Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/459

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Cantelupe
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Cantillon

CANTELUPE, WILLIAM de, third Baron Cantelupe (d. 1254), succeeded his father, William, the second baron [q. v.], in 1251, though the king is described as treating him with harshness. By his marriage with Eva, one of the heiresses of William de Braose, he obtained the honour of Bergavenny, and is said by some writers to have been summoned to parliament as Baron Bergavenny. He was in Gascony with the king in 1253. He died in 1254 and was buried at Studley, Simon de Montfort being one of those who laid him in the grave. By his widow, Eva (d. 1255), he had a son, George [q. v.]

[Dunstable Annals, 192, 194, 196; Matt. Paris, v. 224, 463; Dugdale's Baronage; Nicolas's Peerage, ed. Courthope.]

H. R. L.

CANTERBURY, Viscounts. [See Manners-Sutton.]]

CANTILLON, RICHARD (d. 1734), economist, belonged to the family of that name of Ballyheige, county Kerry (see Burke, General Armory, 1883), and was born towards the end of the seventeenth century. He was for some time a merchant in London, but removed to Paris, where he established a banking house, mixed in good society, made the acquaintance of Bolingbroke, and is said to have become still more intimate with the Princesse d'Auvergne. Grimm is responsible for this information, and for the story that Cantillon assisted Law to float his paper money, telling us also that he shortly afterwards left for Holland with a large fortune acquired through this means (Correspondance Littéraire, 1878, iii. 72). He subsequently came to London and lived in Albemarle Street, where on Tuesday 14 May 1734, he was murdered by his cook, who robbed and set fire to the house. Mr. Philip Cantillon, probably a brother, offered a reward of 200l. to any accomplice, but the actual culprit does not seem to have been captured. Richard married ‘the daughter of Mons. Omani [Ommanney?], one of the richest merchants in Paris, and half sister to the Lord Clare, an Irish gentleman, who followed the late King James to St. Germain's’ (London Mag. 1734). The wills of both Richard and Philip Cantillon are preserved at Somerset House (Letters and Journals of W. S. Jevons, 1886, p. 425). One daughter was married to Lord Bulkeley, lieutenant-general in the French service, brother to the Maréchale de Berwick (L'Année Littéraire, 1755, v. 357). Henrietta, another daughter, married, in 1743, William Mathias Stafford Howard, third earl of Stafford. She had no children by him, and married secondly (in 1759) Robert, first earl of Farnham (Burke, Dormant and Extinct Peerage, 1883, p. 286). A Jasper Cantillon, one of the commissioners for wounded soldiers in King William's wars in Flanders, died 27 Jan. 1756 (Gent. Mag. xxvi. 91).

This is all that is known of the writer of the earliest treatise on the modern science of economics, in which, says Léonce de Lavergne, ‘toutes les théories des économistes sont contenues d'avance’ (Les Economistes français du XVIIIe siècle, 1870, p. 167). W. Stanley Jevons declares that it ‘is, more emphatically than any other single work, the cradle of political economy’ (Contemporary Review, January 1881, p. 68). It has been quoted by Adam Smith, Condillac, and Quesnay, who owes to Cantillon his fundamental doctrine, and was used by the English writers, Harris and Postlethwayt (both in 1757), without acknowledgment.

The ‘Essai sur la nature du commerce en général, traduit de l'Anglois,’ a duodecimo volume of 430 pages, was printed in 1755, with the imprint, ‘Londres, chez Fletcher Gyles, dans Holborn.’ Fletcher Gyles, who was Warburton's publisher and one of the leading booksellers of the day, died, however, in 1741 (Nichols, Lit. Anecdotes, ii. 147). In type, paper, and general ‘get-up,’ the book is continental and not English. It was most likely printed in Holland or Paris. That it was actually ‘traduit de l'Anglois’ is not unlikely, and it is possible that an earlier and printed version in English may yet be discovered. The book is now excessively rare, and deserves to be republished. The same text (with other pieces) was added to an edition of De Mauvillon's translation of Hume's ‘Discours politiques,’ Amsterdam, 1756, vol. iii. In 1759 appeared an English translation: ‘The analysis of trade, commerce, coin, bullion, banks, and foreign exchanges, wherein the true principles of this useful knowledge are fully but briefly laid down and explained, to give a clear idea of their happy consequences to society, when well regulated, taken chiefly from the ms. of a very ingenious gentleman deceas'd, and adapted to the present situation of our trade and commerce, by Philip Cantillon, late of the city of London, merchant.’ It was printed at London ‘for the author, and sold by Mr. Lewis, &c.,’ an octavo volume of 215 pages, price 5s. This garbled edition supplies no idea of the merit of the French text. Some of the best parts are entirely omitted. The preface of seventeen pages on trade in general is new, and valueless. That the book was supposed to be taken ‘from the ms. of a very ingenious