The Marquis de Mirabeau and Cantillon's Essai sur la nature du commerce en général
详细梳理了米拉波侯爵创作《人类之友》的过程，揭示坎蒂隆《商业性质概论》手稿如何经圣乔治侯爵转交，以及米拉波如何从改写、注释到最终独立成书的思想演变。
Abstract This article presents a detailed chronology of the creation of L'Ami des hommes and the very special role played by Richard Cantillon's Essai sur la nature du commerce en général in this process. It shows that Mirabeau obtained the manuscript of the French translation of the Essai made by Cantillon himself through a marquis de Saint-George. It provides a biography of this obscure character and discusses his relationship with both Cantillon and the Marquis de Mirabeau. Then, it examines how Mirabeau used Cantillon's text as a source of inspiration for four projects developed in different contexts. As shown in the article, from 1740 to 1757, his relationship to Cantillon's text changed. His first two tries merely abstracted and rewrote the original text of the Essai to adapt it to a general readership. In the early 1750s, motivated by his discussions with his younger brother, the Chevalier de Mirabeau, on political economy, the marquis developed a more ambitious plan. He decided to provide an annotated edition of Cantillon's Essai. By 1756, Mirabeau realized that his ideas and interests had become so different from those of Cantillon that it was best to reconceive his project as a stand-alone and completely original text, the one he finally published as L'Ami des hommes in 1757.