ABSTRACT
The most perfect competition must have inevitably one or the other of these results. But, if one begins to consider political economy as relating to population as well as to wealth, if one has sought, not what leads to the greatest opulence, but what would give humanity the greatest happiness through opulence, one must be frightened by the very thing that had been wished for from the very first. A great deal of mercantilistic thought appears in Sismondi’s writing, moderated by physiocratic and Smithian ideas. Adam Smith rightly believed that increasing the wealth of a nation by competition would benefit every individual by providing a higher living standard and greater satisfactions, because each consumer would be free to arrange his life in accordance with his own preferences. Birth control was widespread on the Continent among the peasant population, as is attested by population figures, especially for France after the Revolution, and Sismondi was apparently well aware of it.
