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Cantillon, Hume, and the Rise of Antimercantilism

Article  in  History of Political Economy · September 2007

DOI: 10.1215/00182702-2007-018 · Source: OAI

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Cantillon, Hume, and
the Rise of Antimercantilism
Mark Thornton

It is reasonable to infer that numerous others also knew and used

[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’s Essai].
—Friedrich A. Hayek, “Richard Cantillon,” in The Trend of Economic
Thinking: Essays on Political Economists and Economic History (1991)

David Hume and Richard Cantillon were among the first to develop a the-
oretical approach to economic analysis, and both were also important influ-
ences 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

Correspondence may be addressed to Mark Thornton, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 518 West
Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, AL 36832-4528; e-mail: mthornton@mises.org. The author would
like to thank Robert Ekelund, David Gordon, Guido Hülsmann, Donald Livingston, Joseph
Salerno, Chantal Saucier, Jeffrey Tucker, Paul Wicks, the participants and discussants at the
Austrian Scholars Conference, and the two anonymous referees of this journal for their helpful
comments and suggestions.
History of Political Economy 39:3 DOI 10.1215/00182702-2007-018
Copyright 2007 by Duke University Press
454 History of Political Economy 39:3 (2007)

Essai sur la nature du commerce en général (hereafter Essai),1 and the

probability of a connection between the two is generally considered to be
very low. For example, Carl Wennerlind (2005, 228 n. 4, 227 n. 3) found
that while their monetary analyses were similar, they were 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 manu-
script is thought to have been completed around 1730, but he was mur-
dered 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 pos-
session of the Marquis de Mirabeau. There is no evidence that Hume
met Mirabeau during his second visit to France (1734–37) 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 l’entresol—about which there is more in section 3
of this article—to cease their activities in 1731. Hume reported that he
used his time in France to write the Treatise of Human Nature, not Politi-
cal Discourses, where his economic contributions occur.
Another possible reason to dismiss the connection between Cantil-
lon 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, a cat-
egory of economic writers from that time period who promoted inter-
ventionist policies that tended to benefit the ruling elite, empower the
state, and enrich the mercantile classes.2 In contrast, Hume is considered
the first great antimercantilist—followed by friend and fellow Scotsman
Adam Smith—who opposed mercantilist policies on strong theoretical
grounds. Coming from opposing schools of economic thought makes
the possibility of any friendly connection between Hume and Cantillon
seem slight.

1. In each Cantillon citation there are three page numbers referring to the Essai. The first
is to Henry Higgs’s English translation in Cantillon [1755] 1931. The second is to the original
French text, also printed in Cantillon [1755] 1931. The third is to Higgs’s English translation
as printed in the new Brewer 2001 edition.
2. See, for example, Higgs 1892; Blaug 1962; West 1985; and Brewer 1988.
 Thornton / Cantillon, Hume, and Antimercantilism 455

The possibility of a connection between Hume and Cantillon rests pri-

marily on the parallels in their economic analyses, the topics they consider
important, and their economic theories.3 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 the
Essai 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 compo-
sition and purpose from time to time and from place to place. So diverse
have the meanings of mercantilism become that scholars such as Donald
Coleman (1969) have shown that the term has lost its scientific usefulness.
Others, such as Robert B. Ekelund and Robert D. Tollison (1981), have
sought to completely reorient the term as a political concept with a new
meaning based on rent seeking.4 The purpose here is not to enter the debate
over the meaning of mercantilism, but rather to exploit it. For those inter-
ested 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 rather
than clarify our perspective. In the case of Cantillon and Hume, the term
mercantilist was not even in use while they were writing. It was only

3. 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 simply drawn on and developed the ideas of
writers such as Boisguilbert, Gervaise, North, Vanderlint, and other early antimercantilists,
and done so independently.
4. Rent-seeking behavior takes place when someone seeks to extract uncompensated value
from others by manipulation of economic policy, including regulations and government priv-
ileges. The concept is identified with Gordon Tullock (1967), who showed that there were costs
of seeking government privileges, and this meant that the total cost of a privilege, such as a
protective tariff, is more expensive than previously thought. The term was coined by Anne
Krueger (1974), who developed a model of competitive rent seeking, and it was first applied
to the historical context by Ekelund and Tollison (1981).
456 History of Political Economy 39:3 (2007)

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

in the Wealth of Nations. Therefore the modern classification of Cantil-
lon as a mercantilist and Hume as an antimercantilist 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. Accord-
ing 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 antimercantilism in his writings (i.e., theory, models, price-
specie flow mechanism, etc.).

