One of the resources here at Economics in the Rear-View Mirror that I am proudest of is the “Economics Rare Book Reading Room: Classic Economics” that takes visitors to scanned original editions of great and obscure works that have been consulted by generations of historians of economics long after they were first consumed and digested by the readers of their day.
While working to fill a gap in my links to the Physiocrats’ Greatest Hits, I came upon a truly beautiful digitization of the six volumes that constituted all but one of the completed series “L’ami des hommes, ou Traité de la population” by Victor de Riquetti, Marquis de Mirabeau (with some collaboration with the Dean of Physiocrats, François Quesnay). The volumes, linked below, come from the Friedrich-Universität zu Halle and are now to be found at the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt.
While I remain a huge fan of both archive.com and hathitrust.org, I can hardly contain my bibliophilic delight at having such magnificent scans to read outside the setting of an archival reading room. The Bibliothèque nationale de France website Gallica provides us the first editions and the fifth part of L’ami des hommes that is apparently not included in the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt collection.
____________________________
1756
Mirabeau, Victor de Riquetti, Marquis de. First Avignon-edition of L’ami des hommes.
L’ami des hommes, ou, Traité de la population (Avignon, 1756). Partie I. Partie II. Partie III.
Repository: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Gallica website.
1758
Partie IV. Précis de l’organisation, ou Mémoire sur les états provinciaux (1758)
Repository: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Gallica website.
1760
Repository: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Gallica website.
1761-64
Mirabeau, Victor de Riquetti, Marquis de. A later corrected Avignon-edition of L’ami des hommes.
I. Partie. L’ami des hommes, ou, Traité de la population with François Quesnay. (Avignon, Nouvelle édition corrigée, 1762)
II. Partie. L’ami des hommes, ou, Traité de la population with François Quesnay. (Avignon, Nouvelle édition corrigée, 1762)
III. Partie. L‘ami des hommes, ou, Traité de la population with François Quesnay. (Avignon, Nouvelle édition corrigée, 1762)
IV. Partie. Précis de l’organisation, ou Mémoire sur les états provinciaux. (Avignon, 1762)
Suite de la IV. Partie. Réponse aux objections contre le Mémoire sur les états provinciaux. (Avignon, 1764)
V. Partie. Memoire sur l’agriculture envoyé à la très-louable Société d’Agriculture de Berne, avec l’extrait des six premier livres du corps complet d’œconomie rustique de feu M. Thomas Hale (1760). [Not in the digitized collection of the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt]
VI. Partie. Réponse à l’essai sur les ponts et chaussées, la voierie et les corvées (Avignon, 1761).
Suite de la VI. Partie. Tableau Économique, avec ses explications (Avignon, 1761).
Repository: Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt.
Image Source:
Frontispiece of Part I of Mirabeau’s 1762 edition of L’ami des hommes, ou, Traité de la population. A copy of the 1759 engraving by Étienne Fessard is found online at the Bibliothèque nationale de France website Gallica. Louis XV is portrayed as the benefactor (dressed in Roman armour) of the French peasantry, standing on a pedastal with the words “Lod. XV P. P. Util. publ. umdique Prospicienti”.
Another copy is displayed at the British Museum Website. It is identified as the frontispiece to Mirabeau’s ‘L’ami des hommes’ (Paris: Hérissant, 1759-60), volume 1, 1757. Mellay identified as a “draughtsman whose sole work known is the frontispiece he designed for Mirabeau’s ‘L’Ami des hommes’ (Paris, 1759), which was engraved in 1757 by Etienne Fessart.”