The books written by Josiah Child among others, the theme was quite common at the time in the English economic literature. The genre persisted in 18th century not only in England but also in France (the writings of the so-called Gournay circle in the mid-eighteenth century). On the latter group of authors/writings and the genre you mentioned, I have a paper forthcoming (May 2007) in: Margaret Schabas and Carl Wennerlind (eds), Hume's political Economy, Routledge. On 17th century English economic literature, you may begin with the work of Lars Magnusson but there is a large collection of recent works which addresses the topic. Best, Loic Charles