Last Updated: January 31, 2006

Cantillon, Hume and the Rise of Anti-Mercantilism

Abstract: David Hume and Adam Smith are considered the founding fathers of anti-mercantilism, economics, and the Scottish Enlightenment. However, scholars have long recognized a similarity between Hume’s contributions and those of Richard Cantillon. Evidence is presented here that suggests that Hume would have known of Cantillon and would have been interested in reading the manuscript, and that he met people from Cantillon’s intellectual circle who could have provided him with a copy of the manuscript. Other evidence from Hume’s notebooks also suggests that he may have read the manuscript. This connection, if it exists, would explain the similarities between Cantillon and Hume and would make Cantillon an influence on both Hume and Smith and thus a pivotal figure in the development of anti-mercantilist thought.

Dr. Mark Thornton Senior Fellow Ludwig von Mises Institute 518 West Magnolia Avenue Auburn, AL 36832-4528 334-321-2106 Fax=321-2119 mthornton@mises.org

Comments and suggestions welcomed. Please do not quote without permission.

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Cantillon, Hume and the Rise of Anti-Mercantilism

It is reasonable to infer that numerous others also knew and used his (Cantillon’s) work. Little effort has been made to explore the exceedingly rich literature of the mid-eighteenth century from this angle. The period and milieu in which Cantillon wrote was in any event exceptionally propitious for achieving a large impact through personal communication…It is more difficult, but especially interesting, to ascertain this point with respect to Hume…when one compares Hume’s views on monetary theory with those of Cantillon, the impression is inescapable that Hume must in fact have known Cantillon.

F.A. Hayek1

When we know more about the significance of this “anti-mercantilism”…it may well appear that it represents a watershed in the history of French views on wealth and taxes, and perhaps in the history of economic thought generally…It seems to me that there is a connection between physiocracy and anti-mercantilism, or at any rate between Boisguilbert (1646-1714) and Quesnay (1694-1774), though it is not easy to say just what this connection was.

Martin Wolfe2

I. Introduction

David Hume and Richard Cantillon were among the first to develop a theoretical

approach to economic analysis and both were also important influences on Adam Smith.

Scholars have long noticed striking similarities between their economic contributions,

most notably the price-specie flow mechanism, but there is no direct evidence that Hume

read Cantillon’s Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général (hereafter Essai)3 and the

probability of a connection between the two is generally considered to be very low. For

example, Wennerlind (2005, p. 228 n4 & p. 227 n3) found that while their monetary

1 Hayek is stating here that Hume must have known Cantillon’s Essai, not the man himself. Hayek (1931, pp. 286-7) was republished in 1991 in a collection of Hayek’s writings on history and the history of ideas. 2 Wolfe (1966, pp. 479, 481, 483) 3 Page references from the Essai are given for the Higg’s translation (1931), the original French (1755), and the new Brewer (2001) edition.

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analysis was similar, it was not identical and the idea that Hume had access to the Essai

“is conceivable, though unlikely.”

At first glance it would seem unlikely that Hume would have had access to the

Essai because Hume’s Political Discourses was published in 1752 and the Essai was not

published until 1755. Cantillon’s manuscript is thought to have been completed around

1730, but he was murdered and his London home destroyed by arson in 1734 and only

one copy of the manuscript is known to have survived in France, in the possession of the

Marquis de Mirabeau. There is no evidence that Hume met Mirabeau during his second

visit to France (1734-1737) or thereafter. Also, the scholarly environment that Hume

entered in France would not be considered amenable to an open dissemination of ideas.

Censorship in the 1730s not only prevented the publication of controversial books, such

as the Essai; the government spied on academic organizations and even forced the Club

de Entresol to cease their activities in 1731. Hume reported that he used his time in

France to write Treatise of Human Nature, not Political Discourses where his economic

contributions occur.

Another possible reason to dismiss the connection between Cantillon and Hume is

that they are generally thought to come from virtually opposite schools of economic

thought. Cantillon was a merchant banker and it is not surprising that he is often

classified as a mercantilist,4 a category of economic writers from that time period who

promoted interventionist policies that tended to empower the state and enrich the

mercantile classes. In contrast, Hume is considered the first great anti-mercantilist—

followed by friend and fellow Scotsman Adam Smith—who opposed mercantilist

policies on strong theoretical grounds. Coming from opposing schools of economic 4 See for example, Higgs (1892), Blaug (1962), West (1985), and Brewer (1988).

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thought makes any friendly connection between Hume and Cantillon (from a modern

perspective) seem remote.

The possibility of a connection between Hume and Cantillon rests primarily on

the parallels in their economic analysis, the topics they consider important, and their

economic theories.5 To establish a possible connection between Hume and the Essai it

will be shown that it was likely that Hume knew of the existence of the Essai, that he

would have been interested in reading it, and that he met people from Cantillon’s

intellectual circle who probably had copies of the manuscript. Other circumstantial

evidence from Hume’s notebooks gives further indication that he might have read

Cantillon and clearly indicates that Hume was reading beyond the scope of the Treatise of

Human Nature to the subjects of commerce and finance.

First we turn to the more banal question of how to classify Cantillon into a school

of economic thought. Placing an individual thinker into a general category or school of

economics can be difficult and is certainly beset with many pitfalls. Nowhere is this more

of a problem than with mercantilism, which is a loosely connected “school” that varies in

composition and purpose from time to time and from place to place. So diverse have the

meanings of mercantilism become that scholars such as Coleman (1969) have shown that

the term has lost its scientific usefulness. Others, such as Ekelund and Tollison (1981)

have sought to completely reorient the term as a political concept with a new meaning

5 However, it must be recognized that there are also striking differences. Cantillon presents a comprehensive approach while Hume’s approach is topical. Hume wrote—successfully—to a wide audience, while Cantillon had no known audience and was largely unsuccessful in fully penetrating all but the most discerning minds among his few known early readers. It is also true that both Cantillon and Hume may have simple drawn on and developed the ideas of writers such as Boisguilbert, Gervaise, North, Vanderlint and other early anti-mercantilists, and done so independently.

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based on rent seeking.6 The purpose here is not to enter the debate over the meaning of

mercantilism, but rather to exploit it. For those interested in the debate see for example

Coleman (1969) and Magnusson (1994).

Even if there were a more precise meaning for this term, modern classifications

and labeling efforts of historical figures can cloud our perspective. In the case of

Cantillon and Hume, the term mercantilist was not even in use while they were writing. It

was only introduced by Mirabeau in the 1760s and made famous by Adam Smith in the

Wealth of Nations. Therefore the modern classification of Cantillon as a mercantilist and

Hume as an anti-mercantilist should not lead to the presumption that Hume would have

been reluctant to read the Essai or that he would have been unreceptive to its economic

analysis. According to Hume’s notebooks, he read a wide variety of sources on

commerce and finance, including ones that are now classified as mercantilist and anti-

mercantilist. The classification problem looms even larger in the case of Cantillon

because in contrast to the general appraisal of Cantillon as a mercantilist (time period,

profession, policy goals), there is a very strong thread of anti-mercantilism in his writings

(i.e., theory, models, price-specie flow mechanism, etc.).

