A Critical Bibliography of Adam Smith

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Author: Keith Tribe | Hiroshi Mizuta

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A Critical Bibliography of Adam Smith

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A Critical Bibliography of Adam Smith General Editor Keith Tribe Advisory Editor Hiroshi Mizuta

LONDON

PICKERING & CHATTO 2002

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Published by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited 21 Bloomsbury Way, London, WC1A 2TH 2252 Ridge Road, Brookfield, Vermont 05036, USA www.pickeringchatto.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior permission of the publisher. Copyright © Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited 2002 BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Critical bibliography of Adam Smith 1. Smith, Adam, 1723–1790 2. Economics – Great Britain – History – 18th century – Bibliography I. Tribe, Keith, 1949– II. Mizuta, Hiroshi, 1919– 016.3’3’0092 ISBN 1851967419 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Critical bibliography of Adam Smith / general editor, Keith Tribe; advisory editor, Hiroshi Mizuta. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 1-85196-741-9 (alk. paper) 1. Smith, Adam, 1723–1790–Bibliography. 2. Economists–Great Britain–Bibliography. I. Tribe, Keith. II. Mizuta, Hiroshi, 1919–

HB103.S6 C69 2002 016.33015’3–dc21

8

2001045933

This publication is printed on acid-free paper that conforms to the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper in Printed Library Materials. Typeset by P&C Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge

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Contents Acknowledgements General Introduction: Keith Tribe

vii 1

Early Editions of Adam Smith’s Books in Britain and Ireland, 1759–1804: Richard B. Sher Adam Smith in English: From Playfair to Cannan: Keith Tribe The Glasgow Edition of the Collected Works of Adam Smith: D. D. Raphael The Diffusion of the Work of Adam Smith in the French Language: An Outline History: Gilbert Faccarello and Philippe Steiner The German Reception of Adam Smith: Keith Tribe Adam Smith in Russian Translation: Tatiana V. Artemieva The Reception of Adam Smith’s Works in Poland from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries: Stefan Zabieglik Adam Smith in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking World: John Reeder and José Luís Cardoso Translations of Adam Smith’s Works in Japan: Hiroshi Mizuta Adam Smith in China: Zhu Shaowen

61 120 153

Notes to the Bibliographies

219

Main Bibliography: All Editions, Chronologically Ordered

227

Bibliography by Individual Work

331

Bibliography by Language Group

361

Note on Dutch Editions: Hans Blom Note on Italian Editions: Marco E. L. Guidi Note on Romanian Editions: Roxana Bobulescu

391 392 397

Index

399

13 27 50

168 184 198 209

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Acknowledgements I would first of all like to thank Anna Crago of Pickering and Chatto for proposing this project and overseeing its early development, providing clear guidance in what turned out to be an increasingly complex project. Julia Benest, followed by Sarah Brown, assumed editorial responsibility during the last few months and have been of great help as the work was completed. The ESRC has provided funding for the year and a half of editorial work that the project has required, and I am very grateful both for the help I have had from them and for the assistance of Keele University in providing me with the time that I needed to compile this new survey of the impact of the writings of Adam Smith. Various individuals have been of great help at different stages of my work: I would like to thank Monika Altgeld, Marea Arries, Karen Bailey, Vincent Barnett, Stephanie Blankenburg, Vivienne Brown, Lilia Bull, Tony Cross, Mark Curthoys, Knud Haakonssen, Iraj Hashi, Robert Holman, Istvan Hont, Ed Hundert, Cheng-chung Lai, Liberty Press, Peter Lord, Richard Machesney, Carlos Mallorquin, Martin Maw, Tamotsu Nishizawa, Fania Oz-Salzberger, Nick Phillipson, Ken Roberts, Doris and Jürgen Rudolph, John Simmons, Andrew Skinner, Tony Sneddon, Chris Stray, Nigel Swain, Michael Tochtermann, Michael Twyman, Sue Walker, John Winckler, and Björn Wittrock. The following are responsible for tracking the international diffusion of Adam Smith’s writings, in some cases confirming that there were no editions in their part of the world: Tatiana Artemieva (Russian) Rabeea Assy (Arabic) Hans Blom (The Netherlands and Belgium) Roxana Bobulescu (Romania) Hans Erich Bödeker (Germany) Michal Brzezinski (Poland) José Luís Cardoso (Portuguese) Kenneth Carpenter (French) Gilbert Faccarello (French) Marco Guidi (Italian)

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A CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ADAM SMITH

Alon Kadish (Hebrew) Béla Kapossy (Switzerland) Aladar Madarasz (Hungary) Lars Magnusson (Scandinavia) Pratap Mehta (Indian languages) Siavash Moridi (Persian) Hiroshi Mizuta (Japan) James Otteson (United States) Eyup Ozveren (Turkey) Michalis Psalidopolous (Greek and Serbo Croat) John Reeder (Spanish) Kari Saastamoinen (Finnish) So Jinsu (Korean) Richard Sher (English) Philippe Steiner (French) Steve Takahashi (Canada) Keith Tribe (Great Britain and Ireland, Germany) Mike White (Australia) Stefan Zabieglik (Poland) Zhu Shaowen (China)

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General Introduction Keith Tribe

In 1939 the Kress Library of Business and Economics, a part of the Baker Library of the Harvard Business School, published a catalogue of their by then extensive collection of Adam Smith editions.1 Listing each edition by title and country of publication, one can trace in its pages the way in which the international diffusion of Adam Smith’s ideas was carried forward both by translation, and also by the readiness with which British and American publishers continued to reprint Smith’s two original books – The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. This new bibliography of Smith’s writings takes the Vanderblue Catalogue as its starting point; and during its preparation it quickly became evident that, since the bicentenary of the Wealth of Nations in 1976, the rate of international publication had accelerated significantly. If we start with the decade after Smith’s death, when both works were selling well, and compare it with the that of the 1890s one hundred years later, it is apparent that the rate of publication roughly doubled. One hundred years later, during the 1990s, the number of new editions had doubled again. Quite evidently, this quickening of pace in publication as the work itself becomes older has significantly extended the scope of this bibliography beyond that of 1939, which provided our original benchmark. Its scope has been further enlarged by including essays on aspects of the diffusion process, and, importantly, the bibliography has been systematically annotated and chronologically organised. The notes appended to the entries provide a running commentary to the gathering pace of publication; while the inclusion of all works in the chronological main bibliography gives a ready overview of the scope of the diffusion process. One effect of this has been to emphasise the somewhat neglected standpoint of publishing history. Typically, scholarly discussion of the meaning and content of Adam Smith’s books has failed to consider the physical form in which this content was carried over time and around the world, and thereby lent meaning. Use of the publishing record renders important aspects of Smith’s 1

The Vanderblue Memorial Collection of Smithiana, introduced by Charles J. Bullock, Publication No. 2 of the Kress Library of Business and Economics, Baker Library, Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, Boston (Mass.) 1939.


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impact upon generations of readers quite obvious – that Germain Garnier was during the first half of the nineteenth century the most accessible introduction for English readers of Wealth of Nations, as well as for French; that while Theory of Moral Sentiments went through a period of relative neglect, this was greatest in the mid-twentieth, and not the later nineteenth, centuries; that several condensed versions of Wealth of Nations were published in later nineteenth-century Oxford, and that Ashley continued this Oxford tradition in a popular 1895 edition which appears to have sold well in North America; and, more generally, that publishers keen to add Adam Smith to their backlist repeatedly commissioned new translations of the work.1 Quite apart from anything else, the extent of this new bibliography provides a renewed basis for an appreciation of the manner in which Smith’s writing, which teaches us how we might understand economy and society, has itself been altered in successive readings and rereadings. This in turn directs renewed attention to the importance of the Vanderblue Collection.

1. The Vanderblue Memorial Collection of Smithiana2 The Vanderblue Memorial Collection of Smithiana at Baker Library, Harvard Business School was initiated by a chance encounter and has subsequently developed thanks to the scholarly commitment of its founder and that of curators and librarians of the Kress Collection. In the mid-1920s Harvard University’s rapidly growing programme in business administration, established in 1908, was just moving to its new campus on the Boston side of the Charles River. The focal point of the new campus was Baker Library, named after George Fisher Baker, president of the First National Bank of New York and donor of the funds to build the business school campus. Around this time Homer Bews Vanderblue, then a professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration, visited a well-established Washington bookstore looking for prints to add to the business school’s library collections. What he acquired instead were the first and second editions of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. This was the beginning of more than a decade of acquisition by Vanderblue that would form the core of the incomparable collection of the works of Adam Smith added to the Baker Library. Vanderblue earned his PhD at Harvard University in 1915. After several years teaching at Northwestern University, he became Professor of Business Economics at Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration (now known as Harvard Business School), a position that he held from 1922 1 There is sufficient material here for at least one doctoral thesis directed to the inter-relation of the book market and the production of new translations. 2 This account of the genesis of the Vanderblue Memorial Collection was generously written for this introduction by Karen Bailey, Rare Book Librarian, Baker Library.



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until 1929. Some years later, Vanderblue would also serve as Honorary Curator of Early Economic Literature at Baker Library. The business school administration was committed to establishing Baker Library as a leading international research collection. When the rare book collection of H. S. Foxwell came on the market in the 1930s,1 the school was anxious to acquire it. Purchased in 1936 with a generous gift from Claude Washington Kress, president of S. H. Kress & Co. department stores, the collection became known as the Kress Library of Business and Economics. These materials formed the foundation of an exceptional rare book collection focussed on the history of business and economics.2 Meanwhile, Homer Vanderblue’s Adam Smith collection had grown significantly, particularly in regard to editions and translations of the Wealth of Nations, numbering nearly 150 imprints in about a dozen languages by 1936. Vanderblue summarised his collecting adventures that year in a pamphlet;3 and one year later he announced several new acquisitions in a short article called ‘Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations: a Report of Progress,’ which appeared in the November 1937 issue of the Harvard Business School Alumni Bulletin. Homer Vanderblue generously presented his Adam Smith collection to Baker Library in 1939 in memory of his father, Frank J. Vanderblue. The Vanderblue Memorial Collection of Smithiana became part of the Kress Collection of Business and Economics and was housed in a special alcove of the Kress Room, where it has remained until this day. Included in the gift were books, manuscript letters of Smith, and several volumes from Smith’s own library. In addition to the gift of his rare book collection, Vanderblue also provided a financial gift, the income from which could be used to purchase additional Adam Smith items and books of the period when Smith was a leading figure. While Vanderblue’s collecting efforts had remained fairly tightly focussed on editions of the Wealth of Nations, the arrival of the collection at Baker Library brought with it several new directions for the collection. A particular emphasis was put on developing the breadth as well as the depth of the collection by acquiring commentaries on and excerpts from the Wealth of Nations, editions of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, and historical criticisms of the works of Adam Smith. Relevant imprints from the original purchase of the Foxwell collection as well as from other Harvard University libraries were transferred into the Vanderblue Collection. By the time Baker Library published a catalogue of the new collection in 1939, there were 171 editions (or issues) of the Wealth of 1

The second time this had happened: Foxwell’s first collection was acquired in 1901 by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths’ and donated in 1903 to the University of London, forming the core of the present Goldsmiths’ Library in the University of London Library, Senate House. 2 Unlike the Goldsmiths’ Library, which broadly reflects the English-language bias of Foxwell’s original collection and which has not been systematically extended, the Kress has always had a more international focus, and funds sufficient to support an active purchasing policy. 3 Homer B. Vanderblue, ‘Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations: an Adventure in Book Collecting and a Bibliography’, Baker Library 1936.


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Nations in twelve languages; fifteen editions of the Theory of Moral Sentiments in three languages; plus 160 other related titles included. The Vanderblue Memorial Collection of Smithiana, publication No. 2 of the Kress Library of Business and Economics, subsequently became the standard by which booksellers and scholars alike cited the imprints of Adam Smith. Baker Library has built on this remarkable foundation over the years, bringing together one of the most comprehensive collections of the works of Adam Smith in the world. There has been only one printed update on the growth of the collection, however: a 1948 article by professor and librarian Arthur Cole titled ‘Hewing to the Line: the Vanderblue Memorial Collection of Smithiana.’ This essay reports, among other items, eleven new editions and six new summaries of and excerpts from the Wealth of Nations, ten new editions of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, and eleven new volumes of criticism of Adam Smith. The work of several curators, assisted by a remarkable network of scholars and booksellers, is evident in the growth of the collection during the intervening half-century since Cole’s update. Among the highlights of the collection today are nearly 250 editions and fifty eight summaries of and excerpts from the Wealth of Nations; approximately forty five editions of the Theory of Moral Sentiments; and twelve books from Adam Smith’s personal library. Recent new additions include an early, unrecorded German reaction to Adam Smith, published in 1788, and the famed 1798 French translation of the Theory of Moral Sentiments by Sophie de Grouchy, wife of the Marquis de Condorcet. Microfilm of unique items from other collections complement the rare books, forming a particularly comprehensive resource for scholars visiting Baker Library. A significant portion of the Vanderblue Collection may be found on the Goldsmiths’–Kress microfilm series, which combines resources from the Goldsmiths’ Library at the University of London and the Kress Collection of Business and Economics at Baker Library.1 In the later 1980s the Kress Library of Business and Economics and the Baker Library Manuscripts and Archives Division merged to form the Historical Collections Department of Baker Library, which is now responsible for developing, preserving, and providing access to the Kress Collection of Business and Economics, including the Vanderblue Collection, and continues to actively acquire relevant materials and to assist scholars using the collections. 2. The Catalogue The 1939 catalogue is organised by work, beginning with Wealth of Nations (pp. 3–37); Theory of Moral Sentiments (pp. 38–42); Essays on Philosophical Subjects (pp. 43–4); Collected Works (p. 45); Miscellaneous Writings pp. 46–7; Lectures (p. 48); Manuscript Letters (p. 49); Criticism of the Work of Smith (pp. 50–8); 1

The microfilm does not include accessions after 1980.



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Biographies and other Personal Material (pp. 59–63); the Library of Adam Smith (pp. 64–6); and finally Prints and Similar Items (pp. 67–8).1 Although the items are listed chronologically, these sections are subdivided, so that works published in England are separated from those in Scotland and Ireland, as well as from France, Russia or China. It is consequently difficult to form a clear overview of the progress and sequence of publication from the catalogue. More important, no commentary other than that of a bibliographic nature was provided on the individual editions – it is primarily the instrument of book collectors and librarians, rather than historians of whatever kind. This bibliography is by contrast historical in structure and substance. The main bibliography includes all items ordered chronologically by year, sequenced then by work and country of origin. Selections and condensations are treated as equivalent versions of the text from which they select or which they abbreviate. Commentary, other than that which is mainly biographical, is excluded; also, with some exceptions, we have excluded general readers that reproduce among a number of other authors one or two extracts from Smith’s writings. Finally, it is directed to texts, so that prints and other memorabilia are likewise excluded. This is a historical, rather than a purely bibliographical work,2 and a substantial amount of commentary has been included. Ten essays in the first half of the book discuss various aspects of Smith’s publishing history, in Britain and overseas; while comments are appended to many of the bibliographic entries, highlighting notable features of this or that edition. As far as has been practical, items listed below have been physically examined and reported upon by scholars familiar with the language in which the work has been published. This might seem an elementary point, but it is an important one when seeking to distinguish condensed versions of an original text from the text itself, or even commentary from condensation. Two examples from Homer Vanderblue’s 1936 interim report highlight the importance of a proper understanding of the content of some of the more obscure translations of Smith’s writing.3 The first example concerns the Sommarin 1909–11 Swedish translation of the Wealth of Nations, which in 1936 Vanderblue thought to be complete. He later realised his error; the mistake was rectified and the item appears in the 1939 Catalogue in the section ‘Summaries and Excerpts from Wealth of Nations.’4 Lars Magnusson was able to confirm that this work is indeed an abbreviation of the first three books of Wealth of Nations – hence a condensation of a selection. A second discrepancy must have 1

It includes some items that are not in the Vanderblue Memorial Collection, but where reliable bibliographical evidence has been provided – these items are marked with a double dagger. 2 Although as McKenzie suggests, all bibliography has in recent years become historical bibliography – D. F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999) p. 12. 3 H. Vanderblue, ‘Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations’ p. 4. 4 H. Vanderblue Catalogue, p. 34.


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been more difficult to resolve. An 1881 Turkish translation of Wealth of Nations by Sakisli Ohanes is recorded by Vanderblue in 1936 as having been published in Constantinople, printed in ‘old Turkish characters’, the modified ArabicPersian script in use until about 1928.1 There is indeed a work by Sakizli Ohannes Pasha published in 1881 whose title translates as ‘the science of the wealth of nations’, but it is not a translation of Wealth of Nations.2 The book is a discussion of political economy in five parts – production, exchange, distribution, consumption and a conclusion; it is therefore recognisable as a work written more under the influence of Jean-Baptiste Say than Adam Smith, but given a title reminiscent of Smith all the same. However, to reach this conclusion one requires access to Turkish literature and, if a copy were available, the services of someone who could read the script. The book would in any case have had very few readers when originally published, since print runs were small and the Turkish literacy rate was low. In the 1939 catalogue this text is still listed (with the date modified to 1880), but under ‘Criticism of the Work of Adam Smith’.3 What happened here is plain: unable to read the ‘old Turkish script’ of the work, or perhaps not having even seen the work, Vanderblue was in 1936 under the impression that this was a translation of Wealth of Nations. But it was not – it was instead a synthesis of political economy based on the work of Jean-Baptiste Say, which accounts both for it being taken to be a translation of Wealth of Nations, as well as its later reassignment as a work of criticism. A bibliography such as the one published here must necessarily be a cooperative undertaking – in fact it embodies the utterly Smithian principle of the division of labour, applied along linguistic lines and greatly facilitated by the internet. Given the sheer number of editions recorded below, a considerable amount of collective time and effort has been needed to complete a project that looks increasingly like the foundation for something else – more detailed, more comprehensive. Why then should this be thought a worthwhile enterprise? In part it has to do with the corpus of writing that Smith left. Historians routinely seek in an author’s life a way of making sense of that author’s work; but we know relatively little about Smith’s life. Dugald Stewart’s account of 1793 remains the core of all biographical sketches, and it was not until Rae’s 1895 biography that a reliable account drawing extensively on letters and other sources was available, and there have been no discoveries relating to Smith’s life since then that might prompt a major re-evaluation of Smith’s project and writings. The major third party correspondence sources were all identified by the late nineteenth century – Emanuel Leser for example drew attention to the value in this connection of John Hill Burton’s Life and Correspondence of David 1

H. Vanderblue, ‘Adam Smith and the ‘Wealth of Nations’ pp. 4, 13. Mebadi-I Ilm-i Servet-i Milel, 441 pages; no copy has been traced in Turkey, but this appears to be the work referred to in the 1939 catalogue. Eyup Ozveren kindly supplied all details concerning this work. 3 Vanderblue Catalogue, p. 54. 2



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Hume (1846), even though some of the conclusions that he reached were misguided.1 And so the reconstruction of Smith’s project has depended, to a greater degree than usual, on the books that he wrote and those that he possessed (or used, in the case of the Advocates’ Library).2 James Bonar worked for many years reconstituting the history of Smith’s library3 and Hiroshi Mizuta has now completed this enterprise some one hundred years after it was begun.4 From this and the existing catalogue of the Advocates’ Library as it existed in 1776 we can draw conclusions about sources that Smith could have read, those of which he could possibly have been aware and, importantly, those that he is unlikely to have studied or even heard of. These sources have been of special importance in arguments over the degree to which Smith drew upon the writings of the Physiocrats, for example, or the manner in which he continued arguments taken over from his teacher Frances Hutcheson. Combined with study of Smith’s own revisions to Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, and also more recently the Lectures, this enables scholars to reconstruct rather more exactly Smith’s reading and intentions, what Smith “meant” in writing what he did. But Smith’s writings have been read and argued about for over two centuries now, and so there is another axis of meaning that we need to consider: what Smith has “meant” to succeeding generations of readers, and our understanding of this must start from a clear conception of the publishing history. As this bibliography shows, there have been a bewildering number of editions and translations of both Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations; and by studying these we can gain some insight into the way Smith has been read over the years. Out of the initial, limited task of updating the Vanderblue bibliography has grown a study of the diffusion of economic knowledge, in which recent studies of literary reception play their part, but which, importantly, is also informed by modern historical understanding of the development of political economy and the moral sciences, and the place that Smith occupies within this. 1 He lent support to Burton’s notorious idea that the ‘Smith’ referred to in Hume’s letter of 4 March 1740 is Adam Smith. Initially sceptical, Leser goes on to examine the timing of Smith’s departure for Oxford on the basis of Dugald Stewart, but gets it wrong, and concludes that this could well be Adam (Hume is not in Glasgow and so Adam Smith has to be somewhere else if he is to meet Hume) – see E. Leser, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Nationalökonomie, Gustav Fischer, Jena 1881 p. 5–7. But Thorold Rogers had already sorted the Oxford dates out on the basis of the Balliol Buttery books (Preface to his edition of Wealth of Nations, Vol. I 1869 p. vi) showing that Smith arrived in Oxford in early July 1740 and left in August 1746. Leser proceeds from his initial mistake to a well-meaning, but misguided, reconstruction of the relation of Hume and Smith. 2 A Catalogue of the Library of the Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh, Part the Second, (Balfour and Smellie Edinburgh 1776) identifies, together with Part the First (printed in 1742), those works available to Smith up to the date of publication of Wealth of Nations. 3 J. Bonar (ed.) A Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith, (Macmillan & Co., London 1894). 4 Hiroshi Mizuta, Adam Smith’s Library. A Catalogue, (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000).


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3. The Construction of a Reputation The ‘Wealth of Nations’ being one of those books which much talked of and little read, it is natural that some strange misconceptions should be current regarding the doctrines it contains and, above all, the tone and spirit in which it is written. The author of the ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments,’ the keystone of which is sympathy, the man who at his death left a much smaller fortune than was anticipated owing to his constant expenditure in deeds of unostentatious charity, the man who was especially distinguished amongst his contemporaries by his geniality and kindness, is popularly supposed to be the father of dismal dogmas which amongst the vulgar (if the term may still be used in its older signification) pass current for Political Economy.1

Shield Nicholson’s point concerning the supposed ‘egoism’ at the heart of Wealth of Nations remained true for a hundred years or more after he had written this comment. In his own lifetime Smith was taken for an ‘oeconomist’, and he was keen to distance himself from this. But it is apparent that this effort proved quite vain. The reception of Adam Smith’s writing has been dominated by the Wealth of Nations, and Smith has consistently been read as an economist (whatever the contemporary definition of an ‘economist’ might happen to be) – a reading then periodically countered by the re-assertion of a position closer to the eighteenth-century Smith, rather than some present-day construct. The comments of Bagehot,2 Bastable,3 Morrow,4 and Schneider5 testify to the cycli1 J. Shield Nicholson, ‘Introductory Essay’, to his edition of A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (T. Nelson and Sons, London 1886) p. 13. 2 ‘And it is precisely this singular position of Adam Smith which has given him his peculiar usefulness. He fulfilled two functions. On the one hand, he prepared the way for, though he did not found, the abstract science of Political Economy. The conception of human nature which underlies The Wealth of Nations is near enough to the fictitious man of recent economic science to make its reasonings often approximate to, and sometimes coincide with, those which the stoutest of modern economists might use.’ W. Bagehot, ‘Adam Smith and our Modern Economy’, in his Economic Studies, (Longmans, Green and Co., London 1880) p. 127. 3 See the citation from Bastable in my essay ‘Adam Smith in English: From Playfair to Cannan’ below p. 46. 4 Morrow wrote of Smith: ‘Like his predecessors he states the truism that an isolated individual can never develop a moral consciousness; but instead of regarding this moral consciousness as already implicit in the individual (a method which results in well-known contradictions and difficulties), he starts at the other end. The moral world is something independent of the individual thinker; his standards of right and wrong come to his consciousness from an order beyond it.’ G. Morrow, ‘The Significance of the Doctrine of Sympathy in Hume and Adam Smith’, Philosophical Review Vol. 32 (1923) pp. 70–1. 5 ‘…the Wealth of Nations is not based, as some have maintained, on a psychology of selfinterest, but on a theory of natural laws of prudence (dictates of right reason) or social art of self-command, which is not a theory of motivation at all, but a theory of moral judgement. For the psychology of propriety, benevolence, justice, and prudence we must turn to the Theory of Moral Sentiments; for the “natural law” or objective embodiment of these same virtues we must turn to jurisprudence and political economy. The two approaches complement each other.’ Herbert W. Schneider (ed.), Adam Smith’s Moral and Political Philosophy, (Harper and



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cal character of this process. These names are seldom to be found in presentday writings on Smith, an extensive literature which, however, typically draws upon a recent, attenuated, body of commentary. And so the complaint that Smith has been read in economistic terms, and hence unhistorically, is repeated without awareness that this complaint simply echoes similar charges made by writers of previous generations. Commentary upon the writings of Smith has certainly altered the manner in which his work has come to be read, but one result of this bibliography is to restore a ‘long view’ to this process. As a result, this new perspective has also revealed that much historical criticism of contemporary commentary is itself “unhistorical”, unwittingly reiterating positions already elaborated in an older literature.1 The bibliography provides a template against which the cyclical nature of Smith commentary becomes more obvious. A feature that also emerges clearly from the essays is that the history of the diffusion of Adam Smith’s reputation does not coincide with, nor can be read out of, the rate of translation of his work or its re-editions in the original English. This is the ‘old story’ that we find for example in Palyi and Hasek2 – essentially that a book by Smith is first read in translation and then discussed, or read and subsequently taught to someone. One cannot however draw direct conclusions from the presence, or absence, of a book in circulation in a particular country. German scholars invented an ‘Adam Smith Problem’ in the later nineteenth century concerning the relationship between Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations even though the last German edition of the former had appeared in 1791. Stefan Zabieglik’s account of the Polish Smithian reception goes further in undermining this simplistic account of the diffusion process. He confirms the ‘new story’ – that the reception process works not directly, but indirectly and in phases. So Adam Smith in Polish turns out to be derivative of the French and the German receptions, and early in the nineteenth century it was thought that Say and Sartorius had improved upon Smith, with the result that their work was read, and translated, and not that of Smith himself. Geographically and culturally Poland was remote from Britain; Smith had a canonical reputation but how that reputation was understood was influenced by prevailing conceptions of economic order and interpretations Row, New York 1970 (reprint of the 1948 edition)) p. xxii. Schneider presents Smith’s arguments in Lectures and Wealth of Nations as extensions of those found in Theory of Moral Sentiments, rather than the more usual practice of using Theory of Moral Sentiments to illuminate Wealth of Nations. 1 This line of argument is borrowed from the introduction to Istvan Hont’s Jealousy of Trade: Nationalism, Global Competition and the ‘Wealth of Nations’, (Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2003). 2 Melchior Palyi, ‘The Introduction of Adam Smith on the Continent’ in J. M. Clark et. al., Adam Smith, 1776–1926. Lectures to Commemorate the Sesquicentennial of the Publication of ‘The Wealth of Nations’, (University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1928) pp. 180–233; C. W. Hasek, The Introduction of Adam Smith’s Doctrines into Germany, (Faculty of Political Science, Columbia University, New York 1925).


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and commentaries that happened to be accessible, linguistically and physically. We could say for the first half of the nineteenth century that, in central and northern Europe, French was the most widespread second language, so knowledge of ‘international’ intellectual trends came with a strong Parisian accent. In the second half of the century the German university system, and also of course German social democracy,1 became the more powerful force, although as Tatiana Artemieva shows, the 1866 Bibikov translation of Wealth of Nations was based on the 1843 Blanqui French translation, while the 1895 Soldatenkov version was based on Courcelle Seneuil’s 1888 abbreviated version of the book. Likewise in Spain – Adam Smith was comparatively little read in the nineteenth century because Jean-Baptiste Say was more popular and accessible. But while Smith’s reputation might be propagated courtesy of Say, or Germain Garnier, there was nevertheless a steady consolidation of his canonical status as the founder of modern political economy. The international diffusion of Smith’s writing has greatly relied upon translations of his work; and while there is no great mystery about the nature and limitations of translation, what is very striking is the sheer number of separate translations made into French, German, Japanese or Korean. Translators will routinely justify the production of a new version of a work by suggesting that linguistic deficiencies of earlier versions were such as to compromise a proper understanding of the text. This argument has been most popular among German commentators on the two initial German editions of the Wealth of Nations, the first by J. F. Schiller, the second by Garve and Dörrien.2 But Smith’s written style is straightforward; his choice of terminology and sentence construction idiomatic.3 Smith’s English goes very easily into French, as any comparison of sections from the original and the Garnier translation show. The difficulty with Smith’s language is primarily a conceptual one – the prose might be plain enough, but at times its exact meaning is obscure. One can for example read Smith’s account of exchange transactions and price formation several times and still be quite unsure of what it is exactly that he means. Moreover, many readers complained that deviations and the overuse of illustration and example obstructed appreciation of the main line argument; and this was for instance why Garnier composed his ‘method’, a reading guide which outlined and reordered the text. This feature also helps account for the appeal of condensed versions of Wealth of Nations. But none of this really gives us a clear idea why there are just so many French, German, Japanese and Korean translations, repeated translation and revision being in these languages the rule, rather than the exception. 1

Russian social democrats acknowledged the political and intellectual leadership of the SPD well into the twentieth century. 2 The merits of the arguments advanced in this particular case are discussed below in the German essay. 3 There has been recurring complaint about his love of deviation, and the manner in which this obscured his overall argument, but that is a different issue.



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Part of the answer surely lies in the commercial prospects of publishing an edition of Adam Smith – the sheer number of editions recorded in the bibliography clearly attests to that. Having one or even two of Smith’s books on your list was indicative of academic seriousness, and did no harm to the cash flow either. The risk is low, the cost of a new translation moderate,1 and in any case no royalties are due, and copyright has long expired.2 But this economic line of argument, although suggestive, cannot account for the scale of the phenomenon, since there are so many other works of this kind that have not been translated so frequently. Some consideration has also to be given to problems in translating Smith’s writing, and to changing standards of translation. Although there is at present no clearcut solution to this puzzle, the scale of the problem has only become evident in the compilation of this bibliography. Nonetheless, it has been possible to terminate the careers of some longstanding myths concerning Adam Smith and his writing. On the occasion of the centenary of the publication of Wealth of Nations the Economist published a commemorative editorial, suggesting that Smith was no man of business, ‘He was a bookish student who never made a sixpence, who was unfit for all sorts of affairs, and whose absence of mind is hardly credible.’3 As Richard Sher demonstrates, not only did Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations earn Smith lucrative appointments – the first as tutor to the young Duke of Buccleuch with a substantial continuing pension, the second appointment as Commissioner for Customs – Smith also made a great deal of money from the books themselves. By contemporary standards, Smith was a wealthy man; but he lived modestly, and so the real question is what he did with the sums of money that steadily flowed his way. But, two hundred years and more after his death, it is unlikely that we will ever know. Which directs our attention back to the books themselves – not simply as disembodied ‘texts’, but real books, printed, bound, sold and read (or not). Adam Smith has turned into a publishing phenomenon, and the history of this phenomenon can provide us with new insights – not into the intentions of Smith, but into changing perceptions of these intentions and their significance. And as such, this bibliography is one contribution to this ‘rehistoricisation’ of the work of Adam Smith. 1 Given that many of them are surely light revisions of previous versions, deviating just enough to be published as a ‘new work’. 2 This was one argument used by Oxford University Press in correspondence with Edwin Cannan concerning any payment due for the rights over the student notes that became Lectures on Justice, Revenue, Police and Arms. The owner of the notes had no copyright in them and there, the Press suggested, he had no right to demand any payment in return for their publication – their commercial value was nil, they suggested, comparing it to the Stock Exchange price list in Rogers’s Bank of England, and Ricardo’s ‘dull’ Letters to Malthus. Copy of Cannan to Philip Lyttelton Gell (Secretary to the Delegates), 24 St. Giles, Oxford, 6 June 1895; Cannan Papers File 1020 f. 41, British Library for Political and Economics Sciences. 3 Editorial, The Economist Vol. XXXIV (3 June 1876) p. 649.


sb - essay1.fm Page 13 Monday, September 9, 2002 2:39 PM

Early Editions of Adam Smith’s Books in Britain and Ireland, 1759–1804 Richard B. Sher1

Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith’s first book was published in London at the end of April 1759 with the simple title The Theory of Moral Sentiments.2 It is a one-volume octavo of 550 pages, with thirty narrow lines (about 200 words) to the page. The title page identifies the author as ‘ADAM SMITH, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow’, and the co-publishers as A. Millar, in the Strand, and the Edinburgh firm of A. Kincaid and J. Bell. The book was printed in April 1759 by William Strahan, whose ledgers record a print run of 1,000 copies.3 In a letter of 26 April, Andrew Millar told the author that the printing required thirty-four sheets, on the basis of which he planned to sell the book for six shillings bound.4 Sales were brisk. Shortly before publication, David Hume told Smith that ‘Millar exalts and brags that two thirds of the Edition are already sold, and that he is now sure of Success’.5 Two weeks later, Millar himself told Smith that he had ‘no Sort of doubt of this Impression being Soon gone tho’ it will not be 1 I would like to thank Ian Simpson Ross and Keith Tribe for their help with this chapter, and Vivienne Brown, editor of The Adam Smith Review, for allowing me to include information on the publication history and reception of Wealth of Nations that will be discussed more fully in a forthcoming article. 2 The Public Advertiser for Saturday 21 April 1759 carried an advertisement for The Theory of Moral Sentiments beginning ‘In a few Days will be published,’ and on Monday, 30 April, an advertisement in the same newspaper announced the publication ‘This Day’. 3 B[ritish] L[ibrary], Add. MS 48,800, f. 122. References to the Strahan ledgers are drawn from examination of the manuscripts in the British Library and in the multi-reel microfilm edition of ‘The Strahan Archive from the British Library’, produced by Research Publications of Reading and Woodbridge, Conn., 1990. As recorded in the Strahan ledgers, printing dates indicate when a work was completed or billed, though the printing process may actually have occurred over a longer period of time. 4 The Correspondence of Adam Smith, ed. Ernest Campbell Mossner and Ian Simpson Ross, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1987), p. 39. 5 Ibid., p. 35, Hume to Smith, 12 April 1759.


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published till next Week’.1 Under these circumstances, Millar gave Smith ten presentation copies as a gift, and for the remaining eight presentation copies he charged him the same low rate given to booksellers who ordered at least a certain number. It is clear from Millar’s letter that Smith had sold the copyright before publication, two-thirds to Millar and one-third to Kincaid & Bell. We do not know how much copy money Smith received for Theory of Moral Sentiments, but it almost certainly was not very much, given the format and price of the book. After Smith made revisions and corrections, Strahan printed 750 copies of the second edition in September 1760.2 Responding to criticism by Hume and Gilbert Elliot, Smith had revised his central concepts of sympathy and the impartial spectator. When he received a pre-publication copy in December 1760, he noted further errors in his text and supplied Strahan with errata, the most serious of which (‘sins against the holy Ghost’) were corrected in the third edition; others were handled piecemeal up to the sixth edition of 1790, and ten were never dealt with at all.3 The second edition bore a 1761 imprint and was published on 23 January. The title page shows the same publishers and identifies the author in the same way as the first edition. When the third edition was being printed early in 1767, however, Smith told Strahan to ‘call me simply Adam Smith without any addition either before or behind’.4 Strahan finished printing 750 copies of the third edition in February 1767, and the book was published on 5 May.5 In accordance with Smith’s instructions, the phrase identifying the author as a Glasgow University professor was dropped from the title page; yet the author’s name was now followed by ‘L.L.D.’, signifying the honorary doctor of laws degree that Smith had received from the University of Glasgow on 21 October 1762,6 and he continued to be identified that way until the sixth edition. The imprint of the third edition also adds the phrase ‘and sold by T. Cadell in the Strand’ after identifying Millar as the London publisher, because by this time Andrew Millar had retired and Thomas Cadell was running his London bookshop. But the most significant change in the third edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments was the appending of ‘Considerations concerning the first formation of Languages, and the different genius of original and compounded Languages’, which is referred to somewhat differently in the book’s title: ‘To which is added A Dissertation on the Origin of Languages’. This essay had previously been published in The Philological Miscellany in 1761, but from 1

Ibid., p. 40, Millar to Smith, 26 April 1759. BL, Add. MS 48,800, f. 122. 3 Smith to Elliot, 10 October 1759, and Smith to Strahan, 30 December 1760, Corespondence, pp. 48–50, 73, and note 1. 4 Smith to Strahan, [early 1767], Correspondence, pp. 122. 5 BL, Add. MS 48,800, f. 152; Edinburgh Evening Courant, 27 May 1767. 6 Ian Simpson Ross, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1995), p. 151. 2


EARLY EDITIONS OF ADAM SMITH

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1767 onward it was a fixture in the various editions of Theory of Moral Sentiments.1 Andrew Millar died in June 1768, and the following year his copyrights were sold to the London trade at an auction at the Queen’s Arms Tavern. His twothirds ownership of the copyright of Theory of Moral Sentiments was divided into four shares, each worth one-sixth of the entire copyright. According to marginal annotations in a surviving copy of the sale catalogue, Strahan purchased the first one-sixth share for £5. 5s., and Cadell bought the remaining three onesixth shares, amounting to half the copyright, for a total of £17.2 In October 1774 Strahan printed 500 copies of the fourth edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments,3 the first edition to appear after Millar’s death, and the first to have a much longer title: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, or, An Essay towards an Analysis of the Principles by which Men naturally judge concerning the Conduct and Character, first of their Neighbours, and afterwards of themselves. To which is added, A Dissertation on the Origin of Languages. The imprint now identified the publishers as ‘W. Strahan, J. and F. Rivington, W. Johnston, T. Longman; and T. Cadell’ in London, as well as W. Creech in Edinburgh. The naming of William Johnston, Thomas Longman, and John and Francis Rivington suggests that these booksellers had purchased fractional shares of the copyright from Strahan and Cadell, and this assumption is consistent with the ‘List of Copies taken June 4, 1778’ in the Strahan ledgers, which records Strahan owning only a one-fifteenth share of Theory of Moral Sentiments at that time.4 In Edinburgh, meanwhile, William Creech had replaced John Bell as the junior partner of Alexander Kincaid in 1771, and had taken over the business upon Kincaid’s retirement in 1773. Although the small size of the print run of the fourth edition would seem to signify that the market for Theory of Moral Sentiments was starting to decline, the fact that Strahan once again printed 750 copies of the fifth edition in September 1781 is an indication that this was not necessarily the case.5 The imprint of the fifth edition of 1781 looks much like the fourth, except that it no longer contains the name of William Johnston, who had retired as a bookseller in 1773.6 1 In the Glasgow Edition, however, it is appended to Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, ed. J. C. Bryce (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1983), rather than to Theory of Moral Sentiments. See Bryce’s Introduction, pp. 23–9. 2 A Catalogue of the Copies and Shares of Copies of The Late Mr. Andrew Millar; Which will be Sold by Auction, To a select Number of Booksellers of London and Westminster, At the Queen’s-Arms Tavern, in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, On Tuesday the 13th of June, 1769 [London, 1769], p. 14. The catalogue is in the Murray Archive in London, and is cited by permission of John Murray. I am also grateful to Warren McDougall and Hugh Amory for providing me with copies of this catalogue. 3 BL, Add. MS 48,801, f. 72. 4 BL, Add. MS 48,804. Strahan also recorded that he had paid £3.8s. for his 1/15 share. 5 BL, Add. MS 48,815, f. 63. 6 Ian Maxted, The London Book Trades 1775–1800 (Dawson, Folkestone (Kent) 1977), pp. 123–4.


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On 14 March 1786 Smith commented to Cadell on the copyright of Theory of Moral Sentiments: ‘I should be glad to know in what degree of demand the theory of Moral Sentiments still continues to be. The eight and twenty years property are now near expired. But I hope to be able to secure you in the property for at least fourteen years more’.1 It is unfortunate that no more of this letter has survived, and that there is no record of Cadell’s reply. Nevertheless, on the basis of this passage, it is clear that Smith clearly understood that publishers commonly used major textual revisions and additions as a device for extending the copyright beyond the maximum period of twenty-eight years allowed by the Copyright Act of 1709–10. In light of this convention, it is significant that on 9 April 1790 Strahan and Cadell registered the sixth edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments at Stationers’ Hall in London, noting in the registration file that the work contained ‘considerable additions and corrections’ – the same phrase that appears on the title page of the published work.2 This was a way of giving notice that even though earlier editions could legally be reprinted by others after April 1787, all the revisions in the latest edition were protected by copyright for a period of fourteen years from the time of publication of the sixth edition in late April 1790,3 that is, until April 1804. The revisions to the sixth edition were so extensive that Smith might well have been entitled to additional compensation from his publishers. However, in a letter to Cadell of 18 November 1789, Smith writes: ‘I intended the additions [to the sixth edition] as a present to Strahan and you’,4 suggesting that he did not expect any further pecuniary rewards for the new material he had written for the sixth edition. The sixth edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments was the last to appear in Smith’s lifetime, and it assumed a different form from earlier editions.5 Whereas every previous edition had been published in one thick octavo volume and priced at six shillings bound, the sixth edition was expanded to 950 pages of text in two octavo volumes, each approximately the same number of pages as past editions had been in one volume, and the price was accordingly raised to twelve shillings in boards or fourteen shillings bound. The book was printed 1

Smith to [Cadell], 14 March 1786, Correspondence, pp. 293. Records of the Stationers’ Company 1554–1920, ed. Robin Myers, 115 microfilm reels (Chadwyck-Healey, Cambridge 1987), reel 7. I have discovered no evidence of any other book or edition by Smith being registered at Stationers’ Hall during the eighteenth century. 3 The publication of the sixth edition is announced in an advertisement in the London Chronicle for 27–9 April 1790. 4 This letter appears in Heiner Klemme, ‘Adam Smith an Thomas Cadell: Zwei neue Briefe’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, Bd. 73 (1991), pp. 277–80, as quoted in Ross, Life of Adam Smith, p. 395. 5 For the extensive textual revisions, not discussed here, see the Introduction to the Glasgow Edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1976), pp. 42–5. The present discussion draws upon the Glasgow Edition but adds new material on pricing, printing and other matters. 2



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with eight fewer lines (twenty-six instead of thirty-four) and almost 25% fewer words (about 200 instead of about 260) to the page than the cramped fifth edition. The representation of the author on the title page moved to the opposite extreme from the wish to be identified as ‘simply Adam Smith’, for it now read ‘ADAM SMITH, LL.D. Fellow of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh; One of the Commissioners of his Majesty’s Customs in Scotland; and formerly Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow’, a form of designation modelled, as we shall see, on the third edition of Wealth of Nations. This was the first edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments to be printed by Andrew Strahan, who had taken over the family firm after his father’s death in 1785. The fact that he printed 1000 copies may be taken as an indication that the publishers sensed a renewal of interest in the book.1 The publishers’ names in the imprint of the sixth edition also changed: Longman and the Rivingtons were omitted, leaving only Andrew Strahan and Thomas Cadell among the London publishers. Creech was still listed as an Edinburgh co-publisher, but he was joined for the first time by ‘J. Bell & Co. at Edinburgh’. As Kincaid’s partner at the time of the first edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments, John Bell may have claimed a right to be included in the imprints of later editions. There is another possible explanation for Bell’s inclusion, however. In the letter to Cadell of 18 November 1789 that is cited above, Smith takes issue with Cadell for offering a share in the sixth edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments to William Creech, even though Creech’s name had appeared in the imprints of the fourth and fifth editions. This is the context for Smith’s remark about intending the additions to the sixth edition as a ‘present’ to Strahan and Cadell, and, he adds significantly, ‘to nobody else’. Smith then discusses his aversion to printing the book in Edinburgh on account of ‘the present state of Literary faction here’. His meaning is far from clear, and it is possible that he has in mind religious faction, as Ian Simpson Ross has suggested.2 But it is also possible that Smith is talking about politics, and that the literary faction to which he refers was associated with Creech, whose politics were conservative. In that case, the appearance in the imprint of the sixth edition of Creech’s Edinburgh rival John Bell, who had more radical political associations, may have represented an attempt to undo the harmful effects that Smith feared might result from Cadell’s invitation to Creech. In the absence of additional evidence, however, these ideas remain highly speculative. The combination of a thoroughly revised, greatly expanded text and a new publishing format appears to have given Theory of Moral Sentiments a new lease on life. Since the second edition in 1761, the gaps between editions had been steadily increasing – from six years between the second and third editions, to seven years between the third and fourth and between the fourth and fifth editions, and finally to nine years between the fifth and sixth editions. At the same 1 2

BL, Add. MS 48,817, f. 15, contains the printing account, dated April 1790. Ross, Life of Adam Smith, pp. 395–6.


