POLITICAL ECONOMY: [Science Primers series]

16mo, pp. 134, [4] advertisements, first leaf used as front paste down (remains of label); original glazed brown cloth, colour-stamped on sides and spine, remains of label on front board.

Jevons writes: 'in preparing this little treatise, I have tried to put the truths of Political Economy into a form suitable for elementary instruction'.

In fact the need to simplify produced a staggering tour de force of economic writing, dealing both with quite advanced theory, such as definitions of utility and wealth, with popular fallacies, including make-work and protectionism, and with credit cycles, including the exposition of a ten year credit cycle which Jevons traces back to the mid-eighteenth century. A Jevons maxim we should all remember he prints in bold type: 'As a general rule, it is foolish to do just what other people are doing, because there are almost sure to be too many people doing the same thing'.