RICARDO, David.
Zasady ekonomji politycznej i podatkowania.
Warsaw, Jan Cotty, 1919.
8vo, pp. xii, 357, [1, errata], [2, advertisements]; toned throughout due to paper stock, a little light soiling to the half-title, small tears to the blank fore-edge of a couple of leaves, two leaves with slight adhesion in the gutter; a good copy in contemporary half cloth and leather-effect paper boards, spine direct-lettered gilt, a little rubbed.
Second and most complete Polish edition of On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (first published in 1817), in a new translation by Dr. M. Bronstein. The 1826 first Polish translation by Stanislaw Kunatt was based on the translation into French by the Portuguese journalist Francisco Solano Constâncio. The latter translation had been made from the very first English edition which was subsequently revised and expanded, thus the 1826 edition was incomplete, and contained some inaccuracies. The present translation, i.e. the first complete edition in Polish, was based on the then latest English edition (London, G. Bell, 1913, edited by E. C. K. Gonner). Bronstein aims at introducing precise and modern terminology and – at the same time – staying as close as possible to the English original.
By 1817, through the publication of a number of notable pamphlets, Ricardo had become a respected authority on questions of economics. Urged by James Mill and others to set down a systematic account of his theories, he produced the present work. It is based on older and accepted theories of the relations among rent, labour and production, but there is a new emphasis provided by his theory of distribution. Ricardo’s exact mathematical approach and deductive methods have had an enormous influence on succeeding generations of economists and have proved of lasting value, especially in the fields of currency and banking. ‘Ricardo was, in a sense, the first “scientific economist”’ (PMM, p. 168).
PMM 277; Sraffa, p. 379. KVK locates a single copy at LSE.