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time, the number of copies printed in editions two to five had never exceeded 750 and in one case had dropped to 500. But the sixth edition of 1790 sold out quickly, in spite of its much higher price and its larger print run.1 Another 1000 copies of the seventh edition were printed a little more than two and half years later, in December 1792.2 There was an eighth edition of 1000 copies in 1797 (printed in January 1797) and a ninth of the same size in 1801 (printed in December 1801)3 – the last edition to be covered by statutory copyright. These editions retained the two-volume octavo format pioneered by the sixth edition. Meanwhile, minor changes were occurring on the title pages. The title page of the seventh edition is like the sixth except that the phrase ‘With Considerable Additions and Corrections’ has been omitted. By the time of the eighth edition in 1797, Cadell’s son Thomas, Jr., partnered with William Davies, has replaced Thomas, Sr., in the imprint, as ‘T. Cadell jun. and W. Davies (successors to Mr Cadell)’. In the ninth edition of 1801, Andrew Strahan’s name appears only as the printer, and the words ‘(successors to Mr Cadell)’ are omitted after the reference to Cadell and Davies. This does not mean that Cadell and Davies owned the entire copyright, however. The Strahan ledgers reveal that Andrew Strahan still owned a 68/1000 share of Theory of Moral Sentiments in September 1807, and a 1/10 share in July 1822 and in 1831.4 In addition, surviving Longman ledgers reveal that the firms of Longman (now led by Thomas Norton Longman) and Rivington (now led by Francis Rivington and Charles Rivington III) remained silent partners in the eighth edition, with 1/30 shares that entitled each firm to 34 copies out of the total print run of 1000, at a charge of just 4s.4d. per two-volume set. A similar arrangement was in effect for the ninth edition, when Thomas Norton Longman was partnered with Owen Rees.5 Finally, according to the impression account of the eleventh edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments in the Longman ledgers, dated 10 January 1812, William Creech had a one-sixth share of this edition, and the firm of the late John Bell, also of Edinburgh, still owned approximately one-twelfth.6 It is likely that 1 Some owners of earlier editions traded them in for credit toward the purchase of the sixth edition. For example, on 23 November 1790 Hugh Blair traded in an ‘old edition’ and received a four-shilling credit toward the purchase of the new one. See the ledger book of Bell & Bradfute spanning the period 1788–93, National Library of Scotland, Dep. 193, p. 175. 2 BL, Add. MS 48,817, f. 18. 3 BL, Add. MS 48,817, ff. 95 and 97. 4 BL, Add. MS 48,901, ff. 81–2, 96–7, 108–9. 5 I. Maxted, London Book Trades, 141, 190. Archives of the House of Longman, 1794–1914, 73reel microfilm series (Chadwyck-Healey, Cambridge 1978), reel 37, H4, f. 12, and H5, f. 7 (reproducing manuscripts in Reading University Library). An oddity here is that the date of the eighth edition is recorded in the Longman impression account as March 1797, two months after Strahan recorded the printing in his ledger, while the Longman account dates the ninth edition to 14 May 1801, some seven months before the printing is recorded in the Strahan ledgers. 6 Longman Archives, reel 38, H7, f. 158.



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these were the same shares owned by Creech and Bell at the time of the sixth edition of 1790.1 All told, the Strahans printed 4,750 octavo copies of Theory of Moral Sentiments in six editions during Smith’s lifetime, the first 3,750 in one volume, and the remaining 1,000 in two volumes. They also printed 3,000 two-volume octavo sets in three editions in the decade or so following Smith’s death, bringing the total number of copies printed under the protection of statutory copyright to 7,750. A steady seller from the outset, Theory of Moral Sentiments was, by the time of Smith’s death in 1790, a more imposing book and a more popular one as well. The Wealth of Nations Unlike Theory of Moral Sentiments, which started out as a modestly priced, onevolume octavo, Wealth of Nations was originally published in London in early March 1776 as a two-volume quarto, priced at £1. 16s. in boards or £2. 2s. bound. The publishers were once again William Strahan and Thomas Cadell. No printing record of the first edition has survived, but it is probable that the press run was either 500 or 750 copies. Despite the high price and difficult subject matter, the book sold surprisingly well, and a second edition of 500 copies, also in two quarto volumes, was printed by Strahan in November 1777 and published by Strahan and Cadell in London in late February 1778.2 The author is identified on the title page of the quarto editions as ‘ADAM SMITH, LL.D. and F.R.S. Formerly Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow’. The third edition of Wealth of Nations was printed by Strahan in October 1784 and published in the third week of November. This was the first and only major textual revision of the work, with ‘additions and corrections’ so substantial that they were also published separately in quarto for the benefit of purchasers of the first two editions. In addition to Smith’s own revisions, the third edition included an index that was prepared in London and mailed to 1 It is certain that Bell owned a one-twelfth share of the seventh edition, as recorded in the ledger book of Bell & Bradfute spanning the period 1788–93, Cadell account, 23 January 1793, National Library of Scotland, Dep. 193, p. 299. In addition, the Bell & Bradfute ledgers in the Edinburgh City Chambers, SL 138/3, vol. 3, contain impression accounts of the ninth edition of 1801 and the tenth edition of 1804 that also show Bell with a one-twelfth share. 2 Printing information from the Strahan ledgers for the second through the sixth editions of Wealth of Nations is presented fully in the note on ‘The Text and Apparatus’ by W. B. Todd in the Glasgow Edition of Wealth of Nations, ed. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1976), pp. 61–4. However, the old folio numbers in BL, Add. MS 48,815, as given on 61, n. 2, should be updated to 22 (second edition), 79 (third edition), 98 (fourth edition), and 126 (fifth edition), and the reference to the account of the sixth edition should be corrected to read Add. MS 48,817, f. 17.


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Smith shortly before publication.1 This was also the first edition to be published in a more affordable three-volume octavo format, though the price of 18 shillings in boards or a guinea (21 shillings) bound was still substantial. Both the format and the price remained constant for several editions to come. The publishers printed 1,000 copies of the third edition and were not disappointed. Just two years later, in October 1786, Andrew Strahan printed 1,250 copies of the fourth edition, which was published in early November, with an imprint that reflected the change at the head of the Strahan firm (i.e., ‘A. Strahan’ instead of ‘W. Strahan’). As sales continued to soar, the publishers kept increasing the size of the print runs. The fifth edition, the last to appear in the author’s lifetime, was printed by Strahan in February 1789 in a quantity of 1,500 copies. In December 1791 Strahan printed 2,000 copies of the sixth edition, and he printed 2,500 copies of the seventh edition in December 1793 and the same number of the eighth edition in September 1796. Then the press run fell back down to 2,000 for the ninth edition, printed in May 1799, as well as the tenth edition, printed in March 1802 – the last edition to be covered by statutory copyright.2 Thus, in addition to the 1,000 or 1,250 two-volume quarto sets that appeared in the late 1770s, Strahan printed almost 4,000 three-volume octavo sets of Wealth of Nations during Smith’s lifetime and a total of nearly 15,000 three-volume octavo sets in the period from October 1784 to March 1802. As a large and unexpectedly popular book, Wealth of Nations was also very profitable, and the author himself made a great deal of money from it: £1,100 in confirmed payments, and a grand total of perhaps £1,500–1,800.3 Another indication of the book’s popularity is the appearance in 1797 of a textbook abridgement of just under 300 octavo pages by Jeremiah Joyce, entitled A Complete Analysis or Abridgement of Dr. Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Printed at Cambridge by Benjamin Flower for ‘J. Deighton, and J. Nicholson; also for G. G. and J. Robinson, W. H. Lunn, and T. Conder, London; and J. March, Norwich’, with an advertisement by Joyce dated 20 June 1797, the Complete Analysis went to a second Cambridge edition in 1804 (also issued with a London imprint in 1818) and would go to a third London edition in 1821. In the revised and expanded third edition of Wealth of Nations of 1784, Smith’s name appears on the title page with extensive description, as ‘ADAM SMITH, LL.D. and F.R.S. of London and Edinburgh: One of the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs in Scotland; and Formerly Professor of 1 Smith to [Cadell], 18 November 1784, Correspondence, pp. 279–80. Hugh Blair had pointed out the need for extensive indexing in his letter to Smith of 3 April 1776, Correspondence, p. 189. 2 BL, Add. MS 48,815, ff. 22, 79, 98, 126; Add. MS 48,817, ff. 17, 18, 95, 96, 97. 3 A more detailed discussion of this topic will appear in my forthcoming article in the Adam Smith Review.



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Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow.’ We do not know why Smith changed his mind on this matter so completely in the seventeen years since he had asked William Strahan to ‘call me simply Adam Smith without any addition either before or behind’ on the title page of the third edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments. Whatever the reasons for it, the change had a lasting effect. Not only did the title pages of subsequent editions of Wealth of Nations continue to refer to the author in this manner but, as we have seen, in the last year of his life Smith (or his publishers) altered the title page of the sixth edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments to conform to this longer style of biographical identification, and the same mode of description subsequently became standard on the title pages of later editions of that work, as well. From the fourth edition in 1786 to the seventh edition in 1793, the imprints of Wealth of Nations contain only the names of Andrew Strahan and Thomas Cadell as publishers. After the retirement of Thomas Cadell, Sr., in 1793, however, the title page of the eighth edition of 1796 was altered to read ‘Printed for A. Strahan; and T. Cadell jun. and W. Davies (successors to Mr. Cadell) in the Strand’. The ninth edition of 1799 has the same imprint without the parenthetical reference to the senior Cadell, but in the tenth edition of 1802, as in the ninth edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1801, Andrew Strahan appears only as the printer, with Cadell and Davies as the sole publishers, even though it is clear from the Strahan ledgers that at this time Andrew Strahan still owned one-half of the copyright.1 On the basis of evidence that I shall present more fully elsewhere, it also appears that William Creech of Edinburgh was involved with the publication from the beginning, though the precise nature of his role as a co-publisher cannot currently be ascertained. Essays on Philosophical Subjects After Smith died in July 1790, his literary executors, Joseph Black and James Hutton, set out to edit a number of his unpublished papers for a posthumous volume. As the principal publishers of both Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, Andrew Strahan and Thomas Cadell were the most likely publishers to approach for this purpose. Not knowing these men personally, the executors employed as their intermediary the eminent Edinburgh literary man and lawyer Henry Mackenzie, who had been publishing his works with the firms of Strahan and Cadell for two decades. In a letter to Cadell of 2 August 1792 that was also intended for Strahan, Mackenzie first promotes a work by Hutton himself, which Strahan and Cadell would publish later that year as Dissertations on Different Subjects in Natural Philosophy. He then turns to ‘our Friend Dr Smith’s posthumous Works’, consisting of his history of 1

BL, Add. MS 48,901, ff. 81–2.


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astronomy ‘& some smaller Essays on the Imitative Arts, & other moral & literary subjects’. Mackenzie thinks these essays might make up a fairly large octavo volume, comparable in length to the first edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments, or perhaps a single quarto volume along the lines of William Robertson’s Historical Disquisition concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients Had of India (1791). ‘Of the merit of these Essays (if my opinion were worth any thing)’, he writes, ‘I need only say that I think them worthy of their Author. His nephew [Smith’s heir David Douglas] whose property they are, is not so independent as Dr Hutton, & therefore the Copy Money for this work is a matter of some consideration’. Finally, Mackenzie mentions the possibility that a biography of Smith by Dugald Stewart, not yet complete, will be prefixed to the book.1 Breaking with their standard policy of responding to authors’ proposals regarding the terms of publication, rather than proposing terms themselves, Strahan and Cadell decide, in light of their ‘respect for the memory of Mr Smith’ and their confidence in Mackenzie himself, to offer the following terms: £300 pounds for the first edition, to consist of 1000 copies of a quarto volume, plus another £200 if the book should reach a second edition. In support of this proposal, the publishers review the publication terms for Wealth of Nations and point out that in the case of the posthumous essays there will be no chance to renew the copyright for a second period of fourteen years (because that could only be done when the author was still alive), thus lowering the value of the property. After they conclude by requesting that the printing be done in London, Cadell adds a postscript which asks: ‘Cannot we have a Portrait of Dr Smith.’2 The fact that no portrait of Smith had ever been painted may have determined the negative response to Cadell’s question, though a medallion by James Tassie was later used for frontispiece engravings of Smith in the French edition of Essays on Philosophical Subjects of 1797 as well as in the first volume of the London edition of Smith’s Works in 1811. Dugald Stewart read his life of Smith to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 21 January and 18 March 1793. Five days before the latter meeting, he informs Cadell that his biography is complete and ready for publication, though he expresses some uncertainty about its possible publication venues.3 Stewart’s Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith, LL.D. was first published in 1794 in the third volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, but it also appeared in the following year, with slight revisions, at the beginning of Essays on Philosophical Subjects. On 16 March 1795 Stewart, in an attempt to sort out 1

Mackenzie to Cadell, 2 August 1792, National Library of Scotland, Acc 9546. Cadell [and Andrew Strahan] to Mackenzie, 21 December 1792, in Literature and Literati: The Literary Correspondence and Notebooks of Henry Mackenzie. Volume 1/Letters 1766–1827, ed. Horst W. Drescher (Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1989), p. 177. 3 Stewart to Cadell, 13 March 1793, National Library of Scotland, MS 5319, ff. 35–6, quoted in Ian Simpson Ross’s Introduction to Stewart’s biography of Smith in the Glasgow Edition of Smith’s Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. W. P .D. Wightman and J. C. Bryce (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1980), pp. 265–8. 2



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the details of the title page, submitted final corrections to William Preston, who was handling the printing of Smith’s book for the Strahan firm that he served as foreman (and later partner).1 In addition to changing the designation following his own name from ‘F.R.S. Edinburgh’ to ‘F.R.S.E.’, Stewart tends to the presentation of Smith’s name, which would appear on the title page as ‘The late Adam Smith, LL.D. Fellow of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh, etc. etc.’ The Strahan ledgers reveal that 1000 copies of Essays on Philosophical Subjects were printed in April 1795, and publication occurred by early June.2 Essays on Philosophical Subjects was officially edited by Black and Hutton, who explained their editorial policy in an advertisement prefixed to the work, but it is likely that Stewart was also involved in the editing process, and John Playfair may also have been involved. Besides Stewart’s biography, which is paginated in roman numerals running to xcv, the book consists of seven previously unpublished essays that come to a total of 244 pages: on the history of astronomy, the history of ancient physics, the history of ancient logics and metaphysics, the imitative arts, the affinity between music, dancing and poetry, the affinity between certain English and Italian verses, and the external senses. The imprint reads ‘London: Printed for T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies (Successors to Mr. Cadell) in the Strand; and W. Creech, Edinburgh’ (Creech’s name having been added as a result of a postscript in Stewart’s letter to Preston). The price was fifteen shillings in boards.3 Sales were unimpressive. Andrew Strahan’s account of the book in his ledgers, titled ‘Dr. Smith’s Posthumous Essays’, records on the verso that on 23 December 1794 Strahan paid the executors £150 as his one-half of the copy money for the first edition (the other half would be paid by Cadell and Davies). There were no further payments to Smith’s estate, because a second British edition was never required during this period, though the work was reprinted quickly in Dublin, and four years later in Basil (Basel),4 and would appear as a volume in Cadell and Davies’s edition of Smith’s Works (1811–12). The recto, showing income from Essays on Philosophical Subjects alone, records a total of 1

115. 2

Stewart to Preston, 16 March [1795], Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Montagu d.10, f.

BL, Add. MS 48,817, f. 20; Edinburgh Evening Courant, 6 June 1795. Cadell & Davies’s advertisement in the General Evening Post for 4–6 August 1795 lists it at that price, as do various Cadell & Davies catalogues and advertisements, including one at the end of the eighth edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments. The Post advertisement states that ‘the following valuable Books were, during the last Winter, printed for T. Cadell, jun. and W. Davies (successors to Mr. Cadell), in the Strand’. However, since we know that Essays on Philosophical Subjects was printed in the spring of 1795, it cannot literally have been published during the preceding winter. 4 A list of editions appears in Essays on Philosophical Subjects (1980), 28–9. The National Library of Scotland and the online English Short-Title Catalogue also record a copy with a 1799 Strasburgh (Strasbourg) imprint, sold by F. G. Levrault (ESTC T219379), which is probably a reissue, with a cancel title page, of the 1799 Basil edition that appears to have the same pagination (ESTC T33500). 3


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just £122. 15s.1d. as ‘Profit on Books sold’ to 1818.1 Thus, Essays on Philosophical Subjects was the only one of Smith’s three books on which the publishers lost money.

Irish Reprints of Smith’s Books Despite its popularity and steady sales, Theory of Moral Sentiments was not immediately reprinted in Dublin. Wealth of Nations, however, was promptly reprinted by a group of twenty Dublin booksellers affiliated with a body that sometimes called itself the Company of Booksellers.2 The first Dublin edition of Wealth of Nations was printed on ‘fine paper’ and published by mid-June 1776 in three octavo volumes that cost just under a pound (19s. 6d. bound) at a time when the book was available in Britain only in a two-volume quarto edition priced more than twice as high.3 On at least one occasion, customs officials in Scotland confiscated the unbound sheets of this Dublin edition as they were being smuggled into Britain.4 A second Dublin edition is said to have been advertised by William McKenzie in the Dublin Evening Post on 15 October 1782, as being ‘published this day’,5 but no copy has been traced. After Strahan and Cadell published the third edition of Wealth of Nations in three octavo volumes in 1784, at a price not much different from that of the Dublin threevolume octavo edition of 1776, ten Dublin booksellers responded in 1785 with a cheaper ‘fourth edition’ in just two octavo volumes.6 They achieved their goal 1

BL, Add. MS 48,814A, f. 35. On the Company of Booksellers and Dublin reprinting of British (especially Scottish) books, see Richard B. Sher, The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and America, forthcoming, as well as M. Pollard, A Dictionary of Members of the Dublin Book Trade 1550–1800, (Bibliographic Society, London 2000), esp. 114. The twenty booksellers listed in the imprint are: [Henry or William] Whitestone, [Dillon] Chamberlaine, W[illiam] Watson, [James] Potts, S[amuel] Watson, [James II or Peter] Hoey, [James] Williams, W[illiam] Colles, [William] Wilson, [Thomas] Armitage, [Thomas] Walker, [Richard] Moncrieffe, [Caleb] Jenkin, [William] Gilbert, [Edward] Cross, [Michael] Mills, [William] Hallhead, [Thomas Todd] Faulkner, [John] Hillary, and [Isaac or John] Colles. 3 See the separate advertisements by Edward Cross and William Wilson in the Hibernian Journal for 14–17 June 1776. Wilson’s advertisement comments on the paper, as does an advertisement by Michael Mills in the 16–18 October number of the same newspaper. Cross’s and Mills’s advertisements state that the book is also available for 16s. 3d. sewed. 4 Warren McDougall, ‘Smugglers, Reprinters and Hot Pursuers: The Irish-Scottish Book Trade and Copyright Prosecutions in the Late Eighteenth Century’, in The Stationers’ Company and the Book Trade 1550–1990, ed. Robin Myers and Michael Harris (Oak Knoll Press, Winchester and New Castle, Del. 1997), p. 161. 5 Cited in M. Pollard, Dictionary, p. 386. 6 The ten Dublin booksellers were W[illiam] Colles, R[ichard] Moncrieffe, G[eorge] Burnet, W[illiam] Wilson, C[aleb] Jenkin, L[uke] White, H[enry] Whitestone, P[atrick] Byrne, J[ohn] Cash, and W[illiam] M’Kenzie. 2



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by placing more than forty lines and well over four hundred words on each page, while closely copying the third London edition in content (including the style of designating the author on the title page). This was followed in 1793 by a similarly formatted ‘fifth edition’, so-called even though a fifth and a sixth edition had appeared in London since the last Irish edition. Though the publishers of the 1785 and 1793 Irish editions were not identical, the seven names listed in the imprint of the 1793 edition included five men who had been among the publishers of the 1785 edition.1 Theory of Moral Sentiments was not reprinted in Dublin until the spring of 1777. Although four editions had appeared in Britain by that time, the Dublin publishers, John Beatty and Christopher Jackson, called theirs the ‘sixth’ edition. Like the existing British editions, it was a one-volume octavo. The timing of the Dublin edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments suggests that its publishers were attempting to capitalise on the enormous popularity of Wealth of Nations. An advertisement for the book in the Hibernian Journal for 21–3 April 1777 seems to confirm this interpretation, for its begins: ‘To the Admirers of the Writings of Dr. SMITH, the celebrated Author of ‘An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the WEALTH of NATIONS,’ This Day is published…The Theory of Moral Sentiments…by Adam Smith LLD. FRS Formerly Professor of Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, and Author of ‘An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’.’ The price is given as 5s. 5d. bound. Slightly tighter printing reduced the size of the volume by a few pages compared to the British editions, no doubt for the sake of a lower price, but the British octavo was already so cheap that the differential of 6d. was not significant. It was probably for this reason that no other editions of Theory of Moral Sentiments were published in Dublin. Beatty and Jackson’s advertisement also contains the following long passage, addressed ‘To the LOVERS of LITERATURE’, and written in a bombastic style that may well have driven away more readers than it attracted: Though the great Degree of Reputation in which the THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS is deservedly held, may render unnecessary all Attempts to recommend it; and though it is generally observed, that Works of great & acknowledged Excellence are but degraded by Panegyric – characters however, the Productions of impartial and elegant Pens, which, whilst they display in a brief, yet comprehensive Manner, the Plans of Compositions of Merit and Utility, and by their ingenious and disinterested Strictures thereon, direct the Opinions of Taste in their Judgment on and choice of, Literary Works, as they are rarely met with, so they must prove acceptable.

To this is added the following sentence, which is made all the more intriguing by the fact that I have yet to locate a copy of the Dublin edition which actually 1 The five whose names appear in both editions are Burnet, White, Wilson, Byrne, and M’Kenzie. The two new names in the 1793 imprint are J[ames] Moore and W[illiam] Jones.


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contains the advertisement it mentions: ‘The Editors have, in an Advertisement which is given with the above Book, inserted Extracts from two of our most celebrated English Writers, whose Recommendations may be considered as the Standards of Truth and Taste.’ Finally, in early December 1795 a group of eight Dublin booksellers, three of whom had also been involved with reprinting the 1793 Irish edition of Wealth of Nations, published an Irish edition of Smith’s posthumous Essays on Philosophical Subjects.1 Like Wealth of Nations, the London edition of Essays on Philosophical Subjects appeared to be a vulnerable target for an Irish reprint because it was a relatively expensive quarto that the Dublin booksellers could reduce to a smaller and cheaper octavo format. They did so, but given the poor sales of the London edition, it is unlikely that there was much demand for the Dublin edition either. Conclusion In spite of the commercial failure of the posthumous Essays on Philosophical Subjects, Adam Smith was a best-selling author on the strength of the only two books to appear in his lifetime: Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations. We have seen that these works followed very different paths to best-seller status. Theory of Moral Sentiments began in 1759 as an inexpensive one-volume octavo, and it sold steadily, if not spectacularly, for three decades, before being expanded, in the sixth edition of 1790, into a two-volume octavo that sold better than earlier editions even though it cost more than twice as much. Wealth of Nations began in 1776 as an expensive two-volume quarto that far exceeded its publishers’ modest expectations, but it was the publication of the revised third edition in 1784, in three octavo volumes that cost half as much as the quarto editions, which carried the book to the next level of commercial success. In each case, then, Smith carried out one major textual revision, with large additions, which occurred in conjunction with a significant change in format and price – though one book became bulkier and considerably more expensive, while the other was reduced in format and price. In both cases, this critical moment – 1790 for Theory of Moral Sentiments and 1784 for Wealth of Nations – demonstrated the ability of the author and the publishers to coordinate their efforts effectively in order to sustain and rejuvenate Smith’s major books, for readers in their day as well as in ours.

1 The publishers were [Patrick] Wogan, [Patrick] Byrne, J[ames] Moore, [Harriet] Colbert, [John] Rice, W[illiam] Jones, [James or William] Porter, and [George] Folingsby. M. Pollard, Dictionary, p. 110, cites a ‘published this day’ advertisement for the Irish edition in the Dublin Evening Post by one of its publishers (Harriet Colbert) on 5 December 1795.


Adam Smith in English: From Playfair to Cannan Keith Tribe

In 1804 copyright both in Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations expired.1 Although the former had sold well during the 1790s, its central theses had been criticised by Thomas Reid and also by his student, Dugald Stewart;2 and Smith’s ‘sympathetic’ account of human conduct became increasingly peripheral to the development of moral philosophy during the first third of the nineteenth century. Theory of Moral Sentiments did remain in print, editions appearing regularly every decade (apart from the 1830s) until the end of the century. But as James Bonar observed, although Smith’s first book made his reputation and provided the opportunities for travel and reflection that enabled him to write the second, it ‘has needed all the fame of the second to keep alive the memory of the first.’3 Scholarly discussion of Theory of Moral Sentiments has indeed been at best patchy until very recently – only the sustained revival since the 1970s of interest in the Scottish Enlightenment has brought the work back into prominence, three separate editions of the book being currently available in Britain.4 Essays on Philosophical Subjects never found a strong following, and so until Cannan published his edition of the Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms in 1896, ‘the writings of Adam Smith’ were equivalent to these three books only, only one of which, the Wealth of Nations, enjoyed wide circulation and recognition. And this circumstance persisted well into the twentieth century, for although the importance of the Lectures was immediately acknowledged, the book sold poorly until the 1920s, a period in which there 1 Copyright under the Act of 1709–10 lasted 28 years from the publication of a work, so the copyright in Wealth of Nations naturally expired in 1804; while as Richard Sher demonstrates, the revisions to the 1790 edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments were sufficiently extensive to justify refreshment of the copyright for a further fourteen years. 2 See the extracts printed in J. Reeder (ed.) On Moral Sentiments. Contemporary Responses to Adam Smith (Thoemmes Press, Bristol 1997), pp. 65–8, 121–35. 3 J. Bonar, ‘’The Theory of Moral Sentiments,’ by Adam Smith, 1759’, Journal of Philosophical Studies Vol. 1 (1926) p. 333. 4 The Glasgow Edition; the Liberty Press paperback version of the Glasgow edition; and the recent Cambridge University Press edition edited by Knud Haakonssen.


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was a general, international revival of interest in the work of Smith, cut short in mid-century by the Second World War. Throughout the nineteenth century, therefore, the reputation of Adam Smith was associated almost exclusively with his Wealth of Nations. While the work remained in copyright the text was published as it stood, with the addition of advertisements to the third and fourth editions, and an index. Once copyright lapsed it typically appeared in editions with various kinds of introductory matter, and in some cases with extensive editorial notes.1 First in 1805 came William Playfair’s three-volume edition from Cadell and Davies, the former holders of the copyright; then in 1814 the four-volume edition from David Buchanan, the fourth volume being entirely made up of Buchanan’s own notes; then in 1828 McCulloch’s four-volume edition, reset in one volume in 1838 and then reprinted several times through to the 1870s. Other notable editions were published by Gibbon Wakefield (1835–9), Thorold Rogers (1869) and Shield Nicholson (1884), all of which went into second editions, and in Shield Nicholson’s case was reprinted at least twice. This sequence was concluded in 1904 with the publication of Edwin Cannan’s twovolume edition, which formed the textual and editorial basis for all serious editions and translations during the twentieth century until it was in turn replaced by the Glasgow edition in 1976. Besides these recognised editions of Smith there were also a large number of versions not attributed to any particular editor. At least two significant editions never saw the light of day – both Malthus and later Jevons planned their own editions of Wealth of Nations, but never completed the task. And as the bibliography makes plain, new editions of Wealth of Nations appeared almost annually in Britain during the last third of the nineteenth century. Cannan however, having completed editing the Lectures in 1896, was clearly unimpressed with the quality of available editions of Wealth of Nations, and he appears to have formed the intention of remedying this deficiency by producing his own scholarly edition. By the end of July 1897 he had agreed terms with Methuen,2 committing himself to delivering a manuscript by October 1899, although as it turned out Cannan did not submit the manuscript until February 1903, the new edition being published in 1904 in two volumes.3 This was indeed a significant advance in Smith scholarship, a running summary in the margin assisted the reader in perceiving the flow of Smith’s writing, identifying 1 The same thing happened to Theory of Moral Sentiments, although without the degree of elaboration that came to characterise editions of Wealth of Nations – nineteenth-century editions of the former typically included, by way of an introduction, a version of Dugald Stewart’s account of Smith’s life. 2 A. M. M. Studman to Cannan, Methuen & Co., The Strand, 27 July 1897; Publishers’ Agreements, British Library of Political and Economic Science (BLPES), Cannan Papers, File 1015 f. 35. 3 Cannan to Methuen & Co., 28 February 1903 (handwritten draft); Publishers’ Agreements, BLPES, Cannan Papers, File 1015 f. 45.


ADAM SMITH IN ENGLISH

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unattributed allusions made by Smith to other literature, and noting where additions or changes had been made in the early editions. It was a model of restrained and careful scholarship, Cannan having first broached such an approach to the literature of economics in his Theories of Production and Distribution, where he had criticised the careless manner in which historical works were usually cited and discussed in the literature, emphasising that he would identify the source of all quotation with an exact reference.1 Looking at the many editions of Wealth of Nations turned out in the nineteenth century it is not difficult to see where Cannan found them lacking. The Shield Nicholson one-volume edition was not in itself unscholarly, but as with many one-volume editions it was presented in a typeface so small as to make the reading of extended passages an effort of will. The earlier Rogers edition was presented in a more readable format, but the editorial comments added by Rogers were directed primarily to the substance of Smith’s argument, rather than to his sources and allusions. And as we go back through the preceding editions, this tendency becomes even more marked. As already noted, ‘edited’ texts were a product of the post-copyright period when publishers sought to differentiate their own edition of Wealth of Nations from actual and potential competitors. But generally speaking, the more notable the editor, the worse the result. The more accessible nineteenth century editions were those unencumbered with extended notes and additional chapters composed by editors more concerned with advertising their own opinions than elucidating an increasingly historical text. It is likely that the throughout the nineteenth century the most widely read versions were the anonymous editions published with a short prefatory ‘life’ or, very often, a translation of Germain Garnier’s commentary upon Smith. Playfair, Buchanan, McCulloch and Wakefield all presumed that the task of the editor was to demonstrate to the reader where Smith had ‘gone wrong’, appending lengthy commentaries upon Smith’s arguments, especially in Books One and Two. Hence the fourth volume of Buchanan’s edition, composed of Buchanan’s own dreary views on political economy; hence also McCulloch’s extensive apparatus of notes which in 1872 was still setting forth opinions (recycled, as so often with McCulloch, from his other writings) on colonies and the American War (of Independence) and the use of impressments for naval recruitment (which had not been practised since the end of the Napoleonic Wars). Quite obviously in such cases not even the publishers looked at what they were printing, but the fact that they kept turning out such editions indicates that they must have thought there was a steady market for the work. 1 E. Cannan, A History of the Theories of Production and Distribution in English Political Economy from 1776 to 1848, (Rivington, Percival & Co, London 1894), p. vii. (The book was actually published in May 1893). Cannan’s generally robust, combative and argumentative approach to classical economics in this book has rather distracted attention from the careful reading of the literature of political economy that he provides, which remains the principal source of the work’s originality.


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However, this did not mean that any and every edition would sell: mistakes could be made, as Cadell and Davies found to their cost with their choice of William Playfair as editor of their ‘new’ edition. The Early Post-1804 Editions of the Wealth of Nations Within a year of expiry of their copyright in Wealth of Nations Cadell and Davies published an ‘Eleventh Edition’ edited by William Playfair,1 establishing a continuity with the ten editions produced in copyright while also extending the edition in a manner intended to confirm its status as the standard text. No correspondence with Playfair appears to have survived, but supposition that the publishers actively sought to defend their rights in Smith in this way is confirmed by contemporary correspondence from Malthus concerning drafts of Playfair’s notes sent to him by Cadell and Davies. Malthus, writing from Bath (in the dark, while his wife was in labour) responded to this material as follows: I have looked over the packet that you sent, though from being at present very particularly engaged I have not been able to give it the attention I could have wished. Some of the notes appear to have merit, others not, and some of the most important points are not discussed at all. It is difficult however to pass any fair judgement upon the work as a whole; because the supplementary chapters evidently contain the discussion of those subjects which the writer thinks of the greatest consequence, and none of these supplementary chapters are sent. With regard to myself I can have no manner of objection to your publishing this edition before mine, as it would give me more time, which the more I think on the subject the more I feel is necessary, in order to produce an edition that would have any thing like the effect of giving you a new copyright. I had much rather that you would rely on the advice of any other friend respecting the eligibility of publishing the edition now offered, than on mine, particularly as I have not had the leisure to read the manuscript very attentively, and this you will not be surprised at when I tell you that in addition to the engagements, I have been in a state of considerable anxiety about Mrs. Malthus, who was brought to bed this morning before her time, but is now happily pretty well. Should the present offer that you have received or any other, make you wish to alter your plans, I beg that you will not consider yourself as tied by anything that has passed between us. I am Dear Sir etc. In the advertisement, the last paragraph and the manner in which the French economists are spoken of do not give a very favourable impression. The style is not very correct, and is written without punctuation; but such little errors may be easily mended. The Author of the original work is always called Mr. Smith; but Adam Smith, Dr. Smith, or Smith are all preferable. 1

See below, p. 33, n. 1.



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I am writing in the dark – Excuse great haste.1

From this and later correspondence it is clear that, much as Smith himself had facilitated the renewal of copyright in Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1790 by the extensive additions he made to the sixth edition, Malthus had been involved in discussions with Cadell and Davies concerning his editing Wealth of Nations to similar effect. Malthus implies above that Playfair had ‘offered’ an edition to Smith’s publishers, but it seems altogether too much of a coincidence that the Playfair edition originated in a purely unsolicited approach, given that the complete work, with supplementary chapters, appeared within the year. Malthus’s one substantive criticism, concerning Playfair’s treatment of the Physiocrats, is a fair and significant one, for this relates to one of the more bizarre features of Playfair’s colourful ‘Life of Dr. Adam Smith’; so it seems likely that Malthus had been sent this item and some of the draft notes at least. In July 1805 Malthus was appointed Professor of Political Economy at East India College, and although the teaching burden was not high – later records state that he taught on average five hours per week2 – the course that he devised was entirely new, since political economy had never been systematically taught before in England. His chief textbook was Wealth of Nations, as the questions from a surviving 1808 examination paper show.3 Later student notes demonstrate that this work remained the core of his teaching some twenty years later, well after he had published his own Principles of Political Economy in 1820. Malthus never did publish ‘his’ edition of Wealth of Nations, but he seems to have kept such a project in mind,4 and when in 1812 he was approached by an Edinburgh bookseller concerning a new edition he seems to have been very receptive to the idea. Thinking that Cadell and Davies had no further interest in a new edition, Malthus accepted an offer made through Jeffrey of £1,5005 to supply footnotes to Wealth of Nations plus an additional volume of ‘larger notes and dissertations’, to be completed ‘in about two years.’6 This last suggests that the publisher concerned was Oliphant, Waugh and Innes, who did publish an 1 Letter from Malthus to Cadell and Davies, Bath, 16 December 1804, cited in P. James, Population Malthus, (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1979) pp. 165–6; source for the letter given on p. 477 as ‘MS Letter in the City of Bath Municipal Library.’ 2 India Office Records, J/1/38, ff. 224–5. 3 Three questions in this paper explicitly refer to Physiocratic doctrine – Examination Paper in Political Economy 1808, East India College Papers, Bodleian Library. 4 Perhaps he had formed it much earlier than 1804, since James records that he bought a copy of the Garnier translation during his visit to Paris in 1802 – P. James, Population Malthus, p. 245. 5 Which was three times Malthus’s generous East India College salary. 6 T. R. Malthus to Cadell & Davies, East India College 3 September 1812, reprinted in T. Besterman, (ed.) The Publishing Firm of Cadell & Davies. Select Correspondence and Accounts 1793–1836, (Oxford University Press, London 1938) p. 163. James reproduces a similar letter from Malthus to Cadell and Davies dated 28 August 1812, Population Malthus, pp. 245–6, giving the source on p. 483 as Houghton Library, Harvard University.


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edition of this kind – three volumes with an additional volume of notes – in November 1814, the ‘Introduction’ to the fourth volume being dated 14 September 1814.1 From Malthus’s testy responses to enquiries from Cadell and Davies regarding his plans it seems that the latter did still entertain hopes of his producing an edition for them, although Malthus obviously had a quite contrary impression. Over a year later, when Malthus saw the forthcoming Buchanan edition advertised, he wrote to Francis Horner that it was ‘precisely upon the same plan as that which I had projected.’2 Consequent upon the appearance of the Buchanan edition at the end of 1814 Malthus gave up the idea of producing his own edition of Smith and planned instead to publish his notes as essays, and Ricardo at least was under the impression that the work was well in hand.3 And so nothing ever came of Malthus’s plan to produce an edition of Wealth of Nations, which is regrettable since he did at least understand something of Smith and political economy – not something one could with confidence say of William Playfair, or later of David Buchanan. Playfair had more than a little of the seventeenth-century projector about him. Born near Dundee in 1759, the fourth son of a Scottish minister, he gravitated to Paris during the 1780s after an unsuccessful London business venture, became involved in a dubious land development company and allegedly participated in the storming of the Bastille, but then quickly left France following the failure of the land company. Back in London he set up a security bank making small loans against subdivided securities, an enterprise which likewise promptly failed. By 1795 he had turned to criticism of the French revolution, and for the next twenty years he lived as a jobbing writer, coming in this way to edit Wealth of Nations for Cadell and Davies.4 His experience of Paris on the eve of the Revolution helps explain both the interesting linkage that he makes in his ‘Life’ between Adam Smith and the French revolution, and also the very curious account that he gives of this link. Playfair’s three-volume edition opens with an ‘Advertisement’, a ‘Preface’, and ‘The Life of Dr Adam Smith’, all written by Playfair. From the beginning 1 D. Buchanan, Observations on the Subjects Treated of in Dr Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (Oliphant, Waugh & Innes, Edinburgh 1814) p. xvi. 2 Malthus to Francis Horner, 10 November 1813, cited in James Mill to David Ricardo, 24 November 1814, in The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. P. Sraffa, M. H. Dobb, Vol. VI Letters 1810–1815, No. 68, p. 159 fn. 1; Mill noted that the Buchanan edition had just appeared and had asked Ricardo what Malthus was doing with his notes on Adam Smith. 3 Ricardo to Malthus, 13 January 1815, Works and Correspondence Vol. VI, No. 73, p. 169. ‘I expect that they will not only be very useful in giving correct notions to the public, but also in calling attention of those, who are well informed in the science of political economy, to many points which have hitherto escaped their attention.’’ No manuscript relating to these notes has ever been traced. 4 Dictionary of National Biography Vol. 45 pp. 414–15.



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he sought to contrast French politics and economics with those of Britain. Smith’s Wealth of Nations was, he stated, ‘founded on facts’, following lines established by Newton. French writers, by contrast … more numerous and less attentive to facts, have established ingenious theories, and attempted to reduce everything to a system, on which they reasoned until they became enthusiasts, incapable of appreciating any thing that did not conform to the theories they had laid down.1

This foreshadows a life of Smith in which the ‘oeconomists’ play a significant role both for Smith and for the course of the French Revolution. ‘Philosophers’, suggested Playfair, were abroad in Europe: The philosopher aimed at overturning religion, in order to destroy an order of society that hurt their pride; they had formed a most absurd theory that all distinction among mankind should consist in genius and talents; they considered themselves then as entitled to the first rank, and looked down from their philosophic thrones with contempt on kings and princes.2

Assuming the guise of oeconomists, these Philosophers entered into a conspiracy that resulted in the turmoil of the Revolution, an event for which oeconomists were not to blame, but which corresponded with much of their reasoning. Once into Smith’s text, Playfair’s editorial interventions take the form of thoughts prompted by the text; in Book I there are substantial footnotes of this kind every third page on average. Volume I of this edition contains Book I and Book II, Chapters 1 and 2, resuming with Chapter 3 in Volume II, where Playfair begins to insert chapters which comment upon, correct, or ‘complete’ Smith, as with the new chapters ‘On the Commerce of Grain, Monopolies, and Forestalling’ and ‘On Treaties of Commerce’. In Volume III Playfair includes a financial history since 1790, as Smith’s treatment of the Bank of England was very brief, and a chapter ‘On the French Oeconomists’, noting that The real fact is, that Dr Smith (as well as many of the oeconomists themselves) was ignorant of the secret belonging to the sect, which became evident to all the thinking and reflecting part of mankind, when the revolution began in 1789. … The leaders of the revolution were all oeconomists, the Abbé Sieyes, the Abbé Morelet, the marquis of Condorcet, Mirabeau’s eldest son, with the whole host of inferior disciples were all oeconomists. M. Necker was an oeconomist, though his pride and vanity hindered him from subscribing implicitly to their faith.3

Frederick the Great, argues Playfair, was also long fascinated by the oeconomists, but when he discerned that ‘by simply pretending to reduce to practice 1 ‘Preface’, to A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols, ed. William Playfair, 11th edition, (T. Cadell and W. Davies, London 1805) p. vii. 2 W. Playfair, ‘The Life of Dr. Adam Smith’, in Smith, 1805 (Playfair) pp. xviii–xix. 3 Smith, 1805 (Playfair) Vol. III pp. 514–15.