II. Was Cantillon a mercantilist?

Cantillon has often been labeled a mercantilist, but many commentators have placed

qualifications on these labels. It seem reasonable to put him into the mercantilist camp

6 Rent-seeking behavior takes place when someone seeks to extract uncompensated value from others by manipulation of economic policy, including regulations and government privileges. The term is first identified with Gordon Tullock and his 1967 paper on government-created monopolies. The term is first used by Anne Krueger, and was first applied to the historical context by Ekelund and Tollison.

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because he was a merchant banker, lived in the mercantile period, and often agreed with

the policy objectives of the mercantilists. Qualifications to this label are to be expected

because the mercantilists never had a well-developed set of theories from which their

writings could be systematically organized. However, with Cantillon, the qualifications

are significant. It is not just a matter, for example, of how best to “protect trade” because

Cantillon’s theories actually undermined protectionist trade policies. Nor is it a question

of how to increase the stock of gold, for Cantillon’s saw no general benefit of doing so.

To take two prominent examples, West (1985) concluded that Cantillon was a

mercantilist, while Smith was the great opponent of mercantilism. However, in terms of

microeconomic theory, he viewed Cantillon as the real architect, while Smith often failed

to measure up, despite having read Cantillon. Likewise, Brewer (1988) found that

Cantillon was a mercantilist, but one who had created economic theories that defeated the

arguments of the mercantilists. Brewer explained this puzzle in terms of the time period

Cantillon lived in, and concluded that he should not be judged as harshly as other

mercantilists.

Upon closer examination, the merit of Brewer’s analysis is much stronger than he

himself may have realized. Placed into the proper historical perspective that Brewer

urges, Cantillon can be shown to exhibit a strong thread of anti-mercantilism. Cantillon

was clearly an opponent of government tinkering and meddling in the economy for he

had little or nothing favorable to say about such interventions, and much to criticize. He

was also a critic of government excess, whether it was excessive spending, government

debt, war, or extravagant luxury spending by the ruling elite. Finally, in opposition to the

severe French mercantilist policies of his day, he supported an expansion of industry and

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trade, criticized artificial blockages such as usury laws and the prohibition against

exporting gold, and he made the entrepreneur and property owner the key decision

makers in his theoretical construction of the market economy. For these “anti-

government” reasons, he could be considered an anti-mercantilist.

Unlike many of the mercantilists, Cantillon was also a systematic thinker and

model builder who developed economic theory to understand economic questions. His

Essai is structured more like a economic treatise than a mercantilist tract; beginning with

subjects like value, cost, production, distribution, population and the standard of living in

Part I; exchange, prices, money, credit and interest in Part II; and international trade and

finance, inflation, and central banking in Part III. He employed subjective value,

opportunity cost, deductive reasoning, and equilibrium constructions. Cantillon also

invoked ceteris paribus conditions, built open and closed models of the economy, and

drew the line between positive and normative economics. Therefore, it is not surprising

that Schumpeter (1954, p. 562) (along with Jevons, Higgs, Spengler, Murphy,

Groenewegen, Brewer and others) dubbed Cantillon as the first modern economic

theorist:

In economics, particularly, there are many inhibitions to overcome before the nature of the analyst’s task can be clearly understood. But model building, that is, conscious attempts at systematization of concepts and relations, is more difficult still and characterizes a later stage of scientific endeavor. In economics, efforts of this kind date, substantially, from Cantillon.

If we consider anti-mercantilism as something more than just “anti-government” rhetoric

and link it instead to economic theory, Cantillon would still clearly qualify as an anti-

mercantilist.

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The three mercantilists Cantillon refers to in the Essai are William Petty, John

Locke, and Charles Davenant.7 Cantillon attacked them as nearly imbecilic, writing that

their approaches went against nature and their conclusions were either wrong or trite. He

also referred to “all the other English authors who have written anything on this

subject”—the mercantilists—as wrongheaded, including Isaac Newton, although he is

treated separately and more respectfully by Cantillon. This is no minor skirmish on the

finer points of mercantilism. It is clear that Cantillon was widely read and confident with

the subject matter he addressed, and that he gained little inspiration from the authors he

cited except in the negative. As Higgs (1892, p. 448) observed: “In originating even so

much, Cantillon derived, as he complains, little help from his English predecessors,

whom he accuses of attending, ‘not to causes and principles, but only to effects.’”

One prominent economist who is not referred to is John Law, but Law and his

scheme are the thinly veiled subject of Cantillon’s critique of financial manipulation in

the final chapter of the Essai. John Law is usually treated apart from the mercantilists, but

Eagly (1969) dubbed Law’s system “the most important mercantilist monetary

experiment attempted in Western Europe during the pre-Adam Smith era.” Humphrey

and others also classify Law and his system as mercantilist. Murphy (1986) provided a

detailed analysis of Cantillon’s critique of John Law and his “system” that created the

Mississippi Bubble and shows that Cantillon can be seen as having built his entire system

of economic analysis as a mechanism to analyze and critique John Law. Cantillon (323,

429-30, 130) ended his book with the following indictment of Law’s system:

7 As Brewer (1992) has correctly argued, the connection between Petty and Cantillon is generally much weaker than often thought. Cantillon probably knew Davenant who was a Tory and a leading economic writer in the early eighteenth century, but whose writings are “confused” and seem to be tailored to promote his personal interests.

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It is then undoubted that a Bank with the complicity of a Minister is able to raise and support the price of public stock and to lower the rate of interest in the State at the pleasure of this Minister when the steps are taken discreetly, and thus pay off the State debt. But these refinements which open the door to making large fortunes are rarely carried out for the sole advantage of the State, and those who take part in them are generally corrupted. The excess banknotes, made and issued on these occasions, do not upset the circulation, because being used for the buying and selling of stock they do not serve for household expenses and are not changed into silver. But if some panic or unforeseen crisis drove the holders to demand silver from the Bank the bomb would burst and it would be seen that these are dangerous operations.

Cantillon had a more respectful tone when critiquing anti-mercantilists such as

Marshall de Vauban (159/210/66), agreeing with him on the need for tax reform, but

respectfully disagreeing with Vauban’s plan as “neither advantageous nor practical.” He

also referred to a book by Vauban’s cousin, Henri Comte de Boulainvilliers in a critical,

but respectful manner. Benitez-Rochel and Robles-Teigeiro (2003) have argued that

Cantillon was influenced in the circular-flow model of the economy by Boisguilbert and

it should also be noted that Boisguilbert and Cantillon had similar, anti-mercantilist views

on the nature of wealth. Boisguilbert described wealth as “not only of the needs of life,

but even of all the superfluities and of all that can give pleasure to the sensuality” while

Cantillon defined it as “nothing but the maintenance, conveniences, and superfluities of

life.”8 It would seem therefore that Cantillon was exposed to and influenced by at least

three early French anti-mercantilists. As Hébert (1987) noted, Boisguilbert and Vauban’s

8 McDonald (1954, p. 404) quoted from Boisguilbert’s Dissertation, p. 383. Cantillon is quoted from the opening paragraph of the Higgs translation. Boisguilbert may have influenced Cantillon’s development in the areas of money, credit, interest and the circular flow economy because their ideas are similar, relative unique, and anti-mercantilist. Hume also used the term superfluities in his writing.

