Recherche des principes de l'économie politique

First French edition, rare. Translated by Etienne François de Sennevert. A fine printing on handsome laid paper.
Contemporary full polished mottled calf, smooth spines richly decorated with gilt tooling in compartments and rolls, black morocco lettering-pieces, tan morocco volume labels, triple gilt fillet borders on the boards. Some surface abrasions to the boards, joints, and borders. Slight brown waterstain in the upper margin of the preliminary leaves of volume 1. A small loss at the foot of volume 4. Headcap of volume 2 lightly worn. Loss at the lower joint of volume 1. Despite a few minor defects, a very handsome copy.

Born into a prosperous family of Scottish lawyers, Steuart followed the same career path. In 1735, he was admitted to the Edinburgh bar and immediately undertook the Grand Tour. This journey, customary at the time for young men of the European elite, led him through Germany, France, Spain, and Rome. It was no doubt an opportunity for him to observe the various political systems of continental Europe. After five years, he returned to Scotland and supported the Jacobite uprisings aimed at restoring the Stuart dynasty after their overthrow in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Following the defeat at Culloden and the failure of the pretender to the throne, he was forced into exile in France, Flanders, and Frankfurt, before settling for several years in Tübingen.
His many travels, as well as his friendship with Hume, awakened his interest in political economy, and in 1767 he published his Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, a work that marked the end of his twenty-year exile, as he was authorized to return to Scotland in 1771. It was also the first time since the Frenchman Antoine de Monchrestien in 1615 that the term "political economy" was used.
For the first time, economic science was conceived as a system both theoretical and practical, as illustrated by Steuart's own definition: « Le principal objet de cette science est d'assurer un certain revenu de subsistance pour chaque habitant, de parer à toutes les circonstances qui pourraient le rendre précaire ; de fournir toutes les choses nécessaires pour satisfaire les besoins de la société, et d'employer les habitants (...) de manière à créer des relations réciproques et des liens de dépendance entre eux » ("The principal object of this science is to secure a certain fund on subsistence for all the inhabitants, to obviate every circumstance which may render it precarious; to provide every thing necessary for supplying the wants of the society, and to employ the inhabitants (...) in such a manner as naturally to create reciprocal relations and dependencies between them").
Methodical and systematic, Steuart deployed a complete economic taxonomy, dividing his work into five major books. The first concerns the influence of agricultural development on population growth; here the economist also addresses labor and its distribution, notably the introduction of machinery into manufacturing. He questions whether the presence of machines in factories might harm the interests of the population by affecting employment. The second book turns to trade and industry, specifically the exchange of goods between nations. The third focuses on "artificial or material" currencies, their application in commerce, and their taxation. The fourth addresses credit and debt, but also banks and exchange. The fifth and final book deals with taxes and levies. Each part is accompanied by a detailed plan at the beginning of the volume in which it appears.
This vast work might have been regarded as the founding text of economic liberalism had it not been eclipsed nine years later by Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, whose thesis Steuart's arguments could have undermined. Etienne François de Sennevert, in the preface to his French translation entitled Recherche des principes de l'économie politique (1789), nevertheless restored Steuart's due: « Le chevalier Steuart a eu cet honneur que n'obtient pas la médiocrité : il a été peu cité, il est vrai ; mais on l'a souvent copié. M. Smith lui-même, dans son ouvrage, très justement célèbre, De la Richesse des Nations, a fondu, dans les trois premiers livres, tout ce que notre auteur a dit sur les mêmes sujets, mais sans les approfondir autant, par ce qu'ils ne sont que des accessoires à son plan, et qu'il suppose, en quelque sorte, que les développements sont connus de ses lecteurs. » It is worth noting that Adam Smith does not once acknowledge the work of his predecessor; yet other thinkers recognized the foundational role of Steuart's principles, among them Marx, who cited him on several occasions in his celebrated Capital.