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the oeconomical table they were silently labouring to overturn all the thrones of Europe’1 he withdrew his support. Nonetheless: If a monarch of such eminent abilities and penetration, and an active member of the association, who pensioned and protected several of the leaders, was so long ignorant of the real intentions of his associates, the author of the inquiry could not be expected to see into it; and his not doing so can neither merit blame, nor excite surprise.2

Playfair’s excessive anxiety to absolve Smith of any suggestion of radicalism is suggestive of the contemporary political climate in which he worked, even though his strenuous efforts to distance Smith from any intellectual association with the French Revolution appears slightly comical today. Aside from this altogether eccentric aspect of Playfair’s editorialising, his real lack of competence did not go unremarked; we have already seen that Malthus found the drafts wanting in balance, and Francis Horner opened his own review of the work as follows: In the whole course of our literary inquisition, we have not met with an instance so discreditable to the English press, as this edition of the Wealth of Nations. It may be given as a specimen of the most presumptuous book-making. The editor proves himself quite ignorant of his author, and of the science on which that author wrote: He does not scruple, however, sometimes to correct, and sometimes to confirm, what he generally misunderstands in both cases.3

While expressing his surprise that such a defective work should be published by an otherwise respectable bookseller, Horner goes on to state that ‘since the expiration of the original right of property several editions have been published in different parts of the country’, noting the recent publication in London of an edition directed to ‘artisans and tradesmen.’4 Although it is not entirely clear to which edition Horner was referring, he was perfectly correct to note that the expiry of copyright had prompted a flurry of new editions, and these were far better received than that of Playfair. There never was a ‘twelfth edition’ of Wealth of Nations from Cadell and Davies, instead they published a ‘new’ edition in 1812 from the same sheets as their ‘Works’ edition of Wealth of Nations,5 prefacing it with an outline of Smith’s life 1

Smith, 1805 (Playfair) Vol. III p. 518. Loc. cit. 3 F. Horner, Review of William Playfair, ‘The Wealth of Nations, with Notes, Supplementary Chapters, and a Life of Dr Smith,’ Edinburgh Review Vol. VII No. 14 (January 1806) p. 470. 4 F. Horner, p. 471. 5 The Works of Adam Smith, LL.D., 5 vols, (T. Cadell and W. Davies, London 1812): Vol. I was Theory of Moral Sentiments; Vols II–IV were Wealth of Nations; Vol. V (dated 1811) was fronted by the essay on the first formation of languages, followed by the Essays title page and contents, but with Stewart’s ‘Account’ following Smith’s essays, rather than prefacing them as in the 1795 edition. This running order had been suggested by Stewart, who noted that 2



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and Garnier’s introduction in exactly the same way as had become standard practice since 1805.1 These Works represented a renewed attempt to defend their claim to Smith’s writing, suggesting that this alternative strategy was adopted once the failure of the Playfair edition had been recognised. Four separate editions of Wealth of Nations appeared in 1805: the Playfair, a two volume London edition from Greenland and Norris, a four volume Glasgow edition from R. Chapman, and a three-volume Glasgow edition printed for J. & J. Scrymgeour at the University Press. This last was the most significant, since it contained a translation of Garnier’s ‘Comparative View’ and ‘Method’ from his 1802 French edition, together with a ‘Life of the Author’.2 This set the overall pattern for subsequent editions – three volumes, without editorial notes, prefaced by a life of Smith and including Garnier’s two essays. Adopted by the Edinburgh 1806 edition from Creech, this pattern was hardened into a model reproduced until 1819.3 The advertisement to the Creech edition announced that the ‘Account of the Life of the Author’ drawn up for this edition was a more satisfactory account of his doctrines that was to be found in ‘any other edition’ of Wealth of Nations, a claim that appeared unchanged in all the succeeding editions, lending emphasis to the manner in which new editions were simply copied from the old without much attention being paid to any frontmatter. The Creech edition included in the ‘Life’ strong criticisms of Playfair, but these were moderated in the subsequent versions by the deletion of footnotes containing extracts from contemporary reviews.4 Smith had always thought that the essay on the first formation of languages sat awkwardly in Theory of Moral Sentiments, while Stewart wished to make some additions to his ‘Account’ – Dugald Stewart to William Davies, Kinneil House, Boness, 26 July 1810, in Besterman, Cadell & Davies, pp. 161–2. In agreeing to this Davies noted that production of the Works would have begun, except they could not find the relevant editions to print from, and asked if Stewart might supply them – William Davies to Dugald Stewart, London August 24 1810, in Besterman, Cadell & Davies pp. 162–3. 750 copies of the Works were produced, but 1,500 copies of the Theory of Moral Sentiments sheets were printed, the extra 750 making up the 11th edition; and 2,000 copies of the sheets for Wealth of Nations were printed, the excess sheets being bound with the 1,250 copies of the separately produced ‘Sketch of the Life of Smith’ and published as the ‘new edition’ of Wealth of Nations. See Strahan Papers, British Library Add. MS 48819 f. 134 which dates the edition as December 1811. 1 An American version of the Playfair edition was published in 1811 by Oliver D. Cooke, Hartford, Conn., reprinted in 1818; and a facsimile edition by Pickering & Chatto in 1995. 2 All later versions of this Garnier translation are identical apart from some later modernisation of spelling and punctuation, so it can be assumed that compositors simply set new versions from existing printed copies. 3 Reappearing in the Edinburgh 1809, Edinburgh 1811, London 1811, London 1812, Edinburgh and London 1817, London 1819 and Edinburgh 1819 editions. These share some curious common features, but close examination shows that they are all new settings produced by different printers. 4 ‘Leaving, therefore, the supplementary chapters and elucidations of Mr Playfair, it must be observed, that Dr Smith has, at the same time, been equally unfortunate in a biographer.


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The 1806 Creech edition extended to seven subsequent reprintings, bracketing the two editions, in 1814 and 1817, of Buchanan’s Wealth of Nations which, presumably, it also quantitatively eclipsed.1 David Buchanan, an Edinburgh journalist, appears to have been more conversant with contemporary political economy than William Playfair, although this familiarity seems to have induced overconfidence bordering on conceit and his editorialising largely took the form of ‘putting Smith right.’ Even a brief consideration of his commentary in the opening chapters, including remarks on some of Smith’s most well-known formulations, is sufficient to grasp this point. In the ‘Introduction and Plan of the Work’ Buchanan starts as he means to go on by questioning Smith’s distinction of productive from unproductive labour, referring the reader to his discussion of this point in Volume IV. Likewise he disputes Smith’s argument concerning the favour shown to trade over agriculture – implicitly rejecting Smith’s entire argument concerning European economic development – and refers the reader to his note on ‘The Natural Progress of Opulence’ in Volume IV.2 On p. 11 Smith is said to be mistaken with respect to the principle regulating the price of corn, and here Buchanan proceeds to make a distinction between production and market prices irrelevant to the point at issue. He questions the need to show a motive for division of labour in the propensity to truck and barter on p. 25. At p. 44 he appends a footnote suggesting that Smith’s labour-commanded conception of value is self-evident; on p. 48 a footnote disputes Smith’s account of the value of gold and silver. Buchanan finds Smith’s argument concerning the constancy of the portion of ease and happiness that has to be laid down in exchange ‘quite metaphysical’ (p. 49 fn. 1). A better measure of value would be corn: … From century to century, corn, from the steadiness of its own value, is the best measure for other commodities; but labour varying in its own value, cannot, on that account, measure the value of other things.3

Pages 65 and 66 are mostly taken up with a long footnote by Buchanan in which he complains of Smith’s ‘capital mistakes’ in respect of the value of silver. Fn. c) on p. 74 notes (for a change) that Smith is correct in his account of The detail of his peaceful life is almost lost among dissertations on the wickedness of atheism, and the horrors of revolution.’ Likewise Playfair’s laboured efforts to distance Smith from the Physiocrats are rejected, instead emphasis is placed on the purity of their views and Smith’s admiration for them. ‘Life of Dr. Adam Smith’ in A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols, (William Creech, Edinburgh 1806) p. xxiii. 1 Indeed, there is nothing that superficially distinguishes the text of the two Buchanan editions, and so, unlike those editions which followed the Creech model, there is a distinct possibility that the second Buchanan edition of 1817 simply recycled sheets from the first. 2 A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols, with notes, and an additional volume, by David Buchanan (Oliphant, Waugh & Innes, Edinburgh, and John Murray, London 1814), Vol. I pp. 2, 4. 3 Smith (1814 Buchanan) Vol. I p. 50 note m).



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the market price of bullion, but states this in such a way as to imply that this is an exception. And so it goes on. Whatever the substantive merit of Buchanan’s arguments, the notion that the work of an editor should be chiefly directed to a detailed running commentary expressing his personal opinions is a curious one, but one that Buchanan shares with Playfair. This approach does point to the function of Wealth of Nations at this time in the development of political economy – the Principles of both Ricardo and of Malthus, published respectively in 1817 and 1820, were themselves an analysis and critique of Smithian principles. But they published their comments and criticisms in their own books; and contemporaries turned to their arguments, not to those of Buchanan. The Transition to a Classical Author The most well-known nineteenth century edition of Wealth of Nations is that of J. R. McCulloch, first published in 1828 in four volumes, then in 1838 in a one-volume two-column version reprinted several times over the following forty years. But here again, the McCulloch edition was not the most common edition of its time, just the most noticeable. In 1827 a one volume, two-column edition of Wealth of Nations was published in Edinburgh1 which included ‘A Short Account of the Life and Writings of Dr. Adam Smith’2 and Garnier’s ‘View’ and ‘Method’. This printing was stereotyped, a procedure only adopted at this time for works where substantial sales were anticipated.3 Twenty-one further editions were printed from these plates over the following forty years.4 When the McCulloch edition was reset in one volume, that too was stereotyped, which accounts for the way that later editions reiterated notes and commentary that had become for the time quite outmoded. As the 1827 Edinburgh edition contained Garnier’s commentary on Smith and the structure of Wealth of Nations, a faithful copy of the original 1805 translation, it can be said with some justification that during the first half of the nineteenth century the most consistently accessible guide to Wealth of Nations in English was that of Germain Garnier.5 1 A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (Thomas Nelson and Peter Brown, Edinburgh 1827). 2 As had originally been printed in the 1812 Baynes, London edition. 3 Plaster of Paris impressions would have been made of the pages, and a master set of plates made – see P. Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oak Knoll Press, New Castle, Delaware 1995), pp. 200–5. Printers would have only kept pages set up for small books; the pages for large texts like Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations would have been set up, printed and then broken down several times in succession during printing. 4 In 1828, 1829, 1831, 1834, 1836, 1837, 1838, 1839, 1840, 1846, 1847 and 1848, 1852, 1854, 1860, 1863, 1864, 1865, 1867 and 1869. 5 The third edition of Jeremiah Joyce, A Complete Analysis; or, Abridgment of Dr. Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (G. & W. B. Whittaker, London 1821) pp. 362ff. also included for the first time Garnier’s ‘View’ and ‘Method’.


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Hence McCulloch’s edition first gained a wide readership in the 1840s and 1850s, but already in the first edition his commentary is suggestive of a shift in the status of Smith’s political economy. His ‘Editor’s Preface’ emphasises the progress made by the science of political economy since 1784, the date of the last revisions made by Smith to the Wealth of Nations, while the French Revolution and the growth of manufacturing in Britain had likewise altered the issues to which political economy had been addressed. What, then, could one learn from Smith? Still, however, the great and leading merits of Dr Smith’s work continue unimpaired. Nothing of importance has hitherto been added to his full and masterly exposition of the benefits arising from the freedom of industry: And even those parts where he is least sound as to principle, uniformly abound in the most sagacious remarks and disquisitions, and are illustrated with unrivalled skill and felicity.1

This new edition would therefore provide brief annotations and supplementary notes which would alert the reader to the fallacy of some of Smith’s principles, and indicate the progress of political economy, together with that of commercial and financial legislation. Most of the fourth volume was devoted to McCulloch’s supplementary notes, while the first volume was fronted with a ‘Sketch of the Life of Dr. Smith’, followed by an ‘Introductory Discourse’ on the development of political economy which extended to over ninety pages – all told the prefatory matter occupies some 120 pages, as against the 420 pages given over to Adam Smith’s text (which pagination in turn includes McCulloch’s substantial footnotes). McCulloch therefore conceived his editorial task along the same lines as had Playfair and Buchanan before him, the difference being that McCulloch’s views were at least representative of the current understanding of political economy. But of course this understanding was even by 1838 no longer quite the same, and by the 1850s, as the one-volume edition was reprinted with a very light reworking of the 1828 apparatus, McCulloch’s edition would have already become the sort of text to which his earlier comments on Smith now equally applied. The ‘Introductory Discourse’ presents a history of political economy from the Greeks onward, arriving at the Physiocrats just over half way through, whose principles are outlined in some detail before moving on to an assessment of Wealth of Nations. Contrasted with the Physiocrats, Smith’s demonstration that labour was the only source of wealth was a ‘merit’; but elsewhere McCulloch thought him to be close to other aspects of Physiocratic argument. His leaning to the system of the Economists – a leaning perceptible in every part of his work – made him so far swerve from the principles of his own system, as to 1 A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. R. McCulloch (Adam Black & William Tait, Edinburgh 1828), Vol. I p. VIII.



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admit that individual advantage is not always a true test of the public advantage of different employments. He considered agriculture, though not the only productive employment, as the most productive of any; and he considered the home trade as more productive than a direct foreign trade, and the latter than the carrying trade. It is clear, however, that these distinctions are all fundamentally erroneous. A state being nothing more than a collection of individuals, it necessarily follows, that whatever is most advantageous to them individually must be most advantageous to the state; and it is obvious, that the self-interest of those concerned will always prevent them from engaging in manufactures and commerce, unless when they yield as large profits, and are, consequently, as publicly beneficial as agriculture.1

This deviation of Smith had led him to consider agriculture as the most important of any sector, and leads on to his conception that productive labour is confined to that which is fixed and realised in a vendible commodity. Instead, McCulloch maintains all labour to be productive that ‘yields a revenue to the labourer without lessening the revenue of society in which it is exerted’.2 This discussion leads into a general evaluation of Smith’s treatment of value and rent, concluding that Smith’s over-fondness of digression had made the work less clear than it otherwise appeared: The real scope and tendency of the doctrines it unfolds is not to be learned from particular sentences or even chapters; and can only be properly understood and appreciated by those who have carefully studied and compared the whole work.3

Once into the text proper McCulloch remains at the reader’s elbow, noting omission and error in abundance. One example can stand for the many: the title to Book I Ch. VI, ‘Of the component Parts of the Prices of Commodities’ is footnoted and McCulloch comments: I have already shown – (Introductory Discourse, p. lxxi) – that the doctrine laid down in this chapter, that the value of commodities in the advanced stages of society varies according to the variations of rent, profit, and wages, is fundamentally erroneous. The variations alluded to merely affect the distribution of commodities, or the proportions in which they are divided among the three great classes of landlord, capitalists, and labour; and have nothing to do with their value, or with their power to exchange for, or buy each other, or labour.

By half way through the second volume the number of remarks has diminished, Smith’s account of the mercantile and agricultural schools in Book IV attracting remarkably little editorial attention. Overall, the editorial style is no different to that of Buchanan or Playfair, although McCulloch does have the advantage of a detailed understanding of the material, and none of the passages cited here are in themselves especially objectionable. Except that they properly 1 2 3

Smith (1828 McCulloch) Vol. I pp. lxx–lxxi. Op. cit. p. lxxi. Op. cit. p. lxxxi.


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belong in a separate work – and with McCulloch’s penchant for recycling his material much of the apparatus found here was either drawn from, or later found its way into, his other publications. The notes in the fourth volume range widely, including ‘Note V Consequences resulting from the use of the potato as a principal article of food’ pp. 163–72; ‘Note IX Money’ pp. 201–318; a nine page discussion in ‘Note XII Impressment – Plan for its Abolition’ which mentions Decker but not Smith; and a discussion of entailment in ‘Note XIX Disposal of Property by Will’ pp. 441–92. As in all these editions, the weight of commentary diminishes as the work progresses. In the last example, that of Wakefield, his comments, although still lengthy, are consigned to endnotes appended to each chapter, and cease altogether after Book II, implying perhaps that Wakefield did not consider the following books demanded as careful a reading as the first two.1 Smith’s work has by this time been divided between the principles outlined in the first two books, seen as directly relevant to an understanding of political economy, and that which can be found in the remaining three Books, whose contents do not lend themselves to evaluation as ‘principles’ in the same manner. And with the publication of John Stuart Mill’s new Principles of Political Economy in 1848 the Wealth of Nations was displaced from its existing role as an accessible introduction to modern political economy. But editions continued to appear with remarkable consistency, seemingly in the face of a general decline in the perceived relevance or applicability of Smith’s doctrines. This apparent paradox deserves some attention.

‘… A very amusing book about old times’2 It is generally supposed that, by the time of the centenary of the publication of Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith was celebrated as a canonical figure whose arguments were no longer considered in any great detail. Bagehot’s comment is sometimes invoked to register this shift, failing to note the complete context: Of The Wealth of Nations as an economic treatise, I have nothing to say now; but it is not useless to say that it is a very amusing book about old times. As it is dropping out of immediate use from change of times, it is well to observe that this very change brings it a new sort of interest of its own. There are few books from which there may be gathered more curious particulars of the old world. 1 A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, with a Commentary by the author of ‘England and America’, 4 vols (Charles Knight, London 1835–9). The first volume, including all of Book One bar the final chapter, obviously sold out before the others and Vol. I was reprinted in 1840, and bundled with the remaining stock of the first edition. 2 Walter Bagehot, ‘Adam Smith as a Person’, Fortnightly Review Vol. XX New Series (1876) p. 37. See also Donald Winch’s interesting discussion of this period in his essay under this title in A. E. Murphy, R. Prendergast (eds) Contributions to the History of Economic Thought. Essays in Honour of R. D. C. Black (Routledge, London 2000) pp. 73–95.



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So Bagehot was dismissive of the work strictly as an economic treatise, which seems a reasonable enough position; political economy would really have been in some trouble if such a book were still a source for economic analysis, narrowly conceived. Reviewing Smith’s biography and his other writings, Bagehot dismisses Theory of Moral Sentiments as a once well-regarded book which was now of little philosophical value, a judgement symmetrical with his verdict on Wealth of Nations. But it was the first work which, as Bonar later noted, gave Smith the opportunity for developing his ideas concerning the second: It was of cardinal importance to him to be delivered from the production of incessant words and to be brought into contact with facts and the world. And as it turned out, the caprice of Charles Townshend had a single further felicity. It not only brought him into contact with facts and the world; but with the most suitable sort of facts, and, for his purposes, the best part of the world. … And as a preparation for writing The Wealth of Nations he could nowhere else have been placed so well. Macauley says that ‘ancient abuses and new theories’ flourished together in France just before the meeting of the States-General in greater vigour than they had been seen to be combined before or since. And the description is quite as true economically as politically, on all economical matters the France of that time was a sort of museum stocked with the most important errors.1

France, Bagehot emphasises, was naturally suited to be an agricultural country, but its rulers had for generations sought to suppress this in favour of a manufacturing and mercantile development. The reference to France as a museum, then, refers not merely to the oeconomists and the mercantile school, but to the entire argument of Wealth of Nations Book III, which is further linked by Bagehot to the political limitations of the Physiocratic project. And so the reading that Bagehot here presents draws attention to aspects of Smith’s ideas that had, hitherto, gone largely unremarked, given the fixation of commentators on Books I and II of Wealth of Nations who reading the work in terms of principles and doctrine, rather than economic analysis and argument. Another common reference point relating to this centenary has been the dinner that the Political Economy Club held to mark the centenary. The afterdinner speaker was Robert Lowe, the Chancellor who responded to a question put to him by Gladstone: ‘What are the more important results which have followed from the publication of the ‘Wealth of Nations’, just one hundred years ago, and in what principal directions do the doctrines of that book still remain to be applied?’2 Here again, Lowe has been interpreted as suggesting that Smith’s work was simply a historical curiosity:

1

Op. cit. pp. 29–30. Political Economy Club, Revised Report of the Proceedings at the Dinner of 31st May, 1876, held in celebration of the hundredth year of the publication of the ‘Wealth of Nations’, (Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, London 1876) p. 5. 2


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Of course the questions that Adam Smith argued in his day are not the questions of our day; they have become obsolete, and they have become obsolete mainly through the labours of Adam Smith himself, because, by the cogency of his arguments and the force of his demonstrations, he has done away with many of the questions which then agitated the public mind. That, therefore, is nothing against Adam Smith. It is said, also, that he is always imperfect; and in one sense that also may be said to be true. It is true that Adam Smith was not what is called a systematic writer. I do not think his arrangement is at all a model of clearness or perspicuity.1

But Lowe did not permit these reservations to obstruct his view of the larger point: that in his view Smith had founded a ‘… deductive and demonstrative science of human actions and conduct’, in this respect the science of political economy having succeeded where a science of politics, in the hands of Bentham and Mill, had failed. … I apprehend nothing is more certain than that the main truths of Political Economy do not rest upon à posteriori arguments, but that they rest upon assumptions with regard to what mankind will do in particular circumstances, which assumptions experience has verified and shown to be true.

Here again the interest in Wealth of Nations turns no longer upon its doctrinal principles, but on its method, providing a basis for the elaboration of economic argument while at the same time its individual arguments were shown to be faulty. Far from falling into a state of neglect, Smith’s work begins to be rediscovered in the last third of the nineteenth century as a larger project that brought Theory of Moral Sentiments back into consideration. And when Thorold Rogers in his response to Lowe’s speech disputed this account of Smith’s method, arguing that Smith was an inductive, not a deductive, thinker, ‘… the practical Bacon of Economical science,’2 this simply confirms the manner in which Smith’s legacy had shifted into a new domain. 1

Op. cit. p. 8. Op. cit. p. 33. Thorold Rogers had staked his claim to Smith as an inductivist in his edition of Wealth of Nations: ‘His work not only displays a wealth of varied reading, but is full of facts. But, in fact, to be scientific, Political Economy must be constantly inductive. Half, and more than half, of the fallacies into which persons who have handled this subject have fallen, are the direct outcome of purely abstract speculation. In consequence, though he was the progenitor of the science, and necessarily left it incomplete, Smith is far more frequently in the right than his critics are. Almost every blemish in his work (some few inaccuracies of expression excepted, which arise from a somewhat loose use of terms,) is due to his exaggerated sympathy with the economical theories of his French friends and teachers. It is to this influence that we can trace his errors as to the nature and causes of value, and whatever is defective in his exposition of rent. Even here, however, he seems to me to be much more in the right than Ricardo, who accounts for the origin of rent on grounds which have absolutely no warrant in fact. His most adverse critics have, however, united with his warmest admirers in his vindication of private liberty against the interference of Government; that is, in his advocacy of what are called Free Trade principles.’ ‘Editor’s Preface’ to A. Smith, An Inquiry 2



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The fact that even W. S. Jevons, a very different economist from Thorold Rogers, planned his own edition of Wealth of Nations gives the lie to the idea that the work was regarded as superseded in the later nineteenth century. Jevons’s surviving drafts date from 1878–9, but he got little further than annotating some of Book I and sketching an outline ‘Life’;1 perhaps he was put off by the fact that three separate editions of the book were published in England in 1880, including a second edition of the Rogers edition.2 But it was a chance encounter in Oxford in 1895 that set in train events that would lead to the publication of a reliable edition of Wealth of Nations, and in turn prompt the production, in German, of a scholarly edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments. Edwin Cannan as an Editor of Adam Smith Cannan was an ‘Oxford economist’ when Oxford was at the centre of English political economy. A frail youth, but of independent means, he took a Pass Degree in 1884, continuing to live with his aunt in St Giles while studying political economy through the 1880s, succeeding William Ashley as Secretary of the Oxford Economic Society in 1888. Towards the end of 1889 he began work on what would later be published in 1893 as A History of the Theories of Production and Distribution, a work which, as noted above, set new scholarly standards in the history of economic analysis. In late April 1895, quite by chance, he fell into conversation with a Scottish advocate who turned out to own a set of student notes of Adam Smith’s lectures.3 By early May the manuscript was in Cannan’s hands, he had formed a plan for publication and gained Maconochie’s agreement to his being their editor;4 and by the end of the into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. James E. Thorold Rogers (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1869), Vol. I pp. xli–xlii. 1 ‘Political Economy. A. Smith – Wealth of Nations’, Jevons Papers, John Rylands Library, Manchester JA6/6/7. Jevons drafted his edition by pasting pages from a late eighteenth century octavo edition of Wealth of Nations on to plain foolscap leaves, upon which he made his annotations. Presumably he selected this edition as a way of establishing a reliable text, since there were any number of new and secondhand editions available at the time. He worked through to p. 182, not completing Book I. He would have had to dismantle two copies of the work from the same edition, suggesting that, despite the availability of several new printings of Wealth of Nations, older copyright editions were relatively easy to come by. 2 Foxwell also planned an ‘historical edition’ in the mid 1880s, although since his working copy was an 1863 McCulloch edition, Jevons would seem to have been the better historian. Foxwell’s annotated copy is in the Kress Collection, and I am grateful to Karen Bailey for drawing my attention to it. 3 The encounter and the manuscript are described in E. Cannan, ‘Editor’s Introduction’ to Adam Smith, Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1896), pp. xv–xix. 4 Charles Cornelius Maconochie (1852–1930) to Cannan, 9 May 1895, ‘Correspondence 1889–99’, BLPES, Cannan Papers File 1020, f. 30. Maconochie had sent the lecture notes to Cannan on 2 May from Scotland, and here responds to Cannan’s proposals on first having had sight of them.


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month there had been preliminary discussions with Oxford University Press, who unfortunately became fixed on the idea that Maconochie simply owned the manuscript but had no copyright in it. There could be, the Press conjectured, other such lecture notes as yet undiscovered, and so while they were interested in publishing the work they saw no good reason to make anything but a token payment to Maconochie.1 This very nearly derailed negotiations; Cannan intervened, first agreeing a minimum payment with Maconochie of £25 for the rights, then writing to the Secretary of the Delegates, pointing out that if Maconochie were to give away his manuscript for nothing, there were far more deserving causes than Oxford University Press, especially if one took into account Adam Smith’s low estimation of the University. He went on: A.S. has always been a popular writer. Of the Wealth of Nations there are 5 editions at least in print in this country alone. The exhausted editions are numbered by the score. I should think at least 20 or 30 copies are sold for every one of Ricardo’s Principles. Since I wrote last I have done some work with the MS & I find it will not be difficult with the aid of several recent works especially the Catalogue of AS Library to produce an edition which will be absolutely necessary to any serious student of the Wealth of Nations at any rate till some moderately respectable edition of that work itself appears.2

He further demanded for his editorial work £25 plus 10% of the royalty after 500 copies had been sold, and by early July the contract had been signed,3 Maconochie was paid the £20 that he had requested, and Cannan had begun work. Cannan worked through the text using numbered slips for queries and annotations, exchanging these with Raleigh. So for example in December Raleigh returned slips 53 to 90, together with some comments on Montesquieu: It is as you say clear that A.S. had the Esprit des Lois before him: he takes from it the elementary matter (especially in the account of money) and some illustrations.

1 Sir Thomas Raleigh to Cannan, All Souls 26 May 1895, Cannan Papers File 1020, f. 34. See also Lyttleton Gell to Cannan, 29 May 1895, Oxford, Cannan Papers File 1018 f. 17–18. Raleigh (1850–1920) became a Fellow of All Souls in 1876, was Reader in English Law in the University of Oxford 1884–96, and in 1895 also a Delegate of the University Press. He was of great assistance to Cannan in preparing the Lectures over the autumn and winter of 1895–6, and his help is duly acknowledged in the ‘Preface’ to the Lectures. 2 Copy of Cannan to Philip Lyttelton Gell (Secretary to the Delegates), 24 St Giles, Oxford, 6 June 1895, Cannan Papers, File 1020 f. 41. 3 The agreement was signed on 6 July 1895, on the terms that Cannan demanded – £25 plus 10% on UK sales over 500 – the £25 to be paid by Cannan to Maconochie – ‘Publishers’ Agreements’, Cannan Papers File 1015 f. 15. In fact Maconochie had earlier insisted that he only wanted £20, so presumably Cannan retained £5 – see Maconochie to Cannan, 4 June 1895, Cannan Papers File 1015, f. 38.



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He knows more business that the Frenchman, but M anticipated the substance of the free trade doctrine. I recollect that Ld. Chesterfield (a friend of Montesquieu) expounds free trade very clearly in his Letters to his son, but have not time just now to look the passage out.1

Raleigh appears to have made a significant contribution to the annotations. So for example when Smith refers to ‘Dutch recruiting’ we find a note directing Cannan to Lecky’s History of England Volume III p. 458, and material from Lecky duly turns up in footnote 1 page 32.2 It might be assumed that Cannan worked with a transcription of the lecture notes, since Raleigh makes the correction ‘Waff goods (not waste) are ownerless goods (waif and stray)’ which then becomes footnote 5 page 41.3 By December 1895 both Cannan and Raleigh were working on a set of proofs, Raleigh’s being distinguished by annotations relating to legal terminology.4 The revised second set of proofs are dated from mid-April to late July 1896 and the ‘Editor’s Introduction’ is dated 15 August 1896.5 The book was published in the early autumn, some sixteen months after Cannan had first received the manuscript, and the first review appeared in the Glasgow Herald for 6 October 1896. The book made an immediate impact upon understanding of Adam Smith.6 Although as August Oncken pointed out,7 a careful reading of Theory of Moral Sentiments, and especially of the revised 1790 edition, should have left a reader in no doubt that Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations were part of a larger project, and that the general lines of this project were established by the early 1760s. The publication of a set of lecture notes dating from the period immediately preceding Smith’s visit to France and first-hand encounter with philosophes and ‘oeconomists’, definitively undermined argument to the effect that Smith owed the plan and general argument of Wealth of Nations to this 1 Sir Thomas Raleigh to Cannan, All Souls, Oxford 28 December 1895, Cannan Papers, File 1020, f. 63. 2 Notes for Edition of Adam Smith and Lectures, Cannan Papers File 920 f. 4; see W. E. H. Lecky, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, Second edition, (Longmans, Green, and Co., London 1883) p. 458. 3 Notes for Edition of Adam Smith and Lectures, Cannan Papers File 920, f. 5ff. 4 A. Smith, Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms. First proof copy, Cannan Papers File 922; this set is stamped with dates from early November 1895 to early January 1896. Cannan’s own set of first proofs are in Cannan Papers File 921. 5 A. Smith, Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms, ed. Edwin Cannan (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1896). First revised proof copy, Cannan Papers File 923. 6 Although, rather curiously, it did not sell very well – by June 1897 the Press reported sales in Britain of 90, in the USA of 40 and for export of 72, which with 78 presented left 754 on hand. Sales then slowed to a trickle: by 31 March 1909 there were still 618 copies on hand, with total sales to 31 March 1920 of 455. Sales then picked up, especially for export, 40 to 50 copies being sold overseas each year through the 1920s; see Publishers’ Statements of Sales, Cannan Papers File 1016, f. 6–34. 7 See the discussion on this point below p. 136–7.


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encounter. Moreover, the fact that the lecture notes also covered hitherto unrecorded arguments on justice also supported the move away from an exclusive focus upon Smith as a political economist foreshadowed in Bagehot’s comments and, it should be noted, the publication of Farrar’s extensive summary of Theory of Moral Sentiments.1 Reviewers immediately saw the point.2 Moreover, on this foundation it became possible to reverse the question concerning the impact of Smith’s French connection. Instead of arguing from Physiocratic doctrine to the text of Wealth of Nations, it was possible to pose the opposite question: what is there in the book that cannot be found in the Lectures? This question was raised by Bastable in an extended review of the Lectures, prompted by his knowledge of Continental theory to note the omission from the book of the first two sections of part II Division II, ‘Cheapness or Plenty’, dealing with the question of human need:3 The study of Society as an economic machine presupposes the existence of objects for which that machine is to work. Had there been no disturbing influence, it is at least possible that the opening chapters of the Wealth of Nations would have described the growth of wants in civilized societies, and shown how their increasing subdivision and differentiation insensibly produced a corresponding division of employments, and permitted more effective, because more specialized, kinds of labour. But the aspect of society as working to produce, overshadowed, in the minds of the French economists, the parallel view of society as using its products. ‘Accumulation’ became more important than ‘satisfaction’; and Adam Smith was persuaded to abandon this section of his system, contenting himself with laying down, at an advanced part of his treatise, that ‘consumption is the end and purpose of all production’ (Book IV chap. 8), and introducing scattered notices of the effect of changes in the modes of expenditure. If his connexion with France enabled him to gain a more scientific position in respect to the partition of produce, may it not have induced him to abandon quite as valuable a conception, viz. the dependence of the economic system on the nature and variation of human wants?4

This insight is not simply forced upon Smith as a ‘novel insight’ prompted by a different perspective; for Bastable continues this thought onward into the common origin of Smithian and Continental political economy, an origin which the Lectures render more accessible:

1 J. A. Farrer, Adam Smith (1723–1790), (Sampson, Lowe, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, London 1881). 2 Henry Higgs, Economic Journal Vol. 6 (1896) pp. 608–12; August Oncken, ‘The Consistency of Adam Smith’, Economic Journal Vol. 7 (1897) pp. 443–50; W. Hasbach, ‘Adam Smith’s Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms’, Political Science Quarterly Vol. 12 (1897) pp. 684–98. 3 A. Smith, Lectures, 1896, pp. 157–61. 4 C. F. Bastable, ‘Adam Smith Lectures on ‘Jurisprudence’’, Hermathena Vol. X (1899) pp. 207–8.



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A final impression that the study of the Lectures leaves on the mind is the descent of the whole body of modern political and economic speculation from the 17thcentury system of natural law (or jus gentium), itself the product of reflections on the Roman law, in the shape that it was presented by its latest commentators. It is a commonplace since the publication of Maine’s Ancient Law, that the Grotian system was connected by an irregular filiation with Roman law. Hobbes, Locke, Smith, and even Hume were profoundly affected by this form of thought. We can see how much the classification and exposition of the Lectures owes to the terminology and arrangement of the Civil Law. The conditions of modern society have indeed helped to shape, and have supplied the materials for, both Politics and Economics; but both sciences owe their existence to the earlier and less definite system of Jus gentium, or natural law.1

This was all to unravel of course, and it would take almost another century before Adam Smith began once more to be recognised in these terms. This was no fault of Cannan; it is clear that in working on the Lectures he found himself hampered by the lack of a reliable edition of Wealth of Nations, and he quickly sought to remedy this deficiency. Details of the publication were agreed with Methuen by May 1900, but Cannan then appears to have neglected to keep them informed of progress, since a curt letter in January 1902 asks after the projected edition. In response, Cannan reported that by the end of May 1900 he had collated the editions, drafted half of the headlines and marginal summary, completed one-sixth of the notes, and roughed out an index. When he received the enquiry this work was more or less complete, and he had been drafting the introduction.2 Cannan delivered the manuscript one year later, in February 1903, and the work was published on 12 September 1904. As Cannan outlines in his ‘Preface’, the text for his edition is based on the fifth (the last in Smith’s lifetime), collated with the first, recording any material variations in the footnotes. As already noted, when Cadell and Davies came to set the two books for the Works, they did not actually have copies to hand, and asked Dugald Stewart for the relevant editions – it had been nearly ten years since the last copyright version, in 1802. This is strongly suggestive of the manner in which a new edition was simply set up from the previous version, new errors and omissions being added to the old with each fresh setting. W. B. Todd suggests in his comments on the variations in the early edition of Wealth of Nations that it was illogical of Cannan to select the fifth edition as his base text, since with one or two small exceptions any changes in this edition over the fourth and the fourth over the third originate with the compositor, not with Smith. The third edition was the only one heavily revised by Smith and this 1

Op. cit. p. 211. A. M. S. Methuen to Cannan, 2 January 1902, Correspondence with Publishers I 1890– 1916, Cannan Papers File 1018, f. 38. Cannan made the notes of his progress on the reverse of this letter. 2


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was also proofed several times, so that the Glasgow edition rightly takes this 1784 edition as the printers’ copy.1 However, Cannan did collate the fifth edition with the first which, despite it being less closely proofed than the third edition, would have had the effect of removing cumulative errors from the text, while revealing the changes of the third.2 Since he also indicated in footnotes where the variations occurred, it was for the first time possible to see clearly how the text had been altered by revisions, without need for resort to the supplementary ‘Additions and Corrections’ of November 1784. This then is the main reason that Cannan’s text became the standard edition – for all previous editions, without exception, had simply reprinted an unexamined text. As with the Lectures, Cannan also added a substantial number of explanatory notes, clarifying the text, noting statutes referred to by Smith, and where necessary referring the reader to further sources. This added a further layer of significance to the text; Cannan did not seek (like Shield Nicholson) to contrast Smith’s principles with those of modern political economy; and for the most part refrained from adding notes which questioned or criticised Smith’s argument (the style of editorialising practised from Playfair to Gibbon Wakefield). Thirdly, Cannan devised a running set of marginal notes which summarised the argument; indeed, it would be an interesting exercise to separate them from the text and read them independently, since they represent Cannan’s running commentary on the work. This was linked to his provision of header lines so that a reader opening the book ‘may discover where he is immediately’.3 Smith’s original index, reproduced in so many editions, was in addition systematically supplemented to form the new standard index for the work – and which can also be found in the 1976 Glasgow edition. And finally Cannan provided a substantial introduction of some thirty five pages in which he provides an account of the publishing history, an account of the genesis of the text through comparison with the relevant section of the Lectures, a summary of the book, a review of Smith’s relation to the Physiocrats, and a sketch of the connection between Smith’s ideas and those of Hutcheson and Mandeville. Altogether one of the most useful introductions to the text, it was included in many of the subsequent translations.

1 W. B. Todd, ‘The Text and Apparatus’, Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. I (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1976) p. 63. The exact procedure used in establishing the Glasgow text is described in the first paragraph, p. 65. 2 Cannan’s summary outline of the accidental and intentional variations between editions can be found in his ‘Editor’s Introduction’, Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. I, (Methuen, London 1904) pp. xv–xviii. 3 Edwin Cannan, ‘Preface’, to Smith, Inquiry, p. vi.



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Conclusion Cannan’s edition was more or less continuously in print until the 1970s, either under the Methuen imprint, the Modern Library edition, or as one of a number of reprints. Fresh ‘editions’ of Wealth of Nations appeared, but none of these added to the Cannan edition until the Glasgow edition displaced it. The Lectures, having sold so slowly, were neither republished nor reprinted in Britain until the Glasgow edition, augmented by a newly-discovered set of notes. More editions of Theory of Moral Sentiments have been published since 1976 than from 1876 to 1976. Neither the catalogue of the British Library, nor that of the Bodleian Library, record a British edition from the mid-nineteenth century until 1976, while of the four English-language editions published during the 1960s and early 1970s one was published in Kyoto and three in the United States. The Essays were likewise not republished after the 1880s. The Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres were of course only discovered in 1958. The Liberty Press paperback version of the Glasgow edition, under the terms of their agreement an exact reprint of the Glasgow edition, is both very cheap and has sold in very large numbers. Despite the fact that one cannot buy a better, or a cheaper, edition of Smith’s works than this, new editions of Wealth of Nations have appeared at an accelerating rate. More new editions of Wealth of Nations appeared in the 1990s than in the 1890s; there had been more in the 1890s than the 1790s, when the work was selling well. The book is now available on the web and an abridged audio-cassette version is available. Indeed, it sells so well that even national libraries have lost interest in the more marginal reprints and editions now available.


The Glasgow Edition of the Collected Works of Adam Smith D. D. Raphael1

At the University of Glasgow in 1961, a committee of senior members of the academic staff in economics and allied social sciences began thinking of a suitable way to celebrate the bicentenary in 1976 of the first publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Their plans did not at first include any project for a new edition of Collected Works. The initial impulse for that came from Professor G. J. Stigler of the University of Chicago in October 1961. Sir Laurence Hunter, now Emeritus Professor of Applied Economics at Glasgow, was at that time a newly graduated student of the Department of Political Economy. He went to Chicago for a year’s postgraduate study, and soon after his arrival Professor Stigler asked him whether the University of Glasgow was going to produce a new edition of Adam Smith’s works. Stigler thought this would be a highly appropriate way to celebrate the bicentenary of the Wealth of Nations. Hunter communicated this information in a letter to Professor A. L. Macfie, Emeritus Adam Smith Professor of Political Economy at Glasgow. He added that there was a Professor of some seniority at Chicago who might be ready to undertake an edition of the Collected Works. ‘But,’ he went on, ‘I fancy Stigler would not want to intrude on other plans provided the work was done, and he asked me if I knew of anything in that direction.’ Macfie sent a brief interim reply to ensure that Chicago should hold its hand meanwhile. He then drafted a reply for consideration by the committee. Our Committee has authorised me to write to you as follows: There is no doubt Glasgow will do something big for 1976. The Court [i.e. the University Court, the governing body of the institution] has been approached, and has indicated its support in principle. We feel sure we shall get it. The scheme we have in mind is something like this. First, we will produce a volume of critical essays on Smith’s work and its influence. For this we would seek the best people in the world – including Japan. (Professor Stigler would be one we should like to approach). For any such volume we should seek the help of the Scottish Economic Society, and we know we would get it. 1

I wish to thank Andrew Skinner for several items in this article.


