Commerce & Government: Considered in Their Mutual Relationship - Hardcover

This is a reprint of the translation published by Edward Elgar in 1997. Condillac's theory of economics was initially condemned by the physiocrats because in his utility-based analysis, industry and commerce and not just agriculture contributed to the wealth of France. This first English translation includes a comprehensive account of Condillac's life and contributions, the importance of which were widely recognized after the marginal revolution of the 1870's. Translator and editor Shelagh M. Eltis is a UK-based historian; Walter Eltis is emeritus, Exeter College, Oxford and visiting professor of economics at the U. of Reading, UK.

Reference & Research Book News
August 2008

This text covers such topics as value, money, agriculture, domestic and foreign trade, war, labor, interest rates, luxuries, and the various government policies that affect these subjects.The theme that unites these disparate subjects is liberty.

As Condillac writes near the end of the work, the means to eradicate all the abuses and injustices of government is ?to give trade full, complete and permanent freedom.” In their preface to the 1997 edition, Shelagh and Walter Eltis wrote, ?English language readers . . . will find . . . that the case for competitive market economics has rarely been presented more powerfully.”

Étienne Bonnot, Abbé de Condillac (1714?1780) was one of eighteenth-century France’s preeminent philosophers of the Enlightenment, who had wide-ranging influence beyond metaphysics and epistemology to political thought and economics. He was a leading advocate in France of the ideas of John Locke, Bishop George Berkeley, and David Hume.

Shelagh Eltis is a historian and graduate of Somerville College, Oxford, U.K.

Walter Eltis is an Emeritus Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Reading, U.K.