The _Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général_ was written between
1730 and 1734 by Richard Cantillon, a natural-born British subject, of
the family of Cantillon of Ballyheigue, co. Kerry, Ireland. He was
probably born between 1680 and 1690. In 1716 he established himself as a
banker in Paris, where his cousin, the Chevalier Richard Cantillon (died
in 1717), had long traded, first as a silk mercer, then as a banker. Our
author soon became flourishing; but, having given umbrage to John Law by
his outspoken belief in the ultimate failure of the Mississippi scheme,
he found it dangerous to remain in France. He therefore quitted that
country in 1719, but continued his Paris business in the name of a
nephew, Richard Cantillon, and gained enormous profits by speculating
for the fall of Mississippi shares. Out of these speculations arose
several lawsuits, in the course of which he was once arrested in Paris,
and spent a night in prison. He married, in 1726, Mary Anne Mahony,
daughter of the Lady Clare. He was murdered in his bed at Albemarle
Street, London, on the 15th of May, 1734, by a discharged man-servant,
who stole some of his papers and set fire to the house before escaping.
The _Essai_ was written by Cantillon in English, and by himself
translated into its present form for the use of a French friend. The
original English work, with its statistical supplement, was never
published. It was possibly in the possession of Philip Cantillon, a
second cousin, when he brought out _The Analysis of Trade_, London,
1759, professedly based upon it. The fictitious imprint "A Londres, Chez
Fletcher Gyles, dans Holborn, M.DCC.LV." appears also upon the
title-page of _Questions importantes sur le Commerce_, a French
translation by Turgot of Tucker's _Reflections on the Expediency of a
Law for the Naturalization of Foreign Protestants_.
Cantillon is said to have been a prolific writer, an indefatigable
traveller, and to have joined the experience of a silk mercer and a wine
merchant to that of a banker. He was an enthusiast in agricultural and
monetary science. This the only surviving fragment of his work greatly
influenced the early French economists,--Gournay, Quesnay, Mirabeau,
Turgot, Condillac, Mably, Graslin. It is one of the few works referred
to by Adam Smith, and Jevons called it the first treatise on economics.
Three editions of it are known,--the 1755 edition of 436 pages, 12mo,
now reprinted; an edition in smaller form (probably from another press)
in 1756, 432 pages, 12mo; and the reprint appended to Mauvillon's
translation of the _Discours Politiques_ of Hume (in vol. iii.),
Amsterdam, 1755.
See the articles by F. von Sivers, _Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie_,
1874, p. 145; S. Bauer, _ibid._, 1890, p. 145; W. S. Jevons,
_Contemporary Review_, 1881, p. 61; Henry Higgs, _The Economic Journal_,
1891, p. 262. Also A. Espinas, _Histoire des Doctrines Économiques_,
Paris, 1891.