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Then, secondly, our committee are agreed that one job that should be done is an annotated edition of the Moral Sentiments (the only modern such edition is in German – by Eckstein. Schneider’s – U.S.A. – is not annotated). I am the victim chosen for this toilsome job, and I have agreed to tackle it if I am assured of D. D. Raphael’s collaboration; Raphael being one of the best people in Britain on 18th century Ethics. Thirdly, other projects are a reissue of W. R. Scott’s book. at present out of print, possibly with additions; a new edition of the Essays; and perhaps a reissue of Rae’s Life with a new introduction. As to a ‘Collected Works’ – while the above proposals would all appear as University publications, and therefore uniform, some of us are in some doubts as to ‘Collected Works.’ They feel Cannan’s editions of the Wealth of Nations and Lectures will not be improved on by anyone now starting from scratch. And they are not sure about merely reproducing Cannan. It may be that Cannan’s editions could be brought up to date in some ways with new introductions, and so included in a collected edition. But Cannan must have lived with the Wealth of Nations for a decade or so. I personally doubt whether anyone will be found, in this more pressed age, at once willing and able to do that again. However, the project of a ‘Collected Works’ along with supporting volumes, as indicated above, will always be before our Committee here, whatever may happen elsewhere before, and/or for, 1976.

Although the draft is written as if the committee had already considered Hunter’s letter, it was simply a draft, subject to revision. I was a member of the committee and I do not recall having attended any meeting to discuss Hunter’s letter before this draft was composed. While the draft sets out the provisional plans of the committee, I think that its view on a Collected Works was predominantly the view of Macfie himself, though no doubt shared to some extent by others. Certainly the initiative for an annotated edition of Smith’s first book, Theory of Moral Sentiments, came from Macfie, who had been especially interested in that book for a number of years. He had published several papers on Smith’s thought, two of them specifically on Theory of Moral Sentiments. When he said in the draft reply to Hunter that he was ‘the victim chosen for this toilsome job’, he was writing with tongue in cheek: he was in fact very keen to do the job, and no other member of the committee had any wish to demur. The members of the Bicentenary Committee, apart from Macfie, were Tom Wilson, Macfie’s successor as Adam Smith Professor of Political Economy, Donald Robertson, Professor of Applied Economics, Sydney Checkland, Professor of Economic History, myself (D. D. Raphael, Professor of Political and Social Philosophy, later Professor of Philosophy in the University of London), and Ronald Meek, Senior Lecturer in Political Economy (later Professor of Economics in the University of Leicester). Meek’s special interest was in the history of economic thought, and he became the moving spirit in the proceedings of the committee.


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Macfie’s draft reply to Hunter was circulated to the rest of the committee for comment. I do not know what comments were made by committee members other than myself, nor do I know what reply was eventually sent by Macfie to Hunter. I think it likely, however, in the light of later developments, that Meek will have come out pretty strongly in favour of undertaking a Collected Works. My own comment on the draft was that the committee should take a more positive attitude to the idea of an edition of Collected Works, and that Oxford University Press should be approached as the favoured publisher. I also confirmed that I was willing to collaborate with Macfie in editing the Theory of Moral Sentiments. Meanwhile Meek, consulting, on behalf of the committee, Lord Robbins of the London School of Economics concerning the plans for 1976, took the opportunity to tell Robbins of Stigler’s message and learned that Stigler had written to Robbins some months earlier asking if he knew of any British project for an edition of Smith’s Collected Works. Stigler had indicated that he and some of his colleagues were trying to persuade Aaron Director, a member of the Chicago Department of Economics, to produce such an edition if there were no British project. Robbins had replied that he knew of no British project, and had heard no more. Robbins was enthusiastic about the provisional Glasgow plan of reprinting Smith’s works and W. R. Scott’s book, Adam Smith as Student and Professor, together with a new book of critical essays. He was in favour of reprinting the Smith works in the form of photographic reproduction of the original texts with added introductions in the front and notes at the back. He did not say whether the photographed texts of the Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments would be those of the first editions; he obviously had not asked himself whether that would be satisfactory. Meek then wrote a lengthy memorandum, dated 31 October 1961, to help towards reaching a decision on producing an edition of Collected Works. He himself was strongly in favour. The main argument, he wrote, ‘is simply that people will be expecting us to do this job, and if we don’t do it someone else almost certainly will’; amid the many local enterprises to celebrate the bicentenary, he said, Glasgow had a special obligation, and the only way to fulfil it was to produce a Collected Works. Secondly, since 1976 was the bicentenary of the Wealth of Nations, not of the Theory of Moral Sentiments or the Essays on Philosophical Subjects, new editions of the latter works without a new edition of the Wealth of Nations would hardly be an appropriate celebration. Thirdly, a Collected Works was needed because anyone who wanted to read the whole of Smith’s works and correspondence had to go to seven different books, most of which were out of print or hard to come by. Meek also considered two arguments that might be posed against the project. First, ‘it is very unlikely that any new manuscript material, etc., will be discovered’; and second, Edwin Cannan’s edition of the Wealth of Nations was readily available. Meek responded to the second argument by noting that Can-


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nan’s editions of the Wealth of Nations and the Lectures on Justice, while excellent in what they did, nevertheless omitted to consider in depth some things that were of interest to present-day scholars, notably the relationship between economics, philosophy, and law in Smith’s thought, and the relevance of his economic thought to the problems of growth and development. Meek then outlined a tentative plan for six volumes: I The Theory of Moral Sentiments II The Glasgow Lectures [meaning the Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms published by Edwin Cannan in 1896], together with the so-called ‘early draft’ of the Wealth of Nations and other fragments discovered by W. R. Scott and published in his book Adam Smith as Student and Professor III and IV The Wealth of Nations V Essays. Miscellaneous Pieces. Correspondence VI Biographical Material. Meek acknowledged some uncertainty about the content of Volumes V and VI, especially the latter, which might be either a miscellany of early biographical pieces or a wholly new Life of Adam Smith. The latter part of Meek’s memorandum makes no further reference to the supposed objection that ‘it is very unlikely that any new manuscript material, etc., will be discovered’. To leave it at that was perfectly sensible when writing on 31 October 1961. Yet, curiously enough, the quoted statement was belied the very next day. Dr John M. Lothian, a Reader in English at the University of Aberdeen, had the good fortune to discover, at the sale of a private library in 1958, several bound volumes of manuscript notes of lectures delivered by Adam Smith in 1762–3, notes apparently written by a student or a small group of students. There were two volumes of lectures on ‘Rhetorick’ and six of lectures on ‘Jurisprudence’. The second set of notes was a fuller, though incomplete, version of lectures (on ‘Juris Prudence.., or Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms’) already known from a manuscript, dated 1766 but probably reporting lectures of 1763–4, that had been edited and published by Cannan in 1896. Lothian did not give any publicity to his discovery at the time; he was working on the Rhetoric lectures and eventually published an edited version of them, as Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, in 1963. He did, however, write two long articles about his discovery of both sets of notes and had them published in the Edinburgh newspaper, The Scotsman, on 1 and 2 November 1961. If Meek had been able to see these before he wrote his memorandum of 31 October, his case for a Collected Works would have been overwhelming. Professor Andrew Skinner has pointed out to me the remarkable role of sheer accident in the discovery of Adam Smith manuscripts: first the Jurisprudence manuscript edited by Cannan in 1896, and then the more detailed Jurisprudence notes together with the Rhetoric notes discovered by Lothian in


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1958. At Skinner’s suggestion, I quote Cannan’s account of how he came to know of the first manuscript: No one could have been more sensible of the historical value of the last two parts of the lectures than I, but I can not claim any credit for having discovered the manuscript which is now published. On April 21, 1895, Mr. Charles C. Maconochie, Advocate, whom I then met for the first time, happened to be present when, in course of conversation with the literary editor of the Oxford Magazine, I had occasion to make some remark about Adam Smith. Mr. Maconochie thereupon immediately said that he possessed a manuscript report of Adam Smith’s lectures on jurisprudence, which he regarded as of considerable interest.1

Cannan also reproduces a letter from Mr Maconochie saying that he obtained the manuscript from the library of a grand-uncle, an advocate and Sheriff (that is, a Scottish judge of first instance), who died in 1845. He added that dates made it impossible for the grand-uncle or either of two other lawyer members of the family to have been a student of Adam Smith, and he thought it likely that the book, a fair copy of notes, had been bought at a sale – which is how Lothian acquired the second manuscript more than a century later. In a forthcoming article2 Andrew Skinner has written of some important consequences of Cannan’s publication of the Lectures on Justice. It clarified John Millar’s brief account of jurisprudence as treated by Smith: a history of the progress of law in the developing stages of society and the relationship of this to ethics and to economics, bringing out especially the significance of Books III and V of the Wealth of Nations. It also changed economists’ perceptions of the role of Hutcheson in the formation of Smith’s thought; there is an illuminating account of this in Cannan’s introduction. Thirdly, Cannan was able to confirm from the Lectures the character and extent of Smith’s economic thought before he visited France and became acquainted with the Physiocrats. As Skinner observes, the Cannan text of the Jurisprudence lectures is more valuable than the one discovered by Lothian. Nevertheless the Lothian text adds quite a lot on details; and of course Lothian’s find was all the more exciting for including notes of the lectures on Rhetoric. It should not be thought that Lothian was entirely secretive about his discovery until November 1961. Ernest Mossner, Professor of English in the University of Texas, reviewing Lothian’s 1963 edition of the Lectures on Rhetoric, began by saying: ‘Some five or six years ago rumors began to circulate that Adam Smith’s lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres ... had at long last been discovered.’ These rumours had not, however, reached the Adam Smith scholars at Glasgow. 1 E. Cannan, ‘Editor’s Introduction’ to Adam Smith, Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1896), p. xv. 2 Andrew S. Skinner, ‘Adam Smith (1723–1790): Theories of Political Economy’, in J. E. Biddle, J. B. Davis, and W. J. Samuels (eds), The Blackwell Companion to the History of Economic Thought (Blackwell, Oxford 2003).


THE GLASGOW EDITION

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Despite the Glasgow committee’s initial ignorance of the Lothian discovery, the case made by Meek for a Collected Works was strong enough in any event. It was endorsed by the University Court, and the Bicentenary Committee was reorganised and enlarged to include a member of the Court, Sir William Robieson, the ‘Clerk of Senate’ (virtually the deputy of the University’s Principal and Vice-Chancellor), Professor C. J. Fordyce, and W. G. Maclagan, Professor of Moral Philosophy. A meeting of the new committee was held on 30 November. It elected Sir William Robieson as its chairman and Ronald Meek as secretary. It appointed a Board of Provisional Editors and agreed to open negotiations with the Oxford University Press. Macfie was to edit Theory of Moral Sentiments, and Meek and Checkland were to be joint editors of the Wealth of Nations. The Board of Editors was to consider the appointment of editors for other volumes of the Works. Two members of the committee had been informed of a proposal by the Edinburgh University Press to publish an edition of Smith’s Collected Works; the committee resolved to write to the Edinburgh University Press saying that Glasgow was set to produce a definitive edition and was negotiating with the Oxford University Press as prospective publisher. The Board of Provisional Editors had a preliminary meeting on 12 December with Mr C. H. Morris, the Glasgow representative of the Oxford University Press. Then on 16 January 1962 the larger Bicentenary Committee held a more substantial meeting with Mr J. K. Cordy, a senior member of the Oxford University Press, and Mr Morris. Thereafter Mr Cordy was a tower of strength to the Glasgow committee and the various editors of Smith’s works. At the meeting on 16 January, Cordy told the committee that the Collected Works proposal would be considered by the Delegates (the authoritative body) of the Press later that month, and he thought there was a fair chance of approval. The matter of negotiations with Dr Lothian about use of the newly discovered notes was discussed. Cordy recommended speedy action since there might be problems about copyright. Meek reported that information had just been received from Aberdeen that Lothian had made certain proposals. The negotiations with Lothian proved to be difficult and long drawn out. The University of Glasgow offered in the first instance to purchase the manuscripts at a price 10% higher than the market value estimated by Sotheby’s, the leading dealer in antiques. Lothian was unwilling to accept this, or later offers of a higher figure, and for a while hoped to receive more from possible purchasers overseas. Eventually he turned back to Glasgow University of his own accord in February 1964 and accepted the figure offered to him at that time for the purchase of the manuscripts and any copyright that might exist. It was agreed that the Glasgow edition of the Rhetoric lectures should not be published before 1971 in order to allow Lothian’s edition of 1963 to have a fair run on its own. The acquisition of Lothian’s manuscripts enabled the Bicentenary Committee to include the lectures on Rhetoric and the enlarged version of the lectures on Jurisprudence in the projected edition of Collected Works. There was


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considerable discussion on the form of these two items. How would the new edition of the Rhetoric lectures stand in relation to Lothian’s edition and who should edit it? Should the Jurisprudence volume include only the newly discovered notes, a longer version than that printed in Cannan’s edition; or should it add the latter part of the Cannan version, on economics, since the new version did not contain anything on that topic; or should it include both? So far as the Rhetoric lectures were concerned, the committee considered the possibility of inviting Lothian to be the editor or one of two editors; but it seemed unlikely that he would be willing, since that would make his existing edition obsolete when otherwise his edition would remain a worthy alternative. Furthermore, if Lothian were to edit the lectures a second time, he would probably not wish to change much of what he had written before. That would be unsatisfactory; Lothian had dealt well with the lectures as a work of literary criticism but had not discussed the authenticity of the manuscript or the relation of these lectures to Theory of Moral Sentiments or the Wealth of Nations. So the committee decided instead to invite John C. Bryce, Senior Lecturer in English (later A. C. Bradley Professor of English Literature) to edit the Rhetoric lectures. It should be said that, despite the difficulties of the earlier negotiations with Lothian, Bryce found him altogether friendly and helpful in advice about the lecture notes. For the Jurisprudence lectures two editors were at first appointed: Peter Stein, Professor of Jurisprudence in the University of Aberdeen (later Professor of Civil Law in the University of Cambridge) and Henry Hamilton, Professor of Economics in the University of Aberdeen. Professor Hamilton unfortunately died in 1964 and was replaced by Ronald Meek, who had become deeply interested in Smith’s Jurisprudence lectures as forerunner of the Wealth of Nations. It was also felt, in the light of the content of the longer set of notes, that a third editor was needed: Stein and Meek would deal respectively with Smith’s treatment of law and economics, but the lectures concerned a fair amount of social and political thought as well. I was therefore added to the editors to deal with this aspect. Meek carried the major burden: in addition to comment on the economic thought, he did most of the (often difficult) work of deciphering the manuscript. I gave him some assistance in this and carried out the less onerous task of collating anew the shorter manuscript that had been published by Cannan. It was decided in the end that both versions of the Jurisprudence lectures should be printed, the longer version first. One possibility had been to show the alternative statements of the same material on the same page, but this proved impracticable as Smith had changed the arrangement of his subject-matter in the later version, which reported the lectures in his last year at Glasgow. Meek had by now left Glasgow for Leicester. His place as secretary of the Bicentenary Committee was taken for a short time by R .L. Briant and then by Andrew Skinner, Lecturer in the Department of Political Economy (later Adam Smith Professor). Thereafter Skinner had the key role in the enterprise that Meek had previously exercised.


THE GLASGOW EDITION

57

Various changes occurred in the appointment of editors. Volume I was originally to be edited by Macfie alone, with some collaborative assistance from me; I was reluctant to be committed to more than that. However, the Oxford University Press, aware of my experience in editing British moralists of the eighteenth century, asked that I should become a full joint editor of Theory of Moral Sentiments, a request that pleased Macfie and persuaded me. The Wealth of Nations, Volume II in the series (though itself consisting of two volumes physically), was originally to be edited by Meek and Checkland. In 1967 William B. Todd, Professor of English in the University of Texas, wrote to the Bicentenary Committee at the suggestion of his colleague, Ernest Mossner, who was already associated with the project. Todd urged the committee not to follow Cannan’s example in his edition of the Wealth of Nations of simply reproducing the text of the last edition published in the author’s lifetime. Editors should instead adopt the bibliographical practice recommended by Sir Walter Greg in 1950 and developed by other scholars; the result, said Todd, would be ‘an eclectic text unlike any in print’. He offered to carry out the operation in Texas, if this would help Glasgow. The offer was accepted for the Wealth of Nations (though not for Theory of Moral Sentiments), and Todd was accordingly appointed Textual Editor of that work, while Meek and Checkland were designated General Editors. Todd’s ideas were followed in his text, but not entirely in the presentation of the variant readings of different editions. His view on this matter was based on his experience with literary texts, and the General Editors considered that it was not altogether suitable for the needs of Adam Smith’s readers. The views and procedure of the editors of the Moral Sentiments are set out in their introduction. As time went on, Meek found himself very heavily involved with the Jurisprudence manuscript and suggested in 1969 that Andrew Skinner, who was engaged on an edition of the Wealth of Nations for Penguin Classics, should join the editors of the Glasgow edition. Meek offered to withdraw from that work himself if it seemed excessive to have three General Editors. The committee accepted both suggestions. But then in 1971 Checkland withdrew, feeling that his other commitments prevented him from giving adequate time to this editorial work. Since he was to have dealt with questions of economic history, his place was taken by Roy Campbell, Professor of Economic History in the University of Stirling. So Skinner and Campbell were the eventual General Editors of the Wealth of Nations, inheriting the association with Todd as Textual Editor. Skinner in fact did a good deal of work on the text as well as on explanatory notes; he collated anew the different editions and was responsible for the system of cross-references within the text of the Wealth of Nations and between it and the other texts. Campbell did all the work relating to matters of economic history and traced many of the references to other works. Volume III of the Glasgow Edition contains Essays on Philosophical Subjects, accompanied by Dugald Stewart’s ‘Account of the Life and Writings of Adam


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Smith’, two contributions by Smith to the Edinburgh Review, and his preface to a book of poems by William Hamilton. In the original provisional plan for the Collected Works, the Essays were assigned to a volume containing also ‘miscellaneous pieces’ and correspondence, while an additional volume would contain biographical material. On further consideration, however, it was thought that the biographical volume should be a new Life of Smith and that it would be more logical for the correspondence to be joined to the new biography rather than to the Essays and miscellaneous pieces. The Bicentenary Committee decided in 1964 to invite Dr George Davie, Reader in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, to edit the Essays, and he accepted the invitation with pleasure; but unfortunately he felt obliged in 1969 to withdraw owing to ill health. The committee then invited Sir Malcolm Knox, Principal of the University of St Andrews (formerly Professor of Moral Philosophy there). He felt unable to accept because the most substantial group of essays is on the history and philosophy of science, a field in which he lacked expertise. He suggested instead Dr W. P. D. Wightman, a retired Reader in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Aberdeen. Wightman was accordingly invited to edit the essays on the sciences together with two of a more general philosophical character. He agreed, but with a cautionary warning that he had no experience of editing as such. John Bryce, who had taken on the editing of the Rhetoric lectures, was asked to deal with the remaining essay on English and Italian verse, and with the Edinburgh Review pieces and the preface to Hamilton’s poems. Ian Ross, who by this time had been appointed to write a new biography, was asked to edit the short biography written by Dugald Stewart for the original edition of the Essays. A work produced by three separate editors writing independently of each other is likely to lack unity. Moreover, Wightman’s warning about his limitations was borne out by lacunas in his explanatory notes. Andrew Skinner therefore suggested to me that the two of us should act as General Editors of this volume, writing a cohesive introduction and supplying additional notes with the help of specialised scholars. Volumes IV and V of the Glasgow Edition are the Lectures on Jurisprudence and the Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. The editors of these volumes have been named above. Volume VI is the Correspondence of Adam Smith, containing letters written to him as well as those written by him. As noted above, the Bicentenary Committee envisaged associating the correspondence with a new biography. Checkland expressed interest in writing the biography. For gathering and editing the correspondence, the Editorial Board thought first of Ernest Mossner, who had recently edited, with Raymond Klibansky, New Letters of David Hume, prior to writing a splendid Life of Hume. In informal discussion with me, Mossner said that his interest in editing letters was as a preliminary to a biography; if the committee were to invite him to write the proposed biography of Smith, he would be very happy to do that and would in consequence be ready to search for and edit the correspondence. He added that, for the latter task, he


THE GLASGOW EDITION

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would wish to have the cooperation of Ian Ross, Assistant Professor (later full Professor) of English at the University of British Columbia; Ross had been a postgraduate pupil of Mossner and had published a biography of Lord Kames, a prominent member of the Scottish Enlightenment along with Hume and Adam Smith. In view of Mossner‘s relevant experience, Checkland readily agreed to give up his own thoughts of writing the Smith biography. A complication then arose. The plans of the committee included a book of critical essays on Smith’s thought, and one of the scholars invited to write an essay was Piero Sraffa, the distinguished editor of Ricardo. Sraffa sent an interim reply and in the course of it mentioned that he had for some years been collecting letters of Adam Smith with a view to possible publication. In these circumstances it seemed right to think of asking Mossner and Sraffa if they would be willing to act together in editing Smith’s correspondence for the Glasgow Collected Works. Mossner was prepared, with some misgiving, to agree. Sraffa decided against, both because collaboration by correspondence presented difficulties and because he had not intended to do any editorial work himself: he had thought of giving his collection of letters to a young scholar to edit and publish. In view of Mossner’s interest and experience, Sraffa said, he was happy to stay out of the project. That enabled the Bicentenary Committee to extend a formal invitation to Mossner to write a biography and to edit the correspondence jointly with Ross. The correspondence was collected under a vigorous search plan divided between the two scholars. Mossner dealt with letters from Smith, and Ross with letters to Smith. Unfortunately Mossner was obliged by serious illness in 1971 to give up his participation. Ross did most of the annotation, and the first edition was published in 1977. A second edition, prepared in 1985, contains eighteen newly discovered letters. Fourteen of them are from a collection of papers in the Archives Office of the Kent County Council, and our finding out about them is another example of accidental discovery. Dr (now Professor) David Raynor, a Canadian scholar with a special interest in David Hume, mentioned in a letter to me that a routine inquiry to Kent County Archives about Hume or his associates had brought a reply that (as he thought) they had ‘a letter’ from Adam Smith ‘to’ Lord Chesterfield. Following this up, I found that what the Kent Archives had was a number of letters about Lord Chesterfield and his erstwhile tutor, Adam Ferguson. The letters from and to Adam Smith do not add to our understanding of his works, but they do reinforce the impression of his character that we get from the Theory of Moral Sentiments. The editorial work for the second edition of Smith’s correspondence was done by Ross but, of course, made known to Mossner, though he did not live to see the new edition in print. He died in 1986 and the second edition was published in 1987. Mossner’s illness meant that he could not proceed with the biography, and the Bicentenary Committee invited Ross to take it over. Ross’s Life of Adam Smith duly appeared in 1995. It is not part of the Glasgow Edition of The Works


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and Correspondence of Adam Smith, but it was originally planned as an ‘associated volume’, like the collection of Essays on Adam Smith, edited by Andrew S. Skinner and Thomas Wilson, and published in 1975. A further short volume, published in 2001, can properly be regarded as an addendum to the edition of the Works. It is a comprehensive Index to the Works of Adam Smith, compiled by Knud Haakonssen, Professor of Philosophy at Boston University, and Andrew Skinner. Before concluding this account, two policy decisions of the Bicentenary Committee should be recorded. One concerns the editors’ method of giving references to passages in Smith’s works, especially the two works published in his lifetime. A passage is located by roman and arabic numerals identifying Book or Part, section (if applicable), chapter, and paragraph. This can look cumbersome. There were two reasons for it. First, citation by page number in the Glasgow edition was not possible when referring to a book not yet published in the edition. Secondly, that form of citation would be of no help to readers using earlier editions of Smith’s books. The second policy decision is more substantial, relating to the character of the commentary by editors. It was at first suggested that the introductions should be of a non-controversial nature and relatively brief: personal interpretation could be expressed in one of the critical essays. Macfie was unhappy about this, believing that some element of interpretation was inevitable in editing philosophical work. The final view was a longer statement, referring more to editorial notes than to introductions: notes should, so far as possible, bring out the inter-relation of Smith’s ideas in different works, place them in historical context, and indicate their relevance or irrelevance to modern problems.


The Diffusion of the Work of Adam Smith in the French Language: An Outline History Gilbert Faccarello, Philippe Steiner

Ken Carpenter’s recent publications on the translation of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations into the French language during the period 1776 to 1843 have shed a great deal of light on Adam Smith’s translation history.1 If we add to this record what we know of Theory of Moral Sentiments, we can summarise the various translations into French as in Table I, supplemented by the listing given in Table II of other writings by Smith.2 Table I – Translations of Smith in France and in French (1764–2002)3 1764 1774 1774–5

TMS T1 Eidous T2(m, i) La Rochefoucauld T3 Blavet

WN

1776 TMS

1

W1 (m) Morellet WN

Kenneth E. Carpenter, The Dissemination of the Wealth of Nations in French and in France 1776–1843 (The Bibliographical Society of America, New York 2002); and his earlier essay, ‘Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations d’Adam Smith et politique culturelle en France’, Économies et Sociétés, no. 10 (1995), pp. 5–30. 2 See also Carpenter’s book for Wealth of Nations in French to 1843. 3 Large caps indicate original translations, small caps reprints, the translation number serving also to indicate the translator. The suffix (a) indicates an abbreviated edition, although the name of the editor concerned is not given here for the sake of clarity; (e) indicates substantial extracts in a periodical, encyclopedia or other serial publication. It is worthwhile distinguishing those extracts published in the eighteenth century from abbreviated editions which, from the late nineteenth century, were conceived for an entirely different purpose. In the former case (and leaving to one side encyclopaedia entries), extracts were designed to make the work of an author better known, preceding publication as a book and a complete reading. In the nineteenth century the publication of ‘select extracts’ related to works already considered to be classics of their kind, and intended as a substitute to a complete reading; (i) indicates an incomplete translation; (m) indicates a manuscript only.


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1782

1798

1830

1860

1981

1999

1778 1778–9 1779–80 1781

W2(e) Reverdil W3 [Anonymous] W4 Blavet w4, w4

1782 1784–88 1786 1788 1789 1790 1790–1 1791–2 1792 1794

W5 (m) Nort w4(e) w4 w4 w3 w6(e) & w4(e) W6 Roucher w6 w6 w6

1800–01 1802 1806 1810 1822

w4 W7 Garnier W6 w7 w7

1843 1859

w7 w7

1881 1888 1908 1950 1966 1976

w7 w7(a) w7(a) w7(a) & w7(i) w7 w7(a)

1991 1995

w7 W8 Taieb

t3

T4 Grouchy

t4

t4

t4

T5 Bizioux et. al. 1999–2003 W9 ed. Jaudel


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Table II – French Translations of Smith’s Philosophical Writings Date of Edition Translator 1796 Considérations sur la première A. M. H. Boulard formation des langues, et le différent génie des langues originales et composées 1797 Essais philosophiques Pierre Prévost

Translated Text Dissertation on the Origin of Languages

Essays on Philosophical Subjects, including Stewart’s ‘Account’ and Smith’s letter to the authors of the Edinburgh Review 1798 Considérations sur l'origine et Sophie de Grouchy Dissertation on the Origin of Lanla formation des langues guages, appendix to Théorie des sentiments moraux (see Table I for subsequent editions) 1809 Essai sur la première forma- Jacques-Louis Manget Dissertation on the Origin of Lantion des langues et sur la différence du guages, followed by the translation génie des langues originales et des of a text by Friedrich Schlegel langues composées [followed by] Book I of Recherches sur la langue et la philosophie des Indiens (reprinted 1971) 1997 Essais esthétiques P.-L. Autin, I. Ellis, Of the Nature of that Imitation M. Garandeau, which takes place in what are called P. Thierry The Imitative Arts; Of the Affinity between Music, Dancing, and Poetry; Of the Affinity between certain English and Italian Verses; A Letter to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review

The following account is divided into three distinct periods: 1764–1802 1802–1888 1888 to the present. This periodisation arises from the ‘material’ aspect of the Smith reception: the translations themselves, whether complete or in part, made accessible to a francophone public. Within each of these periods we have briefly examined this material dimension of the reception, but also taken account of another history, that of the intellectual translation of the work – the province of the history of ideas, whose phasing does not exactly correspond to that of the material publication history.


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1. The First Period: 1764–1802 The translation history of Smith’s work, and importantly, that of its reception, is rich and varied during this period. One has only to look at the figures – taking into account that out of all translations, we are talking of not less than twelve translators working over a period of forty years; and seven of these translators, over a period of twenty years, directed their efforts to Wealth of Nations. By the end of the period canonical translations had been made of Moral Sentiments and of Wealth of Nations, and all later interpretations and editions would be based on these versions. At the close of the ancien régime, this flurry of activity was first directed to Moral Sentiments, two complete translations of this work appearing in succession – that of Marc-Antoine Eidous (1764) and the abbé Jean-Louis Blavet (1774–5), the latter being reprinted in 1782. Besides this, we know that LouisAlexandre de La Rochefoucauld prepared an incomplete manuscript translation in 1774. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, originally published in 1759, reaching its sixth edition in 1790, was also published in a completely new translation during the revolutionary period: Sophie de Grouchy, Condorcet’s widow, published her own version in 1798, based on the seventh English edition. Besides translations of this major text, there are a number of other philosophical writings that can be added, all of which appeared during the revolutionary period. Smith’s ‘Considerations concerning the first formation of Languages, and the different genius of original and compounded Languages’, published in the Philological Miscellany of 1761 and then appended to the 1767 third edition of Moral Sentiments, was translated twice. The first was by A. M. H. Boulard, who published the text under a direct translation of the original title in 1796; the second was by Sophie de Grouchy, who appended the text to her translation of Moral Sentiments, following exactly the English edition upon which she based her translation.1 Finally, the writings that Joseph Black and James Hutton brought together in 1795 under the title Essays in Philosophical Subjects, together with Dugald Stewart’s ‘Account’ and Smith’s 1755 letter to the Edinburgh Review, were translated and published by Pierre Prévost as Essais philosophiques in 1797. Prévost added ten notes in the form of commentary directed to specific points, as well as a more general essay ‘Réflexions sur les œuvres posthumes d’Adam Smith’. But it was the Wealth of Nations that attracted most attention from translators, reflecting in great part the intensity of intellectual activity prevailing in France during the second half of the eighteenth century, turning on the philosophical, economic and political questions raised by the Enlightenment. It also reflected a certain personal rivalry between translators who were themselves reformers by persuasion; and these conflicts have to be considered if we are to reach a 1

In 1809 Jacques-Louis Manget published another new edition.



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more exact understanding of the diffusion and reception of Smith in this period. Up until 1789 there are no less than five separate translations: 1. two translations were never published: the almost complete translation of abbé Morellet – the manuscript that has survived lacks the last two chapters of Book V;1 and that of the comte du Nort, mentioned by Adam Smith in a letter of 1782 to Blavet,2 but for which no manuscript has ever been found; 2. a very partial translation by Élie Salomon François Reverdil was published in 1778 under the title Fragment sur les colonies en général, et sur celles des anglais en particulier. This is a translation, with some modifications,3 of Book IV, Ch. VII ‘Of Colonies’ from Wealth of Nations; 3. two complete translations were printed, the first from 1778–9 being anonymous, republished in 1789; and the second being by Jean-Louis Blavet (1779–80). This was first published as a serial in Journal d’agriculture, du commerce, des arts et des finances, republished in book form in 1781, then reprinted in 1786, 1788 and in 1800–01 (in a revised and corrected edition).4 During the revolutionary period there were two new complete translations of Wealth of Nations: the first in the early days of the Revolution being that of JeanAntoine Roucher (1790–1, republished three times, in 1791–2, in 1792, and in revised form in 1794); and the other, published during Bonaparte’s Consulate in 1802, is that of Germain Garnier. In sum, twelve years after the death of Smith in 1790, the two key editions for the diffusion of his work in the French language had been published: de Grouchy’s Moral Sentiments, and Garnier’s Wealth of Nations. In this way a line was drawn under three decades of polemic over the existing translations.

1 Carpenter, op. cit., p. 1. Morellet also prepared an extract intended for separate publication, but had no more success than with the complete manuscript (see below). 2 E. C. Mossner, I. S. Ross (eds.) Correspondence of Adam Smith (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1987), Letter 218, pp. 259–60. 3 Carpenter, op. cit., p. 18. 4 It might be added here that in referring to a ‘complete edition’ this does not imply what it would today. Although a translation might present itself as ‘complete’, in practice there were often omissions made on religious or political grounds, so that censorship of the entire work might be avoided. For example, the anonymous version of Wealth of Nations lacks the section in Book V that deals with expenditure on educational institutions. On the other hand, when passages that could possibly attract the attention of the authorities were retained, as in the Blavet edition, some ‘explanatory’ note was added, or a comment such as ‘il ne faut pas oublier que c’est un Anglais qui parle’ (Carpenter, ibid., pp. 22–5, 28–31).


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2. The Second Period: 1802–88 This second period is characterised by a process of critical assimilation on the part of economists working in the French language. There are two features of this phase of the reception that need emphasis: 1. The Wealth of Nations was the almost exclusive object of critical attention, Smith’s moral philosophy being almost entirely neglected; it was only philosophers, notably Victor Cousin and Théodore Jouffroy, that paid any attention to this part of Smith’s work. This is quite paradoxical, since French economists had, since the time of the Physiocrats and the creation of the Institute during the Revolution, considered political economy to be a part of the ‘Moral and Political Sciences’. 2. Following Jean-Baptiste Say and Sismondi, French-language economists opted for Smith against Quesnay. But in so doing they did not simply adopt Smith’s ideas; the ideas underwent a profound modification. Say, for example, did not accept Smith’s theory of value, complained of the gaps in the argument of Wealth of Nations, and denounced its confused organisation. The interpretation of Smith offered to the French public was one that had undergone a reconstruction, incorporated into systematic ‘treatises’,1 where the approach had mainly pedagogical concerns; this was also the case with Say, whose scientific claims are well-known. Despite this, liberal French economists during this second period assigned a central place to Smith’s work; it was through this allegiance that they marked themselves off from adversaries, whether theoretical (Ricardo and the Ricardians) or political (protectionists and socialists). As regards translations of Wealth of Nations, this second period is characterised by the supremacy of Germain Garnier’s translation over the three preceding translations published. The new, revised edition presented by Adolphe-Jérôme Blanqui in 1843 consolidated the standing of this translation as the definitive French language version. A rather similar course was followed by Sophie de Grouchy’s translations of Moral Sentiments: it was republished in 1830, and then published in a new edition with an introduction by Henri Baudrillart in 1860. During the period 1860–80 the work emerged from the shadows to which liberal economists had hitherto consigned it. This development is due to the contributions made by Baudrillart at the time that the celebrated ‘Adam Smith Problem’ began to dominate discussion, although Baudrillart differed quite profoundly from the terms of that debate.

1 A form of which Say was a leading exponent – his Traité d’économie politique went through six editions from 1803 to 1841.



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3. The Third Period; 1888–2002 The third phase reaches from the later nineteenth century to the present. Smith no longer plays a role in theoretical debate and his writings become an object of specialised interest. It is noteworthy that from 1888 to 1976 all accessible editions of Wealth of Nations are either abbreviated versions – that of JeanGustave Courcelle-Seneuil in 1888, of Georges-Henri Bousquet in 1950, and of Gérard Mairet in 1976 – or, if not condensed, then truncated, as with the Costes edition of 1950.1 Smith’s work is not only re-worked in economic treatises but, with the development of teaching in economics, this is associated with a professorial view that reading the complete text of Wealth of Nations is unnecessary. Theory of Moral Sentiments endures a lengthy eclipse in this period: it is not republished until 1981, some 120 years after the Baudrillart edition. This third period ends with a re-evaluation of Smith’s work. Following the publication of the bicentennial Glasgow edition, the accessibility of Smith’s work in French is dramatically improved: 1. Garnier’s classic translation of Wealth of Nations is made available once more (in 1991) in its complete form as a handy paperback aimed at a potentially wide market; while two new complete translations are put forward – one by Paulette Taieb (1995)2 and another by a team of translators under the general direction of Philippe Jaudel.3 2. The Grouchy translation of Moral Sentiments is republished in 1981, and then in 1999 an entirely new edition appears translated by Michaël Biziou, Claude Gauthier and Jean-François Pradeau. Hence these new translations made available good quality French-language editions of Smith’s work, besides the ready availability of the original texts in the bicentennial Glasgow edition. But there is no doubt that today’s readership has changed; it is unlikely that many students of economics in contemporary French universities would be inclined to read, in any depth, the work of Smith. The decline in the teaching of the history of economics is as marked in France as elsewhere. Nor is it likely that readers of Smith are academic economists, who are less and less inclined to cultivate a curiosity in the history of their discipline. The work of Smith is instead today the almost exclusive province of historians of ideas. 1 The Garnier translation was, it is true, republished in 1966 in Germany, but this was not really distributed to the French public; it was part of a facsimile edition – the Collections des Principaux économists – published by Guillaumin in the nineteenth century, mainly purchased by libraries. 2 Apart from the high quality of her translation, Paulette Taieb’s edition is noteworthy for its being based on the first edition, with Smith’s later revisions being flagged and translated in notes and in an appendix. The translator also contributes an entire volume composed of tables, glossary and index. 3 Publication of this latter edition is in progress at the time of writing.


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This essays falls into two broad sections. The first probes the later eighteenth century, a period so important for translations. The second covers the period following the appearance of canonical editions of Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations. We seek to provide merely the principal outlines of this history. ‘L’excellent ouvrage de M. Smith est devenu un livre classique’, 1764–1802 We have already seen that the later eighteenth century is rich in translations of Adam Smith’s writings; the final phases of the ancien régime are quite exceptional and mark the French case off from that of other countries. Why such a variety of translation? Does it indicate the speedy adoption of the economic and philosophical ideas of this Scottish writer? If so, what form might this take? Although we have no complete answer to this question, we can sketch the scenery and identify some important and useful details. 1. The Reception of Theory of Moral Sentiments in Translation In France, as everywhere else, Smith was first known and appreciated as a philosopher. Given the publication of Theory of Moral Sentiments it could not have been any different. But the speed with which this reputation spread in the cosmopolitan République des lettres is very striking. In October 1760 the Journal encyclopédique published a laudatory review. Morellet’s retrospective judgement certainly reflects one that was widely held at the time, and which would later open for Smith the doors of the most prestigious Parisian salons: …his Théorie des sentiments moraux … had impressed me with his wisdom and depth. And … I still today regard him to be one of those men … whose analysis of all the questions with which he deals is the most complete. M. Turgot, who was as fond of metaphysics as me, also had a high regard for his talent.1

Nonetheless, favourable reception of the book was not a foregone conclusion; reflection on morals had for a long time in France followed the rationalist track of Malebranche. But things were beginning to change; in 1747 Louis Jean Lévesque de Pouilly published his Théorie des sentiments agréables,2 a work of which Smith thought highly – it had been published in Britain in 1749 as The 1 André Morellet, Mémoires de l'abbé Morellet sur le dix-huitième siècle et sur la Révolution, revised edition, 1822 (Mercure de France, Paris 1988), p. 206. 2 Théorie des sentiments agréables, où, après avoir indiqué les règles que la nature suit dans la distribution du plaisir, on établit les principes de la théologie naturelle et ceux de la philosophie morale. According to D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie in their ‘Introduction’ to the Glasgow edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1976), pp. 14–15 the French title of Pouilly’s book prompted Smith’s own choice of title.



