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282 Germano Maifreda

ticulating an anthropology based on two principles – pain as a me-
chanical, automatic, element and freedom as a moral reality – which
he felt to be his most original theoretic contribution. Here, indeed,
Verri, wavering between the physical/environmental and the moral
explanations of anthropic characteristics, firmly excluded a third
solution – advanced, among others, by both Hume and Voltaire 19 –
which explained the variety of individuals composing the human
species by citing ‘racial’ factors («being domiciled a few degrees closer
to the poles, or to the equator», Verri observed tersely, «does not create
a diversity in the species»).
Verri’s experience is fully expressive of a period and an intellectual
current which saw in political economy the true «human science» on
whose bases, with more robust and general concepts and ideas, the
project of reform might be undertaken and the search for «public
felicity» find resolution. Franco Venturi noted some years ago that
Pietro was moved by «enthusiasm at the discovery of political economy,
key [for him] to all reforming action», together with «his growing
20
conviction that he found himself in the presence of a genuine science» .
Among the ideal origins of this project were also, among many others,
the Locke of Some Considerations on the Consequences of Lowering the
Interest and Raising the Value of Money 21 – especially for its definition
of money as «universal commodity» (merce universale [Verri] or una
generale mercanzia as the Italian edition had put it), as well as the
principle of price determination through the number of buyers and
sellers (Hotta 1999). And the academic members of ‘I Pugni’ discussed
Locke in the pages of Il Caffè as well, with, as we shall see, results that
were not always predictable.
If, in any case, as Paola Tubaro has observed, the quintessence of
18th century political economy, even when compared to the earlier
political arithmetic à la Petty, consisted in the crucial movement from
quantification to formalization, since «the new science is intrinsically

19 Imbruglia 1999, 466.
20 Venturi 1998, 557.
21 The economic writings, a number of papers – of which the leading title indicated
here is a letter to a member of Parliament – were composed by Locke during his term as
Secretary of the Board of Trade and Plantations as well as Secretary of the Lord
Proprietors of the Carolines for Lord Ashley (Shaftesbury). Though the first Italian
translation is usually ascribed to the Neapolitan Galiani, whose own book Della moneta
was published in 1751 when its author was twenty, Stapelbroek 2005 affirms that the
first Italian publication, edited by G.F. Pagnini and A. Tavanti, came out in Florence in
1751, with various annotations and «remarks concerning a proper evaluation of the
things and the coinage and the commerce of the Romans». Galiani declares that he
abandoned Locke in the ‘40s as he found himself in growing disagreement with the
opinions expressed.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XV - Agosto 2018 n.43
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)