1. Was Cantillon a Mercantilist?

Cantillon has often been labeled a mercantilist, but many commentators
have placed qualifications on these labels. It seems reasonable to put him
into the mercantilist camp because he was a merchant banker, lived in the
mercantile period, and often agreed with the policy objectives of the mer-
cantilists. 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 saw no general benefit of doing so. To take two
prominent examples, Edwin West (1985) concluded that Cantillon was a
mercantilist, while Smith was the great opponent of mercantilism. How-
ever, in terms of microeconomic theory, he viewed Cantillon as the real
architect, while Smith often failed to measure up, despite having read Can-
tillon. 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 stron-
ger 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 antimercantilism. Cantillon was clearly an opponent of govern-
ment tinkering and meddling in the economy, for he had little or nothing
 Thornton / Cantillon, Hume, and Antimercantilism 457

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 a global expansion of industry and trade, criticized artificial
blockages such as usury laws and the prohibition against exporting gold,
and 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 antimercantilist.
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 an economic trea-
tise than a mercantilist tract, beginning with subjects like value, cost,
production, distribution, population, and the standard of living in part 1;
exchange, prices, money, credit, and interest in part 2; and international
trade and finance, inflation, and central banking in part 3. 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 Joseph Schum-
peter (1954, 562) (along with Jevons, Higgs, Spengler, Murphy, Groenewe-
gen, 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 con-
cepts and relations, is more difficult still and characterizes a later stage
of scientific endeavor. In economics, efforts of this kind date, substan-
tially, from Cantillon.
If we consider antimercantilism as something more than just “antigovern-
ment” rhetoric and link it instead to economic theory, Cantillon would
still clearly qualify as an antimercantilist.
The three mercantilists Cantillon refers to in the Essai are William
Petty, John Locke, and Charles Davenant.5 Cantillon attacked them as

5. As Brewer (1992a) 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 “con-
fused” and seem to be tailored to promote his personal interests. Locke comes toward the end of
458 History of Political Economy 39:3 (2007)

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 Henry Higgs (1892, 448) observed, “In originating even so much, Can-
tillon 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 not
considered a mercantilist, but Robert Eagly (1969) dubbed Law’s sys-
tem “the most important mercantilist monetary experiment attempted in
Western Europe during the pre-Adam Smith era.” Thomas Humphrey
(1999) and others also classify Law’s system as mercantilist, but others
find him to be more modern, Keynesian, and even revolutionary.6 Antoin
Murphy ([1986] 1988) provided a detailed analysis of Cantillon’s cri-
tique 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 indict-
ment of Law’s system:
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

the mercantilist period and is not considered a typical mercantilist. Indeed, Karen Vaughn’s
(1980) criteria for classifying him a mercantilist are weak (and provide little confidence in her
analysis or conclusions), and Locke’s “student” Bolingbroke is considered an important anti-
mercantilist. Such are the pitfalls of classifying thinkers into schools of thought.
6. See, for example, Murphy 1994.
 Thornton / Cantillon, Hume, and Antimercantilism 459

occasions, do not upset the circulation, because being used for the buy-
ing 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 antimercantilists
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 “nei-
ther advantageous nor practical.” He also referred to a book by Vauban’s
cousin, Boisguilbert, in a critical but respectful manner. Jose Benitez-
Rochel and Luis 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.”7
It would seem therefore that Cantillon was exposed to and influenced by
at least two early French antimercantilists. As Robert Hébert (1987) noted,
Boisguilbert’s and Vauban’s views have been subject to various interpre-
tations, but Hébert concluded that they should both be considered anti-
mercantilists.8
Therefore there are several distinct grounds on which to classify Can-
tillon as an antimercantilist, 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,

