I've found an essay by Stanley Jevons on Cantillon

at the Online Library of Liberty (at the bottom). He writes in a very engaging, personable style. I'll have to read more Jevons.

But there are a couple French passages in it that I don't understand and they seem interesting and important. The first, from p. 6, is a conversation Cantillon was reported to have had with Mississippi Bubble engineer John Law:

"`Si nous etions en Angleterre [said Law] it faudrait traiter ensemble, et nous arranger; mais, comme nous sommes en France, je puis vous envoyer ce soir ; la Bastille, si vous ne me donnez votre parole de sortir du Royaume daps les vingt-quatre heures.' Cantillon se mit A rever un moment et lui dit: `Tenez; je ne men irai pas, et je ferai reussir votre systeme." Accordingly Cantillon took from Law an immense quantity of the new-fangled paper, which through the hands of his numerous com¬mercial friends and agents, and by the force of his immense credit, he was able to place upon the market to great advantage. He thus, if the accounts can be trusted, made a fortune of several millions in a few days, but still, distrusting Law, prudently retired to Holland, whence he subsequently removed to London. Here he was murdered by a valet-de-chambre (more correctly a cook), who then decamped with his most valuable and portable property.

And this, from page 12, where Jevons finally finishes with biographical and bibliographical matters and gets down to analyzing the Essai:

The opening sentence of the first chapter, "De la Richesse," is especially remarkable, and is as follows : "La Terre est la source ou la mature d'oii 1'on fire la Richesse; le travail de Momme est la forme qui la produit: et la Richesse en elle-meme n'est autre chose que la nourriture, les commodites et les agremens de la vie."

I may have dropped an accent or two.

Jevons' comment on the latter is worth quoting as well:

This sentence strikes the keynote, or rather the leading chord of the science of economics. It reminds us at once of the phrase "land and labour of the country" upon which Adam Smith is so frequently harping. Yet it holds the balance between the elements of production more evenly than almost any subsequent treatise. Quesnay, as we shall see, attributed undue weight to some other remarks of Cantillon, and produced an entirely one-sided system of economics depending on land alone; Smith struck off rather on the other track, and took "the annual labour of every nation" as the fund which supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life. Properly interpreted Cantillon's statement is probably the truest which has yet been given.