ABSTRACT
This chapter presents uses of the Essai edition in detail. It reviews the arrangement of the versions of Richard Cantillon's writings that were published in the eighteenth-century follows the order of the Essai. The fragments found in Postlethwayt's Universal Dictionary have been arranged accordingly and rearrangements of both English versions. The Rouen manuscript can probably be considered as the most authentic of the French versions and sometimes its wording agrees with what people find in an English version. Postlethwayt's presentation of the circular flow process appears that one wonders whether in fact Cantillon had written an English version of the Essai which was even more complete than that produced in the French version of the Essai and that Postlethwayt borrowed this English rather than the French version. Some commentators have suggested that David Hume may have acquainted himself with Cantillon's ideas by reading relevant fragments in Postlethwayt's Dictionary.
