Bidspirit auction | [HERBERT (Claude-Jacques)]. ESSAI sur la

[HERBERT (Claude-Jacques)]. ESSAI sur la Police Générale des Grains, sur leurs Prix & sur les Effets de l'Agriculture. Berlin [Paris: Pissot]. 1755. - [HERBERT (Claude-Jacques)] ESSAI sur la Police Générale des Grains, sur leurs Prix & sur les Effets de l'Agriculture . Berlin [Paris: Pissot]: s.n., 1755. xviii, 436 pp.; 170 mm. Fifth edition, the first truly complete one, published anonymously in Paris by Pissot under the fictitious heading ”A Berlin”. Claude-Jacques Herbert (1700-1758), director of public carriages in Bordeaux, published the first version of the text in London in 1753. The 1754 and 1755 editions resulted from his direct intervention, with revisions to the text, and the addition of two new parts – the ”Essai sur les prix des grains” (with statistical tables) and the ”Essai sur l'agriculture” – which constitute half the volume in this edition. A work of great influence on 18th-century French economic thought, enthusiastically hailed by the Marquis d'Argenson, it had an immediate impact on administration and was cited for fifteen years as an authority on the issue of free grain trade. Herbert, a neo-mercantilist, did not yet advocate full freedom of cereal trade, but defended a significant reduction in the regulations then in force, and was one of the first to argue that competition would be the best remedy against famine. Rare. ⚑ Auto-translated via Google Translate