GENOVESI, Antonio.

Lezioni di commercio o sia d'economia civile ... Edizione novissima accresciuta di varie aggiunte dell' Autore medesimo.

Venice, Bassano, 1769. Two vols, 8vo, pp. 355, [1] blank; 260; early ink ownership inscriptions to the front free endpaper in each vol., the occasional blemish elsewhere, but an attractive, uncut copy in contemporary carta rustica, spines and front cover of vol. I MS lettered in ink. First published in Naples 1765–7, this work (‘the first complete and systematic work in Italian on economics’, Encyclopaedia Britannica) went through a number of early editions in various Italian cities. In 1769, three editions were published in Venice by Bassano; they are distinguished in Kress Italian – our copy is their edition number 3.Genovesi (1712–1769) taught metaphysics at the University of Naples. Encouraged by Bartolomeo Intieri to follow Broggia and Galiani in the study of economics, he was called to the new chair of economics established in 1754 by Intieri at Naples. He was ‘the most distinguished and the most moderate of all Italian mercantilists … Commerce was for him not an end only, but also a means by which the products of industry at large were brought to the right market. He, moreover, distinguished between useful commerce which exported manufactured goods and brought back in return raw material, and harmful commerce which exported raw material and imported foreign goods; he also insisted that useful commerce calls rather for liberty than for protection, while upon harmful commerce the stricest embargo should be laid, or at least it should as far as possible be bound hand and foot’ (Cossa, Introduction to Political Economy, p. 235).‘Though the Lezioni do not form a regular treatise, they contain the author’s opinions on the mercantilist system and the most important principles of economics, which he terms civile … (the science which embraces the laws which make a nation populous, powerful, wise, and cultured), limiting thus the science to the increase of population and the production of wealth’ (Palgrave II, 189).At the time the work appeared, nobody had ‘published as comprehensive a presentation of the utilitarian welfare economics that the epoch was evolving. The “mercantilist” elements in Genovesi’s teaching only prove the realism of his vision’ (Schumpeter, p. 177).Carpenter XXII (6); Einaudi 2515; Goldsmiths’ 10505; Higgs 4572; Kress Italian 373 (Edition 3); Mattioli 1409.

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