Cantillon, Richard

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CANTILLON, RICHARD

(1697–1734)

Born in Ireland, Richard Cantillon made a fortune as a banker through clever speculation in England and on the continent, before being murdered by a disgruntled servant. His only surviving work, entitled Essay on the Nature of Commerce in General, may have been written either in English or in French, but only the French version, published in 1755, has survived. The work has been called the first systematic treatise on economics.

Cantillon's view that all value originates in the land influenced the Physiocrats, and his theory of money is deemed especially important. His views of population involve an early discussion of what would later be called the Western European pattern of marriage. Society is divided into three classes: the proprietors who draw their wealth from ownership of the land; the entrepreneurs (Cantillon originated the term's use in economics) who include farmers, traders, craftsmen, and others who live from the uncertain profit of their activities; and hired laborers.

The tastes, fashions, and modes of living of the proprietors determine the use of the land, and hence the number of people in the state; the private property system is the ultimate regulator of population size. If the proprietors choose to use the land or the rent they receive from it for purposes other than the "Maintenance of Man" (such as for the purchase of luxury goods), numbers will diminish. "Men multiply like Mice in a barn if they have unlimited Means of Subsistence," he wrote (Cantillon, 2001, p. 37). Cantillon contended that the size of population is not limited by mortality (as Adam Smith believed), but by marriage, since men of the lower classes fear the prospect of insufficient means to support a family, and men of higher means do not want to lose status. "Most men desire nothing better than to marry if they are set in a position to keep their Families in the same style as they are content to live themselves" (2001, p. 35). That style, in Europe, implied a relatively high level of living.

Cantillon presents China as an alternative demographic model without private property and with universal and early marriage. This results in a large population living at a low material standard, recurrent famines despite a highly productive agriculture, and the practice of infanticide as a check on numbers. In the late eighteenth century political economist T. R. Malthus would echo these ideas, although there is no evidence that he had read Cantillon's Essay.

See also: Population Thought, History of.

bibliography

selected works by richard cantillon.

Cantillon, Richard. 1952 (1755). Essai sur la nature du commerce en général, texte de l'édition originale de 1755, avec des études et commentaires par Alfred Sauvy [et al.]. Paris: Institut national d'études démographiques.

——. 2001. Essay on the Nature of Commerce in General. Contains background materials, including the 1881 essay by the economist W. Stanley Jevons. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.