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views have been subject to various interpretations, but he concluded that they should both

be considered anti-mercantilists.9

Therefore there are several distinct grounds on which to classify Cantillon as an

anti-mercantilist, notably economic policy, economic theory, and his direct criticism of

mercantilist policies and writers. In addition, the influence he had on subsequent

economists, both direct and indirect, is substantial and well documented and indicates

that Cantillon was an important influence on the development of anti-mercantilism.

Mirabeau had a copy of the Essai and called himself a student of Cantillon, and through

him de Gournay and Quesnay were introduced to Cantillon. Mirabeau’s own writings

were popularizations of Cantillon and his books became best sellers in France and were

translated into other languages. The publication of the Essai in 1755 marks the beginning

of the Physiocratic school, which began in 1756. In addition, it is well known that Turgot

and Condillac derived their inspiration from Cantillon. They were among the best

economic theorists of the 18th century and both exhibited a zeal for laissez faire. The

Classical school was also influenced by Cantillon, most notably Adam Smith. The only

significant early anti-mercantilist for which there is no recognized linkage to Cantillon is

David Hume.

9 There have been other suggestions of anti-mercantilists influencing Cantillon. For example, it is likely that he had read Roger and Dudley North and possibly even Nicholas Barbon, who represented the beginnings of English anti-mercantilism or reform mercantilism. See Spengler (1954, pp. 406 & 411) for the possibilities of connecting Barbon and North (and others) to Cantillon. It also is possible that he had read Isaac Gervaise whose pamphlet had attacked John Law. It was even possible that they knew one another given that Isaac Gervaise was born in Paris and moved to London where his family was engaged in the manufacture and trade in silk during the same time period when Cantillon was a merchant banker and had houses in both Paris and London. Not only did Gervaise anticipate aspects of the specie-flow mechanism, he was an unabashed free trader.

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III. Cantillon and Hume

The modern evidence of appraisal connecting Cantillon and Hume is strong. This is

especially so with regard to Hume’s greatest contribution to anti-mercantilism—the

price-specie flow mechanism. Based on his reading of Cantillon, Angell (1926, p. 213,

n2) observed that: “It will at once strike the reader that this analysis contains the entire

argument and proof of Hume’s price-specie flow doctrine.” Roll (1956, pp. 112) noted

that “Cantillon…shows the closest affinity to the French Physiocrats; and David Hume’s

economic writings, whose merit has, at times, been exaggerated, are important as a

synthesis of economic thought prior to Adam Smith.” He (p. 118) concluded that

Cantillon is “superior” to Hume and he found that Cantillon either influenced or

anticipated most of the contributions of both the Physiocrats and the Classical

economists, although in many cases both schools failed to match, extend, or properly

interpret his writings.

Viner (1937, p. 74) followed Angell’s analysis and saw a clear connection

between Cantillon with Hume, Adam Smith, and the downfall of mercantilism. He noted

that:

After Hume and Smith had written, mercantilism was definitely on the defensive and was wholly or largely rejected by the leading English economists. That their victory was as great as it was, was due largely, of course, to the force of their reasoning and the brilliance of their exposition, but it was due also in large part to the fact that, even before they wrote, mercantilism as a body of economic doctrine had already been disintegrating because of dissension within the ranks of its adherents and attacks by earlier critics. An important element in its collapse, especially in its monetary phases, was the development of the theory of the self-regulating mechanism of international specie distribution. The most influential formulation of this theory in England2 prior to the nineteenth century was by Hume. But its most important constituent elements had

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been stated long before Hume, and several earlier writers had brought them together much as he did.

Viner investigated Angell’s suspicion of a linkage between Cantillon and Hume,

but his investigation did not produce any evidence, for in footnote 2 to the quote

above he wrote the following:

In Richard Cantillon, Essai sur la nature du commerce en general, written ca. 1730, but not published until 1755, the self-regulating mechanism is clearly and ably expounded. See especially pp. 159-99 in the 1931 reprint, edited by Henry Higgs. Although material from Cantillon’s manuscript had been used by French and English writers before its publication, I have found no evidence that any part of his exposition of the self-regulating mechanism appeared in print before 1752, or that Hume was influenced, directly or indirectly, by Cantillon.

More recently Blaug (1986, pp. 97-8) noted the clear connection between

Cantillon and Hume’s economic writings based on the fact that, of Hume’s three major

contributions to economic science, all are anticipated in the Essai. Hume’s answer to the

mercantilists—the price-specie flow mechanism—is clearly in Cantillon, as noted by

Angell and others. The distinction between normative and positive economics is also an

obvious contribution by Cantillon. The third contribution is the effect of gradual

increases in the money supply on increasing output and employment in the short run.

This point is especially important in connecting Hume to Cantillon because they stand

virtually alone during this period in recognizing this short-run output effect in relation to

the price-specie flow mechanism.10 The conclusion that Hume was “clearly influenced”

by Cantillon is so strong that Blaug (1986, p. 37) erroneously suggested that Hume had

10 Adam Smith recognized Hume’s monetary contributions but decided not to include them in the Wealth of Nations; possibly because it was either too technical or because it represented an exception to the general rule that more money was not economically beneficial and thus might represent a weakness in Smith’s overall assault on mercantilism. On Hume’s influence on Smith’s approach to money see Wennerlind (2000).

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cited Cantillon’s Essai, and later he (1991, p. ix) even suggested that Hume had “quoted

and even plagiarized” Cantillon.11

Hayek (1935, p. 9) who was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his

extensions of Cantillon’s work, also had little doubt that there was a connection between

Cantillon and Hume and the price-specie flow mechanism based on the textual evidence.

After describing Cantillon’s mechanism he observed:

Better known is the somewhat shorter exposition of the same idea which David Hume gave a little later in a famous passage of his Political Discourses, which so closely resembles the words of Cantillon that it is hard to believe that he had not seen one of those manuscripts of the Essai which are known to have been in private circulation at the time when the Discourses were written.”