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Theory of Agreeable Sensations, but Smith read the work in the original French1 – and Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie had familiarised French readers to some extent with the ways of thought prevailing in the British isles. Smith welcomed this shift: writing anonymously in 1755 to the first and short-lived Edinburgh Review he expressed his great pleasure that the French seemed at last ‘to be pretty generally disengaged from the enchantment of that illusive [Cartesian] philosophy.’2 The original and inventive genius of the English, has not only discovered itself in natural philosophy, but in morals, metaphysics, and part of the abstract sciences. … This branch of the English Philosophy … has of late been transported into France. I observe some traces of it, not only in the Encyclopedia, but in the Theory of agreeable sentiments by Mr. De Pouilly, a work that is in many respects original; and above all in the late Discourse upon the origin and foundation of the inequality amongst mankind, by M. Rousseau of Geneva.3

During this period, from mid-century to its close, we might also note that the work of all Smith’s French translators met with criticism. In the eighteenth century, translation was not characterised by the rigour customary today. Fidelity to the original text was not the prime concern; sometimes the translator thought more of being true to the author by adapting his work than sticking to the letter of the text. However, things seemed to have begun to change, above all since the authors themselves become increasingly involved. For whatever reason, quality of translation became an important element in French debates. Moreover, Smith knew French,4 even if he spoke it badly.5 Did he take account of the mediocre quality of the translations, or did he just echo the opinions of those with whom he mixed and corresponded? The story begins with the version of Moral Sentiments that Marc-Antoine Eidous published in 1764 under the title Métaphysique de l’âme.6

1

See D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie, ‘Introduction’, p. 14. ‘A Letter to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review’, in Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects and Miscellaneous Pieces (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1980), p. 244. 3 Ibid., pp. 249–50. 4 ‘I have heard him say, that he employed himself frequently in the practise of translation, (particularly from the French), with a view to the improvement of his own style… . The knowledge he possessed [of languages], both ancient and modern, was uncommonly extensive and accurate’. Dugald Stewart, ‘Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith, LL.D.’, revised edition in D. Stewart, Biographical Memoirs of Adam Smith, William Robertson, and Thomas Reid (1811); Smith, Essays, pp. 271–2. We should not forget that Smith visited France and spent ten months in Paris. 5 According to the account of the Duchesse d’Enville, see the opinion reported to Smith by Adam Ferguson, Correspondence, p. 173; and also Morellet’s own report in his Mémoires, op. cit., p. 206. 6 Eidous is described in the Biographie universelle ancien et moderne, vol. 12 (Paris 1855), p. 324 as ‘… a tireless translator, but often inexact and above all rather lacking in elegance.’ 2


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The circumstances of this translation were propitious, since it came from the circle around Baron d’Holbach. Hume announced the news to Smith: The Baron d’Holbac [sic], whom I saw at Paris, told me, that there was one under his Eye that was translating your Theory of Moral Sentiments; and desird me to inform you of it: Mr. Fitzmaurice, your old Friend, interests himself strongly in this Undertaking: Both of them wish to know, if you propose to make any Alterations on the Work.1

Smith was obviously pleased by this, but suggested to Hume in reply that the translation should be based on the second edition of 1761, even though he considered it imperfect; he had given the matter serious consideration, but had not had sufficient opportunity to revise it.2 When it appeared in 1764, Eidous’ translation was far from satisfactory. Grimm’s Correspondance littéraire attributes the limited circulation the work had in France to the poor quality translation. Smith also raised complaints, if one can believe a letter later published by Blavet: I was greatly mortified to see the manner in which my book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, has been translated into the language of a nation in which I certainly aspire to be esteemed to no greater degree than I merit.3

The poor quality of this translation prompted thought on the need for another. This was undertaken by a member of the circle around Madame de Boufflers, a correspondent of Hume, an important figure among the anglophiles and the mistress of the Prince de Conti. Jean-Louis Blavet was the Prince’s librarian, and he was given the task of preparing a new translation from the third edition of 1767.4 In his letter of February 1772, Smith expressed his thanks to the countess: Your generous kindness has rendered me the greatest assistance that one could to a man of letters. I look forward to the pleasure of reading a translation made because you desired that it be done.5

1

Hume to Smith, 28 October 1763, in Correspondence, pp. 97–8. Smith to Hume, 12 December 1763, in Correspondence, pp. 413–14. See note 4, pp. 413– 14 which reviews doubts concerning the identity of this translator; we believe that the translator cannot be anyone other than Eidous, there being quite plausible reasons for the date of official approval preceding the date of Smith writing to Hume. 3 Smith to Madame de Boufflers, February 1772, in Correspondence, p. 161 [translated from the French, K. T.] 4 The translation is dedicated to the prince. It also includes a lengthy systematic table of contents (vol. I, pp. xiii–lvi.) Blavet declares, somewhat surprisingly, in his preface that he did not know that ‘there already had been one of them’ – J.-L. Blavet, ‘Préface’ to A. Smith, Théorie des sentiments moraux (Valade, Paris 1774), Vol. 1, p. xi. 5 Ibid., [translated from the French, K. T.] 2



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Blavet later confirmed that Madame de Boufflers had checked the translation.1 The book was published in two volumes in 1774 and 1775, then again in 1782. Parallel to the efforts of Blavet another translator set to work:2Louis-Alexandre de la Rochfoucauld, son of the Duchess d’Enville, both of them having made Smith’s acquaintance in Geneva during 1765. But as soon as Blavet’s translation was published he ceased work, as he told Smith in 1778.3 He did not give up on the project entirely, however, for in 1779 he returned to it: I receive with great pleasure the announcement of a new edition that you are preparing … and if the changes that you have made there render a new French edition necessary, and M. l’Abbé Blavet does not provide one, perhaps I might dare to take up my work once more, but your consent would be necessary, as would an assurance that you would look over the translation before it saw the light of day.’4

Would Blavet’s translation have been badly received? For the French text remained faulty and was subsequently considered to be unsatisfactory. According to Dugald Stewart, Smith himself blamed the poor circulation of his book on the translation: The Theory of Moral Sentiments does not seem to have attracted so much notice in France as might have been expected, till after the publication of the Wealth of Nations. Mr. Smith used to ascribe this in part to the Abbé Blavet’s translation, which he thought was but indifferently executed.5

Happily for Smith, some of the lettered public of the time was able to read the work in the original English. For it was only towards the end of the century that Sophie de Grouchy’s version was published. The approach to the text adopted by Sophie de Grouchy, together with the various remarks devoted to Smith in the ‘Letters on Sympathy’ that she appended to her translation of Moral Sentiments, is quite typical of the French 1 ‘Madame de Boufflers, known to be a woman of spirit and of taste, who both understood and spoke good English, compared this translation from beginning to end with the original.’ J.-L. Blavet, ‘Préface du traducteur’, in A. Smith, Richesse des nations (Laran, Paris 1800), Vol. 1, p. xxiv and in Carpenter, op. cit., p. 158. 2 Blavet also tells us that ‘Mr. Turgot had begun a translation of the same work’, ibid., p. xxiv. But it is also true to say that Turgot ‘began’ a great many things without getting beyond the first few pages, or the draft of a project. 3 He wrote to Smith on 3 March 1778: ‘I have had perhaps the temerity to undertake a translation of your Theory; but as I was finishing the first part I saw that M. l’Abbé Blavet’s translation had appeared, and I was forced to abandon the pleasure I would have had of rendering into my language one of the best works in yours.’ Correspondence, p. 233 [translated from the French, K. T.] 4 La Rochefoucauld to Smith, 6 August 1779, Correspondence, p. 238. 5 Dugald Stewart, ‘Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith, LL.D.’, revised edition in his Biographical Memoirs of Adam Smith, William Robertson, and Thomas Reid (1811); reprinted in Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects and Miscellaneous Pieces (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1980), p. 338 – note F added to the original 1794 version in 1811.


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understanding of the text, as well as highlighting the different perspectives on the nature of moral philosophy existing either side of the Channel. This reception would be repeated during the following century, both by French philosophers and economists. Commentators just did not understand a key point of Scottish philosophy: the construction of a moral theory that did not derive from reason. We have already seen that Smith complained of the French rationalist tradition, although he could see that this was at last changing. But he was mistaken about the extent of this change. Although Moral Sentiments was admired in France, it was generally thought to be unfinished: according to the commentators, Smithian sympathy could not in itself provide adequate foundation to his argument, but had to be derived from something else – from reason. This is why the response of Sophie de Grouchy – and there are others, although we lack the space to deal with them – is of interest. There are not many remarks in her ‘Letters on Sympathy’, but they are quite plain. Smith, recognising that reason is incontrovertibly the source of general rules of morality, but finding it impossible to deduce from reason the first ideas of justice and injustice, asserts that these initial impressions are the object and the result of an immediate sentiment, and supposes that our knowledge of justice and injustice, of virtue and of vice, partly derives from their propriety, or impropriety, with a kind of intimate sense, which is assumed but not defined. However, this kind of intimate sense is not one of those primary causes that must be recognised, but whose existence cannot be explained. … We should, my dear C[abanis], beware of this dangerous tendency to suppose the existence of a intimate sense, a faculty, a principle, every time that we encounter a fact whose explanation escapes us.1

Grouchy’s criticism culminates in the sixth letter, and is also expressed quite unambiguously in the ‘Avertissement’ to the works of Smith that was placed – probably by the publisher – at the front of her translation: Some of Smith’s opinions are examined, revised, and even confronted. The letters seemed an appropriate way of tracing the line separating the Scottish from the French school of philosophy.2

A little later Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis returned briefly to the topic in his important work Rapports du physique et du moral de l’homme of 1802. In the tenth part, ‘Considérations touchant la vie animale, les premières déterminations de la sensibilité, l’instinct, la sympathie, le sommeil et le délire’, he stated characteristically: …sympathetic tendencies can easily mislead even the most attentive observer … The great difficulty in relating their effects to their true cause can lead to the idea that unspecifiable faculties are needed to be able to conceive of such phenomena. 1 Marie-Louise Sophie de Grouchy, ‘Lettres à C*** [Cabanis] sur la Théorie des sentiments moraux,’ in Adam Smith, Théorie des sentiments moraux (Buisson, Paris 1798), Vol. 2; published separately as Lettres sur la sympathie (L’Étincelle, Montréal and Paris 1994), pp. 151–2. 2 Adam Smith, Théorie des sentiments moraux (Buisson, Paris 1798), Vol. 1, p. viii.



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Such tendencies are what is meant by moral sympathy, a well-known principle in the writings of Scottish philosophers…, for which Smith has put forward an analysis of great wisdom, but nonetheless incomplete, … and which Madame Condorcet, through simple rational deliberation, was able to make much clearer than Smith had achieved in Theory of Moral Sentiments.1

2. The Reception of The Wealth of Nations in Translation In 1776 the ground had been prepared for a very favourable reception of Wealth of Nations. Smith was well known in intellectual circles and appreciated by reformers: his work could be of use to the latter in the propagation of Enlightenment and in support of their policies. The ground had also been prepared for a French translation of the book. But while the reception of the work was on the whole favourable, successive translations provoked serious disagreement and debate. The Wealth of Nations at the end of the ancien régime The publication of Wealth of Nations in Britain was noticed immediately in France. Smith probably had copies of his new book sent to friends and correspondents: Jean-Louis Blavet and André Morellet, among others, were among these, if their reports are to be believed. Reviews followed quickly. The first, in two parts, was published in the Journal encylopédique of the 1st and 15th October 1776. Another followed a few months later in the February 1777 issue of the Journal des savants.2 The first review is anonymous. It consists of a substantial but rather neutral résumé of the book, embellished with some translated paragraphs, but also with some comments, considered below. In many respects this review already lays down the main themes that will be characteristic of the Wealth of Nations’ reception in eighteenth-century France. The second review has been attributed by Ken Carpenter to Blavet.3 By contrast with the first, it amounts to an extended puff for the work. It reproduces the ‘Introduction and Plan of the Work’, prefacing this extract with two general points. One relates to the importance of a ‘great work’ in which one can see ‘that superiority in genius and talent to which we owe the Theory of Moral Sentiments’:

1 Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis, Rapports du physique et du moral de l’homme (Crapart, Caille et Ravier, Paris 1802); reprint of the 1844 edition (Slatkine, Geneva 1980), p. 549. 2 These reviews are reproduced, with many others, in Ken Carpenter’s book. Since access to the original sources is so difficult for French readers as well as English, we cite from the new edition. As everywhere else in this essay we have modernised the spelling. 3 Carpenter, op. cit., p. 13.


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The most important economic questions are dealt with in all possible nicety, order and profundity; and the author … displays everywhere a degree of discernment and wisdom that one cannot but admire, since it is extremely rare.1

The other issue raised – and so soon after the book’s appearance in March – concerned the material problems presented by a future French translation: Some of our men of letters who have read the work have decided that this is not a book to be translated into our language. They say, among other things, that no individual would underwrite the cost of printing, given the uncertainty of sales, and that booksellers would be even more reluctant to do so.2

But as regards translations, things turned out well enough, at least with respect to the quality and competence of the translator. André Morellet immediately set to work. A friend of Turgot, close to the Physiocrats but also to Necker, having met Smith in Paris,3 Morellet was closely acquainted with economic issues. He had already published a great deal on the subject and so seemed made for the job.4 And so, according to his account, he set to work in the autumn of 1776, when he was staying in Champagne with the Archbishop of Sens, Étienne-Charles Loménie de Brienne; we can disregard the date Morellet gave for its completion, since he possibly gave an earlier date on polemical grounds. There I worked very assiduously on a translation of Smith’s very excellent work Wealth of Nations, which one might regard as a truly classical work of its kind. … As soon as the work appeared he sent me a copy through Lord Shelburne; I took it with me to Brienne and threw myself into its translation.5

The translation went well, but remained a manuscript; Morellet found it impossible to raise money for it and find a publisher, even when, much later, Loménie de Brienne became ‘principal minister’.6 The work was too lengthy, printing would have been too costly, and its marketing too risky in the face of 1 J.-L. Blavet, Review of the first English edition of the Wealth of Nations, Journal des savants (February 1777); in Carpenter, op. cit., p. 14. 2 Ibid. 3 Morellet also kept in occasional contact with Smith, sending for example in 1774 a copy of his refutation of Galiani’s Dialogues sur le commerce des grains – see Lettres d’André Morellet (The Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 1991), Vol. 1, p. 227. For his part Smith valued his relationship with the abbé – see for example in Smith, Correspondence, p. 295. 4 It is true that Morellet had ten years earlier sparked controversy with his translation of Cesare Beccaria’s Dei Delitti e delle pene; he suggested that Beccaria expressed his views badly, and he had sought to remedy this defect by altering the order of presentation of the book. 5 Morellet, Mémoires, op. cit., pp. 206–7. 6 ‘Much later, during his ministry, I requested 100 louis from the Archbishop de Sens [Loménie de Brienne] so that I might chance publishing the work at my own cost; he refused me the money, as had the booksellers’ Mémoires, op. cit., p. 207. Brienne was ‘principal minister’ – and Controller-General of Finance, but without the title – from August 1787 to August 1788.



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censorship.1 Moreover, potential competitors quickly appeared in the market. Morellet’s translation did nevertheless circulate as a manuscript.2 There is a curious incident here that has never fully been explained. As Carpenter emphasises,3 Morellet’s correspondence shows that poor fortune also played a part, for he was not able to publish as intended an extract from Smith relating to corporations – this was from Book I, Ch. X, ‘Of Wages and Profit in the different Employments of Labour and Stock’.4 It was impounded by the police. But if the dating of the correspondence is right, then this occurred during February 1776 while Turgot was still minister; hence this event took place before the publication of Wealth of Nations on 9 March 1776. This raises two issues: firstly, that the translation and publication of an extract from Wealth of Nations would have been thought useful in the pursuit of Turgot’s policies;5 and secondly, Turgot (or one of those close to him)6 already had a copy of the work before its publication, most likely sent to him by Smith. The correspondence shows that Turgot pressed Morellet for the translation – ‘I have made haste with everything that you wished to speed the printing of the extract from Smith’ wrote Morellet to Turgot on 22 February 1776;7 and Morellet expressed on the same day, and then again on 30 March, the idea of translating the whole book, ‘which would be good for our present times.’8 Meanwhile, the fall of Turgot probably delayed matters. Morellet made a prophetic statement; writing 1 Carpenter, ‘Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations d’Adam Smith et politique culturelle en France’, Economies et Sociétés, no. 10 (1995), p. 13; Dissemination of the Wealth of Nations in French and in France 1776–1843 (The Bibliographical Society of America, New York 2002), pp. xxx–xxxi. 2 According to C. Salvat, ‘Histoire de la traduction inédite de la Richesse des nations par l’abbé Morellet. Une traduction manuscrite toujours célébrée et toujours obstinément refusée au public’, Storia del pensiero economico, no. 38 (1999), p. 125, Morellet later revised the manuscript to take account of Smith’s changes to the second and third editions. 3 Carpenter, ‘Recherches sur la nature et les causes de las richesse des nations d’Adam Smith et politique culturelle en France’, op, cit., p. 12; see Morellet’s letters to Turgot between 22 February and 20 March 1776. 4 Carpenter, Dissemination, p. 1. This mishap is confirmed by the correspondence of Métra. 5 Salvat’s (‘Histoire de la traduction inédite’, p. 124) hypothesis is quite plausible. Turgot was planning his edict abolishing jurandes together with other commercial and craft associations. 6 Most likely Turgot himself, since Morellet made clear that he received his copy of the book after its publication through the offices of Lord Shelburne. And in any case he wrote to Shelburne on 12 April 1776 that ‘I have been lent a copy of the first volume of Mr. Smith’s new work’ Lettres, p. 339. See also on this Richard van den Berg, Christophe Salvat, ‘Scottish Subtlety: André Morellet’s Comments on the Wealth of Nations’, The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 8 (2001) pp. 146–85. See Richard Sher’s discussion (pp. 19– 20 above) of the printing history of Wealth of Nations – publication records for the first edition do not exist, but roughly three months separated the printing and publication of the second edition, and one for the third. 7 Lettres, p. 309. 8 Lettres, p. 330.


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to ask Turgot for two thousand pounds to facilitate the preparation of a good translation, he added: ‘The work seems to me so useful that it merits such encouragement, without which it will not be translated at all, or if so then by some poor incompetent in Holland.’1 The first French translation was in fact printed outside France, in The Hague, the translator remaining anonymous – he is simply known as M***. It was published quickly, the text appeared in 1778–9. It was poor quality work, but was nonetheless reprinted ten years later, in 1789, on the eve or at the outbreak of the Revolution. According to Carpenter,2 it is the most literal of all French translations, sold mainly outside France, and thus not penetrating the French market. At the same time as this first complete translation began to appear, the fragment on colonies was published in Lausanne and Basel, translated by É. S. F. Reverdil.3 Here we meet up once more with the abbé Blavet. Having already made available a French version of Moral Sentiments, he embarked upon a translation of Smith’s new work. He lived in part from his work as an occasional translator, and he either was, or had been, friendly with prominent Physiocrats such as the abbé Nicolas Badeau, and François Quesnay himself.4 He had discovered that Hubert-Pascal Ameilhon’s Journal de l’agriculture, du commerce, des arts et des finances was short of material and that the serial publication of Smith’s work would allow him to alleviate this shortage. His translation was therefore published serially from January 1779 to December 1780. In the final instalment Blavet included a seemingly unassuming letter to the editor in which he stated that he had only completed the translation ‘to teach myself ’, and that he wished …to occasion the publication of a new version more faithful to the original, or if a bookseller would undertake to reprint my own, that he would ensure that someone more versed in economic matters and the art of writing than myself would revise and correct the whole, for such a person would not be hard to find.5

Subsequent events showed however that Blavet clung tooth and nail to his original translation. This version of Wealth of Nations was reprinted several 1

Lettres, p. 310. Carpenter, op. cit., p. 20, and pp. xxxv, 24. 3 Reverdil prefaced the work with an ‘Advertisement’ that concisely conveyed a sense of the contents of Wealth of Nations, and explained the separate publication of the chapter on colonies by pointing to interest in recent events in America, and as a spur to a complete translation: ‘I hope above all that this sample will render the entire work sufficiently desirable to French readers that a suitable patient and capable translator will be engaged.’ Carpenter, op. cit., p. 20. 4 Together with the abbé Nolin he published in 1755 an Essai sur l’agriculture moderne, although the title could not conceal that the work was really a ‘small essay on gardening’. 5 Letter to the Journal de l’agriculture, du commerce, des arts et des finances, December; in Carpenter, op. cit., pp. 25–6. 2



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times as a complete work, at first in Switzerland and then in Paris1 – not always accurately, even in relation to the rough original – or as extracts,2 until Blavet finally revised his translation for the Paris 1800–1 edition. Despite republication, Blavet did not get off so lightly with Wealth of Nations as he had with Moral Sentiments: his translation was generally thought to be faulty. Morellet – both judge and jury – was unforgiving: The abbé Blavet, a poor translator of the Moral Sentiments, has snatched up3 Smith’s new treatise, and every week sent to the Journal whatever he had put together; which was good for the journal, for it filled its pages, but poor Smith was more traduced than translated. … Blavet’s version, scattered through the journal, was soon reissued by a bookseller, and this became a hindrance to the publication of my own translation. Originally I had proposed to do the work for one hundred louis, and then for nothing; but the competing edition prompted refusal.4

Morellet underlined that in Blavet and Roucher (he is writing after the Revolution) ‘everything that is a little abstract in Smith is unintelligible’, both of the them disregarding the content, that is to say, knowing nothing of political economy. Controversy surrounding Blavet’s translation did not remain confined to aspersions cast in Parisian salons. It burst into the open at the time that it was republished in 1788. Jacques Mallet du Pan, during a somewhat lively exchange in the pages of the Journal de Paris with Constantin François de Volney concerning some points of interpretation with respect to Wealth of Nations, stressed in the issue for 13 October 1788 that he had called for a ‘decent translation’ of Smith’s work. Volney, responding on 24 October, seized on this: I also would wish that we had a good translation of this admirable work; the author of the existing translation not only has a poor understanding of Smith’s ideas, very often he fails to understand them entirely.5

1 It seems that Blavet only acknowledged the Journal version. The other editions – Yverdon 1781, Paris 1786, Paris 1788 – remained unacknowledged, presumably on account of their faults. The 1781 Paris version appeared in an extremely brief printing of 20 copies; it was in fact an offprint of the text published in the Journal. 2 Extracts from the Blavet translation appeared, without naming either author or translator, in the four volumes of Pancoucke’s Encyclopédie méthodique wherever it dealt with ‘political economy and diplomacy’ (see the list in Carpenter, op. cit., pp. 42–53, where he notes (p. 41) that of the total 1, 097 pages of the first English edition of 1776, translations from 524 pages appear in Vols 2–4 of Économie politique et diplomatique). Other extracts from this edition appeared in the Bibliothèque de l’homme publique, t. 4 (1790). 3 Morellet here uses ‘emparé’, implying at once brutality, greed and the illegitimacy of the action. 4 Morellet, Mémoires, op. cit., p. 207. 5 C. F. de Volney, Letter to the Journal de Paris, 24 October 1788, in Carpenter, op. cit., p. 77.


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Volney then gave an example: the beginning of Book I, Ch. V on the real and nominal price of commodities, where he had no trouble in showing that the French text was incomprehensible.1 He concedes that much of this is also probably the result of numerous printing errors, but insists that the translation is itself at fault, ending with a eulogy to Morellet’s manuscript version: I read an excellent translation of this excellent work in manuscript; by abbé M[orellet]. The task of translating M. Smith was a work for this académicien, or our excellent Économistes.

This controversy in the columns of a well-known journal compelled Blavet to respond. In the issue of 5 November he published a letter giving his version of the facts. Blavet began by stating that Smith had been quite satisfied with the translation of Moral Sentiments (although according to Dugald Stewart this was not entirely correct), had sent him a copy of Wealth of Nations and asked him to act as translator; he also claimed once more that Morellet, among others, had sought to dissuade him from taking the task on: Mr. Smith, satisfied with the new translation I made of his Theory of Moral Sentiments, did me the honour of sending a copy of his work On the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations and obligingly indicated to me that he wished that I would also act as translator. The abbé M[orellet] and others who move in the best circles with which I am little acquainted told me that the work would not be readily taken up in France, for it required too much effort and study; and so I restricted myself to the project of translating the work, not for the public, but for my own instruction.

He then maintained that he had consented to its publication to help Ameilhon and the Journal de l’agriculture, that the following editions were printed without his knowledge – a statement that does not entirely match the known facts – and added to the numerous faults of the original text. He then implied that Morellet had been avaricious – that the 1788 edition would have been printed from Morellet’s translation, except that the publisher and the author ‘could not come to an agreement on the price’. In conclusion, he announced a corrected translation – in fact it did not appear until twelve years later – which would also incorporate the revisions that Smith had made to the text through its various editions. 1 ‘Ce qu’une chose vaut pour vous qu’il avez acquise, la peine et l’embarras qu’elle vous épargne et qu’elle peut coûter à d’autres. (It is obvious that a verb has been forgotten here, and it should read c’est la peine.) Le travail a été le premier prix de la monnaie originaire qu’on a payé partout. (It cannot be understood how labour can be the first price of money. In the English it reads: Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things). C’est au travail et non pas à l’or et à l’argent que le monde est redevable de toutes les richesses, et sa valeur, pour celui qui en est l’auteur et qui a besoin d’en échanger le produit, est précisément égale à la quantité de travail qui le met en état d’acheter. (It is obvious that it should read qu’il le met en état d’acheter.)



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Ashamed … for my nation, which had nothing but an imperfect translation of a masterpiece of political economy, I obtained permission to provide a new edition of my own translation, revised, corrected and augmented with the considerable amount of material that Mr. Smith had added to the second edition of the original. … I therefore corrected a great number of errors … but I regarded my efforts merely to be a stopgap, for among those far more skilful than myself I did not have the good fortune to know of a single person prepared to take on the work himself; it would be better, and I would like it one hundred times more if the abbé M[orellet] gave us his version.1

But this letter to the Journal did not close the debate, which started up anew with the publication of Roucher’s translation. We might note in conclusion that Blavet returned to the issue once more in 1800, writing in his preface to the revised version of his translation. Here he did something he had not done in 1788: he quoted at length from two of Smith’s letters for which today an original no longer exists. The first, dating probably from 1772, is to Madame de Boufflers concerning the poor quality of Eidous’ translation of Moral Sentiments (discussed above); the other is from 23 July 1782 to Blavet himself and deals with his translations. Smith here thanks Blavet for his ‘excellent translation’ of Wealth of Nations: I am extremely satisfied with your translation of my first work; but I am all the more so with the manner in which you have rendered the second. I can tell you, without flattery, that everywhere that I have cast my eyes … I have found it in every respect equal to the original.2

From this same letter we know of the existence of another translation, that of the Comte de Nort. But Smith was supposedly so satisfied with Blavet’s translation that he had specifically discouraged Nort from publishing his own! ‘I wrote to him by the next post that I was very satisfied with your own, and that I am so much obliged to you, that I am not able to encourage or favour any other.’ We lack reliable and incontrovertible evidence for Smith’s reactions and opinions regarding these translations. It is certain, however, that he was always troubled about the translation of his work. In 1784 he was under the impression that Morellet had published his translation in Holland, and he immediately asked his publisher, Thomas Cadell in London, to obtain a copy for him.3 Cadell did not respond to this request, and Smith repeated the request on 10 August 1784.4 Having heard no more, he took the issue up once more on 18 November – ‘But you say nothing to me of the Abbé Morellet’s translation of my Book, which I am extremely desirous of seeing. I am sorry to 1 2 3 4

Blavet, Letter to the Journal de Paris 5 November 1788, in Carpenter, op. cit., pp. 78–9. Smith, Correspondence, p. 260. [Translated from the French, K. T.] Smith, 19 June 1784, Correspondence, pp. 276–7. Ibid., p. 278.


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give you so much trouble, but I beg you would endeavour to procure me a copy of it for Love or Money’1 – before realising in the spring of 1785 that he had been misinformed in the first place.2 The Wealth of Nations during the Revolution The Wealth of Nations was published in England at a time when in France, following the fall of Turgot, many reformers had lost faith in their ability to influence, in whatever way, the course of events: the reform of France’s political and economic system seemed to be continually put off to the morrow, the urgency of problems remained while a succession of Controllers General of finance pussy-footed around with them. In political economy, innovation and publication marked time, and priority was given to the political debate. This phase ended with the convocation of the Estates General for 1 May 1789, and the publication of Sieyès’ celebrated pamphlet Qu’est-ce-que le Tiers état? Several months later, when the Estates General transformed themselves into the Constituent Assembly, and with the Revolution, matters appeared in a different light. The radical change of political regime in France permitted in principle every citizen to participate in power and influence decision-making. In this context, each should seek to inform himself the better to perform this new role.3 The state of mind during this period is caught by a quotation taken from Rousseau’s Social Contract, and used as an epigraph to the Bibliothèque de l’homme public: ‘Whatever feeble influence my voice might have in public affairs, the right to vote is sufficient to impose upon me the duty to instruct myself.’ In the Introduction to the first volume of the Bibliothèque we find that among the knowledge to be acquired by the citizen the importance of economic matters is acknowledged: the study of political economy ‘is becoming in France the concern of all the best minds’ – something that the Physiocrats had dreamed of many years before. The writings of Smith, and especially his Wealth of Nations, assumed a topicality they had not previously had. And it all begins with a new translation. As the Estates General were convened the two published editions – the first anonymous, the second by Blavet – were republished, in 1789 and 1788 respectively. In 1790 a third, competing, translation appeared by Jean-Antoine Roucher. The new translation had some important advantages: it was well1

Ibid., p. 279. Letter of 21 April 1785, Correspondence, p. 281. 3 See for an account of the evolution of economic thinking during the French Revolution Gilbert Faccarello, ‘L’évolution de l’économie politique pendant la Révolution: Alexandre Vandermonde ou la croisée des chemins’, in Politische Ökonomie und Französische Revolution (Schriften aus dem Karl-Marx-Haus, Trier 1989), pp. 75–121, and Faccarello and Steiner (eds.), La pensée économique pendant la Révolution française (Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, Grenoble 1990). 2



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advertised, it was well presented, and it was given the imprimatur of Condorcet, who was to write a volume of notes to follow Smith’s text. Roucher was a renowned poet – his long philosophical poem Les mois was especially well-known – and close to the reformers. He had known Turgot, who had helped him financially by making him receiver of the salt-tax, and who had also introduced him to the salon of Madame Helvétius; but he was above all close to Charles Dupaty, a magistrate who continued Voltaire’s battles, a defender of the rights of man, and to whom the translation of Wealth of Nations was dedicated. Besides this Dupaty was Elder of the masonic lodge of the Nine Sisters, where many Parisian intellectuals met and of which Roucher was the secretary. It was through Dupaty that Roucher came into contact with Condorcet, and through whom in turn Condorcet met Sophie de Grouchy.1 Roucher and Condorcet followed similar paths of political evolution, at least up until the early years of the Revolution.2 From 1786–7 Roucher contemplated a new translation of Wealth of Nations, probably with the encouragement of reformers with whom he mixed, using as a base for the translation the most recent edition that he could: the fourth of 1786. The revolutionary events seems to have made up his mind for him. The first three volumes were published in 1790, the final volume appearing the following year. This edition was immediately pirated – editions appearing during 1791–2 in Avignon, and in Neuchâtel in 1792. The translation was corrected by Roucher and then republished in Paris in 1794, after his death.3 A few significant details shed some useful light on the history of this translation. First of all, as the reviews of this new translation were appearing, Morellet’s manuscript version became a talking point once more. On 24 August 1790 Le Moniteur marvelled at the sad fate that had befallen a work of supposed quality: ‘A man of letters, whose talent and knowledge made him the one person capable of producing a suitable work, M. the abbé Morellet, took on the task, but – almost unbelievably – he could find no publisher prepared to take the work up. Today there would be no risk in such an undertaking.’4 It also has to be said that substantial extracts from Roucher’s translation also appeared in 1790 in the Bibliothèque de l’homme public. This review, which had 1

Sophie de Grouchy married Condorcet in 1786; Dupaty was her uncle. They for example both became members of the Society of 1789, founded in 1790. Later, in 1791–92, the paths diverged: Condorcet became more radical, while Roucher became more conservative. See on Roucher, A. Guillois, Pendant la Terreur. Le poète Roucher (1745– 1794) (Calmann-Lévy, Paris 1890); and M. Bréguet, ‘Le poète Roucher et les Condorcet: rencontre et réseau d’amitié’, Lekton, Vol. III, No. 1 (1993), pp. 243–57; ‘Un ‘météore éclatant’: le poète Roucher’, in J.-P. de Lagrave (ed.), Madame Helvétius et la Société d’Auteuil (The Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 1999), pp. 87–101. Both Roucher and Condorcet fell victim to the Terror, dying in 1794. Roucher was executed two days before the 9th Thermidor. 3 There is also an 1806 edition, which is a reissue ‘with a new title page, of the sheets of 1794’ – Carpenter, op. cit., p. 219. 4 The passage is echoed in the Journal encyclopédique of the month of November. 2


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begun publication at the beginning of that year from the same publisher as Roucher’s new translation, Buisson, was co-edited by Condorcet. His aim, at a time that every citizen might be introduced into public decisions and encouraged to assume his responsibilities, was to contribute to public instruction by publishing analyses of well-known works, both ancient and modern. These ‘analyses’ were presentations of classic and modern texts followed with extracts linked by commentary. Wealth of Nations was presented in this way in numbers 31 and 42 of 1790. The first extracts printed were taken from Roucher’s translation, later extracts coming from Blavet’s version, as Ken Carpenter notes.3 The volume of notes that Condorcet was meant to place after Roucher’s translation never appeared, nor was any manuscript copy of such notes ever found, and the republished edition of 1794 dropped all mention of them. It would have been extremely interesting to have a detailed account from the pen of someone who had known the main protagonists of the later eighteenth century and who had himself participated in the debates. The volume was anticipated at the time: ‘The assent or opposition of two writers whose thought is marked by such profundity are equally instructive for the public’ wrote the Mercure de France on 31 July 1790.4 The friend of Turgot, d’Alembert’s worthy equal, one of our greatest political writers, was perhaps the one person who could successfully clarify or rebut the author of the Wealth of Nations.5

Condorcet’s commentaries were repeatedly advertised in the press. Taking Le Moniteur as an example of a widely-circulated journal, it announced on 24 August 1790 the publication of the first two volumes of the Roucher translation and talked in flattering terms of the volume of notes to come – which it did again on 25 October on the occasion of the publication of the third volume. In the number of 26 May 1791 it announced the appearance of the fourth volume, adding: One can only await the fifth volume with impatience, where we are informed that notes are to appear by a writer who is a statesman, worthy commentator to a text which he could have written himself.6 1

pp. 108–216; summary of and extracts from Books I, II, and III. pp. 3–115: summary of and extracts from Books IV and V. 3 This substitution was made in all likelihood because Roucher’s translation was not quite finished at the time. In a letter of July 1790 the poet’s daughter, Eulalie Roucher, noted that her father was busy once again with the translation – Guillois, Pendant la Terreur, p. 140. 4 Carpenter, op. cit., p. 95. 5 Chronique de Paris, 9 April 1790, p. 393 (cited in Carpenter, ibid., p. 94). This periodical took up the question again the following year, on 9 May 1791: ‘To name the author of these notes is to inspire among wise men and good citizens fervent hope of seeing them published. It is known that philosophy, healthy reason and consequently the Revolution are obliged to M. Condorcet, who has spent his life fighting error, and preaching the truth.’ P. 513 (Carpenter, ibid., p. 113). 6 Le Moniteur, vol. 8, p. 490. References here to the Gazette Nationale, ou Le Moniteur Universel (May 1789–November 1799) are to the edition later published by Plon, Paris 1847. 2



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Everything points however to the fact that Condorcet lacked the time to write the notes, busy as he was politically; and that his name was, at least in part, used as a means of lending publicity to the launch of the new translation at a time that the market was already burdened with the revised Blavet edition: ‘This advertisement only served to support to the work.’1 Jérôme de Lalande, in the biographical notice that he published shortly afterwards, also reveals that Condorcet ‘spent little time’ on the notes for Smith, and sanctioned the use by others of his name for commercial ends: ‘It was thought that his name would lend more prestige to the enterprise.’2 A final point must be raised: the quality of Roucher’s translation. Did he escape the criticism directed at those of his predecessors? The answer is yes, if the contemporary press is to be believed. Reviews praised the accuracy and style of the poet, and disparaged previous versions – or rather, ‘the’ previous version3 since the first anonymous translation was ignored. Having been published in The Hague, it does not seem to have been widely distributed in France, and the printing of the new 1789 edition, without naming the author and under a curiously revised title, was covert.4 On 30 March 1790, Le Spectateur national declared: We already had a translation of Smith, but it was inexact, obscure and incorrect. This one has the two prime merits of a work of this kind: precision and clarity.5

The Chronique de Paris noted on 9 April 1790 that the previous translation is ‘illformed, full of anglicisms and errors’ while that of Roucher ‘leaves nothing to be desired in respect of style’. The Journal de Paris of 4 June concurred, as did Le Moniteur of 24 August. Nonetheless, we should consider whether, here as elsewhere, reviewers had really thought about the question seriously, or whether they simply echoed widespread, or orchestrated, opinion – for a lengthy unsigned article that appeared in the Journal encyclopédique for November 1790 complained exactly of this: 1 M. B. Desrenaudes, Review of Germain Garnier’s translation of the Wealth of Nations, La Décade philosophique, littéraire et politique, 30 fructidor an X (17 September 1802); in Carpenter, op. cit., p. 213. 2 Jérôme de Lalande, ‘Notice historique sur la vie et les ouvrages de Condorcet’, Mercure français, 20 January 1796, p. 155. On these points, see G. Faccarello, ‘Troisième partie: Économie. Introduction’, in Pierre Crépel and Christian Gilain (eds), Condorcet: mathématicien, économiste, philosophe, homme politique (Minerve, Paris 1989), pp. 121–49. 3 That of Blavet; in his preface to the revised translation of 1800–01, he stated, inexactly, that: ‘I am the author of the first to appear’ (Blavet 1800, p. ix). This error is repeated in a review appearing in La Décade philosophique, 31 December 1801. 4 ‘Whereas the La Haye edition of 1778–1779 identified Smith as the author, this reissue of those sheets did not. Instead, the new title, Recherches très-utiles sur les affaires présentes, et les causes de la richesse des nations, emphasises that this work is very useful in the present circumstances; and the omission of Smith’s name might have enhanced the emphasis on current relevance by giving the impression that the author was French.’ Carpenter, op. cit., p. 79. 5 Carpenter, ibid., p. 93.


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It seems to us that the original text has never been so completely disfigured. Errors, numerous mistranslations … awkward sentences and a whole crowd of obscure expressions in a highly-structured work possessing a language of its own, all these faults place … this translation is of a standard well below that of the first.1

This author cited many examples from Book I, Chapters VIII and XI, and showed quite easily that his claims were well-founded. The criticism is clearly quite blunt, even raising an accusation of plagiarism at one point: ‘the new translator only makes himself understood where he borrows expressions employed by his predecessor.’ The Journal, while publishing the article, partially disassociated itself from its reviewer’s opinions.2 This attack prompted Roucher, during his imprisonment, to attempt a revision of his translation, resulting in a partially corrected new edition in 1794. But Desrenaudes still talked in 1802 of ‘his very faulty translation’,3 and in his Mémoires Morellet placed Roucher on the same level as Blavet.4 Blavet also intervened in the dispute. Writing in the preface to his revised 1800–1 edition, he made a scathing attack on Roucher, suggesting that he was claiming to translate the work of an author whose language was unfamiliar to him. Roucher was supposed to have plagiarised Blavet – ‘It is no more than a travesty of my own translation, which he had constantly in front of him,’5 although, Blavet went on, Roucher’s efforts at placing his own stamp on the work made the text incomprehensible in places. Blavet’s accusations were echoed in the press – in Le Publiciste of 15 December 1800, and then later in La Décade philosophique of 31 December 1801 – and this impelled the publisher Buisson to react in honour of Roucher’s memory (in the issue of Le Publiciste for 21 December 1800). The affair stopped there. A few months later the publication of Germain Garnier’s new translation6 1

Carpenter, ibid., p. 101. ‘If anyone has cause to complain about this article, sent to us from Paris, such complaints should be addressed to us and we will publish them as soon as is possible. We have neither the original, nor any translation of the work of Smith’. (See Carpenter, ibid., p. 105) 3 Desrenaudes, Review, p. 213. 4 Morellet, Mémoires, p. 207. 5 J.-L. Blavet, ‘Préface du traducteur’, in A. Smith’s Richesse des nations (Laran, Paris 1800), Vol. 1, p. xiii, and in Carpenter, op. cit., pp. 153–9. 6 Garnier had at least one point in common with Roucher: the latter had, in the translator’s preface to his 1790 edition written provocatively: ‘…there has long been a demand for a French translation of Mr. Smith’s work’ – an assertion for which he was criticised. Some years later, Garnier took up this judgement in turn, discounting entirely preceding translations. In his preface to Abrégé élémentaire des principes de l’économie politique (1796) he stated that the Wealth of Nations was ‘a work which we still lack in our language’ (p. v). A lawyer, Garnier was made reserve deputy for Paris in the Estates General, but never sat. He was close to the monarchists. After the fall of the monarchy in 1792 he was forced to take refuge in Switzerland and it was during this period of exile that he began translating Wealth of Nations. ‘I wrote this preface and the subsequent translation in 1794. Proscribed and a fugitive of the times, I sought to console myself regarding the misfortunes of my country’ – ‘Préface du traducteur’, 2



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quickly eclipsed all predecessors, as we shall shortly see.1 3. The Theoretical Horizon How was Wealth of Nations perceived in France at the end of the eighteenth century? Some idea can be gained by considering in turn the reaction of authors who wrote in periodicals or more specialist works; and that of journalists, literary figures and politicians who followed debates at some distance without becoming really involved, and whose opinions can be found in the more everyday press titles. The latter will be dealt with first. General Opinion In the periodical literature of the time many articles appeared that were immediately very favourable to Wealth of Nations, but it is striking that such authors were, in one way or another, involved in the business of translation – which is at once an intellectual and a commercial enterprise. Blavet’s short article in the Journal des savants of 1777 is an example of this: his opinion – Smith ‘displays everywhere a degree of discernment and wisdom that one cannot but admire, for it is extremely rare’ – was everywhere repeated.2 Another case concerns Ameilhon who, in January 1779, prefaced the first instalment of the translation in the Journal de l’agriculture with the statement: ‘We do not believe that there is anything more solid and profound on this matter.’ But general articles are in fact relatively scarce at the beginning of the period and views such as those

in A. Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations (Agasse, Paris), an X [1802], Vol. 1, p. lxxxvii. He did not return to France until after Thermidor, in 1795. A supporter of Bonaparte, he became a prefect, a Count in the Empire and President of the Senate from 1809 to 1811. After the restoration he was made Pain de France. 1 Here we arrive at the point when the frenetic pace of translation slows. Unfortunately there is no space here to compare different translations. But the interested reader who lacks access to the editions in question can form a preliminary opinion by opening the website of the PHARE Research Centre – http://phare.univ-paris1.fr – and visiting the general catalogue of the virtual library under the name ‘Smith’. Paulette Taieb, herself a distinguished translator and designer of this website, has placed there Book I, Ch. II of Wealth of Nations in its different versions, including the manuscript version of Morellet. 2 Blavet’s declaration was reproduced almost word for word in the February 1782 number of the Tableau raisonné de l’histoire littéraire du dix-huitième siècle (see Carpenter, op. cit., p. 39). It was cited once again in 1787, on 5 December, in the Journal de Paris (Carpenter, op. cit., p. 62). Much later, in 1790, Roucher employed a related formulation in the preface to his own translation – Smith had rendered political economy ‘more profound and developed it with exceptional wisdom’, a phrasing which can be found in the same Journal for 4 June 1790, the new formulation also being repeated in the Feuille de correspondance du libraire during the spring of 1791 (Carpenter, op. cit., p. 116).


