Giuseppe Palmieri (Martignano di Lecce, 1721 - Naples, 1793) military and economist, known above all for having contributed to and initiated the overthrow of the crumbling feudal system of the Kingdom of Naples; Customs administrator in Terra d'Otranto and then Director of Finance of the kingdom. He attended Jesuit schools in Lecce and undertook a military career until he reached the rank of lieutenant colonel. The volume "Reflections on the art of war" (1761) dates back to this period. After leaving the army he dedicated himself to economic studies. Palmieri's interest in the economy developed precisely on the occasion of his return to his ancestral countryside; that is, at the moment in which he will find himself almost forced to start a reflection on the "science of cultivation" which will then end up extending to the entire economy, made the object of analyzes aimed at defining the lines of a new economic and financial policy, a policy which it required and in many ways was identified with a reform of public administration. The economy he saw and understood as "necessary for the government of families and peoples was studied in four works: Reflections on public happiness" (1787); "Economic Thoughts" (1789); "Observations on various articles concerning the public economy" and finally "On national wealth" (1792). First and uncommon edition of this treatise written by Giuseppe Palmieri, a leading figure of the Neapolitan Enlightenment, remembered among the homines novi of the Kingdom for his commitment in the battle to free the Neapolitan from the centuries-old evils that degraded him. In this work Palmieri suggests the census of state lands in favor of farmers capable of making them fruitful, thus realizing, in the depressed agriculture of the Kingdom, the ambitious physiocratic model. His proposals, although moderate, were never implemented, representing a lost opportunity: if for Vincenzo Cuoco Palmieri's essay had brought "almost philosophy to the throne", a "non...incendiary" philosophy, which "procured without pumps the good of the homeland" (V. Cuoco, Historical essay on the Neapolitan revolution, edited by A. Bravo, Turin, 1975, p. 80), forty years after the first publication of the work, Ludovico Bianchini in his 'History of Finance', will still complain how the laws suggested by Palmieri, designed for the public benefit, have never been applied, representing a resounding failure for the Neapolitan (Einaudi, 4272; Feltrinelli It, 400; Cossa, 119/128; Mattioli, 2669).