However, Murphy (1986, pp. 270-73) explored Hayek’s claim of Hume deriving his

analysis from Cantillon and showed by a comparison of their writings on the price-specie

flow mechanism that the two are indeed similar. Despite this, he maintained that they

“independently reached the same conclusion” and rejected Hayek’s suspicions because if

Hume had read Cantillon he “would have been able to derive a more complete

understanding of the specie flow mechanism than that enunciated in Of the Balance of

Trade.” Murphy shows that Hume relied on the relative price effect while Cantillon also

used the cash balance effect and thus gave a more sophisticated analysis. Murphy (p.

272) concluded:

Cantillon’s detailed analysis of the monetary sector makes him, it is contended, the true forerunner of the modern Monetary Approach to the Balance of Payments. His analysis was far more comprehensive and more closely related to the Monetary Approach to the Balance of Payments than that of David Hume.

11 These claims are mistakes based on correspondence with the author.

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Disagreements concerning the similarities and differences between Hume and

Cantillon on the price-specie flow model neglect several mitigating factors. Cantillon’s

analysis was comprehensive, complex, and process oriented, and most readers have found

it too difficult to comprehend in its entirety. Hume was clear and succinct and was

writing a convincing analysis for a large public audience while Cantillon was highly

technical, sometimes elusive, and was apparently writing for a small private audience.

Cantillon’s arguments that relate to international monetary flows are scattered throughout

the text, rather than in a single section. Finally, if Hume had read the Essai there would

have been a long delay between reading the Essai and the composition of his own

economic writings, leaving opportunity for technical details in the arguments to be

forgotten.

IV. Could Hume have read the Essai?

Prior to his visit to France (1734-37), Hume was an unhappy and unaccomplished

student. In an anonymous letter to a medical doctor (March or April 1734) he described

his own “incurable distemper” that had left him unable to study and for which he had

taken many types of drugs and cures and seen numerous doctors without remedial

effect.12 His description and self-diagnosis is certainly indicative of hypochondria, and

perhaps depression, resulting from his lack of success in his studies or his involvement in

the Galbraith Affair, a case of fornication and bastardry, in which Hume was named the

12 Greig (1932, pp. 12-18).

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offender.13 In the letter, he wrote of his self-prescribed cure which was to become a

merchant. He wrote that he had received a recommendation from a considerable

merchant in Bristol and that “I am just now hastening thither.” Despite his diligence at

work and best efforts to fit into his new circumstances—he even changed his name from

Home to Hume in line with English spelling and pronunciation—he soon found himself

unsuited to the merchant trade business and left Bristol in the summer of 1734 to go to

France. Hume’s visit to France was a critical event in his life because while intelligent,

promising and ambitious, he was yet an unaccomplished student, but on his return to

England he embarked on a publishing career that would see him become a prolific and

path-breaking philosopher and historian and one of the greatest and most celebrated

minds of the modern age.14

He arrived in France no later than August because he dated his third letter to

former schoolmate Michael Ramsey as September 12, 1734.15 In this letter, Hume wrote

that he was now in Rheims having left Paris and the company of the Chevalier Ramsey.

The Chevalier Ramsey was Andrew Michael Ramsay, the cousin of Hume’s friend

Michael Ramsey. The connection between the Chevalier and Hume was made through

the Ramsey family and was likely arranged on the basis of their mutual interest in

philosophy and religion.16

The Chevalier was a convert to Roman Catholicism, the tutor of the two sons of

the Pretender, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and his brother Henry, and most 13 See Mossner (1980, pp. 81-91). He (p. 86) wrote: “Hume’s case history of his psychosomatic disorder is as clear as could possibly be penned by any highly intelligent person today, and, as such, is diagnosable by modern psychiatrists.” 14 See Mossner (1980, pp. 103-4) on the “mellowing” of Hume while in France. 15 Greig (1932, pp. 19-21). The date of Cantillon’s supposed murder was May 14th, 1734. 16 Ramsey would become one of Hume’s great opponents in the philosophical debate over the nature of religion.

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importantly, has was a key disciple of Fénelon—one of the original architects of anti-

mercantilism. As Rothbard (1995, p. 264) observed: “Fénelon led a powerful cabal at

court who were deeply opposed to the absolutist and mercantilist policies of the king and

determined to reform them in the direction of free trade, limited government and laissez-

faire.” Fénelon himself was a student of the Abbé Fleury, one of the most important early

opponents of mercantilism and absolutism. Based on the fact that he was Fénelon’s

student and biographer, as well as his own writings, the Chevalier should be considered

in a line of dissident thinkers who were anti-mercantilist in terms of politics, economics

and foreign policy. A comparison of Fénelon’s and Ramsey’s views shows a definite

correspondence with Cantillon’s views, and as Rowbotham (1956, p. 480) observed,

Ramsey was a leading intellectual of the nascent anti-mercantilist movement in France:

Ramsey…was the most interesting and probably the most talented of that small group of men who formed a link, cultural and political, between Scotland and France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was a member of the Club de l’Entresol, that small group of liberal thinkers who showed signs of making a significant contribution to the intellectual life of their times until cut short by government suppression. On the same day that Hume had written to Michael Ramsey, he wrote to the

otherwise unknown James Birch in Bristol to describe his situation.17 He excitedly noted

that he had received three letters of introduction from the Chevalier Ramsey to some of

the “best families in town” and that he had already used two of the letters with great

success, and then added:

I have another Letter from him (Ramsey), which I have not deliver’d because the Gentleman is not at present in Town, tho’ he will return in a few days. He is a man of considerable Note, & as the Chevalier told me, one of the most learned in France. I promise myself abundance of Pleasure

17 Greig (1932, pp. 22-23).

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from his Conversation. I must likewise add, that he has a fine Library, so that we shall have all Advantages of Study.

Mossner (1980, p. 97) found that the third letter was for the Abbé Noel-Antoine

Pluche “a learned man, a Jansenist and an anti-Cartesian, having held the chairs of

Humanity and Rhetoric in the University of Rheims.” On September 29th Hume reported

to Michael Ramsey that he was studying in Pluche’s library, that it was a great library,

and that “new works of learning & philosophy from London and Paris” arrive each

month. As an important writer on natural religion and a Jansenist, Pluche also could be

classified as a dissident thinker who would have been most interested in acquiring

nonconformist manuscripts.

