MIRABEAU Victor Riqueti L’Ami des hommes ou Traité de la population. Première [-sixième] partie.

Einaudi, 3941; Goldsmith, 9092; INED, 3194; Kress, 5543; Tchemerzine, III, 749-750 (erroneously mentioning a frontispiece, absent in the scanned copy of the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris).

First edition of the six parts of one of the fouding texts of the Physiocratic doctrine, containing the first public appearance of Quesnay’s Tableau Economique.

Mirabeau was the first economist to follow Quesnay in founding the physiocratic circle and had read and admired Cantillon’s theories. In 1756, he began publishing L’Ami des hommes ou Traité sur la population (The Friend of Men or Treatise on Population), a work that contributed to the fame of its author, who came from a line of Italian merchants established in Marseille and ennobled in the 16th century.

Mirabeau had already published the first three parts of L’Ami des Hommes when he met François Quesnay. Noticed by Quesnay, who was a friend of Madame de Pompadour, Mirabeau joined the group of Physiocrats led by him. Their motto was: ‘Laissez faire, laisser passer”. There he met Dupont de Nemours, as well as Turgot, d’Alembert, Diderot, Helvétius and Buffon. From the fourth part, published in 1758, Quesnay’s influence is clearly visible. The last two parts appeared in 1760, the last containing Quesnay’s Tableau économique, which thus became accessible to the public for the first time. The first edition, which had been printed in very small numbers on Madame de Pompadour’s private press in December 1758 at the Château de Versailles, had been carefully suppressed, and almost no copies remain. As for the second printing, which took place at the end of 1759, only three copies are known to exist. So it was thanks to L’Ami des Hommes that the Tableau économique was finally published.

Parts 4 to 5 each have a subtitle, in particular : Précis de l’organisation ou mémoire sur les états provinciaux (part 4); Mémoire sur l’agriculture envoyé à la très louable société d’agriculture de Berne, avec l’extrait des six premiers livres du corps complet d’oeconomie rustique de feu M. Thomas Hall (part 5). Part 6 has no individual title but is entitled: Réponse à l’essai sur les Ponts et Chaussées, la voierie et les corvées, of which the famous Tableau économique is a very large part.

“This remarkable treatise created the greatest sensation throughout the whole of Europe. It is said to have gone through forty editions and was translated into several languages” (Palgrave).

[Bound at the end of volume III:] [MIRABEAU, Victor Riquetti, marquis de]. Théorie de l’impôt. Paris, no name, 1760. 4to (253 x 194 mm) VIII, 336 pp.

Einaudi, 3946; Kress, 5883; Goldsmiths, 9602; INED, 3209.

First edition. Rare. This treatise, which sets out a plan for tax reform in France, is one of the most important economic and financial works of the Ancien Régime.

Written in collaboration with Quesnay, Théorie de l’impôt helped to establish the ideas of the physiocratic movement, to which it is a highly valuable contribution.

“Ce fut la première œuvre vraiment personnelle de Mirabeau depuis sa conversion [à la physiocratie]. Le succès en fut très vif. Mirabeau développe les principes de la nouvelle école avec un franc-parler qui lui attira de nombreux suffrages et le fit emprisonner. Il s’élève notamment contre les fermiers-généraux, fait une critique sévère du régime fiscal alors en vigueur, et énonce trois conditions nécessaires à une juste imposition” (INED).

Fine copies of these rare editions.