Les Rêves d'un homme de bien, qui peuvent être réalisés; ou les vues utiles et pratiquables de M. l'Abbé de Saint-Pierre, choisies dans ce grand nombre de Projets singuliers, dont le bien public étoit le principe. Paris, Veuve Duchesne, 1775.
First Edition. 12mo (165 x 90 mm), engraved frontispiece portrait and pp. xii, 502, [2], in contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments, red morocco label lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, all edges red, green silk marker, from the library of Claude Lebédel.
Extracts of some twenty works by the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, utopian, diplomat, academicien and economist, prophet of the League of Nations, best known for his Projet pour rendre la Paix perpetuelle en Europe, 1713-17. 'Some of his other schemes called for the inauguration of political, economic and demographical statistics; the establishment of an official press; the reformation of taxation by the institution of a tax graduated according to income or, as he proposed in another project, according to capital; the suppression of begging; the improvement of the judicial system; the building of roads; the creation of a system of public instruction; the vocational and professional training of children; the elimination of most of the inequalities between the sexes in matters of education; and certain advanced innovations in pedagogical method' (Palgrave III, 345).
This selection of his works, selected and edited by Pons-Augustin Alletz, includes essays on population, social welfare, hospitals, child care, finance, commerce and education. 'The works of this 'homme de bien', as he was called in his time, are rare and difficult to collect' (ibid).
Cioranescu 58718; Kress 7163; Goldsmiths 11219; Higgs 6527; Einaudi 934; INED 43.