Louis-Jean Lévesque de Pouilly, another renowned scholar of the town, was also

suggested by Mossner (1980, p. 97) as someone likely to have met Hume during his one-

year stay in Rheims. It has been conjectured by Baldensperger (1942) that Lévesque de

Pouilly was someone who preferred life in the countryside and would have been away

from town attending to the grape harvest, and therefore might have been the resident of

Rheims that would have received Hume’s third letter. Even though there is no direct

evidence of such a meeting, Mossner found that there were several likely bases for such a

meeting to have taken place, most notably Lévesque de Pouilly’s 1736 publication

Théorie des sentiments agréables, a work that Mossner suggested would have been of

great interest to Hume and would have been in its final stages of production while Hume

was in Rheims. Given that Hume claimed in his letters to have attended parties in many

of the best houses in Rheims, and that there were surprisingly few people of affluence in

the city, it appears likely that he was entertained at Pouilly’s house or met him at parties

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and events. Mossner (1980, p. 98) even raised the possibility that Hume lived with

Pouilly. In addition to being a scholar, Lévesque de Pouilly was the principle judge in the

presidial court at Rheims and was a close friend of Bolingbroke and Voltaire. His

youngest brother was also a friend of Bolingbroke and an early member of the Club de

Entresol.18

A relationship between Lévesque de Pouilly and Hume is important because

Lévesque de Pouilly is a known close associate of Bolingbroke and Bolingbroke is a

known close associate of Cantillon. Lévesque de Pouilly was Bolingbroke’s tutor in

philosophy, and in fact Théorie was originally written as a letter to Bolingbroke. The

relationship between Bolingbroke and Cantillon is not a part of Mossner’s narrative and

if we examine an early biographical work such as Sichel’s Bolingbroke and his Times

(1901) we find no mention of Cantillon. However, if we turn to Murphy (1986) we find

that Bolingbroke was a client of Cantillon’s bank and that their relationship went well

beyond banking. Bolingbroke lived with Cantillon in Paris after fleeing England in 1715

and he lived next door to Cantillon in London, and was there the night that Cantillon was

murdered in 1734. The connection is important because Bolingbroke, as both politician

and scholar, was a key figure in the anti-mercantilist movement. Cantillon and

Bolingbroke certainly had similarities in their values, close parallels in their economic

writings, and according to Murphy (1986, pp. 48-50), there is little doubt that they

discussed economic issues at great length with some of the leading intellectuals of the

time.

Bolingbroke was in a position to introduce Cantillon to friends such as the Abbé Alary, Boulainvilliers, Levesque de Pouilly, Montesquieu, and Voltaire. In France, Bolingbroke mixed in influential circles and courted

18 Childs, p. 73.

18

the intelligentsia of the time. We know that later on in the 1720s Cantillon and his wife were good friends of Montesquieu…Cantillon also probably met Voltaire through their mutual friendship with Nicolas Thiériot…Cantillon seems to have been at home with the literati and intellectuals of the day and in later chapters his encounters with people such as Montesquieu, Jean Baptiste Rousseau, Isaac Newton, and John Law will be discussed.

Cantillon was certainly well located to regularly participate in the intellectual

circles of Paris. With his bank located on the Rue de l’Arbre Sec he could walk to the end

of the street and turn onto the Rue Saint-Honoré, a main road of eighteenth-century Paris

and the center of its intellectual life. On the Rue Saint-Honoré he could pass by the Club

des Lanturus, and where today the Louvre is located, and would come to Place Vendôme

where the Club de l’Entresol was located. Farther up the road he could turn right onto

Rue d’ Anjou, where the Club du Bout-du-Banc was located. Cantillon also purchased a

considerable property on the left bank about the time that side started to develop as an

intellectual center. Even if he had never met Bolingbroke, Cantillon would have found

himself located in one of the most important centers of intellectual activity in the world.

As May (1964, p. 34) described it:

Never before, and perhaps never since, had Parisian society been so closely and almost totally intertwined with all the important writers of an age. Never before, and never since, had so high a concentration of talents been so narrowly contained within as restricted a perimeter.

But Cantillon did meet Bolingbroke, and the subsequent connection between

Hume and Bolingbroke is most likely because, as Mossner (1980, p. 93) suggested, one

of Hume’s letters of introduction in Rheims “may have been written by the Earl of Stair,

that distinguished Scottish soldier-diplomat and former ambassador to France.”

According to Dickinson (1970, pp. 237, 221), Stair was a longtime close personal friend

19

and political ally of Bolingbroke, who was even married to his second wife in Stair’s

private chapel.19 As the British Ambassador in Paris, Stair and his spies kept a close

watch on the Mississippi Company, especially Cantillon and Law’s partner Joseph Gage,

and certainly he knew of Cantillon as well. Kramnick (1968) noted several areas of

similarity between Hume and Bolingbroke, many of which are tenets of anti-mercantilism

such as opposition to national debt and trade monopolies.

Due to financial considerations, Hume spent the last two years of his second visit

to France at La Flèche, which was home to a Jesuit College where René Descartes

studied. This hotbed of Cartesianism had an excellent library, presented a challenging

environment, and placed only small demands on Hume’s limited budget. Another

possible attraction for Hume was Père Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset, who had been called

to teach at La Flèche at the age of 26. Mossner (1980, p. 102) reported that Gresset soon

clashed and quickly split with the Jesuits over his recently published “deliciously naughty

verses.” Mossner (1980, p. 102) provided some supporting evidence for the connection

of Hume to Pouilly and Gresset, noting that in 1752 “in his capacity of Keeper of the

Advocates’ Library in Edinburgh, Hume ordered two items signalizing his youthful

residence at La Flèche and at Rheims, Gresset’s collected works and Pouilly’s Théorie

des sentiments agréables.”

Based on this information it can be surmised that Hume had connected with a

very lively and generally dissident intellectual environment and it was this environment

that greatly clarified and stimulated his scholarly development. This intellectual

atmosphere was one of opposition to absolutist monarchy and mercantilism and support

for nonconformity in terms of philosophy and religion. These themes are greatly 19 Childs, p. 89.

20

amplified when examined in the context of the career of Lord Bolingbroke, the student of

Pouilly in philosophy and the client and confidant of Cantillon.

Bolingbroke was a Tory leader of Parliament and one of the authors of the Treaty

of Utrecht, which sought to end the War of Spanish Succession. Bolingbroke’s initial

proposal sought not only peace, but also free trade and closer relations between England

and France. According to Kramnick (1968, p. 181-2):

In negotiations for a commercial treaty with France, for example, Bolingbroke assumed a position virtually identical with that of nineteenth-century liberals like Cobden who felt that peace and cooperation would result from lowering trade barriers. Nations, he assumed, whose mutual interests were served by trade, could not desire war with one another.

Thus Bolingbroke explicitly and knowingly wedded the anti-mercantilist planks of free

trade and peace in the same manner as Bright and Cobden. However, the free-trade

clauses of the treaty caused uproar among English merchants and were eventually

dropped. In the political upheaval that followed, Bolingbroke fled the country in fear of

his safety and eventually became the Pretender’s Secretary of State, finding himself

briefly as a non-religious leader of the Jacobite cause.

He spent ten years in France in philosophical inquiry, all the while plotting his

return to power in England. According to Dickinson (1970, p. 156) Bolingbroke was

introduced to:

…genuine scholars, such as Pierre Joseph Alary, Lévesque de Pouilly, Voltaire, the Abbé Asselin, the Abbé Conti and the British mathematician and philosopher, Brook Taylor. In such a wide circle, he came into contact with ideas of people who were playing a crucial role in the development of the French Enlightenment.

