BALSAMO, PAOLO. - Priest and economist, b. at Termini Imerese on 4 March 1764, d. on 4 Sept. 1816. Having entered the archiepiscopal seminary of Palermo, he was ordained a priest and took a keen interest in the agrarian problems of his time and of Sicily in particular. After staying in various countries of Europe, he returned to his homeland with a vast store of theoretical and practical knowledge, which in 1791 earned him the assignment of the chair of agriculture at the Royal Academy of Palermo. A follower of the free-trade principles of A. Smith, B. subjected the Sicilian legislation then in force on agrarian matters to a profound critique in his lectures, maintaining the need to abolish every form of restriction. He later set out these ideas 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.

Bibliography

BIBL.: Necrologio di N. Palmeri, in Biblioteca italiana, 29 (1818). - On B. and the Sicilian agrarian question cf. G. Ricca Salerno, P. B. e la questione agraria in Sicilia, in Nuova Antologia, 15 Feb. 1895, p. 694 ff., and A. Petino, La questione del commercio dei grani in Sicilia nel Settecento, Catania 1946, passim.

Silvio Furlani

@incollection{ec2_balsamo_paolo, author = {Furlani, Silvio}, title = {Balsamo, paolo}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {II}, pages = {755--756}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/balsamo-paolo} }

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Balsamo, Paolo

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