[MIRABEAU (Victor de Riquetti, Marquis de). The Friend of Me - Lot 72

Lot 72
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Estimation :
2000 - 3000 EUR
[MIRABEAU (Victor de Riquetti, Marquis de). The Friend of Me - Lot 72
[MIRABEAU (Victor de Riquetti, Marquis de). The Friend of Men, or Treatise on Population. First [- Fifth] part. Avignon, s.n., 1756-1758-1760. 5 parts in 2 volumes in-4, speckled calf, triple cold fillet, ornamented spine, red title-pieces and brown tomaison, red edges (Binding of the time). INED, n°3194. - Spengler, pp. 129-135. - Weulersse, t. I, pp. 53-55. Extremely rare first edition. Famous work of Mirabeau, which met a real triumph at its publication. The author clearly advocates the need for population growth, the source of all wealth, and considers that agriculture, the first, most useful, most innocent and most precious of the arts (Part III, p. 216), as the foundation of population, must be stimulated: never before had agriculture elicited such an eloquent "apology", wrote Weulersse. In the famous Ami des Hommes, published about a year before he joined the physiocratic school, we find many of Cantillon's ideas. [Despite the liberties taken with the orthodoxy of physiocratic theory, Mirabeau's Ami des Hommes was, more than any other, responsible for the interest in population questions in the third quarter of the 18th century: one finds in it already many of the key ideas expressed in his later physiocratic writings (Spengler). A complete copy of the five parts. The fifth part contains the following texts: Mémoire sur l'agriculture envoyé à la très-louable société d'agriculture de Berne, Extrait des six premiers livres du Corps complet d'Oeconomie rustique de Thomas Hale, et surtout le célèbre Tableau oeconomique avec ses explications de Quesnay. Engraved armorial bookplate of Jean-Baptiste Peyer imHoff, seigneur de Fontenelle. A frontispiece, found in some copies, is not present here. Lower stain on volume II. Smudging on the boards of volume II, a bit and a cap restored in volume I.
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