21

He would also have known the Marquis d’ Argenson—the first person to use the phrase

Laissez faire, laissez passer20—Montesquieu, the Chevalier Ramsay and Henri de

Boulainvilliers who were also members of the Club de l’Entresol, a hotbed of dissident

thinking among the nobility that was eventually closed by the French government for its

anti-government tendencies.21 As his study of history and philosophy proceeded,

Bolingbroke developed many ideas and beliefs in common with Hume such as

empiricism, skepticism of Biblical evidence, and deism. Dickinson (1970, p. 162) noted

that his ideas were developed during his first prolonged stay in France, but “were revised

during Bolingbroke’s second prolonged residence in France after 1735,” during the same

time period as Hume’s second visit to France. Hume would later refer to Bolingbroke as

one of the few inspiring writers from England.

After he was allowed to return to England, the politician/natural law theorist

Bolingbroke developed a unique approach and political agenda in order to forge an

alliance on which to challenge Walpole. As Dickinson (1970, pp. 186-7) observed:

There was one old plank in the Tory platform that Bolingbroke could successfully renovate and even extend. This was the dismay and fear registered by many of the landed gentry at the rising influence of financiers, stockjobbers and the moneyed interest in general. The Tories had long mistrusted the new financial system which the Revolution had created around the National Debt, public credit, the stock-market, the Bank of England and the great chartered corporations like the East India Company. With good reason they and Bolingbroke had believed that these new vested interests were attached to their Whig opponents and were actively undermining the financial, social and political status of the squirearchy, the backbone of the Tory party.

20 Seligman (1887). 21 According to Higgs (1952, p. 14) “The Abbé Alary had indeed founded a little club, the Club de l’Entresol in 1724, which counted Bolingbroke, D’Argenson, and the Abbé de Saint-Pierre among its members, and met in the Abbé Alary’s rooms, in the Place Vendôme at Paris, to discuss political economy. But the club was closed in 1731, because the Cardinal de Fleury, then minister, disliked its debating Government affairs.”

22

Bolingbroke wrote extensively in support of his program against special interests, but he

always stressed that he supported the freedom to trade and opposed the monopoly trading

privileges of the corporations. He also attacked the extravagance and corruption of his

opposition. His platform was distinctly anti-mercantilist, but after he failed to unite the

opposition in the general election of 1734 he returned to France in 1735. All of these

connections (and others) establish that Hume was most certainly connected with many of

the same people who Cantillon knew in the emerging anti-mercantilist movement. For

example, we know from Higgs (1891, p. 275) that Cantillon knew of and probably met

the Abbé Alary—the founder of the Club de Entresol—as early as 1718. Alary organized

the Club’s academic program, so that if the Essai was to be read at the club (which was

closed in 1731), Alary might have had a copy of the manuscript. The Cantillon-

Bolingbroke-Hume connection is particularly strong and noteworthy because all three

were anti-mercantilist theorists. However, while this establishes a possibility that Hume

had an opportunity to examine the Essai, it does not establish that Hume actually read the

manuscript.

Hume certainly was interested in the economy and trade, having just spent time

working in the merchant trade business. According to his letters, Hume was always

concerned about his lack of money and ways to improve his economic standing. His

economic and political writings indicate that trade was an important component of the

overall system that he planned to create. For example, Wennerlind (2001 & 2002) has

established the links between Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (i.e., his political

philosophy) and his ideas on money and commerce. Cantillon was a well-known banker.

His involvement in the Mississippi Bubble made him one of the wealthiest and well

23

known private persons in the world. After the Bubble burst Cantillon was involved is a

series of public trials that lasted for more than ten years. There was also a great deal of

public notoriety surrounding Cantillon’s recent murder, which took place while Hume

was living nearby, just prior to Hume’s visit to France This certainly would have

attracted his attention. Therefore, it is likely that Hume had heard of Cantillon and that

both Hume’s analytic interest in trade and his interest in improving his economic

circumstances would have given him a powerful motive to seek out the Essai if he ever

learned of its existence.

Motive alone also does not imply access even though Hume was in contact with

many people who knew Cantillon. This is especially true if there was indeed only one

copy of the manuscript. Higgs (1892, p. 451) and others have implied that there was only

one copy of the manuscript:

The manuscript of the Essai certainly affected the Marquis of Mirabeau much earlier. But he retained the manuscript jealously in his possession for sixteen out of the twenty-one years following the author’s death. He is, therefore, probably the only important exception to the statement that the influence of Cantillon was not felt until 1755.

If there was only one copy, then the likelihood that Hume read the Essai would be greatly

diminished, but there is evidence that suggests that several copies of the manuscript

existed and circulated. We know, for example, that Malachy Postlethwayt22 and

Mirabeau23 had copies of the manuscript on which they based their own books. Takumi

Tsuda (1979) also found a copy of the manuscript in the municipal archives in Rouen.

More importantly, it is critical to realize that this period (1720s & 30s) was one of

22 Higgs (1931, p. 383) noted that Hayek discovered that Postlethwayt plagiarized 6000 words from the Essai before 1749. 23 See for example Murphy (1986, p. 82).

24

intellectual censorship. Not only had the Club de l’Entresol been shut down by the

government, but all academic literature was subject to censorship in France during the

first half of the eighteenth century. This was the case with the anti-mercantilists such as

Boisguilbert, and would have been particularly true in Cantillon’s case because the Essai

was openly critical of the policies of the current regime, and the author was associated

with Law’s failed scheme and possibly the Jacobite cause. For example, Cantillon harshly

criticized Cardinal Fleury’s policy of augmention and diminution of money. As a

consequence, the book could not be published by Cantillon, and even when it was

eventually published in more liberal times (i.e., the 1750s) the author remained

anonymous and the publisher and place of publication were deliberately mislabeled.

During this period of censorship (1700-1750) it was the common practice to copy

such unpublishable manuscripts by hand. Wade (1938, p. 273) studied the clandestine

distribution of philosophical manuscripts during this period, including several of the

authors mentioned here, and found that the distribution was far wider than previously

thought or could be surmised by remaining copies. He showed that such works had a

critical influence on the development of the French Enlightenment and Liberalism in the

second half of the eighteenth century.

Hitherto critics of the eighteenth century have regarded the forceful expression of these ideas in a compact whole as the chief characteristic of the group of thinkers writing between 1750-1789. That opinion should be modified to include the first half of the century as representing liberal thought just as truly as did the second. The only difference is that the reading public which was considerably restricted between 1700 and 1750 became much larger and more enlightened after 1750. (p. 273)

His study of manuscripts showed “how they passed from the authors and a very

small circle of connoisseurs into the hands of professional or private copyists and thus

25

reached a wider audience.” Wade’s evidence shows that we cannot rely on our

knowledge of existing manuscripts or known copyists because the:

…persons who earned their living by copying and circulating whatever manuscript came to hand were undoubtedly more numerous than the documents which we now have would lead us to infer. It should be borne in mind that the meager records which we have concerning such men as Letort, Garnier, Lecoulteux, Bonnet, Morlèon, and La Barrière do not give adequate information concerning the number of copyists, for they mention only those who were caught, and neglect to speak of those who plied their trade without being molested by the police. (p. 273)

He also noted that there were many non-professional copyists who while reading and

studying the manuscript would make a copy of it, such as the secretary of D’Argenson

and Havé at Rheims. In addition to these processes, Cantillon employed clerks in his

bank—professional copyists and document preparers—who could have made copies in

their spare time.

