sday dinner of D'Holbach were confounded, while he enforced the
existence of God. Into the questions of political economy which occupied
attention at the time he entered with a pen which seemed borrowed from
the French Academy. His _Dialogues sur le Commerce des Bles_ had the
success of a romance; ladies carried this book on corn in their
work-baskets. Returning to Naples, he continued to live in Paris through
his correspondence, especially with Madame d'Epinay, the Baron
d'Holbach, Diderot, and Grimm.[33]

Among his later works, after his return to Naples, was a solid
volume--not to be forgotten in the History of International Law--on the
"Rights of Neutrals," where a difficult subject is treated with such
mastery that, half a century later, D'Hautefeuille, in his elaborate
treatise, copies from it at length. Galiani was the predecessor of this
French writer in the extreme assertion of neutral rights. Other works
were left at his death in manuscript, some grave and some humorous; also
letters without number. The letters he had preserved from Italian
_savans_ filled eight large volumes; those from _savans_, ministers, and
sovereigns abroad filled fourteen. His Parisian correspondence did not
see the light till 1818, although some of the letters may be found in
the contemporary correspondence of Grimm.

In his Parisian letters, which are addressed chiefly to that clever
individuality, Madame d'Epinay, the Neapolitan Abbe shows not only the
brilliancy and nimbleness of his talent, but the universality of his
knowledge and the boldness of his speculations. Here are a few words
from a letter dated at Naples, 12th October, 1776, in which he brings
forward the idea of "races," so important in our day, with an
illustration from Russia:--

"_All depends on races._ The first, the most noble of races, comes
naturally from the North of Asia. The Russians are the nearest to it,
and this is the reason why they have made more progress in fifty years
than can be got out of the Portuguese in five hundred."[34]

Belonging to the Latin race, Galiani was entitled to speak thus freely.

1. In another letter to Madame d'Epinay, _dated at Naples, 18th May,
1776_, he had already foretold the success of our Revolution. Few
prophets have been more explicit than he was in the following passage:--

"Livy said of his age, which so much resembled ours, 'Ad haec tempora
ventum est quibus, nec vitia nostra, nec remedia pati possumus,'--'We
are