PAOLO BALSAMO. - Priest and economist, b. at Termini Imerese on 4 March 1764, d. 4 Sept. 1816. Having entered the archiepiscopal seminary of Palermo, he was ordained priest and took a lively interest in the agrarian problems of his time, particularly those of Sicily. After sojourning in various European countries, he returned home with a vast store of theoretical and practical knowledge which in 1791 earned him the appointment to the chair of agriculture at the Royal Academy of Palermo. A follower of the free-trade principles of A. Smith, Balsamo subjected the existing Sicilian agrarian legislation to profound criticism in his lectures, maintaining the necessity of abolishing all restrictions. These ideas he later expounded in his Memorie economiche e agrarie riguardanti il regno di Sicilia (Palermo 1803). In 1806 he was called to the chair of Rural Economy and Commerce at the University of Palermo.
BALSAMO, PAOLO
BIBL.: Necrologio by N. Palmieri, in Biblioteca italiana, 29 (1818). - On Balsamo and the Sicilian agrarian question cf. G. Ricca Salerno, P. B. e la questione agraria in Sicilia, in Nuova Antologia, 15 Feb. 1895, pp. 694 ff., and A. Petino, La questione del commercio dei grani in Sicilia nel Settecento, Catania 1946, passim.