Background
He was born circa 1680.
He was son to land-owner Richard Cantillon of Ballyheigue. Sometime in the middle of the first decade of the 18th century Cantillon moved to France, where he attained French citizenship.
( The Liberty Fund edition is a modernized translation of...)
The Liberty Fund edition is a modernized translation of Richard Cantillons Essai sur la nature du commerce en général(1755) with a new introduction by Antoin E. Murphy. In the Essay, Cantillon outlined an extraordinary model-building approach showing how the economy could be built up, through progressive stages, from a command, barter, closed economy to a market economy, which uses money and is open. Though written in the eighteenth century, the Essay has a considerable resonance for a twenty-firstcentury audience. Antoin E. Murphy is Emeritus Professor of Economics and Fellow of Trinity College Dublin.
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LARGE PRINT EDITION! More at LargePrintLiberty.com At last, and finally, here is the first accurate and beautiful translation of Richard Cantillon's 1755 masterpiece on economics. This treatise is widely credited with being the first to describe the market process as one driven by entrepreneurship. William Stanley Jevons, in the first blush of discovery, proclaimed Cantillons Essai, the cradle of political economy. A cradle holds new life; and there can be little doubt that the Essai added new life to the organizing principles of economics. But political economy does not accurately describe the subject Cantillon addressed. Indeed, he scrupulously avoided political issues in order to concentrate on the mechanics of eighteenth-century economic life. When confronted by extraneous factors, such as politics, Cantillon insisted that such considerations be put aside, so as not to complicate our subject, he said, thus invoking a kind of ceteris paribus assumption before it became fashionable in economics to do so. Murray Rothbard, for this reason, called Cantillon the "founding father of modern economics." This book preceded Adam Smith by a generation. Unlike any previous writer, Cantillon explicated the vital role of the entrepreneur with perception and vigor. Hence, he deserves to be called the father of enterprise economics. We know little of Cantillons life and the circumstances of his authorship. The manuscript that was eventually published in 1755 circulated privately in France for almost two decades before; when published, it appeared under mysterious circumstances. Mark Thornton and Chantal Saucier have accomplished the arduous task of bringing forth a new and improved translation of Cantillons famous work. Heretofore the only English translation of the Essai available has been the 1931 edition produced by Henry Higgs for the Royal Economic Society. Though competent, it has become less serviceable over time, as more and more of its shortcomings devolved (not the least of which is the antiquated use of undertaker in place of entrepreneur). Saucier provides a more accurate and lucid account, better suited to the 21st century. Thorntons hand shows not only in competent guidance of the translator but in the inclusion of numerous explanatory footnotes that add historical context.
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He was born circa 1680.
He was son to land-owner Richard Cantillon of Ballyheigue. Sometime in the middle of the first decade of the 18th century Cantillon moved to France, where he attained French citizenship.
His early life is obscure.
He was living in London again at the time of his death.
Cantillon undertook to profit from the failure and, upon the collapse of Law’s scheme in 1720, realized a great fortune.
When possible, he reduced his analyses to terms of supply and demand. Population movements in space and time reflect underlying costs and demands.
The structure of demand is dominated by the expenditure patterns of rich landowners.
Cantillon thus made the size of a closed economy’s population depend mainly upon the domestic food supply and prevailing (although variable) standards of life; but he showed that this supply is susceptible of augmentation through the importation of land-embodying produce or of diminution through its exportation in exchange for labor-embodying wrought goods.
Cantillon was the first to use the phrase "real or intrinsic value" (called "normal value" today) and showed its whole relation to market value.
His treatment of these and other topics, such as the effect of an increase in money supply on the general price level, and his treatment of bimetallism, show that he was far ahead of his time.
He treated land rent as a surplus.
Interest varies not with the supply of money but with the comparative number of lenders and borrowers and their circumstances.
The price of labor tends to approximate its cost; it varies with the workers’ standards of living (which can be elastic upward) and in some instances with other supply-regulating conditions, such as costs of training craftsmen.
A country’s rate of exchange depends mainly upon the state of its trade balance. Cantillon’s analysis of the impact of increases in the money supply was particularly insightful.
Conversely, falling prices would attract money from abroad.
He thus recognized the self-regulating specie-flow mechanism, although he did not define it as precisely as did Hume. The Essai was not published until 1755, though a manuscript copy was known and used by Malachy Postlethwayt and Mirabeau, and may have been known to others (for instance, Joseph Harris, David Hume, Josiah Tucker).
Representative of the writers who knew or were influenced by the Essai were some of the physiocrats, a variety of other French authors (for example, J. C. M. V. Gournay, Accarias de Serionne, Turgot, Condillac, Andre Morellet, G. B. de Mably, Abbé F. A. A. Pluquet, G. Garnier), Arthur Young, Adam Smith, James Steuart, G. A. Will, J. A. Graumann, J. G. Busch, J. F. von Pfeiffer, C. M. de Jovellanos, Beccaria, F. Ferrara, and (apparently) C. Filangieri and A. Genovesi.
Interest revived, however, after W. S. Jevons called the Essai’s merits to the attention of economists in 1881.
Since then at least five new editions have been published, a facsimile in 1892, and editions in German and French–English in 1931, Spanish in 1950, and French in 1952.
( The Liberty Fund edition is a modernized translation of...)
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Quotations: Cantillon wrote: "Men multiply like mice in a barn, if they have the means of subsistence without limit; and the English in the colonies became proportionally more numerous in three generations than they would in England in thirty; because in the colonies they find new lands to cultivate. "
On 16 February 1722, Cantillon married Mary Mahony, daughter of Count Daniel O'Mahony a wealthy merchant and former Irish general spending much of the remainder of the 1720s travelling throughout Europe with his wife. Cantillon and Mary had two children, a son who died at an early age and a daughter, Henrietta, who would go on to marry William Howard Earl of Stafford in 1743. Although he frequently returned to Paris between 1729 and 1733, his permanent residence was in London.