THE MOST "INFLUENTIAL SOURCE" FOR ALEXANDER HAMILTON'S CRAFTING OF AMERICA'S FINANCIAL SYSTEM: EXCEEDINGLY RARE FIRST EDITION OF POSTLETHWAYT'S MONUMENTAL DICTIONARY OF TRADE AND COMMERCE

POSTLETHWAYT, Malachy. The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, Translated from the French of the Celebrated Monsieur Savary… With Large Additions and Improvements, Incorporated throughout the Whole Work…. London: John and Paul Knapton, 1751-1757. Two volumes. Large folio (10 by 17 inches), period-style full black morocco with elaborately gilt-decorated spines and boards, burgandy morocco spine labels, raised bands, marbled endpapers.

First edition of Postlethwayt's massive work, the "most influential source" for Alexander Hamilton in crafting America's financial system and the "inspiration for U.S. industrial policy" in its impressive two-volume assemblage of international treaties and laws of manufacturing, maritime commerce and much more, complete with 26 folding tables and 24 large folding maps, including many of North and South America, as well as those of Europe, Asia and Africa.

To Alexander Hamilton, respected British economist Malachy Postlethwayt was "the ablest master of political arithmetic." His massive two-volume Universal Dictionary was crucial in influencing Hamilton, whose "clear and prescient vision of America's future political, military and economic strength" consistently turned to Postlethwayt for guidance (Chernow, 110-14). Similarly this was a major work in the library of Jefferson, known to recommend it to Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and others. Historians further see Postlethwayt as elemental in understanding principles behind the Constitution's phrase "to regulate commerce" (Crosskey I:130-31).

It was in the winter of 1778 that Hamilton, encamped with Washington at Valley Forge, sought an answer to the dire problems faced by the revolutionary army. "Probably the first book that Hamilton absorbed was Postlethwayt's Dictionary, a learned almanac of politics, economics and geography that was crammed with articles about taxes, public debt, money and banking. The Dictionary took the form of two ponderous, folio-sized volumes, and it is touching to think of the young Hamilton lugging them through the chaos of war… Postlethwayt gave the aide-de-camp a glimpse of a mixed economy in which government would steer business activity and free individual energies" (Chernow, 110-11). "Almost all of the material for the first part of Hamilton's notes in his Pay Book (1777) was taken from Postlethwayt's Dictionary" (Syrette, ed. Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 373n). In addition Hamilton carefully "recorded tables from Postlethwayt showing infant-mortality rates, population growth, foreign-exchange rates, trade balances, and the total economic output of assorted nations" (Chernow, 111). "Hamilton read it through and through, and took detailed notes… he was already looking toward how the new nation might make itself economically independent" (Ferling, Jefferson and Hamilton, 84).

"Postlethwayt had devoted 20 years to the preparation of the Dictionary" (Rare English Books 371). It was the focus on improving financial systems that Hamilton especially sought when he let "the English mercantilists (in particular Postlethwayt) and not Adam Smith, be his inspiration for U.S. industrial policy" (Reinert, Origin of Development Economics, 15). In seeking to resolve America's war debt, Hamilton "was familiar with Hume's work on public credit and the views of Hobbes and Montesquieu on the importance of honoring contracts… Yet probably the most influential source was the Dictionary… which he paraphrased in parts of his Report on Public Credit. Hamilton agreed with Postlethwayt's emphasis on the need to honor debts, promote the easy transfer of securities, and encourage the rapid circulation of funds" (Riccards, A Republic, 92). In further researching a plan to "charter America's first central bank… Hamilton [again] turned to Postlethwayt's Dictionary" (Chernow, 347). Few works had greater influence on the Founding Fathers in laying the foundation of America's financial system. While Postlethwayt had once endorsed the slave trade, he "turned against it in… his Dictionary… Early abolitionists writing in the 1780s—notably Thomas Clarkson and Olaudah Equiano—would draw on his writings extensively (and selectively) to bolster their case against the slave trade" (Brown, Moral Capital, 272-4). "Scholars who have studied Postlethwayt's sources more closely agree that, despite the claim on the title page that the work was a translation of Savary's Dictionaire, Postlethwayt actually used only parts of that French work" (Van den Berg, ed. Richard Cantillon's Essay, 19). Complete with engraved allegorical frontispiece (I), 26 engraved folding and double-page tables, 24 large engraved folding maps, and red- and black-lettered title pages featuring engraved vignettes. With engraved ornamental initials and headpieces, numerous in-text tables and computations. Volume I with publisher's advertisement page at rear. Savary's Dictionnaire published 1723-30. ESTC N35479. Palgrave III:176. Marvin, 577. Sweet & Maxwell, 170:32. Sowerby 2102. Harvard Law Catalogue II:376. Sabin 77276. Goldsmiths' I:8594. Kress 5157. Occasional small faint embossed stamps.

Text, plates and maps quite fresh with only light scattered foxing, occasional expert repairs mainly to foldlines or margins,Volume II with linen-backed title page, tissue-backed dedication leaf. A fundamental economic and revolutionary work in American and European history, in excellent condition, beautifully bound.