7. The quotation from Boisguilbert is from his Dissertation and is taken from McDonald
1954, 404. Cantillon is quoted from the opening paragraph of the Higgs translation (1, 1–2,
5). Boisguilbert may have influenced Cantillon’s development in the areas of money, credit,
interest, and the circular flow economy; their ideas are similar, relatively unique, and anti-
mercantilist. Hume also used the term superfluities in his writing.
8. There have been other suggestions of antimercantilists influencing Cantillon. For exam-
ple, it is likely that he had read Roger and Dudley North and possibly even Nicholas Barbon,
who represented the beginnings of English antimercantilism or reform mercantilism. See
Spengler 1954, 406 and 411, for the possibilities of connecting Barbon and North (and others)
to Cantillon. It also is possible that Cantillon 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 of
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.
460 History of Political Economy 39:3 (2007)

is substantial and well documented and indicates that Cantillon was an

important influence on the development of antimercantilism. Mirabeau
had a copy of the Essai and called himself a student of Cantillon, and
through him the Marquis de Gournay and François Quesnay were intro-
duced to Cantillon. Mirabeau’s own writings were popularizations of
Cantillon, and his books became best sellers in France and were trans-
lated 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 Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot and Etienne Bonnot
de Condillac derived their inspiration from Cantillon. They were among
the best economic theorists of the eighteenth century, and both exhibited
a zeal for laissez-faire. The classical school was also influenced by Can-
tillon, most notably Adam Smith, who referenced Cantillon in the Wealth
of Nations. The only significant early antimercantilist for which there is
no recognized linkage to Cantillon is David Hume.

2. 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 antimercantilism—the price-specie flow mechanism. Based on his
reading of Cantillon, James Angell ([1926] 1965, 213 n. 2) observed: “It
will at once strike the reader that this analysis contains the entire argu-
ment and proof of Hume’s price-specie flow doctrine.” Eric Roll (1956,
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 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 econo-
mists, although in many cases both schools failed to match, extend, or
properly interpret his writings (118).
Jacob Viner (1937, 74) followed Angell’s analysis and saw a clear con-
nection between the ideas of Cantillon, Hume, and Adam Smith on the
one hand, and the downfall of mercantilism on the other. He noted:
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
 Thornton / Cantillon, Hume, and Antimercantilism 461

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 adher-
ents 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 England prior to the nine-
teenth century was by Hume. But its most important constituent ele-
ments had 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 a
footnote 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 mech-
anism is clearly and ably expounded. See especially pp. 159–99 in the
1931 reprint, edited by Henry Higgs. Although material from Cantil-
lon’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, Mark Blaug (1986, 97–98) 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 con-
necting 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.9 The conclusion that Hume was “clearly

9. Adam Smith recognized Hume’s monetary contributions but decided not to include
them in the Wealth of Nations, possibly because they were too technical and they 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.
462 History of Political Economy 39:3 (2007)

influenced” by Cantillon is so strong that Blaug (1986, 37) erroneously

suggested that Hume had cited Cantillon’s Essai, and later he even sug-
gested that Hume had “quoted and even plagiarized” Cantillon (Blaug
1991, ix).10 Most recently, Murray Rothbard (1995, 360) leveled the pla-
giarism charge against Hume.
Friedrich Hayek (1935, 9), who was awarded the Nobel Prize in econom-
ics 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 Polit-
ical 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.
Murphy ([1986] 1988, 270–73) explored Hayek’s claim of Hume’s 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 under-
standing 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 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. (272)
Disagreements concerning the similarities and differences between
Hume and Cantillon on the price-specie flow model neglect several miti-

10. The fact that a scholar as eminent as Mark Blaug could at one point err about Hume’s
citing and even plagiarizing Cantillon indicates the strength of Blaug’s case that Hume was
clearly influenced by Cantillon. Professor Blaug, in correspondence with me, has acknowl-
edged the error of those specifics.
 Thornton / Cantillon, Hume, and Antimercantilism 463

gating factors. Cantillon’s analysis was comprehensive, complex, and pro-

cess 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 audi-
ence. 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, leav-
ing opportunity for technical details in the arguments to be forgotten.

3. Could Hume Have Read the Essai?

Prior to his visit to France (1734–37), Hume was an unhappy and unac-
complished 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 (Greig [1932]
1969, 12–18). His description and self-diagnosis are certainly indica-
tive of hypochondria, and perhaps depression, resulting from his lack
of success in his studies or perhaps his involvement in the Galbraith
affair, a case of fornication and bastardry, in which Hume was named the
offender.11 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 hasten-
ing 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 pathbreak-
ing philosopher and historian and one of the greatest and most celebrated
minds of the modern age.12

11. See Mossner [1954] 1980, 81–91. Mossner wrote, “Hume’s case history of his psycho-
somatic disorder is as clear as could possibly be penned by any highly intelligent person
today, and, as such, is diagnosable by modern psychiatrists” (86).
12. See Mossner [1954] 1980, 103–4, on the “mellowing” of Hume while in France.
464 History of Political Economy 39:3 (2007)

