastedown.
The work which signalled Gray’s change of ideas, away from communitarianism and central economic planning and towards the conclusion that ‘the system of exchange might be rationalised without transcendence or abolition of the market and without the institutional paraphernalia of communities or chambers of commerce. There was now no problem as there had been in the Lecture, [A Lecture of Human Happiness, 1825] in reconciling free and equitable exchange with free competition. “The great principle of individual competition should be left free and unfettered as the air we breath.” All that was required to make competitive capitalism work, all that was needed to ensure generalised prosperity was a medium of exchange that could be expanded pari passu with the level of output. This would eliminate the incidence of general economic depressions and lay the basis for rising living standards and social harmony’ (New Palgrave).
Einaudi, 2690; Goldsmiths’ 35713; Kress, C. 7417.
