ABSTRACT
When one considers commerce as a merchant, I am not surprised that luxury
should be praised. But why did M. Hume, a Philosopher and a Statesman, fall
into this glaring error?
Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, Principes des ne´gociations (1757)
When David Hume traveled to France in 1763 to serve in the British
Embassy, he was accorded an enthusiastic welcome in the Paris salons.
‘‘Those who have not seen the strange effects of modes,’’ he wrote later, ‘‘will never imagine the reception I met with at Paris, from men and women
of all ranks and stations’’ (Hume 1985, xxxix). Hume’s reputation in France
owed much to the success of his essays, particularly the Political Discourses,
published in 1752. As Loı¨c Charles demonstrates in his contribution to this
volume, during the 15 years after their initial publication in English, three
different French translations of the Political Discourses were produced, the
most influential published in 1754 by the abbe´ Jean-Bernard Le Blanc,
author of the celebrated Lettres d’un Franc¸ais sur les Anglois (1745). Le Blanc’s Discours politiques de Monsieur Hume aroused a lively interest in the
French reading public. The Affiches de province, an advertising sheet sold in
provincial cities, likened public enthusiasm for the new work to the recep-
tion of ‘‘the latest novel,’’ remarking that the Political Discourses was being
‘‘snapped up as fast as the most agreeably frivolous book’’ (Labrosse 1988).
The Anne´e litte´raire, one of the leading literary reviews of the day, stated
that, in translating the Political Discourses, Le Blanc had rendered a service
to his country (Balcou 1975, 122). A theme of the Political Discourses that was particularly significant for
French readers, I will argue, was Hume’s treatment of luxury. The second
essay in the book, ‘‘Of Luxury’’ (a title changed to ‘‘Of Refinement in the
Arts’’ in editions published from 1760), made a critical contribution to the
eighteenth-century luxury debate. A spirited controversy about the benefits
and drawbacks of luxury had agitated the French Republic of Letters since
the Regency. At the simplest level, the disagreement was about whether
spectacular consumption by the rich, and the middling and poorer sort’s growing taste for fashionable clothing, colonial commodities, and other
consumer goods, had positive or negative economic consequences.
Apologists for luxury argued that expenditure on frivolities by the rich cre-
ated employment for the poor and stimulated their industry. Critics
charged that such luxury drew labor away from more productive activities,
or engendered a negative balance of trade by drawing expensive foreign imports into the country. But to assume that the debate was simply about
the economic effects of consumption would be incorrect; the storm over
luxury functioned to articulate deeper issues of social, moral, and political
order.