He arrived in France no later than August because he dated his third let-
ter to former schoolmate Michael Ramsey as 12 September 1734 (Greig
[1932] 1969, 19–21).13 In this letter, Hume reported that he was now in
Rheims, having left Paris and the company of the chevalier Ramsey. The
chevalier Ramsey was Andrew Michael Ramsey, 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.14
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 importantly, a key disciple of François Fénelon—one
of the original architects of antimercantilism. As Rothbard (1995, 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 on his own
writings, the chevalier should be considered in a line of dissident thinkers
who were antimercantilist in terms of politics, economics, and foreign
policy. A comparison of Fénelon’s and the chevalier Ramsey’s views shows
a definite correspondence with Cantillon’s views, and as Arnold Row-
botham (1956, 480) observed, Ramsey was a leading intellectual of the
nascent antimercantilist 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 centu-
ries. 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 sup-
pression.
On the same day that Hume had written to Michael Ramsey, he wrote
to the otherwise unknown James Birch in Bristol to describe his situa-
tion (Greig [1932] 1969, 22–23). He excitedly noted that he had received

13. The date of Cantillon’s supposed murder was 14 May 1734.

14. Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsey would become one of Hume’s great opponents in
the philosophical debate over the nature of religion.
 Thornton / Cantillon, Hume, and Antimercantilism 465

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 from his Conversation. I must likewise add, that he has a fine
Library, so that we shall have all Advantages of Study.
Ernest Mossner ([1954] 1980, 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 Uni-
versity of Rheims.” On 29 September 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 and 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 ([1954] 1980, 97) as someone likely
to have met Hume during his one-year stay in Rheims. It has been con-
jectured by Fernand Baldensperger (1942) that 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 who 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 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
and events. Mossner ([1954] 1980, 98) even raised the possibility that
Hume lived with Pouilly. In addition to being a scholar, Lévesque de
Pouilly was the principal judge in the presidial court at Rheims and was
a close friend of Bolingbroke and Voltaire. His youngest brother was also
466 History of Political Economy 39:3 (2007)

a friend of Bolingbroke and an early member of the Club de l’entresol

(Childs 2000, 73).15
A relationship between Lévesque de Pouilly and Hume is important
because Pouilly is a known close associate of Bolingbroke, and Boling-
broke is a known close associate of Cantillon. 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 biographi-
cal work such as Walter Sichel’s Bolingbroke and His Times ([1901–1902]
1968) we find no mention of Cantillon. However, if we turn to Murphy
[1986] 1988, 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 he was there the night that Cantillon
was supposedly 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 simi-
larities in their values and close parallels in their economic writings, and
according to Murphy ([1986] 1988, 48–50), there is little doubt that they
discussed economic issues at great length with some of the leading intel-
lectuals 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 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 intel-
lectual 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,

15. I have benefited greatly from Briggs’s (1931) dissertation for information on the French
academies of this period and would like to thank Professor Briggs for permission to make a
copy of the dissertation and for the able and kind assistance of Godfrey Waller, Superinten-
dent of the Manuscripts Reading Room at Cambridge University Libraries. Regrettably, Pro-
fessor Briggs died in December of 2005 while working on a new book.
 Thornton / Cantillon, Hume, and Antimercantilism 467

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,
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 of the river started to develop as an intellectual center.
Even if he had never met Bolingbroke, Cantillon would have found him-
self located in one of the most important centers of intellectual activity
in the world. As Georges May (1964, 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 ([1954]
1980, 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 H. T. Dick-
inson (1970, 237, 221), Stair was a longtime close personal friend and
political ally of Bolingbroke, who was even married to his second wife
in Stair’s private chapel (Childs 2000, 89). As the British ambassador
in Paris, Stair and his spies kept a close watch on the Mississippi Com-
pany, especially Cantillon and Law’s partner Joseph Gage, and certainly
he knew of Cantillon as well. Isaac Kramnick (1968) noted several
areas of similarity between Hume and Bolingbroke, many of which are
tenets of antimercantilism—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 twenty-six. Mossner ([1954] 1980, 102)
reported that Gresset soon clashed and quickly split with the Jesuits over
his recently published “deliciously naughty verses.” Mossner 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
468 History of Political Economy 39:3 (2007)

