Éclaircissements demandés à M. N**[ecker], sur ses principes économiques, & sur ses projets de législation; au nom des propriétaires fonciers & des cultivateurs françois. [bound with:] Lettres sur le commerce des grains.

First separate edition. 8vo. x, 306 pp. Contemporary mottled calf, flat spine elaborately panelled in gilt, second panel lettered in gilt on red morocco label, the rest with gilt fleuron devices, marbled endpapers, red edges, green ribbon placemarker (pencilled drawing in an early hand to front flyleaf, faint creasing to title and opening leaves, occasional spotting throughout, contents otherwise generally unmarked; board edges rather rubbed, vertical surface cracking to spine, minor chipping to headcap, corners bumped). [Paris], n.p. 1775.

[bound with:] [CONDORCET (Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de).] Lettres sur le commerce des grains.

First edition. 8vo. [4], [7]-29, [1, blank] pp. Paris, Couturier. 1774 [actually published in 1775]. 

The first separate appearance of the Abbé Nicolas Baudeau's (1730-1792) damning reply to Jacques Necker's critique of Turgot's plan for free trade in grains, originally published earlier in the same year in the journal Nouvelles Éphémérides économiques, the main organ of the Physiocrats. 

Turgot's liberalisation of the grain trade in 1774 had coincided with bad harvests and rocketing prices, leading to a fierce pamphlet war between proponents of the mercantilist and free trade schools of thought. Necker had set out his theories in opposition to Turgot in his book Sur la Législation et le commerce des grains (1775), prompting Baudeau reply with one of the great polemics of the Physiocratic school.

The present example of Baudeau's work is bound with Condorcet's defence of the free trade of grain. Condorcet had written the tract prior to Turgot's enactment of the policy, perhaps to anticipate it, but the work was not published until April 1775, in the midst of the troubles, and the month before the outbreak of bread riots in Paris. Condorcet would elaborate his ideas further in his 1776 treatise Réflexions sur le commerce des bleds, the year in which Turgot was dismissed and liberalisation of the grain trade scaled back. 

Goldsmiths', 11256, 11258; Kress 7003, 7071.

Stock Code: 254190