THE ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

New York: Leavitt, Lord & Company, 1837. xv, [1 blank], 472pp, with the half title as issued. Bound in original cloth, stamped in blind, with spine title stamped in gilt. Small separation at head of spine. Very Good.

Six editions were published in 1837. This is the first. For an exposition of Wayland's unusually productive life, see DAB. Wayland was president of Brown University for twenty-eight years. His treatise expounds on the economic concepts of wealth, value, cost, labor, money, production, exchange, distribution, and consumption. He was an articulate advocate of free markets, to the annoyance of some of his northern brethren.
The book is "a classic that deserves a hearing even though it was written almost two centuries ago... The emphasis in The Elements of Political Economy is always on industry, frugality, thrift, innovation, entrepreneurship, property, competition, the division of labor, labor-saving devices, and capital. And rather than exalting the laborer and scorning the capitalist, the merchant, the retailer, the exchanger (middleman), and the money-lender-- as is usually the case — Wayland earnestly defends them" [Vance, FRANCIS WAYLAND: PREACHER-ECONOMIST. In Mises Daily Articles on line, 4/21/22].
Sabin 102186. AI 48393a [5]. Not in Eberstadt, Decker, Larned.