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

Pouilly’s Théorie des sentiments agréables” (102).
Based on this information, it can be surmised that Hume had con-
nected 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 oppo-
sition to absolutist monarchy and mercantilism and support for non-
conformity in terms of philosophy and religion. These themes are greatly
amplified when examined in the context of the career of Lord Boling-
broke, 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 Succes-
sion. Bolingbroke’s initial proposal sought not only peace, but also free
trade and closer relations between England and France. According to
Kramnick (1968, 181–82):
In negotiations for a commercial treaty with France, for example, Boling-
broke 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 antimercantilist
planks of free trade and peace in the same manner as John Bright and
Richard 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, find-
ing himself briefly as a nonreligious 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,
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.”
He would also have known the Marquis d’Argenson—the first person to
use the phrase laissez faire, laissez passer (Seligman 1887)—Montesquieu,
the chevalier Ramsey, and Henri de Boulainvilliers, who were all members
 Thornton / Cantillon, Hume, and Antimercantilism 469

of the Club de l’entresol, a hotbed of dissident thinking among the nobility

that was eventually closed by the French government for its antigovern-
ment tendencies.16 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, 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 Dickin-
son 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 finan-
ciers, stockjobbers and the moneyed interest in general. The Tories had
long mistrusted the new financial system which the Revolution had cre-
ated 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. (186–87)
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 antimercantilist, 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 cer-
tainly connected with many of the same people Cantillon knew in the
emerging antimercantilist movement. For example, we know from Higgs

16. According to Higgs (1952, 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.”
470 History of Political Economy 39:3 (2007)

(1891, 275) that Cantillon knew of and probably met the Abbé Alary—
the founder of the Club de l’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 manu-
script. The Cantillon-Bolingbroke-Hume connection is particularly strong
and noteworthy because all three were antimercantilist theorists. How-
ever, 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 let-
ters, Hume was always concerned about his lack of money and ways to
improve his economic standing. His economic and political writings indi-
cate 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 most well-known private persons in the world. After
the bubble burst, Cantillon was involved in a series of public trials that
lasted for more than ten years. There was also a great deal of public noto-
riety surrounding Cantillon’s 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, 451) and
others have implied that there was only one copy of the manuscript:
“The manuscript of the Essai certainly affected the Marquis of Mira-
beau much earlier. But he retained the manuscript jealously in his pos-
session 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 cop-
ies of the manuscript existed and circulated. We know, for example, that
 Thornton / Cantillon, Hume, and Antimercantilism 471

Malachy Postlethwayt17 and Mirabeau18 had copies of the manuscript on

which they based their own books. Brewer (1992b, 186) discussed the pos-
sibility that Hume may have been indirectly influenced through works that
Postlethwayt plagiarized from Cantillon and published in 1749 and 1751.
Takumi Tsuda (1979) also found a copy of the manuscript in the municipal
archives in Rouen. More important, it is critical to realize that this period
(1720s and 1730s) was one of 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 antimercantilists 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 augmentation and diminution of money. As a consequence, the
book could not be published by Cantillon, and even when it was eventu-
ally 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 (1700–50), it was the common prac-
tice to copy such unpublishable manuscripts by hand. Ira Wade ([1938]
1967) 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 crit-
ical influence on the development of the French Enlightenment and lib-
eralism 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 characteris-
tic of the group of thinkers writing between 1750–1789. That opinion
should be modified to include the first half of the century as represent-
ing 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. (273)

17. Higgs, in his 1931 translation of Cantillon, noted that Hayek discovered that Postleth-
wayt plagiarized 6,000 words from the Essai before 1749 (Cantillon [1755] 1931, 383).
18. See, for example, Murphy [1986] 1988, 82.
472 History of Political Economy 39:3 (2007)

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 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. (273)
He also noted that there were many nonprofessional copyists who while
reading and studying the manuscript would make a copy of it, such as the
secretaries of d’Argenson and Havé at Rheims. In addition to these even-
tualities, 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] 1991, 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 oppor-
tunity to read the Essai. Therefore it can be surmised from the circum-
stantial 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.

