[BECCARIA, Cesare.

Elementi di economia pubblica ... Inediti]. Volumes XI and XII of Custodi's Scrittori classici Italiani di economia politica, parte moderna.

Milan, G. G. Destefanis, 1804. Two vols, 8vo, pp. [iv], 356, [4]; 313, [3], with four folding tables in the second volume; a fine, entirely uncut copy in the original printed wrappers, somewhat faded; extremities a little rubbed, old printed paper labels on spine, modern bookplates inside front covers. First edition of Beccaria’s lectures on political economy, Elementi di economia pubblica, contained in the Custodi collection of Italian economic texts. Custodi’s publication of Italian works on political economy from 1582 onwards occupied 50 volumes, which appeared between 1803 and 1816. Beccaria enjoyed immediate international success with his Dei delitti e delle pene of 1764, translated into 22 languages by the end of the nineteenth century. ‘He died in 1793 without having published his lectures, which were first published in 1804 by Custodi, and certainly are very remarkable considering they were written before A. Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Beccaria treats political economy as an art to maximise the value of the produce of work, regarding labourers as engines whose duty has to be maximised. From this principle he deduces the necessity of a division of labour, a determination of the value of a labourer, and the nature and function of capital. His lectures are also remarkable for an exposition of the laws of growth of population in relation to subsistence, now known as Malthus’s theory’ (Palgrave).Lectures on economics take up the whole of the first, and a substantial part of the second volume (to p. 241). The rest of volume II contains Della reduzione delle misure di lunghezza all’uniformità per lo Stato di Milano, Beccaria’s 1780 paper on the introduction of a metric system of measures.Einaudi 5193 (not mentioning the folding plates); Manuppella 293.

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