Plan of the English Commerce: Being a Compleat Prospect of the Trade of this Nation, as well the Home Trade as the Foreign. In Three Parts. Part I. Containing a View of the present Magnitude of the English Trade...Part II. Containing an Answer to that great and important Question now

London: Printed for Charles Rivington, 1728. Defoe's "Universal Plan of Commerce"

[DEFOE, Daniel]. A Plan of the English Commerce. Being a Compleat Prospect of The Trade of this Nation, as well the Home Trade as the Foreign. In Three Parts. Part I. Containing a View of the present Magnitude of the English Trade, as it respects, 1. The Exportation of our Own Growth and Manufacture. 2. The Importation of Merchants Goods from Abroad. 3. The prodigious Consumption of both at Home. Part II. Containing an Answer to that great and important Question now depending, Whether our Trade, and Especially our Manufactures, are in a declining Condition, or no? Part III. Containing several Proposals entirely New, for Extending and Improving our Trade, and Promoting the Consumption of our Manufactures, in Countries wherewith we have Hitherto had no Commerce...London: Printed for Charles Rivington, 1728.

First edition. Octavo. xvi, [6, contents], [2, ads], 368 pp. Decorative woodcut head- and tail-pieces and initials.

Early nineteenth-century calf by J. Mackenzie, neatly rebacked to style. Gilt single-rule border on covers, board edges decoratively tooled in gilt, turn-ins decoratively tooled in blind, edges stained red, marbled endpapers. Ink stamp of the Devon & Exeter Institution on verso of title. Lending library label of the Devon and Exeter Institution on front pastedown. An excellent copy. Very scarce. Housed in a full morocco clamshell case.

In this work, Defoe contends that the several branches of trade and commerce, from the cottage manufacturer to the merchant, were largely unaware of each other. He proposes a scheme to join these differing branches into a "universal plan of commerce."

"The Commerce of the World, especially as it is now carried on, is an unbounded Ocean of Business; Trackless and unkown, like the Seas it is managed upon; the Merchant is no more to be follow'd in his Adventures, than a Maze or Labyrinth is to be trac'd out without a Clue" (p. vii).

He concludes with a plea for colonial expansion: "More Colonies then is, without Question, extending the Commerce; it is enlarging the Field of Action; it calls in more Hands to assist in the Publick Prosperity; it employs profitably the unprofitable Numbers of your Poor, and lays a Foundation of an extended Trade, and thereby of a still larger Exportation from Home" (p. 366).

"This work is full of information...It is ably written, and contains sundry passages in which the influence of trade and industry in promoting the well-bein of the labouring classes and the public wealth is set in the most striking point of view" (McCulloch, p. 45).Goldsmiths' 6594. Kress 3744. Moore 499. Sabin 19289.

HBS66823.

$7,500.