Title: Essai sur l'état du commerce d'Angleterre.
Publisher: London [i.e. Paris?] et se vend a Paris, chez Nyon.
Publication Date: 1755
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition
Two volumes. 12mo. 466, [2, errata]; [x], 472 printed pages. Titles with woodcut ornaments, woodcut head- and tail-pieces and decorative initials. Near contemporary ink stamp of Eugene de Froberville to first title. Marbled endpapers. Inner gilt dentelles. All edges red. Green silk ribbon place markers. Slight browning to the edges, with the occasional minor spot or very slight blemish elsewhere. The dedicatory epistle signed John Cary. Language: French. 10.5 x 17 cm. Contemporary full calf. Front & back covers with triple gilt fillets and corner decorations in gilt. Spine richly hand-tooled in gilt and with twin, red & green, gilt lettered morocco labels. Spine heads are a little chipped; joints are starting to split, but holding firm; corners slightly worn, and bumped. First edition in French of Cary's Essay on the State of England (Bristol, 1695); another issue, by Guillyn, appeared at the same time. This popular work was reissued several times in English, with amendments, under different titles: An Essay towards Regulating the Trade and employing the Poor in this Kingdom (1717, 1719) and A Discourse on Trade (1745). The work was also translated into Italian (1764).The author, John Cary (d.circa 1720), was a Bristol merchant, and was connected to John Locke. The Essay was said by Locke to be 'the best discourse I ever read on that subject' (quoted by F.Y.Edgeworth in Palgrave I, 230), and is significant for its advocacy of technological progress. 'Cary was evidently esteemed by his fellow citizens as a man of sound practical judgment, for he acted as an arbitrator in commercial disputes, and was chosen by the Bristol committee of trade as their representative in London to advise the city members in matters affecting Bristol trade' (DNB).The translator is Georges-Marie Butel-Dumont, secretary to the French embassy at St Petersburg. He also translated Child, and himself wrote Théorie du luxe (1771, second 1775) and Histoire et commerce des colonies angloises, dans l'Amérique septentrionale (1775), for which he drew on a deep knowledge of English commercial literature and on his own experience as a colonial official in Louisiana. McCulloch notes that the present translation 'contains much additional matter, and is in all respects a more valuable work than that of Cary'. Provenance: Eugène de Froberville (1815-1904) was a pioneering French ethnographer, explorer, cartographer and linguist. Einaudi 920 (Guillyn); Goldsmiths' 9015 (Nyon); Higgs 986; Kress 5424 (Nyon); McCulloch, p. 46. On Cary, see Hutchison, Before Adam Smith, p.389n, and Heckscher, Mercantilism II, 119, 169f. Bookseller Inventory # 5037