[BAUDEAU (Abbe Nicolas).]
Première Introduction à la philosophie économique; ou analyse des Etats policés. Par un disciple de l'Ami des Hommes.
An important introduction to physiocratic doctrine by the Abbé Nicolas Baudeau (1730-1792), described by the great Italian economist Luigi Cossa as ‘a compendious statement of Quesnay’s views which, for clearness as well as for certain touches of originality, is far superior to anything from the pen of Mirabeau, Du Pont de Nemours, or Le Mercier de la Rivière’ (An Introduction to the Study of Political Economy, p. 262).
Schumpeter lists the Première Introduction as one of the four principal textbooks of physiocrat orthodoxy, writing: ‘The Abbé Nicolas Baudeau (1730-92) began as an enemy [of physiocracy] but had his day of Damascus in 1766 and from then on proved a most useful populariser and controversialist as well as an efficient editor’ (History of Economic Analysis, p. 225).
Higgs 5158 (‘The best of his works’); Kress S.4657; not in Goldsmiths’.