ABSTRACT
List wrote little on economics in the ten years after the publication of his letters to Ingersoll. Only one chapter of The American Economist - planned in 1827 - was ever written and only a few pages have survived. In 1830 he was working on a book to be called Criticism of the different Systems of Political Economy40 but it was never written. It was not until 1837 that List wrote his second book on economics. This was The Natural System of Political Economy which was written in the autumn of 1837 but was not published until 1927.41 When List arrived in France at the end of October 1837 he apparently had no intention of resuming his studies on economics. During the previous four years he had tried to foster the progress of railway construction in Germany and he had been particularly active in promoting the line between Leipzig and Dresden. Disappointed at his failure to secure either a directorship in a railway company or a post in the administration of a state railway, he had left Germany to settle in Paris, where he hoped to arouse interest in his plans for the construction of railways in France.
