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an old document with writing on it sitting on top of a table
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127 - Louis SAY (1774–1840), a sugar industrialist from Nantes and…
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Estimate €800 - €1,000
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Louis SAY (1774–1840), a sugar industrialist from Nantes and an economist, brother of Jean-Baptiste. 2 letters from the sender, Nantes, 1 and 9 October 1827, to Charles Dunoyer in Paris; 3 pages, each in-4, with addresses. Concerning his new work *Traité élémentaire de la richesse individuelle et de la richesse publique* (*Elementary Treatise on Individual and Public Wealth*), and his differences of opinion with his brother Jean-Baptiste and Adam Smith. [The letter is addressed to the publicist and liberal economist Charles Dunoyer (1786–1862).] 1 October. He sends him his new work *Traité élémentaire de la richesse et de la richesse publique*, and would like to see a critical analysis of it published in the *Revue encyclopédique*. He wishes to ‘eradicate the false notion, so widely held, that useful things form part of general wealth by virtue of their market or exchange value, a principle adopted by Adam Smith’, which may certainly apply to individual wealth, but not to the wealth of nations… His brother, in his *Treatise on Economics* of 1803, argued that ‘there is no true production of wealth except where there is creation or increase of utility’. He himself was convinced of this principle, and if he did not quote his brother in his work, it was because he was attacking Adam Smith, an author in whom his brother ‘had almost religious faith’, and he might have thought that I was distorting his ideas by quoting them in an unfavourable light. […] One cannot deny that Adam Smith was the first to clear the ground for the science of general wealth, but I believe that my brother was the first to sow the good seed, which must bear fruit, by proclaiming that there is no increase or decrease in public wealth unless there is an increase or decrease in the utility of the things that constitute it’… 9 October. He acknowledges that, in his previous works, he disagreed with his brother on the sole point of ‘how one should measure the value of a thing; I thought at the time that it should be assessed by a degree of utility, whilst my brother believes that the value of a thing is measured by the quantity of any other thing one is willing to give in exchange to obtain it’. He has since come round to his brother’s view, and, in his new book, he sets out this principle of political economy: ‘There is no true production of wealth except where there is creation or increase; let us therefore understand how this utility is produced’. His brother, whilst approving of his work, ‘fears that, in challenging certain principles of Adam Smith, I may be in the wrong. To share my brother’s opinion on this point would not be to take sides against me. [...] The true way to displease me, to take sides against me, is to refuse to tell me one’s thoughts on the ideas I publish”. He did not send his book to Dunoyer as ‘a conditional gift’, but ‘to an old friend and a competent judge’; he therefore expects to receive a review.
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About the sale Letters and Autograph Manuscripts – Part I
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Auction time 10/13/2026 at 2:00 PM
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