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expressed during 1776 in the Journal encyclopédique represent the exception more than the rule. Ten years later opinions remained divided. For example, following the new 1786 edition, the Journal historique et littéraire for 1 March 1787 considered the work ‘a collection of political, economic and philosophical observations, many of which are well-founded and perfectly reasonable, while others are the fruits of convoluted and tiresome speculation, from which one can hardly hope for clear and certain results’.1 For its part the Mercure de France stated on 14 July 1787 that ‘… the best works of economics, such as that of Adam Smith in England, and Forbonnais and Necker in France, are more books for the use of their respective states than general treatises’.2 However, with time opinion altered for the better. The Journal encyclopédique returned to the question. A moderate review of the 1788 edition concluded that ‘There are longueurs …; but there is order, precision and profundity.’3 Barely a week later the Mercure de France had no hesitation in … placing these Inquiries alongside those works that have done the greatest honour to our century and to the human spirit, considering on the one hand the vigour and extent of the genius they require; and on the other, the extreme importance of truths generally ignored, upon which the author has shed great light.4

An allusion is made to the English comparison of the standing of Smith with that of Montesquieu. In conclusion, the article notes the contemporary relevance of the work. ‘The current intellectual and political situation of this kingdom gives grounds to hope that this important work will find among us readers capable of profiting from it.’5 Volney went even further in the Journal de Paris for 11 October 1788: Great Britain, by bringing forth Smith, has equalled a France which has given birth to Montesquieu. It is therefore desirable that Smith is much read, much studied and that his work prompts reflection at this time when all minds, occupied with objects of government, are there generating more heat than light.6

One year later Pierre-Louis Rœderer, also wrote in his first work of ‘the excellent work of M. Schmitt [sic.] on wealth, a work which is to the science of

1

Carpenter, ibid., p. 56. Carpenter, ibid., p. 76. 3 15 March 1788, Carpenter, Dissemination, p. 69. 4 22 March 1788, ibid. 5 22 March 1788, ibid., p. 70. 6 C. F. de Volney, Letter to the Journal de Paris, 24 October 1788, in Carpenter, Dissemination, p. 74. 2



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public economy that which the Esprit des lois is to the science of political and civil government.’1 This comparison with Montesquieu was repeated.2 During the Revolution Smith’s name recurred in political discourse and in the press – where the number of titles had meanwhile increased. It was the hour of reform. It was time to dismantle the elaborate and increasingly overwrought centuries-old system of ancien régime regulation, to read how things were done better abroad, and to seek help in such reflection by dipping into encyclopedias or works of synthesis. Economic debates in France had produced many new ideas, but no single work satisfactorily covered the entire theoretical and practical range of these ideas. From this point of view Smith’s ideas were ‘in the air’ and Wealth of Nations could be presented as required reading:3 ‘No book contains a more comprehensive system of social economy, and … as a consequence none can offer more in the way of instruction and usefulness’ stated Le Moniteur in its issue of Tuesday 24 August 1790. The book would not be easy reading for everyone: ‘Smith is one of those books [sic.] in which each page contains enough material for a whole book; it has to be read several times to properly understand it, to grasp, with any exactness, the entirety of its system.’4 But syntheses were rare. At the beginning of the Revolution, therefore, Smith appeared to the public as an authority, more, an authority hard to challenge. The Annales patriotiques et littéraires talked of ‘the immortal Smith’ (23 March 1790), the Chronique de Paris underlined that ‘the reputation of Smith is beyond praise. Europe … has long 1 P.-L. Rœderer, Questions proposées par la commission intermédiaire de l’Assemblée provinciale de Lorraine, concernant le reculement des barrières, et observations pour servir de réponse à ces questions, s.l., 1787, p. 26. 2 At the beginning of this period Le Spectateur national wrote on 9 April 1790: ‘Smith’s work must be a milestone in the history of political science, as was Esprit des lois. There is no need to seek in Smith the brilliant imagination and the energetic style … of Montesquieu. Smith is a wise and profound calculator whose only ornament is utility. Do you wish great images for your imagination, great thoughts, strong and ingenious expression that entirely sate your spirit? Close the Treatise on the Wealth of Nations and open … Esprit des lois. But if you are seeking the true foundations of the prosperity of empires, if you require exact ideas on the relationship of agriculture and commerce, wages and work, on industry, banks, money, credit and all the many complicated and various elements entering into the structure of the modern state, the Treatise on the Wealth of Nations is what is needed.’ 3 In 1793 the government bought copies of Roucher’s translation for the instruction of its provincial envoys (Carpenter, Dissemination, p. 87). After Thermidor, with the institution of a course on political economy at the École Normale in Paris, and later in the Écoles Centrales, professors such as Alexander Vandermonde or Jacques Berriat Saint-Prix recommended the reading of Wealth of Nations to their students (see Faccarello, ‘Du Conservatoire à l’École normale: quelques notes sur A.T. Vandermonde (1735–96)’, Les Cahiers du CNAM, no. 2 (1993), pp. 17–58). But they did not recommend Wealth of Nations alone; both Vandermonde and Berriat Saint-Prix maintained that the works of Steuart were equally important. The works of Arthur Young and Jean Herrenschwand are also mentioned. The course of study that Vandermonde followed was more or less that of Steuart. For more on Steuart, see below. 4 Le Spectateur national, 9 May 1791, in Carpenter, Dissemination, p. 114.


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ranked him first among the philosophers who directed themselves to the great science of political economy’ (9 April 1790), and the Mercure de France noted on 31 July that ‘the excellent work of M. Smith has become a classic’, a conclusion that Le Spectateur national reiterated on 9 May 1791. Many more examples of this could be found. In 1801 much the same thing was said: ‘Smith’s work, so justly celebrated, has no need of apology: it has become a fundamental book.’1 Alongside this barrage of praise some criticism did however emerge, from intellectuals or politicians uncommitted to ‘freedom of trade’ and the absence of state intervention. Jacobins such as Saint-Just and Robespierre are two examples from the National Assembly, especially in the context of the great debate on ‘subsistence’ that took place at the end of 1792. In his speech of 16 November one deputy, Ferrand, cited Turgot in connection with the ‘freedom of trade’, while on 20 November Roland, Minister of the Interior, praised the ‘great insights of Turgot’ and castigated ‘Necker’s disastrous errors’. Saint-Just responded in 29 November and mentioned Smith: One cannot hide the fact that our economy, affected as it is, … needs extraordinary remedies. Ferrand talked to you of Smith and Montesquieu; but neither Smith nor Montesquieu had experience of what is happening here today.2

Smith, Quesnay, Turgot… and others The first reaction to Wealth of Nations by those versed in political economy was to judge the work against the context of French political economy. Here there were some major figures, such as Boisguilbert – to whom Dugald Stewart did not forget to allude in his biographical account of Smith. But two more recent names dominated: Quesnay and Physiocratic doctrine on the one hand, and Turgot on the other. For Quesnay’s liberal adversaries the publication of Smith’s book served as a lever against Physiocracy. In the editorial preface to the 1781 Yverdon edition of Blavet’s translation, F. B. De Felice’s words were far from gentle.3 From this point of view the ideas of Smith and English writers in general were presented as a corrective to the supposed errors of French authors. English authors ‘had got ahead of other nations.’ ‘They have spared nothing in reaching this goal. They seem to have calculated everything, weighed everything, to have grasped

1

In Carpenter, ibid., p. 165. All reported in Le Moniteur, Vol. 14 (1792), pp. 494, 517, 610. 3 ‘In France, where everything begins in a rush of enthusiasm and ends up in the ridiculous, it was thought that this important subject could be rendered more profound by using abstract terms and an enigmatic language – but it was only rendered more obscure. This is the work a species of political sect, whose proselytes honoured the memory of their venerable master with an apotheosis.’ . ‘Préface de l’éditeur’ in Smith’s Richesse des nations (De Felice, Yverdon 1781), Vol. 1, pp. i–ii; and in Carpenter, Dissemination p. 37. 2



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all relationships, and considered all sides.’ Their views were ‘new’, their observations ‘exact’, their research ‘profound’.1 This assessment was made in 1781, at a time when the intellectual impact of Physiocracy was still fresh. But even in 1800 Le publiciste was able to publish an article in which the same argument was repeated and also amplified: The work of Smith has effected a genuine revolution. … Previously both authors and administrators followed with difficulty the tracks of Quesnay and Forbonnais, and of the Ami des hommes; the language used in their explanations was practically unknown to everyone else; it resembled a sacred Egyptian language, understood only by priests and seemingly empty of all sense. Adam Smith was the first to dissipate the obscurity, whether natural or contrived, of economic science.2

Those disposed favourably to Physiocracy preferred to underline the positive theoretical connections with the work of Quesnay and his disciples, presenting Smith as a writer who was continuing their work, rather than opposing it. An example of this is Volney who, in the course of his controversy with Mallet du Pan, wrote in the Journal de Paris that ‘even if the Economists had a ridiculous side, … they had nevertheless done much to enlighten us. M. Smith, who quite often is of the same opinion, sometimes criticises them, but without relinquishing his high regard for their work. He did not dream of calling them the ‘scourge of Europe’, as M. Mallet du Pan has done.’3 That same year Nicolas Badeau sought to demonstrate in the Nouvelles Éphémérides économiques that the differences between physiocratic theory and that of Smith were more apparent than real.4 This idea was taken up some years later by Germain Garnier and used as the principal axis of his argument.5 Roucher also paid homage to the physiocrats in the ‘Advertisement’ to his edition of Wealth of Nations: France has produced … works which have shed some light on the different aspects of political economy. It would be the greatest ingratitude to forget those services rendered to the country by the Économistes. The days of ridicule and disparagement are over; they have given way to those of justice: and whatever might be the exaggerations dictated by the spirit of system forced upon an association of honest men and philosophers, it is no less acknowledged today that they have given the signal for the study of practical truths, upon which one might cultivate and found the wealth of nations.6 1

De Felice, ibid., p. iv. 15 December 1800, in Carpenter, op. cit., pp. 160–1. 3 Volney, Letter of 24 October 1788, in Carpenter, Dissemination, p. 77. 4 Nicolas Baudeau, ‘Explication amiable entre M. Smith, célèbre écrivain anglais, et les auteurs économiques en France’, Nouvelles Éphémérides économiques, February 1788, second part, pp. 26–51. 5 ‘Préface du traducteur’, in A. Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations (Agasse, Paris an X (1802)), Vol. 1, pp.i–cxii; ‘Notes du traducteur’, op. cit., Vol. 5, pp. 1–456. 6 Jean-Antoine Roucher, ‘Avertissement du traducteur’, in Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations (Buisson, Paris 1790), Vol. 1, pp. vii–viii. 2


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In his well-know Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain Condorcet puts matters into historical perspective. He writes that political economy: Made little progress until the Treaty of Utrecht promised Europe a lasting peace. At this time one can see that there was an almost general move to the study of this hitherto neglected area; this new science was carried by Stewart [i.e., James Steuart], by Smith, and above all by the French economists, to a degree, at least as regards precision and purity of principles, that one could not have hoped to achieve so quickly.1

The comparison with Turgot and his writings was generally clear and unambiguous. Smith, who had met Turgot in Paris, and for whom there is every indication of familiarity with Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses (1766), was presented as a direct continuation, especially with respect to a central element of his doctrine: the theory of capital and of competition between capitals. In his Mémoires sur la vie et les ouvrages de M. Turgot (1782) Dupont emphasised the brevity and density of Turgot’s writing, noting with respect to the Réflexions: Everything that is true in the admirable, although difficult work, that Mr. Smith has since published on the same subject in two large quarto volumes, can be found here; and where Smith has added to it there is a lack of exactness and even of argument.2

Several years later in his own Vie de M. Turgot (1786) – a work which went through a number of editions, was quickly translated into English and was an important text for reformers in the British Isles – Condorcet also touched in passing on this issue. Praising the simplicity of Turgot’s principles and the range of the results that he could draw from them, he suggested that: One can regard this Essay as the germ of the renowned Smith’s treatise on the wealth of nations, a work unfortunately to little known in France for the good of the people, an author whom one can only reproach for having taken too little account, in some circumstances, of the irresistible force of reason and truth.3

This opinion was shared by other French authors, who often linked the names of Turgot and Smith. Roederer remarked, for example, that he had himself ‘only developed some principles from the illustrious Smith, or more exactly Turgot, the true author of the theory of capitals.’4 And importantly, the 1801 1 Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat de Condorcet, Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain (Vrin, Paris 1970), p. 154. 2 Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, Mémoires sur la vie et les ouvrages de M. Turgot, ministre d’État (Philadelphia 1782); in Dupont de Nemours, Œuvres politiques et économiques (KTO Press, Nedeln 1979), Vol. 3, pp. 109–10. 3 Condorcet, Vie de M. Turgot (1786) (London 1787), Vol. I, p. 54. 4 Pierre Louis Rœderer, Mémoires sur quelques points d’économie publique, lus au Lycée en 1800 et 1801 (Firmin Didot, Paris 1840), p. 98. See also here p. 78: ‘Around 1766 he [Turgot] wrote



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Basel edition of Wealth of Nations contains an English translation of the 1766 Réflexions.1 In concluding this survey of the reception of Smith translation in later eighteenth-century France we should not stop simply at the registration of linkages that were made between Wealth of Nations and French contemporary writers. Foreign writers were also repeatedly mentioned, among them James Steuart. Even if he were not so famous in France as Smith, James Steuart had his own public in the early years of the Revolution. His Inquiry into the Principles of Political Œconomy was translated into French and published during 1789–90 by Didot in Paris under the title Recherches des principles de l’économie politique, ou Essai sur la science de la police intérieure des nations libres. Alexandre Vandermonde was behind this initiative.2 He declared that the work was translated … at my request. The translation was completed by an Irishman who knew no French [sic.], but it was reviewed by a man of high intellect.3

The latter was General Étienne de Sénovert, who in 1790 also published a collection of John Law’s works with Buisson,4 prefaced by a ‘Discours préliminaire’ dealing with money and credit.5 How was Smith located in relation to these writers by the French public? The five volumes of Steuart’s book were taken more as a complement to, rather than a substitute for, the Wealth of Nations. It was even thought that Smith had drawn upon Steuart for inspiration. In Le Moniteur for 24 August 1790 for example we find it suggested that: Mr. Smith has drawn his principles largely from the work of Sir James … He also owes many ideas to the famous Law, so ill-judged in his time and even today, whose operations, always thwarted by authority, were so little in harmony with his

a small work … in which he established the same principles that I will present; I invite those who love science to read this little-known treatise. … They will have the satisfaction of discovering there that one of the best chapters from Smith’s book, one of those which has contributed the most to his success, is owed entirely to the work of Turgot, several copies of which were distributed in manuscript shortly after its composition.’ 1 Together with the explanation: ‘as they [the Reflections] are affirmed by the Marquis de Condorcet … to be the germ from which Mr. Adam Smith formed his excellent treatise on the Wealth of Nations, it is hoped the curious reader will not be displeased to find them here in English dress.’ Carpenter, op. cit., p. 174. 2 On Vandermonde and the first public chair of political economy see Faccarello, ‘L’évolution de l’économie politique’, pp. 75–121. 3 Alexandre Théophile Vandermonde, Économie politique, lectures published in Séances des Écoles normale (Reynier, Paris 1795); new edition, ‘Imprimerie du Cercle Social, Paris 1800– 1801’; in L’École normale de l’An III. Leçons d’histoire, de géographie, d’économie politique (Dunod, Paris 1994), p. 372. 4 It should be recalled that Steuart himself revived Law’s ideas. 5 Étienne-François de Sénovert, ‘Discours préliminaire’, in Œuvres de J. Law (Buisson, Paris 1790), pp. i–l.


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true system, who perhaps deserves to be better-known at this time, as he is to the English.1

These suggestions were probably prompted by Sénovert himself. In his translator’s introduction to Steuart, he stated that: Mr. Smith … in his justly famous work … combined in the first three books everything that our author has said on the same issues, but without elaborating on it in any way, for this is only incidental to his plan, and he presumes that these elaborations are known to his readers.2

As far as public debate over money, credit and public debt was concerned, these editions of the writings of Law and of Steuart were timely, for their appearance coincided with the creation of assignats – to which Sénovert and Vandermonde were very favourable – and the lengthy debates that ensued. This was echoed in the press.3 For some participants in the debate a way was thus found of countering some of the prevailing liberal ideas, while also questioning some of the arguments advanced by the Wealth of Nations. In his introduction Sénovert betrayed the key to his preference for Steuart – he appreciated this author’s pragmatism, which is to say, his interventionist bent.4 He appreciated the absence in Steuart of dogmatic and rigid ‘maxims’ which only had to be stated and then applied, whatever the circumstances; this is recognisable as an old criticism directed at the Physiocrats and at Turgot, those who supposed to favour an immediate and uncompromising freedom of trade, imposing a simple system upon a complex reality, without taking account of impediment and the risk of a brutal toppling of social order. According to Sénovert, one of the main advantages of Steuart’s Inquiry was that he … convinced sound minds … of the difficulty of reducing political economy to a system; they will see that administrative principles are necessary, but nothing is more treacherous than maxims whose rigidity never bends before the numerous inconsistencies which oppose their application. These maxims have the inconvenience of favouring ignorance and idleness in a subject which does not permit such accommodation.5 1

Le Moniteur, 24 August 1790, Vol. 5, p. 568. Étienne-François de Sénovert, ‘Avertissement du traducteur’, in James Steuart, Recherche des principes de l’économie politique, ou Essai sur la science de la police intérieure des nations libres (Didot, Paris 1789), Vol. 1, p. vii. 3 ‘We doubt that it is possible to find elsewhere, and especially among French writers, any intelligible explanation of Law’s famous system; the reader will see, and not without some surprise, that neither writers, nor those orators of the day who have talked of it, have ever studied it, or what is worse, have not understood it.’ Le Moniteur, 24 June 1790, Vol. 4, p. 699. 4 This position was elaborated by Sénovert almost three decades later in a long commentary on Smith which remained unpublished – ‘Introduction’ to the manuscript ‘Notes sur les Recherches de la nature et des causes de la richesse des nations d’Adam Smith’, in Carpenter, op. cit., pp. 228–33. 5 ‘Avertissement’, pp. ix–x. 2



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These comments were also aimed at Smith, since the opinion of the day considered that criticism directed to the political economy of Physiocrats and Turgot was also directed at the Wealth of Nations. Today we know that this assimilation is an improper one, and that to some degree the criticism is also mistaken with respect to Turgot.1 Nevertheless, from the perspective of early Revolutionary politics, whether liberal or antiliberal, we can note that even Dugald Stewart in his ‘Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith’ (translated by Pierre Prévost and published in French in 1797) sought to purify Smith of any suspicion of dogmatism in economic policy, emphasising prudence and gradualism. Stewart here drew on Wealth of Nations, and also on those passages added by Smith to the sixth edition of Moral Sentiments concerning the qualities necessary for a statesman.2 And on the issue of this distinction between political economy and economic policy he even linked Smith’s opinions to those of Necker – without however naming the latter, referring simply to his Éloge de Colbert.3 4. The Nature of the Theoretical Reception: Some Examples We can start by dealing with an issue that increases in importance during our first period – that of Smith’s plan of work, or project. There are two aspects to this: firstly, the question of the relationship between Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations; and secondly, the structure of Wealth of Nations itself. The first of these questions was not directly confronted during this period. Generally speaking, reviewers of the various editions of Wealth of Nations in translation confined themselves to the observation that Smith was also the author of the famous and important work Theory of Moral Sentiments. There is only one exception to this; a rare false note was sounded in the Mercure de France which, in 1800, published a rather curious article at the time that the corrected edition of Blavet’s translation of Wealth of Nations appeared.4 The article contends that Moral Sentiments is a minor work. ‘The Wealth of Nations is one of the leading works of the genre. … Theory of Moral Sentiments, from the same writer, 1 See G. Faccarello, ‘Galiani, Necker and Turgot: a debate on economic reforms and policies in eighteenth century France’, in G. Faccarello (ed), Studies in the History of French Political Economy: From Bodin to Walras (Routledge, London 1998), pp. 120–95. 2 In Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects and Miscellaneous Pieces (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1980), pp. 317–18. 3 Stewart, op, cit., pp. 318–19. 4 As Ken Carpenter remarks, (op. cit., pp. 138, 165–6) this article silently repeated the review by Victorin Fabre that had appeared five years before in La Décade philosophique, littéraire et politique on the occasion of the publication of the revised Roucher translation. Some new paragraphs are however added, and it is these that are of interest here.


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is a very inferior work. Everything is positive and substantial in the first; everything is vague and subtle in the second, if you disregard some chapters.’1 But at this stage of the reception no mention was made of the relationship between Smith’s two books. The second point was initially touched on but became increasingly important in approaches to Wealth of Nations. As early as 1781 the publisher De Felice had considered ‘English authors’ to be, in spite of their qualities, sometimes lacking in clarity and without the talent to outline their ideas: Their pace is difficult and crabbed. They have insufficient method to deal with many ideas and much knowledge. They show more acuity in forming a plan, but they are not exact in following it.2

If a partial exception were made for Smith – this was of course in the preface of the Blavet translation and copies had to be sold – there was nevertheless some room for scepticism: ‘Insofar as Mr. Smith has filled his own work by reinforcing his material, and if he has avoided many of these defects, are there yet no criticisms that can be made of him? We cannot say so, but if an author, having struggled with all difficulties, surmounts a great number of them, severity in his case becomes an injustice.’3 Other authors also made comments concerning the structure of Wealth of Nations. But the most direct attack came from Germain Garnier. He challenged the idea that one could use the work as a treatise for instruction in the science of political economy, for the treatment of different themes and the rendering of principles was confused. Garnier formulated this argument in his Abrégé élémentaire des principes de l’économie politique of 1796, a work intended to fill a large gap in teaching material. Although Smith’s work was ‘the most perfect and complete’ in political economy, it lacked order and method. … It cannot be given to beginners. … The author has marked out … a plan too limited for the vast distance he has to cover; and thus his genius, discontented with these narrow bounds, makes an excursion at every step. Most of the interesting elements of his work are thrown up as if by chance, and placed under titles that seem alien to them.4

This reproach was repeated often enough afterwards, by Jean-Baptiste Say in particular. But Garnier came back to it in the long preface which he placed at 1 Mercure de France, 1st Brumaire Year IX, 23 October 1800, in Carpenter, op. cit., p. 166. The author of the article also goes so far as to claim that, for the most part, the substance of Smith’s Moral Sentiments had already appeared in the well-known philosophical poem ‘The Seasons’ by Charles-François de Saint-Lambert – except that the poet is more precise, exact and striking (Carpenter, op. cit., p. 166, note). But the poem actually appeared in 1769, ten years after Moral Sentiments. 2 De Felice, ‘Préface de l’éditeur’, p. iv. 3 Ibid., pp. iv–v. 4 Germain Garnier, Abrégé élémentaire des principes de l’économie politique (Agasse, Paris an IV (1796)), pp. v–vii.



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the beginning of his translation: ‘One cannot hide that the defect identified in English writers, a want of method and a neglect … of those didactic forms which relieves the reader’s memory and directs his acumen, can be sensed in the Wealth of Nations.’1 Defects in exposition were held to be of three types. Firstly, Smith began his book by placing before the reader ‘the complex machine for the multiplication of wealth’ and its main source – the division of labour – instead of outlining ‘preliminary notions’ such as the ‘definition of values’ and the ‘laws which govern them’. Secondly, ‘the line of reasoning is often interrupted by long digression’ through which the reader loses track of the argument. Thirdly, ‘all of Smith’s doctrine … was contained within the first two books; … the three remaining books could be read separately, for while they confirmed and developed his doctrine, they did not serve to complete it.’ And so Garnier inserted into his long preface a section entitled ‘Method for Facilitating the Study of Smith’s Work’, as an aid to reading and studying the text.2 If we consider matters a little more closely we could say that the parts of Wealth of Nations that struck contemporaries most strongly were placed towards the beginning and the end of the work. Taking the latter first, Book IV, on systems of political economy, had a natural interest, since it contained an analysis of the Physiocratic system. But Book V also attracted attention because of its relevance to France’s problems. The problems of taxation and public debt were at the centre of debate and a moving force in the convocation of the Estates General. It is easy to see why, in this context, final chapters of Smith’s book aroused such interest. Regarding Book IV, one can assume that opinion was guided by attitudes taken to Quesnay’s theory. Partisans and adversaries had by this time each selected an emblematic figure suited to their cause. Adversaries naturally gravitated towards the bête noire of Boisguilbert and Quesnay – Colbert. During the second half of the eighteenth century the Académie française intervened in debate by announcing prize competitions on Sully and Colbert. It was the poet Antoine-Léonard Thomas, himself close to the Physiocrats, who carried off the first prize in 1763 with his ‘Éloge de Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully’. Ten years later Jacques Necker, an enemy to the Physiocrats and to Turgot, took the second of the prizes with his ‘Éloge de Jean-Baptiste Colbert’. The interest that Book IV attracted is therefore understandable. An anonymous review published in the Journal encyclopédique of 1776 adopted a moderate

1 Garnier, ‘Préface du traducteur’, in A. Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations (Agasse, Paris an X), Vol. 1, p. xxiv. 2 Op. cit., pp. xxiii–xlix. Garnier added that he believed himself able ‘to indicate the order which seemed to to conform most closely to the sequence of ideas, and for this reason most suited for teaching’ (p. xxvi).


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tone. The reviewer expressed the hope that, thanks to Smith, all would now agree on the essential and stop fighting for one-sided views. In his treatment of the agricultural system he concludes that one must neglect neither the cultivation of land, nor commerce; a middle course which might reconcile the partisans of Sully and those of Colbert, especially when one reflects that Sully found a France in a state of devastation, where it would have been folly to seek enrichment through commerce, before securing the bread that was needed. Can one engage in commerce before the objects of commerce exist? Under Colbert, France already had such objects in abundance, and this minister would not have been more wise in working to increase the sum of these objects, without considering their circulation and sale. It seems to us that this is the nub of the difficulty that separates the Sullyists from the Colbertists; a central issue that has not yet been grasped.1

On 20 March 1791 the Journal returned to this question in another anonymous review of the third volume of Roucher’s translation, devoted to Book IV: ‘Which of the two systems should one prefer? Smith dedicated the work translated here to the solution of this problem.’2 Having summarised the chapters at issue, the reviewer summarily dismissed both schools: ‘How is our author’s investigation concluded? He will tell us himself.’ There then follows a quotation from Smith concerning ‘the system of natural liberty, so simple and so consistent, which will establish itself. Every man, so long as he does not violate the laws of justice, must be perfectly free to follow his interests as he sees fit.’3 For the partisans of Quesnay and Turgot the tone is obviously quite different. Condorcet, for instance, in his brief but laudatory assessment of Smith included in his Vie de M. Turgot (1786), commented in a note that Smith’s arguments concerning the agricultural system lacked ‘the exactness and the precision that one admires in the rest of his work’. In particular, ‘the authors whom he calls French Economists … and the question of the imposition of a single tax’ are dealt with superficially, involving some error, and does them some injustice.’4 But he does not elaborate on these comments. The single tax was of course a controversial idea, and the opponents of Physiocracy could find in Smith several useful arguments against it. However, Book V was not so greatly admired as the remainder of the work; perhaps Smith disappointed because he furnished no immediate solution to the pressing problem of public debt. This was emphasised by the reviewer in 1776: The final chapter of this work, where one can find new perspectives mixed with rather ordinary ideas, is devoted to the topic of national debt. There is no doubt 1 2 3 4

Carpenter, Dissemination, p. 13. Ibid., p. 106. Ibid., p. 111. Condorcet, Vie, Vol. I, pp. 54–5.



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that the most important issue here is to find a way of discharging them, but Mr Smith shows no such way. It is not enough to have a ball of thread to get out of the labyrinth.1

The first book of Wealth of Nations was no less read than the last. Commentators were mainly struck by two themes. The first of these was dealt with only in passing, in contrast to later discussion: this concerned the theory of value and price. Much ink was however spilt over the second. This concerned the emphasis placed upon the ‘annual labour of a nation’ and the role of the division of labour in the production of wealth. Generally, those reading Smith’s discussion of the relation of exchange among commodities did not understand the conception of natural price which this involved – this was a constant factor in the French reception of the work, to the end of the eighteenth century and beyond. The distinction of use value and exchange value seemed to be a curio of little use, and commentators stuck to their own conception of subjective value. This conception can broadly be attributed to the influence of sensualist philosophy and was refined by Turgot and circulated by Condillac. The reaction of the Journal encyclopédique in 1776 is quite characteristic in this respect. The word value has a dual meaning; it expresses both the quality of a particular object, and the faculty that enables this object to be used as a means for the purchase of others; a distinction which appears to us to have greater subtlety than importance, for it is always utility, the real merit or opinion which makes this object the price of another. The one, the author suggests, can be called value in use, and the other value in exchange; let us accept that one merges into the other; for there is no use without exchange, nor exchange without use.2

Some commentators did touch on the question, such as Vandermonde in his course at the École Normale, or Garnier in his Abrégé élementaire. But the first lacked coherence and the second, rigour, and it can be said that the issue aroused little interest among readers at this time. Characteristic is the attitude of the author (or authors) of the summary published in Bibliothèque de l’homme public, where the matter was summarily dispatched. More interesting perhaps is the response of Morellet, which remained unpublished. Turning to Smith’s emphasis upon ‘the annual labour of a nation’ and the means of increasing its productivity, this was certainly the topic that struck most readers – here the impact was important and lasting. The topic recurs in all commentaries, especially the example of the fabrication of pins. This is not surprising – Turgot among others had touched on the issue at the beginning of his Réflexions, and Smith had in any case taken the example from the Encyclopédie. But the power of Smith’s exposition, and the role played by the 1 2

Carpenter, op. cit., p. 13. Ibid., p. 6.


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division of labour in his book, endured. In 1800 for instance the Mercure de France, in an article from 23 October already discussed above, wrote that: …all enlightened readers concur … that the best volume of Smith is the first. His theory of the division of labour is novel, illuminating, and fruitful. It is true that to discover this theory Smith only had to cast his eyes around him. A developed division of labour is in England the source of universal opulence. Whoever has read Smith well, sees England; and he who has seen England understands, without effort, Smith’s entire system.1

Germain Garnier also referred quite unambiguously in 1802 to the ‘innumerable marvels brought about by the division of labour’ that constituted a ‘magnificent and imposing scene’.2 Of course, during all this period, some authors extended the field of the principle of the division of labour, and others stressed the negative effect of this division: but they cannot, unfortunately, be taken into account here. ‘Maintenant je ne suis plus d’aucune école’ 5. French Economic Liberals and Smith, 1802–88 The developing history of French translations of Smith’s two books ends in 1802 following Sophie de Grouchy’s 1798 translation of Moral Sentiments and Garnier’s translation of Wealth of Nations. This made two good quality texts available to French readers for the first time, and these two versions were the basis for all subsequent editions until the new translation of the late twentieth century. Nonetheless, there was a long process of assimilation during the nineteenth century, a sifting process in which some elements were to be retained, some allowed to become dormant, and others discarded. There are three characteristics in this reception process: firstly, Garnier’s translation of Wealth of Nations became the standard text in respect of its formulation of the principles of political economy; secondly, during the debates prompted by the Ricardian interpretation of Wealth of Nations the work returned to centre stage for French economists, on account of its method, which could be used against Ricardo and the Ricardians; thirdly, if French economic liberals were at first uninterested in Theory of Moral Sentiments, this part of Smith’s work was finally taken up to contest socialist arguments, and as a consequence of this there were several revisions made in the interpretation of Wealth of Nations. There was no lack of praise for Garnier’s new translation, as for instance the review published by Roussel in Moniteur Universel. The first began by declaring the work of Smith to be fundamental to the development of societies, and their 1 2

Ibid., p. 166. Garnier, ‘Préface du traducteur’, p. xxiv.



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wealth; it was required reading for men of government, but up until now the work had not been properly understood, because of faulty translation. However, there are few who thoroughly know this wonderful work of Smith’s genius. It is not in a flawed translation, made with an imperfect knowledge of the English language and a lack of acquaintance with the matters discussed by Smith, that one can gain an exact idea of the series of illuminating principles and wellmade arguments through which this writer leads his reader to important and useful truths. This is not a matter of elegance, of force of expression, or a striking style …; the translator, who has in this respect all the necessary advantages, states himself that he has sometimes sacrificed the exact original for the sake of clarity.1

Besides mastery of the English language, in the absence of which it was hard to see how a translator could properly do his job, Roussel emphasised the need to understand the text as a work of philosophy – for it was not many years since the Economists had been known as ‘economic philosophers’. Hence the quality of Garnier’s translation was linked to the fact that he was himself an economic philosopher, that is, he was closely acquainted with the subject matter so that, beyond the language of Smith, he was in a position to reconstitute Smith’s arguments, which were themselves those of an economic philosopher. What follows is quite explicit in this respect: We do not hesitate to assert that this work of Smith, a monument to the rarest wisdom and an exact and all-embracing spirit, will not have been properly known to us as it merits before the date of this new translation, which we owe to citizen Garnier, and which could only be properly completed by a man of distinguished talent and the most varied knowledge, joined with that which is special to Smith’s work, that is, a knowledge of political economy.2

Garnier also had the merit of providing both a reading guide and a critical appreciation: the first being needed because of the way that the detours in Wealth of Nations made it seem hard to follow, the second relating Smith’s text to those of physiocratic economic theory which, if not known at first hand by the contemporary intellectual elite, was known through the impact that this theory had had during 1760 to 1774 and in the political and economic debates of the revolutionary assemblies. This dimension was not without its difficulties in the reception of Smith’s work. Roussel here put his finger on a problem, even though he was not trying to make trouble for Garnier. The advantage [knowledge of political economy] that we find in Smith’s translator sometimes leads to the modification of this writer’s ideas, lending them a veracity or clarity that they lack, correcting assertions made on false information, and this is what citizen Garnier has done in his instructive and interesting notes … they should be treated as the necessary complement to Smith’s doctrine.3 1 2 3

Moniteur universel floréal an X, pp. 891, Col. 3, p. 892, Col. 1. p. 892, col. 1. Ibid.


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Garnier’s preface was not presented only to French readers. During the nineteenth century a translation of this preface appeared in a great number of English and American editions of Wealth of Nations.1 The Preface is important in two respects: firstly, its translation indicated that this form of approaching Smith’s work had found an audience beyond its francophone readers; and secondly, its diffusion lent validated a conciliatory interpretation which sought to demonstrate that, despite all appearance, the Physiocrats and Smith were basically in agreement. What did Garnier do to bring this about? Garnier treated the two doctrines as fundamentally identical – this also went for their errors, since Garnier rejected the distinction between types of labour, on the grounds that it was not possible to tell whether the right or the left foot was more useful in walking – apparent differences fading from view when one took account of the methodological differences between Quesnay and Smith: The science of political economy, considered from the point of view adopted by the French Economists, belongs to the class of natural sciences, which are purely speculative, and which are able only to present a knowledge of the laws governing the object with which they are concerned; whereas seen in the practical perspective from which Smith presents this science, it rejoins the other moral sciences, which tend to the improvement of their object, carrying it to the highest point of perfection of which it is capable.2

The ultimate argument is that the two doctrines, far from being in opposition, are in fact complementary, Smith having the advantage of being practical and useful where the Economists remain abstract.3 Having noted these specific features of the translation, we can now examine the manner in which they were taken up by economists working in the French language, in so doing opening the way for a distinctive interpretation of Smith. Jean-Baptiste Say, whose Traité de l’économie politique first appeared in 1803, is of central importance to this on account of the four further editions following from 1814 to 1826, not counting the sixth posthumous edition of 1841. But alongside Say there is also Sismondi; his Richesse commerciale was likewise published in 1803, in Geneva. Say had been to England several times, he read English, and had discovered Wealth of Nations in the original through the Genevan banker Étienne Clavière when working in his insurance company before the Revolution. Say had cited 1 All of which used the original translation that first appeared in the 3-volume 1805 Glasgow edition (#87 in the main Bibliography below). 2 Garnier, ‘Préface du traducteur’, p. xix. 3 The concluding part of note XXIX (‘Sur le système des économistes’) is even more explicit, since Garnier writes: ‘One could reject the theory of the Economists for being of little use, but not for their error; and at every point where these two great systems of political economic coincide serves to demonstrate the truths which they teach, in the same way that the observations of two astronomers placed at opposite sides of the globe mutually reinforce each other.’ ‘Notes du traducteur’, Vol. 5, p. 283.



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Smith from the English version in his first work, Olbie.1 Nonetheless, the first edition of the Traité has two features that are of interest here: firstly, as regards the principles of political economy, Say chooses Smith against the Physiocrats, making a clear differentiation where important theoretical issues are concerned; secondly, he immediately designates the Garnier translation as the reference work. Let us first examine the second point. The first edition of the Traité is very precise when it comes to the question of the French translation of Smith’s economic work:2 a note in the Preliminary Discourse gets to the point straight away: Garnier’s translation of Smith is the only one worthy of the original. It is unfortunate that the translator in his preface, his notes, and in the Élements that he published a few years previously, has reproduced the principal errors of the Economists; which is not to say that Garnier’s work is not to be most warmly recommended, and which I have myself never consulted without great profit.3

In the main body of his work Say repeats his praise, and he does not fail to discuss some of the interpretation put forward in Garnier’s preface, or in the copious notes making up the fifth volume of the translation.4 Nonetheless, Say does not himself make use of the translation, as an examination of his own quotes from Smith shows. We do not know which translation of Smith that Sismondi used when he presented his own economic work, like Say also in 1803; he never cites Smith directly. Nevertheless, in his critical evaluation of the Economists he does refer to Garnier as ‘the translator of Smith’,5 dissociating himself in this way since he also opts for Smith in presenting the principles of political economy. In subsequent editions of Say’s Traité he made no further admiring comments concerning Garnier’s translation; although this did not prevent him from citing the second 1822 edition of this translation in discussing the new 1 Jean-Baptiste Say, Olbie ou essai sur les moyens de réformer les mœurs d’une nation (Déterville, Paris 1800). 2 Theory of Moral Sentiments is not referred to by Say, even though he had a strong interest in moral issues and their connection to economic activity. He never mentions the work, except for a brief reference in a note to his ‘Histoire abrégée des progrès de l’économie politique’ which concludes his Cours complet of 1828–9; and this comment itself demonstrates his lack of familiarity with the text, for he recalls that Smith had all his manuscripts destroyed after his death, including his first lectures on political economy, adding ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments which made up another part of his teaching, and several lesser essays, were the only items to be preserved’ (Say, Cours complet d’économie politique pratique, 2nd edition, (Guillaumin, Paris 1852), Vol. II, p. 560. Doubtless Say’s allegiance to Benthamite utilitarian philosophy distanced him from Smith’s Moral Sentiments. 3 J.-B. Say, Traité d’économie politique, 1st edition, (Déterville, Paris 1803), Vol. I, p. xxiii. 4 Say, Traité, Vol. I, pp. 365, 392; Vol. II, pp. 458, 512. 5 Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de Sismondi, De la richesse commerciale ou Principes d’économie politique appliqués à la législation du commerce, (Paschoud, Genève 1803), Vol. I, pp. 31, 268; Vol. II, p. 15.


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notes that Garnier had added.1 One could see in this the manner in which Garnier’s translation had by this time established itself as the standard translation, without it being any longer necessary to state this obvious fact. That being so, it is no less interesting to see the manner in which this option for Smith is linked to criticisms of Smith’s arguments. The Preliminary Discourse of the first edition of the Traité clearly demonstrates this. When Say discusses the boundary between economics and politics2 he opts for Smith as against the uncertainties of definitions proposed by Rousseau, the Economists and Steuart. Secondly, the question of method – general and particular facts, the nature of observation) – gives Say the opportunity of demonstrating the force and originality of Smith to those who ranged him alongside Steuart and ‘previous authors’.3 And finally, Say decides to make his position clear: I wanted to do justice to Smith, whom I have only see belittled by those with no hope of understanding him; but I have not closed my eyes to those areas in which he is found wanting.4

The unique position occupied by Say in French neo-Smithian political economy in the early nineteenth century can thus be explained by the dual position that he maintains. On the one hand, he makes a decisive choice for Smith: When one reads this work [Wealth of Nations], one can only conclude that political economy did not exist prior to Smith. I do not doubt that the writings of the Economists were of substantial service to him, as were no doubt the conversations with the most respected and enlightened people in France that he had during his visits to Paris. But there is the same gulf that separates his doctrine from that of the Economists as separates Tycho Brahe from Newtonian physics. On more than one occasion before Smith entirely accurate principles had been advanced; he is however the first to have demonstrated the connections existing between them, and how they follow necessarily from the way things are. It is well known that a truth belongs to him who first proves it, not to him who first states it. He did more than establish truths; he provided a genuine method for revealing error.5

But Say does not accept Smith completely. This is evident from the second and third editions of the Traité. The Preliminary Discourse, as revised in 1814, contains an impressive list of criticisms of Smith’s scientific shortcomings that is carried forward into later editions. We cannot examine all of these, but two can be considered here: the definition of labour, and the importance of machines in relation to the division of labour.

1 2 3 4 5

J.-B. Say, Traité d’économie politique, 5th edition, (Rapilly, Paris 1826), Vol. II, p. 206. Say, Traité, Vol. I, pp. i–iii. Ibid., pp. iii–xxiii. Ibid., p. xxiv. Ibid., pp. xx–xxi.



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Say’s annotations to his copy of Wealth of Nations provide some insight into the first. He writes for example: ‘Labour is the sole basis for the value of things (I believe this is incorrect)’.1 This sets the tone: Say was critical of the central aspects of Smith’s theory of value and prices, and of his theory of distribution. We can conclude from the dozen or so critical notes that Say made to Wealth of Nations Book I, Chapters 5, 6, and 7 that: 1. Say rejects the idea that labour is an invariant measure of value; 2. he fails to see how the quantity of labour commanded can be a measure of the profit of capital; 3. he rejects the idea that market prices tend towards natural prices. These are not merely Say’s private annotations; the traces of these criticisms is already evident in the first edition of the Traité. There he openly declares that the search for an invariant measure of value is chimerical, and that Smith was in error if he thought that labour could perform this function. This view leads him to a complete revision of Smith’s concept of labour. On the one hand, the linked sequence of labour costs, production prices and market prices is replaced by a straightforward connection of market price to utility.2 On the other, ‘work’ is detached from human labour and applied indifferently to nature, machinery or human effort. This homogenisation of diverse productive inputs is in turn related to Say’s conception of the payment for productive services, where market prices are determined solely by the prevailing conditions of supply and demand. Finally, where he directly considers price determination Say does away with the concept of natural price and substitutes for it production costs: ‘The sum of production costs forms what Smith calls the natural price of things.’3 Say explains that ‘production’ means the production of utility, and utility is measured by price.4 The production of utility can be considered as an exchange between man and nature, where the sum of utility is increased by men who set productive processes to work: the human labour of workers, the knowledge of scientists, the accumulated capital of capitalists and the land of landowners. By setting these forces to work the entrepreneur facilitates the creation of a greater amount of utility than enters into the production process. Say therefore rejects the way that Smith treats labour as the sole factor in the creation of wealth. He advances instead the argument that in conquering the laws of nature man learns how to harness nature for productive ends. The application of scientific knowledge by the entrepreneur, dependent for this in turn on men of learning, is embodied by the central role that the machine plays in the production 1 H. Hashimoto, ‘Notes inédites de J.-B. Say qui couvrent les marges de la Richesse des nations et qui la critiquent’, KSU Economic and Business Review, Vol. 7 (1980), p. 67. 2 Say, Traité, (1803), Vol. I, Ch. 6. 3 J.-B. Say, Traité d’économie politique, 3rd ed., (Déterville, Paris 1817), Vol. 2, p. 8. 4 Say, Traité, (1803), Vol. I, pp. 24–6.