By the time David Hume arrived in France, Cantillon’s manuscript would have

been circulating for approximately four years and numerous copies could have been

made. Hayek (1931, p. 279) has suggested that “the manuscript of the Essai was probably

known by far more persons than those who have been named and who can be proved

today to have known it. It may indeed also have been available in several copies.” On this

basis, it does seem plausible that Hume could have had the opportunity to read the Essai.

Therefore it can be surmised from the circumstantial evidence that Hume would have had

an interest and possibly the opportunity and means to read the Essai and that this

connection would help explain the similarities between the economic contributions of

Hume and Cantillon.

26

V. Additional Evidence

Some of Hume’s early notes did survive and were subsequently published by Mossner

(1948). These notes were once thought to have been written in the late 1730s and early

1740s, but Mossner suggested that the first and smallest section on “natural philosophy”

began in 1729 and ended in 1734. The second-largest segment is labeled “philosophy”

and is dated by Mossner (p. 495) as 1730-34. The relatively meager number of entries in

this section would coincide with his psychosomatic illness or the period Mossner (1980,

p. 66) titled the “disease of the learned.” The largest segment of notes Mossner (1948, p.

495) “would venture to suggest” were written sometime between 1737 and 1740 in the

post-French period because the latest citations are to publications of 1738” after his

return from France and before he published his Essays in 1741. Curiously, it would seem

that based on this dating, there are no notes from Hume’s three-year sojourn in France

where his prolific publishing career developed, but there are very good reasons to suspect

that Hume did take notes during this period and that they were written on this note paper.

Most importantly, of the two sources with publication dates later than 1737, both are

multi-volume series that end in 1738 and 1739, and Hume’s notes come from early

volumes in those series well before 1737.

Mossner labeled the third section as “general” based on the “fact that this section

is without a title page and that this is presumptive that the first sheet has not survived.”

However, it could also be the case that numerous pages are missing. For example, it

appears that Hume used the notes frequently in his writings and that once a note had been

used he crossed it out. If a page or pages had been used and crossed out, it is not unlikely

27

that such pages were removed, set aside, lost, or destroyed. If Hume had taken extensive

notes on Cantillon and then used all or most of them, the first part of section three might

have been the notebook that Hume claimed to have destroyed in 1751, the year before

Political Discourses was published. Mossner (1948, p. 496) explained Hume’s use of his

notes:

Here a critical spirit is to be remarked, and sometimes entire notes are crossed out. Yet as several of these crossed-out notes actually appear later in Hume’s printed works, it is clear that disapproval is not necessarily indicated thereby. In such cases the crossing-out apparently was the means of Hume’s indicating to himself that an item had been used.

What is clear from the notes in section three is that Hume had read widely from

both the mercantilist and anti-mercantilist writers. The early notes show references to

Boulainvilliers, The Craftsman (i.e. Bolingbroke, Pulteney and others), Fénelon, and

Vauban, while the mercantilists, such as Child, Davenant, and Law tend to occur later in

the section.

The first two surviving notes of section three are the most interesting. The first

note, which is entirely crossed out (indicating that it was used), concerned the practice of

infanticide in China:

Perhaps the custom of allowing Parents to murder their infant children, tho barbarous, tends to render a state populous, as in China. Many marry by that inducement; & such is the force of natural affection, that none make use of that privilege but in extreme necessity.

Cantillon wrote about China in several places in the Essai, including on the topic of

population. China was not just of interest to scholars of the day because of trade, but also

in the area of religion, because the Figurists were arguing that men of all places and times

were similar and practiced the same basic natural religion. On both accounts Hume would

28

have found the topic of China of great interest. In Part I, Chapter Fifteen, Cantillon

argued that population depends chiefly on the tastes of landowners and that this factor,

more than any other, explains the large population of China. He explained that the

Chinese have a taste for a large population and relegate all other issues to the

maximization of population, even to the extent that infanticide is socially accepted in

order to keep population at the maximum sustainable level:

There is no country where population is carried to a greater height than in China…The Chinese by the principles of their religion are obliged to marry, and bring up as many children as their means of subsistence will afford. They look upon it as a crime to lay land out in pleasure gardens or parks, defrauding the public of maintenance. They carry travellers in sedan chairs, and save the work of horses upon all tasks which can be performed by men. Their number is incredible if the relation of voyages (travelers’ reports) is to be depended upon, yet they are forced to destroy many of their children in the cradle when they apprehend themselves not to be able to bring them up, keeping only the number they are able to support. It is certainly possible that Hume based his note on some other source, but it also

clear that it coincides well with Cantillon and that the note could have been based on

Cantillon’s Essai. Indeed, Hume’s analysis of population (where the issue of infanticide

is raised) seems strongly informed by Cantillon’s writings on population. Hume’s

writings on population are thought to be inspired by Montesquieu, but Montesquieu was

also a member of the Club de Entresol and knew both Cantillon and his wife.24 If that was

the case, the sequence of influence could also have been from Cantillon to Hume or from

Cantillon to Montesquieu to Hume.

The second surviving comment in the third section of notes represents a radical

change in topics from the first. This is not uncommon, as Hume moved from one author

24 Murphy (pp. 199-204) shows that not only did the Cantillons know Montesquieu, but that Montesquieu’s close friend Francois Bulkeley, who was probably a British spy, likely had an affair with Cantillon’s wife and became her second husband after Cantillon death.

29

to another, but generally he would write several notes together based on a single book.

Here he commented on the great productivity of labor in manufacturing: “A pound of

steel when manufactur’d may become of 10,000 £ value.” This is suspiciously similar to

Cantillon’s statement in chapter ten of the Essai:

The fine steel spring which regulates an English watch is generally sold at a price which makes the proportion of material to labour, or of steel to spring, one to one million so that in this case labour makes up nearly all the value of the spring. See the calculation in the supplement.

While the supplement to the Essai has been lost, the two quotes can be linked as

coming from the same source. Hume wrote that a pound of steel can become

10,000 £ when manufactured while Cantillon calculated that a certain monetary

value of steel can be multiplied by one million times its value when manufactured

into watch springs. If both observations were drawn from the same information

then the price of steel would be 2.4 pence per pound or 22.4 £ per British ton

(2240 pounds). According to Hyde (1977, p. 44) pig iron sold for around 6 £ per

ton and bar iron sold for around 18 £ per ton. Barraclough (1984, p. 72) presents

data on steel that indicates that the price of steel in the late 1720s was in the mid-

20 £ range and that the cost of making steel was in the lower-20 £ range. It is

difficult to make any precise calculations in the absence of Cantillon’s

supplement, but based on this data it seems reasonable to link the two quotes via

the price of steel at the time Cantillon wrote the Essai of 2.4 pence per pound.

