SAGGI POLITICI SUL COMMERCIO DEL SIGNOR DAVID HUME. Tradotti dall' Inglese coll' Aggiunta Di un Discorso Preliminare sul Commercio di Sicilia di D. Isidoro Bianchi socio della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Siena. Seconda Edizione.

Second edition in Italian, the first to include Isidoro Bianchi's 'Discorso Preliminare'. Small 8vo. 128pp. Contemporary quarter calf ruled in gilt and with titles in gilt on a red morocco label to the spine. Marbled paper covered boards, parchment corners. A fine copy, the binding firm with minor rubbing to the extremities. The contents, with very minor toning and spotting to the endpapers are otherwise exceptionally clean and bright throughout.

The scarce second appearance in Italian of David Hume's Political Discourses, translated by Matteo Dandolo, containing the first eight of Hume's [twelve] discourses, and including as an introduction the first printing of Isidoro Bianchi's 'Preliminary Discourse'. 'Dandolo's edition had considerable success even outside Venice. A second edition was published in 1774 in Palermo, edited by Andrea Rapetti, a Venetian bookseller who had emigrated to Sicily, and edited by Isidoro Bianchi, a Cremonese professor at Monreale. In his 'Preliminary Discourse' Isidoro Bianchi recalled the glories of Sicilian commerce in centuries past and concluded with a passionate exhortation to reform all aspects of the island's economic life. It was with commerce that they would have to start, just as in Venice. This was 'the real source of our riches and our splendour'. If commerce were not expanded and crafts improved, 'merchants and artisans will languish and so too will the estate owners, till the decline of the whole state ensues'. Many years after in 1798, a new edition of Hume's essays was published with introductions by Matteo Dandolo and Isidore Bianchi.' (Hont, Istvan; Ignatieff, Michael (edits): Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1983, p.354).