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process, a key phenomenon that Smith had overlooked. Say here clearly marks himself off from Smith: while not ignoring the function of the division of labour, which is discussed at length in the Traité,1 Say considers the prime characteristic of industrial society to be the machine. This is not argued empirically, along the lines ‘there are now more machines than in Smith’s time’; instead, Say makes a theoretical argument, in which the machine is the embodiment of scientific knowledge that facilitates the harnessing of nature to the work of production, creating greater amounts of utility for those living in industrial societies. Here it becomes evident that this is not merely a question of economic theory. We can see here the origins of an ‘industrialist’ line of thought that developed in France, a socio-political doctrine that placed industrial factors, as defined by Say, at the core of modern society. And this engendered the line of argument among French economic liberals that Wealth of Nations was superseded as a means for the dissemination of a new body of knowledge, and that it had to be replaced by a more systematic, rigorous and complete treatment, and here Say had furnished the canonical example.2 We can see how this happens by comparing French translations of Smith with the work of French economic liberals. The second edition of the Garnier translation sold for twenty-five francs, rather more than the cost of buying Say’s Traité, the three-volume fifth edition of which only cost eighteen francs in 1826, while the third 1826 edition of the Catéchisme could be had for three francs. It was only with the six-volume Cours complet d’économie politique of 1828–9 at forty-two francs that the cost of Say’s teaching exceeded that of Garnier’s translation. This is an elementary, but economically relevant, comparison which helps us understand important aspects of the diffusion of political economy in early nineteenth-century France.3 And this situation is also made explicit in the introductions to French translations of Wealth of Nations that followed in 1843, 1859 and 1888. In 1843 Blanqui published an updated and corrected edition of the Garnier translation, and in his own preface argued that Wealth of Nations was the decisive work in political economy, despite the work of Say, Malthus and Sismondi: 1

Ibid., Ch. 1; Traité (1817), Vol. I, Ch. 8. See Steiner, ‘Introduction. L’économie politique comme science de la modernité’, in J.-B. Say, Cours d’économie politique et autres essais (Flammarion, Paris 1996), pp. 9–46; and Sociologie de la connaissance économique. Essais sur les rationalisations de la connaissance économique (1750– 1850) (Presses universitaires de France, Paris 1998). 3 Lucette Le Van-Lemesle has made the following interesting estimate of the space devoted to Wealth of Nations in the catalogue of Guillaumin, the publisher for French economic liberals: ‘The 1841 catalogue devotes 1/15 of its space to the Journal des économistes, as much as Smith’s Richesse des nations, Blanqui’s Histoire de l’économie politique en Europe or Louis Reybaud’s Études sur les réformateurs sociaux… But J.–B. Say takes the lion’s share with 3/15 of the catalogue to himself, with the emphasis on the Cours rather than the Traité. There is scientific truth.’ ‘Guillaumin, éditeur d’économie politique, 1801–1864’, Revue d’économie politique, 95 (2) (1985), pp. 134–49. 2



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The great work of Adam Smith remains the classic book par excellence of political economy. Study of the science must begin there, where it perhaps is to be found complete, despite the numerous writings of authors who boast that they have renewed the science from top to bottom.1

Blanqui added to the revised translation notes of his own, and also notes based on the commentaries to the text elaborated by Buchanan, McCulloch, Malthus, Ricardo, Sismondi, Bentham and Say (the last being unpublished notes made available by his son Horace),2 in this way seeking to create a monument to Smith worthy of his stature, and also place in the hands of those interested in social economy a book ‘the reading of which had become indispensable.’3 But he also had a more directly pedagogic concern – he taught at the École Supérieure de Commerce and had succeeded Say in the chair for practical political economy at the Conservatoire des arts et metiers – for he was familiar with the difficulties ‘facing those beginning study of political economy’4 and this edition, supplemented so extensively, could serve them as a guide. In 1859 Joseph Garnier went further in pedagogic preparation for a reading of Smith. Rehearsing first of all the usual praise directed at the work of Smith, whose ‘logic and argument had a contemporary freshness’,5 he tempered these remarks with the observation that both the structure of the book and the method employed were defective, for ‘it was not a methodological treatise’; ‘and so it was necessary that one prepared for it by a preliminary reading of one of the didactic works in the science today available.’6 This forces us to consider the developing literature of political economy if we are to properly understand the changing place of Smith within this field. Smith or Ricardo? Principles of Political Economy and the Debate on Method The publication of Ricardo’s Principles in 1817 challenged the interpretation of Smith’s work established by Say and Sismondi. Say responded immediately with notes which the publisher appended to the French translation of Ricardo’s 1 Adolphe-Jérôme Blanqui, ‘Introduction de cette nouvelle édition’, in A. Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations (Guillaumin, Paris 1843), Vol. 1, p. v. 2 Jean-Baptiste Say annotated his own 1789 5th edition of Wealth of Nations, and they have since been brought together by H. Hashimoto – ‘Notes inédites de J.-B. Say qui couvrent les marges de la Richesse des nations et qui la critiquent’, KSU Economic and Business Review, Vol. 7 (1980), pp. 53–81; ‘Notes inédites de J.-B. Say qui couvrent les marges de la Richesse des nations et qui la résument’, KSU Economic and Business Review, Vol. 9 (1982), pp. 31–133. 3 Blanqui, ‘Introduction’, p. vii. 4 Ibid., p. viii. 5 J. Garnier, ‘Préface de cette nouvelle édition’, in A. Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, (Guillaumin, Paris 1859), Vol. 1, p. iii. 6 Ibid., Joseph Garnier was one of the main suppliers of this kind of work, publishing an Élements de l’économie politique (3 editions between 1846 and 1856); an Abrégé des éléments d’économie politique (1858); and a Traité d’économie politique sociale ou industrielle, exposé didactique des principes et des applications de cette science which went through 8 editions from 1846 to 1880.


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Principles. There followed a long discussion between Ricardo and Say, the public part of which made evident some important differences among those economists who saw themselves as Smithian. Two features characterise the relation of French economists to Smith. First of all, Say drew attention to the distance between the letter of Wealth of Nations and the issues which preoccupied neo-Smithians. I revere Smith, he is my master. As I took my first steps in political economy, and then, still faltering, poked on one side by the doctors of the balance of trade, on the others the doctors of net produce, stumbling at every step, he showed me the right path. Sustained by the Richesse des nations, in which we also discover the wealth of his genius, I learned to walk unaided. Today I am no more of any school, and I will not share the ridicule of the Jesuit fathers who add their commentary to translations of Newton’s elements.1

Say then defended Smith’s method, dubbing it ‘experimental’, at once both abstract and historical, as a way of rejecting the purely abstract theory of Ricardo.2 Sismondi, who opposed Say on other points of economic theory, followed him in this methodological criticism of Ricardo.3 It was in this context that the second edition of Garnier’s translation appeared, this time with two volumes of notes added to the four volumes of the text proper; and this provided an opportunity to review the interpretation of Smith that Garnier defended against Ricardo or Malthus. The review of this edition in the Moniteur Universel that was printed in December 1822 and January 1823 was duplicated by another from the same author that appeared in the Revue encyclopédique in July 1823; and together, it seems, for the first time in France, debate over political economy and ethics was joined. The author signed himself ‘A.D.V.’4 and mentioned both the poor Blavet translation and the fact that the Morellet translation was prevented from publication – without in either case going into more detail.5 He then proceeded to the lack of order and method in Wealth of Nations and placed the work of Say and Garnier in this perspective. Smith’s book, like nearly all works in English, even the very best, lacks order and method. Instead of translating the work afresh, M. J.-B. Say conceived and then carried out the project of abbreviating Smith’s ideas while at the same time pre1 J.-B. Say, Lettres à Malthus (1820) in his Cours d’économie politique et autres essais (1996), p. 242. 2 J.-B. Say, Traité 5th edition, 1826, Vol. I, pp. xxxiii–xxxvi; Cours, Vol. I, pp. 44–8; Vol. II pp. 560–62. 3 Sismondi, Nouveaux principes d’économie politique, 2nd edition, (1826) (Calman-Lévy, Paris 1971), pp. 55–8, 229. 4 Aubert de Vitry, who had published in 1815 Recherches sur les vraies causes de la misère et de la félicité publique ou la population et des subsistences. 5 Le Moniteur Universel, December 1822, p. 1660.



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senting them in clearer order and more methodically. The success of his work confirms its merits. … In France, the work of M. Say, by popularising Smith’s doctrine, created a desire for a good translation of his book. This task could not have been done better than by M. Garnier, already known to be one of the most skilful economists.

This is a strange reconstruction, for it is very hard to see how, in 1822–3, it was possible to regard Say’s Traité as an abbreviation of Smith done instead of a new translation of Wealth of Nations,1 or even harder to see how the first edition of the Traité could have given rise to a need for a previous translation! The writer characterises the older political economy as ‘the science studying means of every nature which might render a society flourishing’ and he emphasised that, up to the mid-eighteenth century, ‘the moral part of this science was always the more important element’.2 First Quesnay, then Smith, had favoured chrematistics – or chrysology – over social economy, and this was the source of recent error among the heirs. Smith’s aim was not to establish principles of political economy, but to dissipate or foil the dangerous errors that ignorance over the nature and causes of the wealth of nations had introduced or occasioned. … It is necessary to insist upon this … Many errors have slipped in with the application of chrematistics or chrysology to social economy, as with many of the exact sciences, because one wants to be more Smithian than Smith, and more Newtonian than Newton.3

This was aimed at Buchanan, Malthus, and above all Ricardo, for: All the reasonings of this new professor rest in effect upon calculation and number. Moral elements do not enter at all into his patterns. He is exclusively a chrysologist, and thinks the science of the mechanism of wealth as the regulator of the world.4

This shows that the writer places himself in a diffuse dynamic of the period. One finds in Sismondi’s Nouveaux principes d’économie politique of 18195 an emphasis on a moral dimension to political economy otherwise neglected, especially in the wake of the Ricardian interpretation of the science; it can also be found in Henri Saint-Simon insofar as he begins by criticising political 1 There is nothing in Say’s Preliminary Discourse, in which he explains his motives and intentions, that could prompt the idea that the Traité is a summary made instead of a new translation of the original. On the contrary, it is precisely in this first edition that Say expresses his subservience to Smith, implying that he would be happy to have made his work accessible to his readers, ‘even if I have not advanced [the science] a single step.’ Say, Traité (1803) Vol. I, p. xxvi. Nonetheless, as we have seen this diffidence on the part of Say with respect to Smith is abandoned from the second edition and his debates with English writers. 2 Le Moniteur Universel, December 1822, p. 1659. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., p. 1746; see also Revue encyclopédique, p. 49. 5 The reference to a science of number and calculation directly echoes passages in Sismondi, likewise the emphasis by the writer on happiness and population.


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economy for its blindness to moral phenomena, without which one could not possibly conceive of a new social system.1 It is also worth noting that the writer refers explicitly to German writers – Garve, Dörrien, Lueder and von Soden, and especially this last, from whom he had translated some extracts of his text of 1815 – who are thought to be superior in this respect. Apart from the fact that the writer adopts a sometimes conciliatory position between Physiocracy and Smith, in the same way as Garnier, the originality of these two reviews lies in the way that the writer emphasises the necessity of reuniting the moral and the economic dimensions within what was called social economy, arguing that Smith was in this respect wanting – even though this author, like Saint-Simon, Say and Sismondi, do not mention the existence of Moral Sentiments. Despite the eminent merit and undoubted utility of the book Richesse des Nations, approached from this point of view [that of chrysology] it is no less true that the moral part of political economy is not treated completely in this great work, and where Smith does direct himself to such matters, he lets fall many errors, examination of which will for the third part of this article.2

The third part, which appeared in January 1823, underlined the relation of morals to political economy, but also that of politics and religion. These were not only indivisible, it was suggested, but the last could not lay claim to predominance, and it was a mistake of economists, Smith included, to deprecate this dimension of their science. Moral Theory and Political Economy These two reviews of the second editions of Garnier’s translation show that methodological debate in respect of Smith’s work introduced the question of the relation of morals and political economy, arguing that Smith’s radical heirs, that is to say, Ricardo and his disciples, though that they were able to leave this dimension of the moral and political sciences to one side. But in this debate noone called upon the support of Smith’s own moral theory. Does that mean that Theory of Moral Sentiments was ignored? Certainly not. Nonetheless, closer examination shows that the reception of Smith in the first half of the nineteenth century had its own dynamic. Since the time of the Physiocrats political economy, along with morals and politics, was included among the ‘moral and political sciences.’ These domains were not run together, and above all political economy was not to be judged from the standpoint of morals. This last often derived from pure ignorance of

1 Henri Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, Du système industriel, (1821), in Œuvres de Henri de Saint-Simon, (Anthropos, Paris 1966), Vol. 3. 2 Le Moniteur Universel, December 1822, p. 1746; see also Revue encyclopédique, p. 54.



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political economy, as André Cochut emphasised in his entry ‘Morals (harmony with economy, economic morals)’ for the Dictionnaire de l’économie politique: Among the adversaries of political economy one can find men who declare their interest to be exclusively religious, and men who present themselves as innovators in religious matters; the first seek to immobilise society under the pretext of its preservation, and the second will not shrink from its overthrow, under the pretext of its improvement. Extreme in doctrine, irreconcilable by instinct, they are miraculously at one in denouncing as deceptive, dangerous and immoral a science they have no more studied than anyone else.1

How should the economist respond to this situation? According to Cochut, political economy generated consequences ‘entirely in conformity with moral laws’, whereas ‘false doctrine is that which, pushed to its extreme, result in immorality.’2 Cochut refers mainly to J.-B. Say for his economic theory and to Joseph Droz3 for the relation of political economy to morals; Smith is only mentioned in passing, in a note: It is perhaps not without utility to recall here that the chief founder of economic science, Adam Smith, prepared for his work with profound studies of the nature of the human spirit and of human obligation. His Théorie des sentiments moraux is, in the opinion of philosophers, one of the best treatises on morals ever produced.4

The reader learns no more of this last work. But it is easy to identify the philosophers alluded to: Victor Cousin, the leading philosopher and, more generally, the dominant force of the University under the July Monarchy; and Théodore Jouffroy, both of them Professors of Philosophy at the Sorbonne, with reputation and influence. Cousin published a detailed commentary on Smith’s moral theory in his course on moral philosophy delivered in 1819–20;5 and he was followed by Jouffroy in his course on natural law in the early 1840s.6 The line of argument is very similar in each case; it is probable that Jouffroy read Cousin’s account and was inspired by it. In either case, Smith’s work is classified as representative of theories basing morals upon sentiment – sympathy – and for this reason Smith is placed between moral theory founded upon interest, and that founded upon reason. The account places emphasis on the role of the impartial spectator, indicating that this moral theory does not solely rest upon changing personal evaluations 1 André Cochut, ‘MORALE (Accord de l’économie et de la)’, in C. Coquelin and G.-U. Guillaumin, (eds.) Dictionnaire de l’économie politique, (Guillaumin, Paris 1852), Vol. 2, p. 239. 2 Ibid., p. 242. 3 Author of Économie politique ou principes de la science des richesse, (1829) (Renouard, Paris 1846). 4 Cochut, ibid., p. 239. 5 Cours d’histoire de la philosophie morale au dix-huitième siècle, (Ladrange Paris 1840), Vol. 2, pp. 99–183. 6 Cours de droit naturel, 3rd edition (Hachette, Paris 1858), Vol. 1, pp. 406–27; Vol. 2, pp. 1– 55.


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not comparable one with another, even if both philosophers do criticise Smith on this count. This moral philosophy is praised for its superiority over theories of morals founded upon interest, and on account of Smith discrimination and clarity. The two central criticisms concern the relation between sympathy and moral obligation, and between sympathy and reason. Both Cousin and Jouffroy note that Smith barely uses the expression ‘moral obligation’. They raise the problem of the well-intentioned man who incurs public antipathy in acting according to obligation,1 and see here an important difficulty for his system, for …sympathy is not a rule to which one must conform; it can be reconciled with the good, but it is not the good in itself; and however agreeable it might be to be surrounded by hearts from which one receives sympathy, this can only ever be a wish, and a wish cannot bind the actions of others.2

Cousin and Jouffroy reproved Smith for making sympathy the real explanation of morality, which they considered fallacious. To use Jouffroy’s phrase,3 they detected humanity, God, or reason behind this form of sentiment. Cousin argued that the idea of the impartial spectator was a contradiction in terms. He considered that impartiality meant that one evinced no sentiment, positive or negative, with respect to the situation in question. Sensibility is placed to one side: the impartial spectator cannot be impartial if he permits sentiment to interfere, and if he does there can be no question of founding morality on the sentiment of sympathy. Is then Smith’s system so incoherent that there is no way out of this dilemma? No, but a complete change in the line of argument is needed. Reason has to be restored to its proper place: Is it therefore necessary to condemn Smith’s idea out of hand? Is there no way of making it intelligible? I can see only one such way, in a supposition that the decisions made out of sympathy are controlled by a higher faculty. … If we introduce into the decisions made out of sympathy a rational element that can make up for this deficiency, we depart from the system of sympathy, it amounts to a confession that it cannot support itself, and has to make resort to a principle not part of itself. His hypothesis is subject to one of two inconveniences: it is unintelligible, or it implies the intervention of reason in decisions made on the basis of a sympathetic instinct. In either case Smith’s principles are abandoned.4

Cousin’s third lecture on Smith touches on the Wealth of Nations. He praises this foundational work, considering Smith’s principle of labour superior to the manner in which J.-B. Say and Destutt de Tracy lay emphasis upon need when 1 2 3 4

Cousin, Cours d’histoire, Vol. 2, pp. 139–40; Jouffroy, Cours, Vol. 1, pp. 426–7. Cousin, Cours d’histoire, Vol. 2, p. 140. Cours, Vol. 2, pp. 17–19. Cousin, Cours d’histoire, Vol. 2, p. 143.



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seeking to place a value upon commodities. But he goes on the suggest a superior principle, that of energy: The freely acting ego is the power of which labour is the product, it is the force manifested in labour, in a word it is the principle of principles for Smith. … Is this measure superior to that of Smith. Yes. Clearer and more philosophical? Yes. We therefore adopt it; and if we should wish to translate it into a mathematical formula, we would present it by the number that expresses the intensity of productive force added to that which expresses duration.1

Doubtless philosophical assurance of the superiority of this measure left economists cold. All the same, there is no trace here of any perspective from which Smith’s two works can be contrasted one against another. That is also true for Jouffroy, although part of his project is to understand the way in which interested and disinterested action combines. His teaching of moral theory does not assume that moral interest is the original form of morality, permitting movement beyond the instinctive stage of human conduct by bringing good and evil into relation with the selfishness of the actor.2 Selfish morality does not get very far: ‘To do so is thus to span an immense distance, the abyss that separates selfish from disinterested morals.’3 And when he comes to deal with Smith he underlines the extent to which sympathy placed disinterest at the heart of his approach.4 But in stating this he does not consider there to be a significant emergent problem in relating Smith the professor of morals and Smith the economist. He mentions this second dimension of his work without examining it in any detail, and he opines that the Scottish professor ‘only had a secondary interest in philosophy’.5 The situation changed with the publication of Baudrillart’s work on the philosophy of economics. At the start of his chapter devoted to the relation ‘la morale du sentiment et l’économie politique’, that is, Smith’s moral philosophy as conceived by Cousin and Jouffroy, he mentions what has since become known as ‘Das Adam Smith Problem’. Adam Smith is accused of having, in his political economy, sacrificed too completely that sentiment which he made the unique spirit of his morals. However well-founded this criticism might be; Smith takes little account of charity, but does one need to reproach the economist for a failure to employ the same principle as the moralist? Was he wrong to believe in the profoundly distinctive character of the two sciences? Far from thinking of reproaching him, I would praise him highly, and I fear no contradiction in stating that he would not be the immortal author of Wealth of Nations if he were content with having introduced 1 2 3 4 5

Ibid., pp. 176–7. Cours, Vol. 1, pp. 40–1. Ibid., p. 41. Ibid., pp. 406–9. Ibid., p. 411.


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into the world of interests that principle of sympathy which suffuses Theory of Moral Sentiments. It would only have set economic science on the road to a mirage.

Baudrillart suggests that Smith’s political economy is founded upon a principle of affinity which arises from the idea of a social convention, of opinion: …his directing principle in political economy is none other that the principles of affinity. Doubtless affinity plays a role in the solution of economic questions; but one cannot imagine that it is supreme. Smith recognises for the remainder that it is right that labour be free; justice has a place in his book, but very limited I think.1

Baudrillart did see some element of competition between the two books, but in identifying universal harmony at the heart of morals and of political economy he was able to deny the presence of any conflict between Smith’s two books. At this time it was possible that Baudrillart was aware of German writings that had contributed to the formation of an ‘Adam Smith Problem’.2 But it is not at all certain that this diversion is a necessary one; after all Baudrillart did not think that Smith stood accused of shifting his conception of human nature in passing from moral theory to political economy. In any case, it is not necessary to follow this particular diversion for in all likelihood Baudrillart was referring to French discussions, either with respect to political matters (the rise of socialism), or social science (Saint-Simonism and Comtean sociology).3 From the 1820s a cleavage developed between the industrialism of liberal economists (Say, Charles Comte and above all Charles Dunoyer) and that of Saint-Simon and the Saint-Simonians, a cleavage that today would be thought of as between those believing in the spontaneous competitive order and inherent justice of the market, and those who favoured conscious organisation of the social order and the establishment of a just society based upon non-market criteria. This latter movement developed in the course of the 1830s into a number of socialist trends that economic liberals, mediated by the writings of Louis Reybaud,4 regarded with mixed feelings and some apprehension. One central issue raised by socialist reformers related to the place of disinterested behaviour in the industrial social order. Liberal economists hence reproved Smith on two counts: not having developed a response couched in terms of justice; of having, in Wealth of Nations, been vague concerning the remuneration of workers. Following along the lines already developed by Cousin and Jouffroy, Baudrillart expressed regret that Smith had not developed his reflections on morals to include justice, which could be extended in the form of a natural law cover1 H. Baudrillart, Philosophie de l’économie. Des rapports de l’économie politique et de la morale, 2nd edition (Guillaumin, Paris 1883), pp. 97–8. 2 See the discussion in the following essay. 3 It might be added here that these ideas are already sketched out in Baudrillart’s 1860 preface to Théorie des sentiments moraux, predating Buckle’s elaboration of the contrast in 1861, and of course well before German debate got going. 4 See for example his Études sur les réformateurs ou socialistes modernes (1840), 7th ed. (Guillaumin, Paris 1864).



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ing positive laws that independently specified social and political conventions.1 The spontaneous order, an expression of economic harmony, represented an order founded upon reason and therefore was beyond Smith’s morals since this is understood to be a morality founded upon sentiments and hence, ultimately, opinion. This interpretation did however underpin the manner in which French liberal economists rejected the socialist critique that reproached Smith for having sacrificed morals and justice on the altar of self-interest. …it is the philosopher of sympathy, the exclusive defender of sentiments of benevolence and commiseration, that the opponents of political economy have accused of selfishness and an implacable hardness with respect to the suffering of his fellow men … at least they might have taken account of the fact that their attacks were directed to the philosopher who had made sympathy the unique motivation of our actions and the dictate of our obligation.2

Taking account of the considerable menace that socialism represented in the eyes of economic liberals, Smith’s work needed to be revised on those points that appeared to provide support to socialist arguments – the sections on distribution were important among these. Courcelle-Seneuil’s introduction to his abbreviated 1888 edition of Wealth of Nations (reprinted in the Dictionnaire d’Économie politique in 1891) is a clear example of this. Like numerous other commentators on Smith, Courcelle-Seneuil outlined everything that he found unsatisfactory in Wealth of Nations. He takes especial exception to the determination of value by labour, since it simply gives ammunition to socialists in their opposition to political economy: Having said that everything exchanged among men is made up of labour, without also having said that not all work is muscular work, is it not true that to then say that the portion of the worker in the price of products diminishes with the progress of industry amounts to fleecing the workers? One knows the number of times, and in what violent terms, that socialists, sustained by the account given by the author of the Recherches, have for sixty years insisted that the worked had been stripped of that which belonged to him.3

In closing this section on the second phase of the reception, it should be noted that during this entire period it was Garnier’s translation of Wealth of Nations which was the basis for all editions, revised by Eugène Buret and Blanqui in 1843, abbreviated by Courcelle-Seneuil in 1881, all published by Guillaumin, publisher to the French economic liberals. Moral Sentiments emerged from 1 2

624.

Philosophie de l’économie, p. 17. M. Monjean, ‘SMITH (Adam)’, in Coquelin and Guillaumin, Dictionnaire, Vol. 2, p.

3 J.-G. Courcelle-Seneuil, ‘SMITH (Adam)’, in L. Say and J. Chailley (eds.) Nouveau dictionnaire de l’économie politique (Guillaumin, Paris 1892), Vol. 2, p. 813. See also ‘Notice sur la vie et l’œuvre d’Adam Smith’, in A. Smith Richesse des nations (Guillaumin, Paris 1891), pp. xxi– xxiii.


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initial obscurity at the beginning of the century, and the republication of Sophie de Grouchy’s translation in 1830, and then again in 1860, made it accessible to readers who were able to refer to it if they wished to see for themselves how Smith developed a moral theory, and not simply take Cousin, Jouffroy and Baudrillart at their word. All this would change in the following period. 6. From Theory to History, 1888–2002 The third period of the Smith reception in France is characterised by the fact that, besides republication of Guillaumin’s Collection des Principaux économistes in 1966, more than a century separates the last complete translations of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations and their reappearance in 1983 and 1991, followed by new translations in 1999 and 1995 respectively. We can take up the story with the 1876 centenary of the publication of Wealth of Nations. The Journal des économistes, house journal of French economic liberals, had never published very much on Smith and his writing. This changed in 1876, and the shift was signalled by Maurice Block, during a meeting of the Société d’économie politique on 6 March 1876: Arising from studies upon which I have been engaged for some time, I noticed that the celebrated work of Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) appeared in March 1776. I wish to call that date to mind in this meeting and add a proposal.1

Block had already spoken for most of the meeting, so he limited himself to reporting details concerning a pilgrimage made by a young economist, Arthur von Studnitz, to Kirkcaldy; first published in German, the article appeared in French translation in the May issue of the Journal.2 On 5 April 1876 Joseph Garnier, presiding over the following meeting of the Society, read out a letter from the Belgian political economy society proposing that a meeting be convened in September to celebrate the centenary, to take account of the extent of the peaceful conquest effected through the influence of Adam Smith’s doctrines, and at the same time to examine whether it were true, as some … claimed, that these celebrated doctrines needed to be revised or rejected on certain points.3

On 2 June the same year the London Political Economy Club held a centenary dinner to celebrate the appearance of Wealth of Nations. Reporting on the event Léon Say, Minister of Finance and grandson of Jean-Baptiste, replied to the criticism Robert Lowe had made of commercial treaties as a means of furthering free trade.4 A month later the Journal published extended extracts from the 1

Journal des économistes, 3rd series, Vol. 41 (March 1876), p. 459. A. von Studnitz, ‘Pélerinage sur la tombe de Adam Smith’, Journal des économistes, 3rd series, Vol. 42 (May 1876), pp. 258–64 3 Journal des économistes, 3rd series, Vol. 42 (April 1876), p. 133 4 Journal des économistes, 3rd series, Vol. 42 (June 1876), pp. 463–4. 2



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London meeting, notably the one that Say had made himself.1 General approval was expressed at the tenor of the contributions, save that made by Émile de Laveleye who seemed to have offended the editors with his treatment of the division between the Historical School and orthodoxy. Finally, the celebration was raised again at a meeting of the Society on 5 December, in which Joseph Garnier suggested that a medal be struck commemorating the centenary of the Wealth of Nations, which could also mark the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Society itself.2 In both France and England the commemoration marked a shift that displaced Smith’s work from the domain of economic theory to that of the history of theory. This finds expression on Block’s own work, as well as the various abbreviated editions of Wealth of Nations published from 1888 to 1973. In 1888 J.-G. Courcelle-Seneuil was the first to present an abbreviated edition of Wealth of Nations. Books IV and V were left out entirely, on the grounds that the ideas they contained had been widely accepted. In Books I to III digressions were eliminated, as well as the notes introduced by Blanqui in the 1843 and Garnier in the 1859 editions. Beyond this, Courcelle-Seneuil noted the change in the way Wealth of Nations was treated. He considered that economists had directed too much attention to this work: The Wealth of Nations had been the object of this superstition [that Smith was the father of political economy, as if there had been nothing beforehand] for at least three quarters of a century, and it had certainly been harmful to the science. As commentators compounded their reservations, restrictions, rectifications and observations of all kinds the work became less clear; it was like a Koran, drowned out by the commentary, a work of very unequally educated minds. Hence a work of the highest value had obstructed for a long period the very science to whose progress it had contributed.3

This argument was also advanced by Block at the beginning of his own book.4 Courcelle-Seneuil’s continued this historical contextualisation by arguing that scientific interest in Wealth of Nations was no longer a major issue, while the pedagogical interest of the work had always been problematic: Science of whatever kind is impersonal, and it is neither sacrilege nor injustice to criticise and correct as needed the formulae of its illustrious servants, nor establish in formal terms the errors that they may have committed. But as corrections pile up it becomes necessary to substitute a new terminology for the older, and this is lengthy work, meticulous, thankless, nearly always subject to challenge or to 1

Journal des économistes, 3rd series, Vol. 43 (July 1876), pp. 110–12. Journal des économistes, 3rd series, Vol. 44 (December 1876), p. 459. 3 Jean-Gustave Courcelle-Seneuil, ‘Notice sur la vie et l’œuvre d’Adam Smith’, in A. Smith Richesse des nations (Guillaumin, Paris 1881), pp. vi–vii. 4 Maurice Block, Les progrès de l’économie politique depuis Adam Smith, 2nd edition (Guillaumin, Paris 1897). 2


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neglect, or poorly understood – but useful and likely to favour the advance of social science.1

Courcelle-Seneuil’s edition was published again in 1908, one year before the appearance of the classic French work of the history of economic thought: Charles Gide and Charles Rist’s Histoire des doctrines économiques des Physiocrates à nos jours. The treatment that Wealth of Nations received in this work further accentuated this historical shift in appraisal of Smith. First of all it can be noted that Gide and Rist cite Smith from the 1904 Cannan edition; they also regarded Cannan’s edition of Smith’s Lectures to be important in clarifying what Smith might have taken from the Physiocrats, a typical issue in the history of economics. They also attributed to Smith’s work an essentially cultural virtue, which enjoined the economist to maintain a wide scientific perspective: Today, in spite of the changes that have occurred in the fundamental principles of the science, no economist can afford to neglect this old Scottish writer without severely constricting his scientific perspective.2

This historicisation of Smith had implications for the manner in which Gide and Rist viewed Smith’s liberalism. They isolated three major ideas: 1. economic activity creates a natural community generated by the division of labour; 2. economic institutions emerged in a spontaneous manner; 3. these institutions are beneficial. They accepted the first and the second of these, but not the third, which they conceived as properly belonging to the naïve confidence of the eighteenth century in natural providence. There is no doubt that Gide’s support for social economy is the source of this judgement on Wealth of Nations. After the new 1908 edition of Courcelle-Seneuil’s condensed edition, there were no more French editions of the work until after World War II. The first of these, the Costes edition, was a projected French version of Cannan’s 1904 edition, employing Garnier’s translation for the text and adding to it Cannan’s notes. But this got no further than the first volume, and publication was broken off. A new condensed edition was proposed the same year, as part of Louis Baudin’s collection of economic writers – the series presented abbreviated versions of the classics of political economy, broadly conceived, including authors like Jean-Baptiste Say, Joseph Schumpeter, but also Frédéric Le Play. Unlike Courcelle-Seneuil, Bousquet did not exclude Books IV and V, even though he did think that the essential contribution of Smith was to be found in Books I 1

Courcelle-Seneuil, ‘Notice’, p. vii. Gide and Rist, Histoire des doctrines économiques depuis les Physiocrates jusqu’à nos jours, 6th edition (Sirey, Paris 1944), p. 58. 2



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and II.1 This was in turn a judgement taken that followed on from that of his master Schumpeter, which viewed Smith as lacking in originality. How then could one explain his success and why also republish him? Bousquet’s response is interesting, since it recapitulates a dimension already touched on with Gide and Rist – the doctrinal dimension enveloping Smith’s economic writings. Just as Gide and Rist disputed the views of those who saw these writings as a defence of liberalism, Bousquet argued that reading Smith could once more be of interest: As far as the science of economics goes, Smith is not a modern writer; and this despite the fact that he argues in favour of free external trade, liberal policies in general, and the spontaneous organisation of the modern world as the outcome of personal interest. Certainly, his arguments are of his time and they might be in certain respects superseded, but they contain a store of lasting truth and a disturbingly contemporary echo. Today there are those who carry this struggle forward, among others I can mention Hayek, Robbins and Machlup and, in France, Jacques Rueff and in part Maurice Allais, and one can only wish them the success that their master, Adam Smith, had formerly.2

Within the context of French political economy, reference to economists like Rueff and Allais, Hayek and Robbins shows that Baudin and Bousquet sought to counter the emergence of a new, more institutionalist or sociological, political economy – associated especially with the brothers André and Jean Marchal.3 They sought to uphold the colours of economic liberalism at a time they were having a bad press, the behaviour of industrialists during the German occupation having left a very negative impression on the higher economic administration directing post-war reconstruction, and liberal doctrine being squeezed at a time when planning was in the ascendant as the pathway to economic reconstruction. This political dimension was no longer of such great relevance when Gérard Mairet issued a condensed edition in 1976, nor when Daniel Diatkine published a complete edition in 1991. Instead, the history of ideas had become the critical motivation for the republication of Wealth of Nations. Mairet situated the work in relation to Hegel and Marx, arguing that Smith organised his thinking in the form of descriptive national ‘tableaux’; the first giving a description in economic categories, and the second in historical terms.4 A specialist in the history of economic thought, Diatkine placed Smith in the context of eighteenth 1

Georges-Henri Bousquet, ‘Avertissement et Introduction’, in G. H. Bousquet, Adam Smith. Textes choisis (Dalloz, Paris 1950), p. 18. 2 (1950–80). 3 See Philippe Steiner, ‘La Revue économique (1850–1980): la marche vers l’orthodoxie académique?’, Revue économique, Vol. 51 (2000), pp. 1009–1058. 4 G. Mairet, ‘Préface’, in A. Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations. Les grands thèmes (Gallimard, Paris 1976), pp. 12–13.


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century thought and the evolution of Smith’s thinking from the Lectures. His concluding argument placed emphasis upon the importance of Smith for modern economic theory, although this line of argument is scarcely credible. Finally we come to the new translations which draw upon the logic and argument of historians. No longer aimed at legislators, no longer part of the arena of ideological conflict, no longer read by economic theorists, Smith’s work now addresses an academic world interested in the history of ideas. These new translations are certainly worthwhile in respect of the rigour with which they restore Smithian concepts, taking into account that an eighteenth-century author is read and translated out of the early twenty-first century,1 especially in the manner in which his language is appraised and the text located historically.2 But one cannot overlook the fact that these translations, faithful by modern editorial standards, no longer have a large public readership. Kenneth Carpenter’s strict focus upon book and publishing history has revealed a Wealth of Nations which passes from a marginal text – first published abroad as a book, but then only in Paris and in editions of increasing solidity – to a canonical text. The present essay on the translations and the reception of Smith in the French language has qualified this approach from the viewpoint of intellectual history and allows us to emphasise certain points. In the first place, the most well-known work of Smith, Wealth of Nations, first appeared to the general public as a quite marginal text, but not for the more limited world of authors publishing in political economy, or among those who thought deeply about this area: for very different reasons they recognised the quality and importance of the work, even if Smith’s originality was disputed or relativised. Translations were not always of good quality – those of Malthus and Ricardo, made in the early nineteenth century, fared no better – but without being well-translated, it can be said that Smith’s reputation constantly rose through the latter half of the eighteenth century. France was a country in which political economy was not unfamiliar: Wealth of Nations was therefore read and commented upon. The French revolution did not slow this process; on the contrary, it was furthered by it. Secondly, parallel to the passage towards editorial canonicity, there is in reality a complex process of work within which Smith’s name becomes synonymous with the science that Wealth of Nations did so much to create; but in the course of this the 1776 text ceased to be that which one read in order to grasp this science. Work on Smith’s work assumed a particular tonality. French economists have never liked the organisation of the book. They modified it where it appeared inadequate, and, following Say, they thought that the system1 Jean-Michel Servet, ‘Introduction’, in A. Smith, Recherches sur la Nature et les Causes de la Richesse des Nations (Économica, Paris 2000), Vol. 1, pp. v–xix. 2 Paulette Taieb, ‘Préface’, in A. Smith, Enquête sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations (Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1995), Vol. 1, pp. i–xxxiv.



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atic treatise was a more appropriate form in which a science aimed at the reconstruction of the modern world should be diffused. This being so, Wealth of Nations became increasingly distanced from more advanced research, and the work was as much marginalised as canonised. As regards Theory of Moral Sentiments, we should emphasise that its reading was at first guided by seventeenth and eighteenth century French rationalist philosophy – through Sophie de Grouchy, Cabanis, Victor Cousin and on to Jouffroy. The text then went through a reconsideration at the hands of Baudrillart, who sought to respond to socialist critics, recalling that Smith, apart from being the author of Wealth of Nations, was also a philosopher of moral sentiments. Finally, it also needs to be emphasised that Smith’s works endured a long eclipse – from the early 1880s to the 1940s. Their reputation revived with the publication of new complete editions – but these were solely for the benefit of historians of ideas.


The German Reception of Adam Smith Keith Tribe

By 1800, Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations had both been translated twice into the German language. Kosegarten’s second 1791 translation1 of Theory of Moral Sentiments remained the standard version until 1926, when the first scholarly edition was published, edited by Walther Eckstein. This became in turn the standard edition, and is still in print.2 We might infer from the lengthy gap between 1791 and 1926 that Theory of Moral Sentiments made little impact upon German readers compared with Wealth of Nations, which appeared in some fifteen new translations and editions up to the 1930s. Certainly this view seems to have been adopted by later commentators,3 many of whom in writing of Smith’s general influence neglect to mention Theory of Moral Sentiments at all.4 But as with almost all the literature on national receptions of Wealth of Nations, the histories constructed in these accounts peter out in the early decades of the nineteenth century, adhering to the broad conventionalised chronology already outlined in the General Introduction.5

1

A. Smith, Theorie der sittlichen Gefühle, (In der Gräffschen Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1791). A. Smith, Theorie der ethischen Gefühle, (Verlag von Felix Meiner, Leipzig 1926), 2 vols Republished in one volume by Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg in 1977. 3 The one significant exception is Dora Fabian’s excellent doctoral thesis, ‘Staat, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft in ihren Beziehungen zueinander’, Philosophy Faculty, University of Gießen 1928 (typescript). 4 For example C. W. Hasek, The Introduction of Adam Smith’s Doctrines into Germany, (Faculty of Political Science, Columbia University, New York 1925); M. Palyi, ‘The Introduction of Adam Smith on the Continent’, in J. M. Clark et. al. Adam Smith, 1776–1926. Lectures to Commemorate the Sesquicentennial of the Publication of ‘The Wealth of Nations’, (University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1928) pp. 180–233; W. Treue, ‘Adam Smith in Deutschland. Zum Problem des “Politischen Professor” zwischen 1776 und 1810’, in W. Conze (ed.) Deutschland und Europa. Festschrift für Hans Rothfels, Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1951 pp. 101–33; Norbert Waszek: ‘Adam Smith in Germany, 1776–1832’, in H. Mizuta, C. Sugiyama (eds.) Adam Smith: International Perspectives, (Macmillan Press, Basingstoke 1993) pp. 163–84. All of these writers treat ‘Adam Smith’ as synonymous with Wealth of Nations. 5 See for example the essays assembled in Cheng-chung Lai’s Adam Smith across Nations. Translations and Receptions of The Wealth of Nations, (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000); only the Chinese and Japanese essays deviate from this approach, for obvious reasons. 2


THE GERMAN RECEPTION OF ADAM SMITH

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But without Theory of Moral Sentiments there would of course be no ‘Adam Smith Problem’, a German scholarly debate of the second half of the nineteenth century in which Theory of Moral Sentiments’ ‘altruistic’ account of human motivation was contrasted with the ‘selfish’ rendering of human motivation said to underpin the Wealth of Nations. While we might today simply regard ‘Das Adam Smith Problem’ as a mistake, based on a faulty appreciation of Smith’s writings,1 the fact that there is kein Problem is not however relevant to historical appraisal of past understandings of Adam Smith’s writings. The history of ideas would be a very short one if this approach were generally adopted. German scholars might have been wrong in thinking that there was an inconsistency in Smith’s account of human motivation as between the two books, but in so doing they were addressing a wider problem: the reconstruction of Smith’s original project. Hitherto all discussion of Adam Smith’s writings had directed attention to one or the other of the two books. Theory of Moral Sentiments was rather left behind by the development of moral philosophy in the course of the nineteenth century,2 while Wealth of Nations played a formative role in early nineteenth century political economy and then turned into the totemic text of economic liberalism. Thus by the 1840s the name of Smith was widely assumed to be synonymous with Wealth of Nations, and such discussion of Theory of Moral Sentiments as took place was entirely independent of writing governed by this assumption. Serious consideration of Smith’s enterprise as a whole first emerged as a problem among German scholars, and to the extent that this new scholarship is identified with ‘Das Adam Smith Problem’ this amounts to the inauguration of modern scholarly criticism of his work. Indeed, by the end of the century ‘Smith scholarship’ was recognised to be largely a German province.3 Our account of the reception process in Germany cannot therefore simply adhere to the chronology offered by a publication or printing history, since in this history Wealth of Nations entirely eclipses its predecessor. But Theory of Moral Sentiments obviously continued to be read, or at least discussed, in Germany, even though by the early 1900s the most recent translation was more than a century old. Eckstein’s new edition in 1926 applied modern standards to the 1 The editors of the Glasgow edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments write the issue off as a ‘pseudo-problem based on ignorance and misunderstanding,’ suggesting that anyone who reads the book should have no trouble in discerning its congruity with Wealth of Nations. D. D. Raphael, A. L. Macfie, ‘Introduction’ to Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1976) p. 20. 2 See the overview of the Scottish, English and French responses to the book in John Reeder’s ‘Introduction’ to his collection On Moral Sentiments. Contemporary Responses to Adam Smith, (Thoemmes Press, Bristol 1997) espec. pp. xviii–xx. 3 Leslie Stephen’s Dictionary of National Biography entry for Smith concludes with a list of exclusively German monographs in respect of Smith’s relationship to predecessors and contemporaries – Hasbach, Oncken, Feilbogen and Skarzynski – Vol. 53, (Smith, Elder & Co., London 1898) p. 10. Rae’s biography is of course also prominently mentioned.


