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DEFOE, Daniel (c.1660-1731)
A plan of the English commerce. Being a compleat prospect of the trade of this nation, as well the home trade as the foreign. In three parts. Part I. Containing a view of the present magnitude of the English trade, as it respects, 1. The exportation of our own growth and manufacture. 2. The importation of merchants goods from abroad. 3. The prodigious consumption of both at home. Part II. Containing an answer to that great and important question now depending, whether our trade, and especially our manufactures, are in a declining condition, or no? Part III. Containing several proposals entirely new, for extending and improving our trade, and promoting the consumption of our manufactures, in countries wherewith we have hitherto had no commerce. Humbly offered to the consideration of the King and Parliament.
London, printed for Charles Rivington 1728.
XVI,[8],368p. Modern full calf, back richly gilt with red label.
€ 3750

First edition. Defoe's chief contribution to economics, or economic jornalism. An extensive plea for the promotion of trade including colonial expansion. ‘More colonies then is, without question, extending the commerce; it is enlarging the field of action; it calls in more hands to assist in the publick prosperity; it employs profitably the unprofitable numbers of your poor, and lays a foundation of an extended trade, and thereby of a still larger exportation from home' (p.366). ‘This work is full of information; and, though desultory, it is ably written, and contains sundry passages in which the influence of trade and industry in promoting the well-being of the labouring classes and the public wealth is set in the most striking point of view ... it is shown that [the commerce and manufactures] had continued progressively to increase, and were then, in fact, more flourishing than at any former period.' *Kress 3744. Goldsmiths' 6594. Mattioli 957. Not in Einaudi. McCulloch p.45. New Palgrave I,p.766.