SAY (Jean-Baptiste).
Traité d'économie politique, ou simple exposition de la manière dont se forment, se distribuent et se consomment les richesses.
An exceedingly nice copy of one of the most important works of the classical period of economic thought, originally published in 1803, the present example being the fifth and final edition to be published within Say’s lifetime.
Besides Smith’s Wealth of Nations, whose doctrine Say expounded from an early age, it proved the most popular work on economics in the first half of the nineteenth century. “It was the first really popular treatise on political economy ever published in France; his main divisions and his terminology have become classical and have served as a model for innumerable subsequent treatises” (Palgrave, III, p. 357). Despite early claims that his work was derivative of Smith, it has long been proved that Say ranks with Sismondi and Cournot in the originality of his contributions to economic theory, and Schumpeter calls his work “the most important of the links in the chain that leads from Cantillon and Turgot to Walras” (History of Economic Analysis, pp. 492-3).
Carpenter, ‘The Economic Bestsellers Before 1850’, XXXIII.20; Kress, B.6577.
