Dialogues sur le commerce des bleds

Copy preserved in its original wrappers.

Octavo, (2) leaves, 314 pp., (1) leaf. Original wrappers. 215 x 136 mm.

Galiani, Ferdinando. Dialogues on the Commerce of Grain.London, 1770.

First edition of this treatise by Abbé Galiani, which questions the policy of free circulation of grain introduced by King Louis XV.

Tchemerzine, II, 952; Einaudi, 2334; Quérard, III, 241; Barbier, I, 952 d; INED, 1948; Melzi, I, 293; Higgs, 4941; Kress, 6730; Goldsmiths, 10640; Catalogue du duc de La Vallière, I, 2319.

“His eight dialogues (…) translated into French by Diderot, (…) are the most brilliant writings published up to that time in support of practical economics.” (Palgrave).

Opposing the Physiocrats, Abbé Galiani sets out in this work his ideas on “the interdependence of agriculture, manufactures, and population.” (INED).

In the first of the eight dialogues, the author gathers reflections prompted by events he witnessed: the opportunity came from a trip to Naples and Rome after the famine and epidemic of 1764. The author recounts what he has seen and demonstrates how, in the always unpredictable and shifting realm of economics, absolute laws cannot be applied.

“Through the artifice of a brilliant conversation, some of the main questions addressed by the Physiocrats are discussed. Galiani is not an enemy of the free export of grain as it was permitted in France under the edicts of 1764. But he thinks, like the Physiocrats, that the rules and restrictions dictated by the diversity of places and the different ways people act should be observed. The direct experience of the disastrous agricultural economy of the Kingdom of Naples serves to illustrate this idea.” (Dictionnaire des Œuvres).

In a letter dated January 10, 1770, which Voltaire wrote to Diderot to thank him for sending the Dialogues, he states: “It seems to me that Plato and Molière must have come together to write this work. I have so far read only two-thirds of it. I await the conclusion of the piece with the greatest impatience. No one has ever reasoned better or more wittily… How grateful I am to the author!”

Galiani was appointed Secretary of the Embassy in Paris, where he would stay ten years. He met the Encyclopedists, and Diderot fell under the spell of the “little abbé”:

“I am madly fond of this abbé; he almost always grasps the oldest things by some secret angle no one else has looked at,” and also: “The abbé Galiani entered, and with the charming abbé came gaiety, imagination, wit, banter, and everything that makes us forget the troubles of life.”

“Abbé Galiani, says M. Blanqui, is one of Italy’s best-known economists. In 1770, he wrote to M. Suard about these Dialogues: ‘You who are of Diderot’s sect and mine, do you not read the white of books? Very well, let those who only read the black of the writing see nothing decisive in my book; but you, read the white, read what I have not written and yet is there, and here you will find: “In any government, under a despot, free export is impossible.” And yet Galiani fought against free export. But he was embassy secretary. He wrote in black, you must read the white.’” (Catalogue of MM. Rostan et Pompeo Ferrario, no. 487).

Before his departure for Naples in 1770, pages of his work were already circulating in the salons, to the great delight of the Parisian public.

But Sartine, Chief of Police and thus responsible for publishing, could not allow a work to appear that attacked with such humor and effectiveness a doctrine that was still officially that of the State. He therefore had the text delivered to him as soon as it left the press, in order to submit it to the censorship of the General Controller.

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