The use of steel in manufacturing did produce high levels of added value,

but this was especially so in watchmaking because watches were expensive

luxury goods, and the use of improved spring mechanisms was a key development

in watchmaking technology just prior to 1730. Watch springs would have been

30

one of the very few items that would have produced the necessary one-to-one

million ratio between the cost of steel and the value of the output. It would not be

surprising if the very wealthy Cantillon owned a watch at this time and that he

acquired his data about watch springs in either acquiring a watch or in replacing a

broken watch spring. Hume on the other hand lived on a rather modest income

during the time period when he made the notation, and this would have precluded

him having a watch until after his publishing successes.25 Higgs (1891, p. 286-7)

affirms that Cantillon did indeed own an expensive gold watch at the time he

wrote the Essai.

Given that Cantillon’s calculations were many years out-of-date, it would

not be surprising that Hume put those calculated ratios aside for his more

ambiguous and glamorous statement of turning steel into the “gold and rubies of

the Indies.” In Hume’s essay “On Commerce” he wrote of the development of

industry and luxury, the advantages of trade, and how the introduction of luxury

goods initially causes large profits, but that in the search for such profits

competition occurs, innovations occur, and new skills and techniques are learned.

Imitation soon diffuses all those arts; while domestic manufactures emulate the foreign in their improvements, and work up every home commodity to the utmost perfection of which it is susceptible. Their own steel and iron, in such laborious hands, become equal to the gold and rubies of the INDIES. (p. 264)

25 Hume wrote in his autobiographical essay of 1776 that “My family, however, was not rich; and being myself a younger brother, my patrimony, according to the mode of my country, was of course very slender…My very slender fortune, however, being unsuitable to this plan of life…I went over to France, with a view of prosecuting my studies in a country retreat; and I there laid that plan of life which I have steadily and successfully pursued. I resolved to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible, except the improvements of my talents in literature…Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots.

31

The conversion of steel into gold via production and trade was a direct

slap against the mercantilists and it also shows, as Brewer (1998) has pointed out,

that Hume was a clearer writer on the topic of luxury than either Cantillon or

Smith. An alternative source from Hume’s reading list from which he could have

derived his calculations has yet to be found, although it is possible that he

acquired the information from some unidentified source. Therefore, while it is

true that Hume could have used an alternative source for his infanticide note and

that there might be an alternative source for the steel note, it is highly unlikely

that there would be any single alternative source for the two consecutive notes,

other than Cantillon.

VII. Conclusion

Hume made many important contributions to economics, such as the price-specie flow

mechanism, but these contributions were made earlier by Cantillon. It has been shown

that Cantillon and Hume were not the polar opposites that modern classifications of

Cantillon as a mercantilist and Hume as an anti-mercantilist would imply. Cantillon had a

strong thread of anti-mercantilism in his ideas and wrote critically of the mercantilists

and mercantilist policies. He had an influence on both the Physiocrats and the Classical

school, both of whom were anti-mercantilist.26

Cantillon was a banker for Bolingbroke who was a leader of the anti-

mercantilists. Cantillon’s intellectual circle included most of the leading thinkers of the

26 See for example Murphy (1986, pp. 279, 299-319). Adam Smith mentioned Cantillon in the Wealth of Nations of which several ideas and passages are attributed to Cantillon.

32

day, including many of the French anti-mercantilists. Given that Hume went to study in

France and also associated with some of the same dissident thinkers as Cantillon, he

could have had the opportunity to read and study the Essai because it was a common

practice among intellectual associates to lend and make handwritten copies of dissident

manuscripts. Cantillon’s notoriety and recent murder combined with Hume’s interest in

commerce and finance would have led him to obtain and read the Essai if he had known

of its existence. The circumstantial evidence regarding Hume’s motivation and

opportunity to read the Essai suggests that the probability of a link is much higher than

previously thought. In addition, evidence from Hume’s own notebooks gives further

credence to the possibility that Hume had read Cantillon. If true, Richard Cantillon

should be seen as the critical seedbed of anti-mercantilism thought. This linkage also

better fits the historical facts and helps explains why anti-mercantilist policy reforms

began before the economic publications of Hume or Smith’s Wealth of Nations.

Hume read many of the leading economists of his time, but his Political

Discourses (1752) can be seen as spawned by his study of Cantillon with all of the

opening essays on Commerce, Luxury, Money, Interest, and the Balance of Trade, along

with the later essays on Public Credit and the Populousness of Antient Nations because of

the numerous similarities between Cantillon and Hume. Hume does give an indication of

his admiration for his inspiration and some clues as to its source in the first paragraph of

the opening essay “On Commerce”:

The greater part of mankind may be divided into two classes; that of shallow thinkers, who fall short of the truth; and that of abstruse thinkers, who go beyond it. The latter class are by far the more rare: and I may add, by far the most useful and valuable. They suggest hints, at least, and start difficulties, which they want, perhaps, skill to pursue; but which may produce fine discoveries, when handled by men who have a more just way

33

of thinking. At worst, what they say is uncommon; and if it should cost some pains to comprehend it, one has, however, the pleasure of hearing something that is new.

The evidence presented here indicates that Cantillon was one of the most important of

Hume’s “abstruse thinkers” and that Hume “pursued” his “hints” with his own “just way

of thinking” and endured the “pains to comprehend it.” It should be added that if Hume

did read the Essai, he was one of the few persons who was able to fully and correctly

grasp Cantillon’s writings and their importance. He not only explained and illustrated the

theories and buttressed them with the force of logic and the pages of ancient history, he

often went beyond them.

34

References:

Angell, James, W., The Theory of International Prices: History, Criticism and

Restatement, New York, NY: Augustus M. Kelley, [1926] 1965.

Baldensperger, Fernand, “La Premiere Relation intellectuelle de David Hume en France:

Une conjecture,” Modern Language Notes, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Apr., 1942) pp. 268-271.

Barraclough, K.C., Steelmaking before Bessemer, Volume 1: Blister Steel, the birth of an

industry, London: The Metals Society, 1984.

Benitez-Rochel, Jose J and Luis Robles-Teigeiro, “The Foundations of the Tableau

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Blaug, Mark, Great Economists before Keynes: An Introduction to the Lives & Works of

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International, Inc., 1986.

Blaug, Mark, Richard Cantillon (1680-1734) and Jacques Turgot (1727-1781),

Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar, 1991.

35

Brewer, Anthony, “Cantillon and mercantilism,” History of Political Economy, Vol. 20

No. 3 (Fall 1988) pp. 447-460.

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(1992) pp. 711-728.

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