MESSANCE, Louis - Lot 132

Lot n° 132
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MESSANCE, Louis - Lot 132
MESSANCE, Louis Recherches sur la population des généralités d'Auvergne, de Lyon, de Rouen, et de quelques provinces et villes du royaume, avec des réflexions sur la valeur du bled tant en France que en Angleterre, depuis 1674 jusqu'en 1764. Paris, Durand, 1766. In-4 (249 x 187 mm) of 4 ff.n.ch., 330 pp., 3 ff.n.ch. Spotted calf, smooth spine decorated, marbled edges (contemporary binding). Einaudi 3852; Goldsmiths' 10185; Kress 6364 ("also attributed to abbé Joseph Audra and to M. de La Michaudière"); INED 3152. Original edition. According to Kress, this work is, despite the author's name on the title page, also attributable to abbé Audra or to La Michaudière. This important treatise on French demography precedes that of Malthus (On Population, London 1798) by more than 30 years. "Since the emotion of the people makes a serious and general census impossible, an article in the Journal de Commerce, inspired by Expilly or more probably by the intendant de La Michaudière, sets out in 1759 the means of turning the difficulty. One can count the stocks and flows of population on urban and rural examples; one deduces birth rates and uses this range of multipliers everywhere else, with the registers of catholicity... This ambitious but very solid initiative opens the way to a real offensive of descriptive demography, the main milestones of which, which are well known, were laid by Messance in 1766 and Moheau in 1778" (Jean-Claude Perrot, Une histoire intellectuelle de l'économie politique, p. 174). Messance gathers here very detailed information on some large French cities such as Lyon, Rouen, Paris, Toulon, Marseille, Aix, Clermont-Ferrand, Avignon, Le Havre, but also looks at the demography of the city of Geneva. [Bound with:] TILLET. Essai sur le rapport des poids étrangers, avec le Marc de France. Paris, imprimerie royale, 1766. 2 ff. (of which the first is blank), 64 pp. A fine copy. Provenance: ex-libris Dupleix de Bacquencourt (intendant of Amiens).
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