4. 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 Moss-
 Thornton / Cantillon, Hume, and Antimercantilism 473

ner as 1730–34 (495). The relatively meager number of entries in this sec-
tion would coincide with his psychosomatic illness, or the period Mossner
([1954] 1980, 66) titled the “disease of the learned.” The largest segment
of notes Mossner (1948, 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 multivolume 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 title,” which “is presumptive that the first sheet
has not survived” (495). However, it could also be the case that numer-
ous 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
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 3 might have been the notebook that Hume claimed
to have destroyed in 1751, the year before Political Discourses was pub-
lished. Mossner (1948, 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 neces-
sarily 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 3 is that Hume had read widely
from both the mercantilist and antimercantilist writers. The early notes
show references to Boulainvilliers, The Craftsman (i.e., Bolingbroke,
Pulteney, and others), Fénelon, and Vauban, while the mercantilists, such
as Davenant, tend to occur later in the section.
The first two surviving notes of section 3 are the most interesting. The
first note, which is entirely crossed out (indicating that it was used), con-
cerned the practice of infanticide in China: “Perhaps the custom of
474 History of Political Economy 39:3 (2007)

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 inter-
est 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 have found the topic of China of great interest. In part 1,
chapter 15, 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 is also clear that it coincides perfectly 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 writ-
ings on population are thought to be inspired by Montesquieu, but Mon-
tesquieu was also a member of the Club de l’entresol and knew both
Cantillon and his wife.19 Since that was the case, the sequence of influ-

19. Murphy ([1986] 1988, 199–204) shows that not only did the Cantillons know Montes-
quieu, but that Montesquieu’s close friend François Bulkeley, who was probably a British spy,
likely had an affair with Cantillon’s wife and became her second husband after Cantillon’s
death.
 Thornton / Cantillon, Hume, and Antimercantilism 475

ence 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 repre-
sents a radical change in topics from the first. This is not uncommon, as
Hume moved from one author 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 10 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 mil-
lion 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 manufac-
tured, 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 informa-
tion, then the price of steel would be 2.4 pence per pound or £22.4 per
British ton (2,240 pounds of weight). According to Charles Hyde (1977,
44), pig iron at the same time sold for around £6 per ton, and bar iron sold
for around £18 per ton. Kenneth Barraclough (1984, 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 Cantil-
lon’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 among the very few items that would have pro-
duced 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 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 his
476 History of Political Economy 39:3 (2007)

having a watch until after his publishing successes.20 Higgs (1891, 286–87)
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 “Of 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 he then wrote 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” (Hume 1985, 264).
The idea of converting 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 uniden-
tified source. Therefore, while it is true that Hume could have used an
alternative source for his infanticide note and that there might be an alter-
native 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.

5. Conclusion
Hume made many important contributions to economics, such as the
price-specie flow mechanism, but these contributions had been made ear-

20. Hume wrote in his autobiographical essay of 1776: “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. . . . 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 pur-
sued. 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 improve-
ments 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” (quoted in Mossner 1943, 3).
 Thornton / Cantillon, Hume, and Antimercantilism 477

lier by Cantillon. It has been shown that Cantillon and Hume were not the
polar opposites that modern classifications of Cantillon as a mercantil-
ist and Hume as an antimercantilist would imply. Cantillon had a strong
thread of antimercantilism in his ideas and wrote critically of the mercan-
tilists and mercantilist policies. He had an influence on both the physiocrats
and the classical school, both of whom were antimercantilist.21
Cantillon was a banker for Bolingbroke, who was a leader of the anti-
mercantilists. Cantillon’s intellectual circle included most of the lead-
ing thinkers of the day, including many of the French antimercantilists.
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 opportu-
nity 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 1734 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 credence to the pos-
sibility that Hume had read Cantillon. If true, Richard Cantillon should be
seen as the critical seedbed of antimercantilist thought. This linkage also
better fits the historical facts and helps explain why antimercantilist policy
reforms began before the economic publications of Hume or of Smith’s
Wealth of Nations.
While Hume read many of the leading economists of his time, his Polit-
ical Discourses (in Hume 1985) can now be seen as heavily influenced by
Cantillon. All of the opening essays, “Of Commerce,” “Of Money,” “Of
Interest,” and “Of the Balance of Trade,” along with the later essays “Of
Public Credit” and “Of the Populousness of Antient Nations,” show numer-
ous similarities between Cantillon and Hume. Hume (1985, 253) 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 “Of 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 think-
ers, 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;

21. See, for example, Murphy [1986] 1988, 279, 299–319. Adam Smith mentioned Cantil-
lon in the Wealth of Nations, of which several ideas and passages are attributed to Cantillon.
478 History of Political Economy 39:3 (2007)

but which may produce fine discoveries, when handled by men who
have a more just way of thinking. At worst, what they say is uncom-
mon; and if it should cost some pains to comprehend it, one has, how-
ever, 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 Cantil-
lon’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.

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