In his early life, he translated Destouches' works and wrote satirical almanacs (Borlanda impasticciata, Gran Zoroastro and Mal di Milza) which scandalized the Milanese society.

Verri's early steps in educating himself in the science of civil society were guided by four eighteenth-century intellectual giants of the Enlightenment: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, David Hume, Edward Gibbon, and Helvétius.

In combination, these particularly informed his emerging views on law and civil society, the importance of historical understanding, his utilitarian tendencies and, more specifically, economic issues associated with trade, money, credit, and taxation.

[1] In 1761, together with his brother Alessandro, he founded a literary association, the Società dei Pugni ("Society of the Fists"), and, from 1764, published the magazine Il Caffè ("The Coffeehouse").

Other figures who wrote on it include his brother Alessandro, the famous philosopher Cesare Beccaria, Alfonso Longo and Pietro Secchi.

This was followed by the Meditazioni sull'economia politica ("Reflection's on Political Economy", 1771), the book contains 40 sections and when Verri's Meditiazioni first appeared was well received.

[7] His work is clearly one of the many examples in the economic literature which during the quarter-century after 1750 marks the emergence of political economy as a separate science.

[8] Pietro Verri provides the first systematic contribution stemming from the quarters of Lombard enlightenment in the field of political economy.

From the vantage point afforded by Verri's political economy, we gain a considerably attractive view of the most significant elements and characteristic concepts of Lombard enlightenment during the latter half of the 18th century.

Success in achieving this policy objective can be measured by at least three different means in the absence of reliable national output data, as Verri indicates at various points in his treatise.

[13] The problem of equilibrium between production ("reproduction" in Verri's terms) and consumption is analyzed examining two opposed cases of disequilibrium.

When the other solution prevails, new productive branches are created in the country: these new industries compete in quality and price with those located abroad, toward which the demand for imported goods was addressed.

The role of ideas is central to this picture: a class of individuals understands the existence of national demand for certain goods and produces it at better conditions than foreign competitors.

As a matter of fact, Verri engages himself in demonstrating that a favorable balance of commerce is possible at certain conditions, that inflation is not a necessary outcome of it, and finally that a growth of the real side of the economy is consistent with it.

Inflation takes place only if the extra monetary demand clashes with rigidities on the supply side (in this case, money "stops" in the hands of an unmodified number of sellers).

[21] The search for happiness in the form of the removal of unhappiness is a core issue in Pietro Verri's political philosophy.

[23] A comprehensive reading of Verri's economic and philosophical writings suggests a new perspective in the analysis of the interplay between moral sense theory, legislation and the competitive framework of a market economy which is not irrelevant to the understanding of the same relationship in other eighteenth-century writers, including Adam Smith.

For Verri's Meditazioni are explicitly rooted in a 'historical' investigation of moral sentiments, and of the way in which these may influence the pursuit of private or public interest, and the characteristics of legislation.

However, Caspari mentions Voltaire's thanks to Verri for sending him a copy of the Meditazioni, dating it precisely at 19 March 1772 on the authority of Mauri.

Joseph II's increasing despotism led Verri to abandon any position in the Austrian administration of Lombardy in 1786; ten years later, after the French invasion, he returned as a member of the Milanese municipality and was one of the founders of the Cisalpine Republic.

Though disapproving the Jacobin excesses, Verri, however, welcomed the possibility of moral and economic improvement in the aftermath of the French Revolution, which he considered influenced in turn by the Enlightenment movement.