NOTE.

The Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général was written between 1730 and 1734 by Richard Cantillon, a natural-born British subject, of the family of Cantillon of Ballyheigue, co. Kerry, Ireland. He was probably born between 1680 and 1690. In 1716 he established himself as a banker in Paris, where his cousin, the Chevalier Richard Cantillon (died in 1717), had long traded, first as a silk mercer, then as a banker. Our author soon became flourishing; but, having given umbrage to John Law by his outspoken belief in the ultimate failure of the Mississippi scheme, he found it dangerous to remain in France. He therefore quitted that country in 1719, but continued his Paris business in the name of a nephew, Richard Cantillon, and gained enormous profits by speculating for the fall of Mississippi shares. Out of these speculations arose several lawsuits, in the course of which he was once arrested in Paris, and spent a night in prison. He married, in 1726, Mary Anne Mahony, daughter of the Lady Clare. He was murdered in his bed at Albemarle Street, London, on the 15th of May, 1734, by a discharged man-servant, who stole some of his papers and set fire to the house before escaping.

The Essai was written by Cantillon in English, and by himself translated into its present form for the use of a French friend. The original English work, with its statistical supplement, was never published. It was possibly in the possession of Philip Cantillon, a second cousin, when he brought out The Analysis of Trade, London, 1759, professedly based upon it. The fictitious imprint “A Londres, Chez Fletcher Gyles, dans Holborn, M.DCC.LV.” appears also upon the title-page of Questions importantes sur le Commerce, a French translation by Turgot of Tucker's Reflections on the Expediency of a Law for the Naturalization of Foreign Protestants.

Cantillon is said to have been a prolific writer, an indefatigable traveller, and to have joined the experience of a silk mercer and a wine merchant to that of a banker. He was an enthusiast in agricultural and monetary science. This the only surviving fragment of his work greatly influenced the early French economists,—Gournay, Quesnay, Mirabeau, Turgot, Condillac, Mably, Graslin. It is one of the few works referred to by Adam Smith, and Jevons called it the first treatise on economics. Three editions of it are known,—the 1755 edition of 436 pages, 12mo, now reprinted; an edition in smaller form (probably from another press) in 1756, 432 pages, 12mo; and the reprint appended to Mauvillon's translation of the Discours Politiques of Hume (in vol. iii.), Amsterdam, 1755.

See the articles by F. von Sivers, Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie, 1874, p. 145; S. Bauer, ibid., 1890, p. 145; W. S. Jevons, Contemporary Review, 1881, p. 61; Henry Higgs, The Economic Journal, 1891, p. 262. Also A. Espinas, Histoire des Doctrines Économiques, Paris, 1891.

H. H.

This edition attempts to reproduce that of 1755 so far as is possible with type not manufactured for the purpose. The old pagination is preserved, and even typographical errors and irregularities are left unchanged.

ESSAI
SUR
LE COMMERCE.

ESSAI
SUR LA NATURE
DU
COMMERCE
EN GÉNÉRAL.

TRADUIT DE L'ANGLOIS.

A LONDRES,
Chez FLETCHER GYLES,
dans Holborn

M. DCC. LV.