The Best of the OLL no. 65: Destutt de Tracy, “Of Society” (1817)

This is part of “The Best of the Online Library of Liberty” which is a collection of some of the most important material in the OLL. A thematic list with links to HTML versions of the texts is available [here](/pages/best-of-the-oll). This extract comes from Destutt de Tracy's *Treatise on Political Economy* (1817) which so impressed Thomas Jefferson that he had it translated into English and published in America. Here he argues that commerce, or voluntary exchanges, is the glue which binds society together.