Principles of political economy : with some of their applications to social philosophy.

London : Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1865. Sixth edition. Two volumes, octavo (225 x 150 mm), uniform contemporary blind-blocked green cloth (fine and unrubbed), spines with printed paper title pieces (one title piece with minor loss at one edge); pp. xvi, 617, [2 publisher’s ads.]; xv, 608; half-title of the second volume with ownership inscription of Robert Watt, dated 1870; bindings firm, internally clean throughout, a very attractive set.

Sixth edition of John Stuart Mill’s Principles of political economy. First published in 1848, this treatise remains one of the most important works on economics or political economy ever published. In it, Mill analyses the function of economy in society: production, distribution of goods, exchange, the impacts of social progress on production and distribution, and the position of government in all of these areas. In the period when it was written, the term ‘political economy’ was used to describe what we would understand in the modern era as macroeconomics, although it should be noted that the subject was treated in a more philosophical way than it is today.