‎PLUQUET, ABBE.‎
‎Traité philosophique et politique sur le Luxe. Par M. l'Abbé Pluquet. Tome Premier [- Tome Second].‎

‎A Paris, Chez Barrois l'aîné, Barrois le jeune, 1786. 2 volumes. (4), 488 pp.; (4), 508 pp. 12mo. Contemporary marbled calf, spine gilt with raised bands, labels with gilt lettering, edges red, lightly rubbed at joints and extremities, small damage to head of spine of one volume. Einaudi A.643; Goldsmiths 13144; INED 3611; Conlon 86:1732; not in Kress; not in Mattioli. Very rare first edition. No eighteenth-century French attack upon luxury exceeded in comprehensiveness that of the Abbé Pluquet. (.....) In volume I the author delineated the evil effects of luxury upon man as an individual, and upon his arts and morals; in volume II he showed, through analysis and through appeal to history, how luxury undermined collective political and social life and destroyed states, and how luxury might be extinguished. Pluquet, who was greatly influenced by Cantillon and Petty, was familiar with both Graeco-Roman views on luxury and those of his contemporaries. Among the defenders of luxury whose views he criticized are Mandeville, Melon, Montesquieu, Hume, Condillac, d'Holbach and others' (Spengler, French Predecessors of Malthus, chapter iv, section viii, with an elaborate analysis of Pluquet's work). - Verso of both title-pages with a black inkspot, which comes through and affects the address, apart from this a good copy. ‎

Reference : 26226

‎‎