[Rarebooks] fa: L'ETAT DU COMMERCE D'ANGLETERRE 1755 - 1st French ed. of John Cary's ESSAY ON THE STATE OF ENGLAND

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

On eBay now, along with a number of 18th-century British titles,  
ending Sunday, Sept. 28 (more details and photos at the URL below):


http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZarch_in_la

Many thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

[John Cary:] Essai sur L'Etat du Commerce D'Angleterre. Londres  
[London]: Et se vend à Paris, Quai des Augustines, Chez Guillyn, au  
Lys d'Or, 1755. First edition thus. Two volumes, 12mo (17 x10cm) in  
full period mottled calf...

John Cary (d. 1720) was a prominent Bristol merchant and writer on  
economic subjects. His Essay on the State of England, in Relation to  
its Trade, its Poor, and its Taxes, one of the most influential  
English economic treatises of its time, was first published in 1695  
and reprinted, in revised form, in 1717, 1719, and 1745. John Locke  
described it as "the best discourse I have read on the subject." This  
important edition in French, appearing on the eve of the Seven Years'  
War, when interest in the economic strengths and weaknesses of  
"perfidious Albion" was understandably intense, was translated by  
Georges Marie Butel-Dumont, who also considerably augmented the text,  
making it in many ways an entirely new work. He added, for example, a  
section entitled, "État des Esclaves, Munitions, Canots, Vaisseuax  
appartenans à la Compagnie Royale d'Afrique, tel qu'ils s'est trouvé  
en l'année 1749 dans les differens Forts sur la côte occidentale  
d'Afrique [State of the Slaves, Ammunition, Boats, Vessels [of] the  
Royal African Company such as they were found in 1749 in various Forts  
on the West Coast of Africa]..."  Also of particular interest to the  
French at the time would have been his detailed "Rolle de la Flotte  
Royale," a 15-page roster of the ships of the British navy, complete  
with tonnage and the number of crewmen and cannon on each...

Another of Butel-Dumont's additions, we presume, is a fascinating 10- 
page "Liste des Bubbles" naming 176 different examples of the wildly  
speculative, rarely profitable, and often ludicrous stock ventures and  
schemes, such as the South-Sea Company, so popular in early 18th- 
century England, a sampling of which we can't resist citing: La  
Compagnie du Groenland pour la pêche de la baleine (the Greenland  
Whaling Company); Compagnie pour le cuivre de Galles (Welsh Copper  
Company); Compagnie de la rivière d'Oronoko (Orinoco River Company);  
Compagnie de <i>Daniel de Foe pour procurer de l'ouvrage aux Tisserans  
(Daniel Defoe's Company to Obtain Work for Weavers [the London Weavers  
Company];... Compagnie pour l'amélioration du tabac (Company for the  
Improvement of Tobacco); pour faire des bas de soie pour femmes (for  
the Making of Silk Stockings for Women); pour paver les rues de  
Londres (for Paving the Streets of London); pour vuider les fosses  
d'aisance (for Emptying Privies)...etc., etc.