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text and included a detailed and balanced account of recent attempts to reconcile the two books; its appearance was closely followed by Jastrow’s edition of the Lectures and together with contemporary reprintings of Wealth of Nations in both full and abbreviated versions there is every indication that in the Germany of the 1920s Adam Smith’s work was a continuing stimulus to both scholarship and teaching. The NS Zeit brought this abruptly to an end, and despite the publication shortly after the war of abbreviated versions of both books, no new full editions were available in the Federal Republic until the 1970s.1 Since then, there have been two new translations of Wealth of Nations – the first, by Horst Claus Recktenwald,2 was clearly prompted by the looming bicentenary of Wealth of Nations, but is, as we shall see, defective; while most recently Monika Streissler has completed a translation from the Glasgow Edition3 which at last complements the level of scholarship established by Eckstein’s 1926 edition of Theory of Moral Sentiment. As already noted, the latter was republished in one volume in 1977 and has been widely available ever since. This discussion of the German reception of Smith’s writings falls therefore into two distinct parts. First, the initial reception process will be outlined and this will, by default, be concerned almost exclusively with Wealth of Nations. ‘Adam Smith’ is in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century perceived first and foremost as the author of this work, and a representative of the new political economy. Wealth of Nations accordingly plays an important role in the supersession of essentially cameralistic conventions and principles, assisting in the establishment of a new, broadly-based political economy.4 By the 1830s, as in Britain, Smith’s book no longer plays a significant role in the elaboration of political economy; it undergoes a transition into a broader public domain and comes to symbolise a clash between ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘nationalism’ as guidelines for economy policy.5 Free traders in Germany were known as Mancherstermänner, peddling Manchestertum, a clear identification of economic liberalism with English policy and the ‘English book’. 1 Peter Thal’s edition began to appear in the German Democratic Republic in the early 1960s, but was not completed until the 1980s – Adam Smith, Eine Untersuchung über das Wesen und die Ursachen des Reichtums der Nationen, 3 vols., Translated and Introduced by Peter Thal, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1963, 1975, 1984. A facsimile edition of the 1811 Works was also published by Otto Zeller, Aalen 1963. Both were of course purchased by major libraries in the Federal Republic, but circulation was otherwise very limited. 2 A. Smith, Der Wohlstand der Nationen. Eine Untersuchung seiner Natur und seiner Ursachen, trans. and edited by H. C. Recktenwald (C. H. Beck, Munich 1974); the paperback version from Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1978, is still in print. 3 A. Smith, Untersuchung über Wesen und Ursachen des Reichtums der Völker, 2 vols, ed. E. Streissler, trans. M. Streissler, Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen, Düsseldorf 1999. 4 This transition process is outlined in the last three chapters of my Governing Economy. The Reformation of German Economic Discourse 1750–1830, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988). 5 In Britain the argument is couched in terms of free trade versus protection and is sustained as such into the early 1900s.



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From the mid-nineteenth century German historicism set the terms of debate. The ‘older historical school of economics’, conventionally identified with Wilhelm Roscher, Bruno Hildebrand and Karl Knies, directed its efforts chiefly to the historical investigation of economic doctrine,1 in which, of course, the work of Adam Smith assumed a key role. The appearance in 1861 of the second volume of Buckle’s History of Civilisation – both in the English original and in German translation – introduced into the work of the historical school the idea that Smith had, for his own purposes, worked with two antithetical conceptions of human motivation. As we shall see, Buckle produced a plausible explanation of why Smith might have deliberately pursued such an apparently contradictory strategy; but whatever the merits of Buckle’s argument, he reintroduced Theory of Moral Sentiments into discussion of the work of Adam Smith. This second phase of the Smith reception, reaching to the end of the nineteenth century, is dominated by argument over the nature of Smith’s project conducted in terms of the relationship between the two books. By the 1920s the ‘problem’ has been resolved and German writing is arguably still at the forefront of what is, by now, a broadening and increasingly scholarly interest in the writings of Adam Smith. The impact of National Socialism on intellectual and academic life puts an end to this: Adam Smith now becomes identified with a defunct economic liberalism, a guise in which much of the negative nineteenth century criticism, from Friedrich List onwards, is simply recycled with a völkisch spin. The subsequent revival of serious interest in Smith from the 1970s reflects a wider international trend; the one distinctive aspect in Germany is that Wealth of Nations was in the later twentieth century positively regarded in both East and West: in the former as a foundation for Marx’s political economy and in the latter as the sourcebook of market capitalism. With German unification in 1990 this linkage of Marx to Smith is, as elsewhere, definitively wound up; but in its place there has arisen a wider interest in Smith’s account of the progress of commercial society and its culture to set against economistic readings of Wealth of Nations. 1. The Early Reception of Adam Smith A translation of Moral Sentiments was published in Brunswick in 1770,2 but appears to have made relatively little contemporary impact. These were ‘preCritical’ times, and although Scottish work was being actively translated at this time, it can fairly be said that Smith did not create the kind of reputation in 1

The ‘younger school’ by contrast paid by little systematic attention to the history of economic doctrine, directing its attention primarily to economic policy and institutions; see my discussion of this in ‘Historical Schools of Economics: German and English’, in J. E. Biddle, J. B. Davis, W. J. Samuels (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to the History of Economic Thought, (Blackwell, Oxford 2003). 2 Theorie der moralischen Empfindungen (In der Meyerischen Buchhandlung, Brunswick 1770), trans. Christian G. Rautenberg from the 3rd English edition.


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Germany with this book that he quickly found in France. There, the early positive reception of Moral Sentiments prepared the reading public for Wealth of Nations although, as Gilbert Faccarello and Philippe Steiner show in the preceding essay, the actual translation history of the second book was a very mixed one until the Garnier edition of 1802. In Germany the story of the Smith reception was rather different: it was the propagation of Critical Philosophy in the1790s that made Smith ‘readable’, and it was during this decade that the new translation of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations appeared. Kosegarten’s 1791 translation of Moral Sentiments postdated the revised 1790 sixth edition, but was based upon an earlier version of the text. Unlike the Rautenberg translation, which is entirely bereft of prefatory remarks or any notes which might help the reader bring this work into relation with contemporary literature, Kosegarten provided both introduction and notes which linked Smith’s writing to the Kantian vogue then developing in German universities. The exact impact that this translation made is, however, today not clear; the work is very rare in older university libraries, for these never did give translated works of this kind a very high priority. That the Rautenberg edition is more readily available in German libraries today than the Kosegarten is not necessarily indicative of their relative contemporary ‘success’. In 1795 Kosegarten published a supplementary volume which reproduced the revisions that Smith had made to the1790 edition – rather in the same way that the revisions to the third edition of Wealth of Nations were separately published – but here again this initiative can be read either as a sign of the popularity of the 1791 translation, or conversely of very slow sales. It is true that the next German edition of Moral Sentiments was Eckstein’s 1926 version, and that the entire ‘Adam Smith Problem’ of the second half of the nineteenth century centred upon an explicit comparison of Moral Sentiments with Wealth of Nations: but as outlined below, Buckle’s commentary on this relation was quickly translated into German and it can be inferred that discussion of the relationship of the two works proceeded largely independently of close study of the texts themselves. More direct evidence of the reception of Smith’s moral philosophy can be found in the long review of ‘Sittenlehre’ that Christian Garve served as a preface in his translation of Aristotle’s Ethics.1 Garve was of course the translator with August Dörrien of the well-regarded 1794–6 translation of Wealth of Nations, and his translations were an important medium for the introduction of new work to German readers. Smith, stated Garve, is much more original than Ferguson,2 and his work on moral sentiments turned on a new conception of ‘sympathy’. Interestingly, Garve declared that this principle was erroneous, and easily refuted, although he went on to say that he had learned more from Smith than from many other writers. A brief outline of the conception of the ‘impartial spectator’ follows, to which Garve raises the objection that this 1

Die Ethik des Aritoteles, übersetzt und erläutert von Christian Garve, Bd. I (Wilhelm Gottleib Korn, Breslau 1798, pp. 1–394. 2 ‘…ein weit mehr origineller Kopf…als Ferguson’, Ethik Bd. i p. 160.



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‘sympathetic’orientation is in itself a moral action in need of some form of standard – in line with other contemporary criticism of Smith. More significantly, however, Garve goes on to link Smith’s understanding of moral action with that of Kant,1 arguing for a convergence in the thinking of Kant and Smith. The early history of Wealth of Nations is by contrast rather better documented. The first German translation of Wealth of Nations was completed by J. F. Schiller in two parts, Books I – III appearing within the same year that the original appeared, the second volume with Books IV and V then being published two years later. Schiller had worked in London, and was acquainted with the ‘admirable author of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, whose personal appreciation and friendship he counted among the happiest circumstances of his life.’2 He obviously maintained his connections in London, for he explains the delayed appearance of the second volume by his expectation that Smith, given the level of demand for his book, would quickly prepare a second edition taking account of comments from both English and German readers. However, Smith had returned to Edinburgh from London and taken a post there as Commissioner for Customs, which development prompted Schiller to proceed with his second volume, hoping that he could summarise the eventual revisions in a later supplement.3 But when Strahan and Cadell published the second edition in 1778 there were no substantial revisions. Smith’s revisions were made for the third octavo edition, and also published separately in quarto so that they could be bound in with the earlier editions;4 Schiller’s publisher translated and printed these some years later, Schiller having since died.5 Schiller’s translation was positively reviewed, and he acknowledged the critical assistance he had received from the well-informed ‘scholarly arbiters’ (Kunstrichter) of Göttingen who had kindly compared his translation with the original.6 Although writing in the plural, the reference must be to Feder’s review of the English edition of Wealth of Nations which, in closing, included some comments on Schiller’s part-translation, which was thought to be: …very good. We have read right through this translation with the original on one side, and only noticed a few small errors, which probably arose in printing; for 1

Ethik Bd. I p. 164. ‘Vorbericht’ to A. Smith, Untersuchung der Natur und Ursachen von Nationalreichthümern, Vol. II (bei Weidmanns Erben und Reich, Leipzig 1778) p. VI. 3 See ‘Vorbericht’ pp. III–V. 4 A. Smith, Additions and Corrections to the First and second Editions of Dr. Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1783. 5 ‘Vorbericht der Verlags-Handlung’ to A. Smith, Untersuchung der Natur und Ursachen von Nationalreichthümern, (Dritten Band, Erste Abtheilung, in der Weidmannischen Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1792). The publisher had intended to print, as part of this, Condorcet’s commentary upon Wealth of Nations, announced on the title-page of Roucher’s 1790 edition of the work, but this had not materialised. Palyi, ‘Introduction of Adam Smith on the Continent’ p. 184 states that Schiller’s edition went through three editions, for which there is no evidence; it can be assumed he took each of the three parts to be a separate edition of the complete work. 6 ‘Vorbericht’ to Vol. II, p. V. 2


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instance on p. 26 there is Proportion instead of Portion; on p. 209 fremden instead of freyen.1

But Schiller’s edition sold poorly, and its reviewers insisted on reading Smith as a Physiocrat,2 as indeed had Feder too. This was at least in part because, after all, Smith’s work, with its discussion of natural liberty, value, profit, capital, productive and unproductive labour, did from the German perspective look more like Physiocracy than anything else; furthermore, the appearance of English and German editions of Wealth of Nations coincided with the high phase of the Physiocratic reception in Germany.3 This took place largely outside university teaching, its readership being found principally in provincial philosophical societies, whose discussions have naturally left a less permanent trace than university teaching. Not until the 1790s can we detect the beginnings of an impact of Wealth of Nations in the extensive textbook literature which served students and university teachers. The new Garve translation was announced in October 1791, the first part to be published at Easter 1792, suggesting in passing that the existing Schiller version was generally poorly written, and in places simply unintelligible.4 Weidmann’s quick response excused the now-dead Schiller’s occasional slips, suggesting the problem arose because the translator was not that familiar with Smith’s system, and entirely unfamiliar with his terminology. Since he went on to announce the publication of Smith’s additions and revisions by a new translator who would also correct the major failings of Schiller, likewise scheduled for Easter 1792,5 it seems more than likely that Weidmann still had stock on his hands and saw in the new translation an opportunity of moving the remainder. The timing and subsequent success of the new Garve edition, the new translation of Theory of Moral Sentiments, and also the fact that the Schiller edition had still not been exhausted, together suggest that contemporary events in France had something to do with this renewed interest in Smith. But later commentators have insisted that Schiller’s edition was poorly received because it was a bad translation – and therefore imply that if Smith had been more fortunate in his translator his work would have been much more widely read at the time than it appears to have been.6 Given the number of translations of Smith’s work into German, this issue deserves some explora1 J. G. H. Feder, review of Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Göttingsche Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen I. Bd. 30 St. (10 March 1777) p. 240. 2 Reviews of Vol. I: Ephemeriden der Menschheit 5 St. (1777) pp. 61–101; ‘Px.’ in Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek Bd. 31 2 Th. (1777) pp. 586–9; of Vol. II ‘Kr.’ Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek Bd. 38 1 Th. (1779) pp. 297–303. 3 See my Governing Economy Ch. 6. 4 Announcement by Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn, Intelligenzblatt der Allgem. Literatur-Zeitung No. 127 (26 October 1791), col. 1039; my thanks to Ken Carpenter for bringing this to my attention. 5 Announcement by Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Intelligenzblatt der Allgem. LiteraturZeitung No. 140 (26 November 1791) cols. 1143–4. The designation of this supplement as Vol. 3 Part I implied that a translation of Condorcet’s account would have formed Part II. 6 See Waszek, ‘Adam Smith in Germany’, p. 166.



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tion, for it does offer an apparently plausible explanation not just for the displacement of Schiller’s translation by the subsequent Garve and Dörrien version, but also for the dynamic underlying later translation. Besides being able to make direct comparisons between variant translations of the same text, we can also introduce comments from two well-informed contemporaries. Sartorius, another Göttingen professor, reviewing the supplementary volume of revisions published in 1792, commented that Schiller had not always ‘translated faithfully’, but went on to suggest that the difficulty in understanding Smith lay with the original, not with the existing translation.1 He also suggested that sales had picked up more recently, a circumstance which he thought should lend heart to booksellers; and so Sartorius, while critical of Schiller’s translation, concludes that the slow initial sales were rather more to do with the intellectual context in which Smith was read. And of course the intellectual context of the 1790s was one quite different to that of the 1770s. This is underscored by the fact that the second translation of Wealth of Nations was begun by the popular philosopher Christian Garve, who had already translated Ferguson’s Institutes of Moral Philosophy and was important for the diffusion of Scottish philosophy in later eighteenth century Germany.2 Garve had first read Wealth of Nations in the Schiller translation; the fact that he decided to begin a new translation in his spare time indicates both that he thought he could improve on Schiller’s work, but also that he was not so struck by its faults that he was initially impelled by any great sense of urgency. Schiller’s translation was, he wrote, not ‘entirely unusable’, indeed when he read the book for a second time in the original he did not discover anything that he had missed the first time: It is in most places correct and intelligible, but I must admit, that it sometimes took me an effort to understand the translation, and the style seemed almost nowhere easy. This must have been a sensation shared by many readers; and word of this must have deterred many from making use of the work. For indeed it has not met with the success which its value might have promised, and with which it has encountered in all those parts of Europe to which it has penetrated in the original, or in good translations.3

What impressed Garve about the English original was its easy style, and he began work on a fresh translation as literary relief from his own work. Progress was however slow, and he enlisted the assistance of a close friend, August Dörrien, Chief Postmaster of Leipzig, who completed the work after Garve fell ill. The one criticism that Garve made of Smith in his preface was of his tendency, 1 G. Sartorius, Review of Untersuchung der Natur und Ursachen von Nationalreichthümern, von Adam Smith, Bd. III Abt. I (1792), Göttingsche Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen III Bd. 166 St. (19 October 1793) p. 1662. 2 Fania Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment. Scottish Civic Discourse in EighteenthCentury Germany, (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1995) espec. Ch. 8. 3 C. Garve, ‘Vorrede des Uebersetzers’, to A. Smith, Untersuchung über die Natur und die Ursachen des Nationalreichthums, Vol. I, (Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn, Breslau 1794) pp. IV–V.


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when seeking to be clear and precise, to repeat himself; and that this anxiety itself contributed to the difficulty of the text – a complaint about repetition and deviation that would characterise much of the later comment by Smith’s readers and translators.1 This new translation was clearly immediately successful, since a second edition appeared five years later in 1799, and a pirate edition in 1796–9, further underlining its popularity.2 The preface to this second edition was written by Dörrien, who reported that Garve’s illness had prevented him from completing the analytical conspectus planned as an appendix to the first edition. Instead, Dörrien placed a translation of Dugald Stewart’s ‘Report’ in the first volume, providing in this way some biographical and literary context for the work.3 A third edition appeared in 1810, and a pirated version in 1814 in Vienna, underlining the large contemporary demand for copies of Smith’s Wealth of Nations. We can of course compare the Garve and Schiller translations directly: and this does confirm Garve’s initial impression – that although Schiller’s translation might not be ideal, it was far from unreadable. Two important passages can be selected here, the opening lines of ‘Introduction and Plan of the Work’, and the famous passage concerning self-interest. Smith writes in the first of these: The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always, either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. According therefore, as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniences for which it has occasion.4

Schiller in 1776 rendered this passage as follows: Die jährliche Arbeit einer jeden Nation ist der ursprüngliche Fond, der sie mit allen den Nothwendigkeiten und Bequemlichkeiten des Lebens versorgt, die sie jährlich verbraucht, und die allezeit entweder im unmittelbaren Produkte dieser Arbeit, oder in demjenigen bestehen, was mit Produkte von andern Nationen erkauft wird. Je mehr oder weniger also dieses Produkt, oder das, was mit demselben erkauft wird, der Anzahl derjenigen, die es verbrauchen sollen, proportioniert ist, desto 1

C. Garve, ‘Vorrede’, pp. X–XII. Published in Frankfurt, Vols 1 and 2 in 1796, and Vols 3 and 4 in 1799. A second pirate edition of the Garve Dörrien translation was published in Vienna in 1814. My thanks to Ken Carpenter for drawing my attention to this. 3 A. Dörrien, ‘Vorbericht zu der zweyten Ausgabe der Uebersetzung’, to A. Smith, Untersuchung über die Natur und die Ursachen des Nationalreichthums, 2nd Ed, Vol. I, (Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn, Breslau) 1799 pp. IV–V. 4 A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1976) p. 10. 2



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besser oder schlechter wird die Nation mit allen den Nothwendigkeiten und Bequemlichkeiten, die sie bedarf, versehen seyn.1

Schiller’s rendering here might be considered somewhat laboured, but it is also evident that if anything this is because he follows the original too closely; and we can also see, from an examination of Smith’s two opening sentences, that Garve was right in suggesting that Smith’s concern with precision tended to get in the way of clarity. So what did Garve make of this passage? Die Arbeit, welche jede Nation jährlich verrichtet, ist der Fond, der sie ursprünglich mit allen von ihr jährlich verbrauchten Nothwendigkeiten und Bequemlichkeiten des Lebens, versorgt. Diese sind entweder das unmittelbare Product jene Arbeit, oder werden, für dieses Product, von andern Nationen erkauft. In einem je größern oder kleinern Verhältnisse also die Quantität dieses Products, oder des dafür Erkauften, mit der Anzahl derer steht, die davon ihre Bedürfnisse befriedigen wollen: desto besser oder schlechter wird diese Nation mit allen Nothwendigkeiten und Bequemlichkeiten des Lebens versehen seyn.2

Noteworthy is the manner in which a shift has been introduced from ‘use’ to ‘need’ in consumption, for this conception of human needs would become a core figure of nineteenth century German economics, as distinct from English political economy. But otherwise, Garve’s translation has reconstructed Smith’s sentences, breaking up the first one and introducing a caesura into the second. These changes are stylistic, and it could even be said that they improve on the original. And the second passage: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.3

‘Benevolence’ and ‘self-interest’ are naturally at the core of Smith’s arguments concerning the motivations of social reciprocity; Schiller renders this passage as following: Nicht vom Wohlwollen des Fleischers, des Brauers, oder des Beckers, sondern von ihrem Eigennutzen, erwarten wir unsere Mahlzeit. Wir wenden uns nicht an ihre Menschenliebe, sondern an ihre Selbstliebe, und stellen ihnen niemals unsere eigene Bedürfnisse, sondern ihre Vortheile vor.4 1 A. Smith, Untersuchung der Natur und Ursachen von Nationalreichthümern, Vol. I, trans. J. F. Schiller, bei (Weidmanns Erben und Reich, Leipzig 1776) p. 1. 2 A.Smith, Untersuchung (1794) Vol. I p. 1. 3 A. Smith, Inquiry pp. 26–7. The editors note two parallel passages in the Lectures, ‘selfinterest’ becoming in the Cannan edition p. 169 ‘selflove’, a fusion that Schiller replicates in his translation. 4 A. Smith, Untersuchung (1776) Vol. I p. 21.


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And Garve: Nicht von dem Wohlwollen des Fleischers, Brauern und Bäkern erwarten wir unser Mittagsmahl, sondern von der Sorgfalt, die sie für ihr eignes Interesse tragen. Wir wenden uns nicht an ihren Menschenliebe, sondern an ihren Eigennutz, und reden ihnen nie von unsern Bedürfnissen, sondern von ihren Vortheilen vor.1

If anything Schiller’s rendering here is more accurate and clearer than that of Garve. Both opt to translate benevolence with ‘Wohlwollen’, although the English term involves completed action while the German implies the intention only. But remedying this deficiency would involve the kind of circumlocution that Garve introduces for the complementary idea, which Schiller captures by treating it the first time as ‘self-interest’, rather than the second time. Further, while both render ‘humanity’ properly as Menschenliebe, Schiller’s counterposition of ‘love of humans’ to ‘love of oneself ’ is the neater solution. From these and other comparisons it can be concluded that Schiller’s original translation was not as unfortunate in its execution as commentators have suggested – although it should also be said that no direct evidence has ever been offered in support of this opinion. Instead, our attention is directed to both the cultural context in which texts are read – which make them ‘readable’ – and the importance of style even for works which, one might assume, are never read strictly for pleasure. And this conclusion also points to one of the underlying motives for new translations – as the language develops over time, older works become less immediately accessible for successive generations. Where the work in question is a translation, the text itself is open to modification which will bring it closer modern usage; translation can provide a fresh basis for new readers. This capacity to update a text through new translation is not possible in the original language; here direct editorial intervention serves the same purpose, abridging, condensing and annotating. Following Garve and Dörrien’s new translation of Wealth of Nations the work did indeed begin to be discussed in academic literature, and from the early 1800s was generally recognised to represent ‘newthink’. The syntheses and condensations of the works that were published give us some insight into perceptions of its novelty, and further underline the manner in which prevailing economic and philosophical conceptions effected a second level of transformation upon the original text. We have already seen that Georg Sartorius2 had commented favourably on Smith’s book in his review of the supplementary volume of revisions for the 1

A. Smith, Untersuchung (1794) Vol. I p. 25. Sartorius (1765–1828) originally studied theology at Göttingen, but changed to history, and was from 1786 employed in the Göttingen University Library. From 1792 he was a Privatdozent in the Philosophy Faculty, teaching eighteenth-century history and politics. When he published his 1796 Handbuch he had already been teaching its subject matter for several years. See F. Frensdorff, Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie Vol. 30 pp. 390–4. 2



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third English edition. In 1796 he published a condensation of Wealth of Nations, including in his preface a review of the international response to the work, including that from Governor Pownall and Alexander Hamilton.1 As the title made plain, this text was designed ‘for use in academic lectures’ and thus left sections out, expunged repetition and deviation, so that an overview of the work might more readily be gained. The reduction thus effected was indeed radical, for Sartorius’s version is about 40,000 words long, perhaps barely a tenth of the original. This is achieved by reducing Books I and II to a series of thematic paragraphs: having polished off the ‘Introduction and Plan of the Work’ in sixteen lines, by the fifth page we have already arrived at §5. ‘The exchange of commodities is governed by their values and prices’ – that is, Book I, Chapter V. At this rate, Books I and II are despatched in around ninety pages, leading in to Part Two of the work: ‘On State Economy, or the rules which the government of a state must follow to place the individual citizen in such a condition that he might earn a sufficient income, while at the same time creating the same for public state expenditures.’ Book III is summarised in a few pages, followed by a four-page summary of Book IV, concluding with §86. ‘On those systems which favour agriculture at the cost of trade and manufactures’ – a somewhat loose rendering of the title of Book IV, Chapter IX, ‘Of the agricultural Systems, or of those Systems of political Oeconomy, which represent the Produce of Land, as either the sole or the principal Source of the Revenue and Wealth of every Country’. Ten pages (§§ 87–91) are given over to Smith’s evaluation of Physiocracy before turning to the final third of the book, ‘On the satisfaction of public needs’2 – here précis turns suddenly to commentary, and the fiscal discussion of Book V is organised as a review of the state’s objectives (Staatszwecke) and the various ways in which institutions give rise to state expenditure. The discussion of justice, for example, simply takes issue with Smith’s argument concerning the desirability of financial independence on the part of the judiciary, suggesting that it is the responsibility of the state to secure access for the citizen to justice, and that the costs of this must therefore be met.3 Sartorius returned to this work in a more critical frame of mind in 1806. He was now less enchanted by Smith’s work: … and he also saw the faults in rendering, in the method, in the ordering, the long-windedness, the repetitions, and the obscurity of the original …

together with its historical inaccuracies and the false conclusions drawn therefrom.4 However, rather than carry this disenchantment into the text itself and 1 G. Sartorius, Handbuch der Staatswirthschaft zum Gebrauche bey akademischen Vorlesungen, nach Adam Smith’s Grundsätzen ausgearbeitet, (J. F. Unger, Berlin 1796). 2 G. Sartorius, Handbuch, p. 151. 3 G. Sartorius, Handbuch, pp. 154–5. 4 G. Sartorius, ‘Vorrede’ to Von dem Elementen des National-Reichthums, und von der Staatswirthschaft, (J. F. Römer, Göttingen 1806) p. IV.


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subjecting it to critical revision, he had instead resolved to purge the text of those ideas of his own which had in the 1796 edition been mingled with those of Smith. This 1806 edition therefore presented a simple abstract of Smith’s work, rendering the principles ‘briefly and faithfully’, even where these might be deemed erroneous. The early sections largely parallel the 1796 version, changes being made to the style and presentation rather than involving major revision. New material on capital is inserted at §32, while at §§61–7 a summary of Book III is introduced, previously dealt with by a few principles placed in the second half of the book. This second half now opens with §68, rather than the §61 of the 1796 version in which ‘state economy’ is defined as the rules to be followed by a government seeking to enable its citizens to meet their needs – this whole paragraph is simply eliminated, and the account of liberty in §68 elaborated, before resuming the account of the mercantile system. There is some clarification of the ‘sterile class’ in the treatment of Physiocracy, although the general evaluation of the system remains unchanged; and most important of all, the language of ‘state objectives’ has been eliminated in the account of ‘public needs’ from §92 onward. Commentary upon Wealth of Nations was now reserved for a separate book, published the same year, in which Sartorius drew in part upon Lauderdale’s criticisms of the work, especially in Section Three where a distinction is made between national wealth and the wealth of individuals, the origin of such wealth and the means for its increase.1 The version of Wealth of Nations that Sartorius offered did at least have the merit of brevity, a quality distinctly lacking in another contemporary approach, whose ambition was altogether greater. Its author, August Ferdinand Lueder2 sought to combine history and statistics with the eternal laws governing man’s existence, in all lands and periods – a project which he considered Smith to have initiated, but executed inadequately: I have followed the path of my predecessor; subjected each of his claims to renewed scrutiny; filled out the gaps that I encountered; corrected the mistakes; brought the parts of the whole closer together and united them; I have completely revised several parts of the work, if I may say so, several of the most important parts; and added the third book that Smith omitted. I could have rewritten the entire book, if I had known how to devise a better system.3

Lueder’s basic strategy is to systematise Wealth of Nations in terms of historical genesis, which in the early stages means adding a historical commentary to Smith’s treatment of the division of labour, the origins of value, money and 1 G. Sartorius, Abhandlung, die Elemente des National-Reichthums und die Staatswirthschaft betreffend. Erster Theil, (J. F. Römer, Göttingen 1806) – no further parts were published. 2 Lueder (1760–1819) had studied in Göttingen and was appointed, in 1786, Professor of History at the Carolinum in Brunswick; he later returned to Göttingen as Professor of Philosophy in 1810. 3 A. F. Lueder, ‘Vorrede’, Ueber Nationalindustrie und Staatswirthschaft. Nach Adam Smith bearbeitet, Part I, (Heinrich Frölich, Berlin 1800) p. XV.



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capital. The first part concludes with the third book that Smith had failed to include: ‘On Nature’, which assumes the form of a general history of those human qualities which have a natural basis. By the time the second part appeared in 1802 Lueder seemed to have reverted to an original ambition to entirely rewrite Smith, since his discussion no longer has any direct linkage to the structure or the argument of Wealth of Nations. The fourth book here deals with ‘state objectives’ and state economy, the fifth with infringements of a ruler’s domestic security, concluding with a sixth book on the ways in which citizens might harm domestic security, the literary reference points being Hume, Steuart, Hufeland, Smith and Kant.1 By the final part in 1804 Lueder is expressing the hope that his efforts have succeeded in uniting ethics and politics, presenting in this last part discussions of armed power, culture and finances. Ueber Nationalindustrie und Staatswirthschaft might have started out as a version of Wealth of Nations but it soon deviates from this original intention into extensive ruminations upon humanity, history and politics, lacking any clear relationship to Wealth of Nations – Lueder does not introduce Theory of Moral Sentiments into his discussion, and so it cannot even be said that this represents an early attempt to identify Smith’s wider project. A third attempt to ‘systematise’ Wealth of Nations, complete with ‘practical comments’, appeared in 1812, and this too diverged quickly and sharply from the substantive argument of Smith. Friedrich von Coelln2 did adhere to Smith’s text more closely than Lueder – the book is organised as a series of citations from Smith in large type, followed by summary and commentary in a smaller typeface – but on the very first page von Coelln rejects the relationship between natural liberty and wealth that is to be found in Wealth of Nations on the grounds that ‘no state could follow such precepts’. Instead, he suggested that: The government contains the summum of national wisdom, and therefore directs national activity, but is only compelled to intervene where peoples are still in their infancy.3

Paradoxically, von Coelln identifies exactly that principle which is today recognised as being at the heart of Wealth of Nations, a move that sets him apart from most contemporaries – but then dismisses it as implausible. Hence von Coelln’s version of Wealth of Nations adheres on the one hand to the letter of the text in its quotations, but then comments upon them in such a way as to reintegrate Smith’s arguments into an older tradition of the state sciences which 1

A. F. Lueder, Ueber Nationalindustrie und Staatswirthschaft Pt. II (1802) pp. 441ff. (1766–1820) – von Coelln had studied at Marburg, Halle and Jena before entering the Prussian administration in 1790. In 1807 he published a collection of letters on Court affairs, was arrested, and banished in 1809 to Glatz, where he relieved the tedium by reading ‘all the systematic treatments of government’ (Staats-Weisheit) – ‘Vorrede’, Die neue Staatsweisheit, (Gottfr. Hayn, Berlin 1912) p. III. 3 F. von Coelln, Die neue Staatsweisheit, p. 2. 2


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these arguments were supposed to have already displaced. There are evidently different ways of reading Smith, and if nothing else von Coelln’s book demonstrates the manner in which the reception process can transform a work out of all recognition – his book was reissued in a revised form in 1816 under the title Practical Handbook for Officials in Government and State. This issue – of the fidelity of synthetic treatments of Wealth of Nations to those principles which have been generally assumed to lie at the heart of its analysis – also arises with respect to the teaching of Christian Jacob Kraus and his teaching in Königsberg during the 1790s. After the death of Kraus in 1807 a colleague completed editorial work on a synthetic overview of Wealth of Nations that was published in four volumes during 1808 under the title Staatswirthschaft. The introduction to the first volume defines this as follows: State economy considered as a branch of the science of a legislator or statesman proposes two distinct aims: firstly, to secure sufficient income to the nation, or rather to enable it to create such revenue itself, and secondly, to provide the government with an income adequate to meet public needs: it proposes to enrich both the nation and the government, that is, the state.1

This is obviously a paraphrase of Smith’s introductory remarks to Book IV, ‘Of Systems of Political Oeconomy’,2 the substitution of ‘nation’ for ‘people’ creating a degree of unclarity, only compounded in the sentence which immediately follows, an amplification not to be found in Smith: For the state is a governed nation, if one calls (as we will always do here) the aggregate of individual human beings, who together constitute a civil society, nation, and the social system that unites these men, government.

Smith of course makes do with government on the one hand and people on the other; Kraus’s introduction of the ‘nation’ as a collective term simply muddles this, for it is individuals who see to their own needs, not the ‘nation’. In the older cameralistic tradition individuals left to their own devices were incapable of properly fulfilling their own needs, they required guidance, and so the Smithian conception of individual humans following their own interests, and in this way maximising the wealth of the nation, was strictly inconceivable. And it is the confusions arising out of this confrontation of an older German camer1 C. J. Kraus, Staatswirtschaft T. I, ed. H. von Auerswald, (Friedrich Nicolovius, Königsberg 1808) p. 1. The four volumes published in 1808 cover Wealth of Nations up to the end of Book IV; an additional volume published in 1811 dealt with Book V, but like Sartorius’s own text of 1796, this rewrites Smith into the terms of Staatswirtschaftslehre. 2 A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1976) p. 428: ‘Political oeconomy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects; first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the publick services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.’



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alistics with the new English political economy that to a greater or lesser extent characterises the writings of Sartorius, Lueder, von Coelln and Kraus.1 Kraus’s Staatswirtschaft was however a posthumous work arising out of his teaching in Königsberg from the early 1790s, and some commentators have made a direct link between this teaching and the activities of Prussian reformers who had been his students during this period.2 Roscher had already drawn attention to Kraus’s translation of Arthur Young’s Political Arithmetic in 1777 and Hume’s Essays in 1800, noting also that Kraus was an admirer of Sir James Steuart, a comment which immediately prompts scepticism in respect of the degree to which the work of Adam Smith dominated Kraus’s intellectual landscape.3 The first and only detailed discussion of Kraus’ actual teaching is to be found in a dissertation from 1902, based on student notes made by von Schön.4 Two principal conclusions follow from Kühn’s study: that Kraus dictated his lectures, the lecture notes being therefore a reliable reflection of what Kraus actually said; and that Kraus never ventured an opinion of his own, but constantly compared one authority with another – even where Kraus might have with justification introduced his own observation, he would by preference cite the work of others. As we have seen above, this was not so with other commentators upon Smith, many of whom were only too ready with comments critical of Smith’s argument and style of exposition. While it cannot therefore be denied that Kraus presented a detailed account of Smithian principles in his lectures, these were combined with other work that was strictly ‘pre-Smithian’, and his marked reluctance to state any opinion of his own would have sharply reduced the impact of his coverage of Smith.5 1 In the wider context of writing at the time it should be said that this confusion is not universal, being absent from writers such as L. H. von Jakob (the translator of Say’s Traité), Gottlieb Hufeland and Christian von Schlözer. 2 Most recently Waszek, ‘Adam Smith in Germany’, p. 167. Christian Jakob Kraus (1753– 1807) studied at Königsberg from 1770, where he attended Kant’s lectures, and it was on the recommendation of the latter that in 1773 he became tutor to Hans Schlippenbach. In 1779 he travelled with his pupil to Göttingen, where he attended lectures by Heyne, A. L. Schlözer and Feder. In 1780 he gained a doctorate at Halle, being thereupon appointed Professor for Practical Philosophy and the Cameralistic Sciences at Königsberg. ADB 17, pp. 66–8. 3 W. Roscher, ‘Die Ein- und Durchführung des Adam Smith’schen Systems in Deutschland’, Berichte über die Verhandlungen der koniglich sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig Bd. 19 (1867) p. 30. 4 E. Kühn, ‘Der Staatswirtschaftslehrer Christian Jakob Kraus und seine Beziehungen zu Adam Smith’, Bern 1902 – it is not clear what happened to the Nachschrift and it is likely that it has since been lost. 5 Adam Müller published in Berliner Abendblätter 11tes Blatt (12 October 1810) pp. 11–13 an appraisal of Kraus which sought to distance the excellence of his treatment of Smith from the dubious merits of Smith’s doctrine. There followed a number of defences of Kraus’ virtues – Müller had casually noted that Kraus, while industrious, was quite unoriginal – to which Achim von Arnim also contributed, in defence of Kraus – ‘Noch ein Wort der Billigkeit über Christ. Jacob Kraus’, 27tes Blatt (31 October 1810) pp. 108–10. The discussion was closed by Müller in ‘Zum Schuß über C. J. Kraus’, 48tes Blatt (25 November 1810) pp. 187–


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Left out of our discussion here has been ‘Smithianism’ and the new Nationalökonomie, the transformation of an essentially administrative conception of economic life into one more in line with the political economy that Smith came to represent.1 By the mid-1820s Smith had lost his purely symbolic importance – in 1823 Karl Heinrich Rau’s Heidelberg course outline refers not only to the Garve translation of Wealth of Nations, but to the translations of Say and Ricardo.2 The political economy of England and France was now freely assimilated into the German academic literature. But this was not without opposition from a newly-emergent form of popular economic journalism, represented by the writings of Friedrich List. During his period in the United States List had learned to identify Smith’s doctrines with a flawed universalism: … his book is a mere treatise on the question: How the economy of the individuals and of mankind would stand, if the human race were not separated into nations, but united by a general law and by an equal culture of mind?3

The national system of political economy which List developed over the following years sought to correct this ‘cosmopolitical economics’. He outlined a historical critique of Smith and Say in a prize essay of 18374 before in 1841 publishing the first (and only) part of his Nationale System der politischen Oekonomie; this brought together both theoretical and historical arguments repeatedly expounded during the previous dozen years. Smithian doctrine, according to List, is historically rooted in the global trading position of Great Britain; free trade well-suited a national economy whose trading position dominated the international economy, but not necessarily its competitors. However, when the international economy became a truly global economy, then Smith’s doctrines would prevail: national economic interests would have been supplanted by the interests of humanity. The detail of List’s arguments do not bear too close an examination, but it is possible to discern in this historical critique of ‘Smithian9. See also for an evaluation of Kraus’ relationship to Smith H. Lehmann, ‘Zum Einfluss des ‘Wealth of Nations’ auf die Ökonomen des deutschen Bürgertums. Die ökonomische Auffasungen des Christian Jacob Kraus’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1976 pp. 109–31. Although Lehmann’s account is predictably laden with references to the work of Marx and Engels, he does make the worthwhile point that most accounts of the impact of Smith in Germany simply assume that this was direct and immediate, or that there was immediate and uniform ‘resistance’. Rarely, he suggests, is consideration given to the mode of reception, or in what way German writers developed some of his principles while either rejecting, ignoring, or simply failing to understand others. 1 I have outlined this story in Chs 8 and 9 of my Governing Economy. 2 Governing Economy, p. 191. 3 F. List, Outlines of American Political Economy (1827), in Schriften/ Reden/ Briefe Bd. 2, (Verlag von Reimar Hobbing, Berlin 1931) p. 101. See my discussion of List’s borrowings from contemporary American economic writings in Strategies of Economic Order. German Economic Discourse 1750–1950 pp. 44ff. 4 F. List, ‘Le Système Naturel d’Économie Politique’, Schriften/ Reden/ Briefe Bd. 4, (Verlag von Reimar Hobbing, Berlin 1927).



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ism’ the roots of the Historical School’s later antagonism to the writings of Adam Smith. The lineage is not however a direct one, for List’s popular economic journalism was not initially taken that seriously by university teachers. It was the popular identification of commercial interests with Smith and Manchestertum that provided the critical impulse, not the adoption of List’s popular critique. As we shall see, German academic economists came to reject both economic liberalism and Marxist socialism, the intellectual roots of each being identified with English classical economics, that is, with what they perceived to be Smithian doctrines. 2. The Emergence of Das Adam Smith Problem Smith first became known in Germany as the author of Theory of Moral Sentiments, but during the early nineteenth century his name became exclusively identified with Wealth of Nations. Theory of Moral Sentiments was not republished at all during the nineteenth century; nor did a new, third translation of Wealth of Nations appear until 1846, when Max Stirner’s version was published. No German editions of the book had been available during the 1820s and 1830s, which is suggestive of the manner in which Wealth of Nations altered from a book that was read and quoted, to a work about which ‘everyone knew’ – a transition that coincides very roughly with a parallel development in Britain. Stirner did without any form of editorial introduction, appending instead to most chapters notes synthesised from the Garnier, Buchanan, Blanqui and McCulloch editions. This edition was the acknowledged basis for two further translations,1 while other, ostensibly new, versions of Wealth of Nations were published in 1861,2 1878,3 and 1879.4 Besides these complete versions of Smith there were also a number of abbreviated editions and access to a copy of Wealth of Nations in German was not therefore an issue by the later nineteenth century. But as has been suggested above, the relative lack of availability of Theory of Moral Sentiments did not prevent that work being seriously discussed either. The first variation in the custom of identifying Smith exclusively with Wealth of Nations can be traced to Hildebrand’s Nationalökonomie der Gegenwart und Zukunft, which opened with a critique of Smith and his ‘School’. Towards 1 A. Smith, Eine Untersuchung über Natur und Wesen des Volkswohlstandes, 3 vols., translated by E. Grünfeld, introduced by H. Waentig, (Verlag von Gustav Fischer, Jena 1908, 1920, 1923); A. Smith, Der Reichtum der Nationen, 2 vols, edited by Heinrich Schmidt, )Alfred Kröner Verlag, Leipzig 1910). 2 A. Smith, Ueber die Quellen des Volkswohlstandes, trans. and edited C. W. Asher (J. Engelhorn, Stuttgart 1861); this was based on the fifth McCulloch edition of 1850. 3 A. Smith, Untersuchung über das Wesen und die Ursachen des Volkswohlstandes, trans. F. Stöpel (Berlin 1878); an abbreviated edition was published in 1905. 4 A. Smith, Natur und Ursachen des Volkswohlstandes, trans. W. Loewenthal (E. Staude, Berlin 1879).


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the end of this first chapter, having repeated List’s allegation of ‘cosmopolitanism’, Hildebrand turned to deal with Smith’s atomistic conception of civil society, and the ‘egoism’ of his analysis.1 The main line of criticism that Hildebrand made was ethical, rather than historical, the ‘philosophical context’ that he sketched out for Smith not being one which took account of Theory of Moral Sentiments. A few years later, composing his own critique of political economy, Knies noted Hildebrand’s charge that Smith assumed self-interest will always coincide with the common good; but Knies then pointed out that Hildebrand was merely repeating here a misconception which by then was into its third generation. Knies was emphatic that, although Smith had treated self-interest as the basic human motivation in the economic domain, the idea that unhindered individual action necessarily leads to the common good was a later accretion, and had no origin with Smith himself. This is demonstrated by a series of citations from Wealth of Nations where for one reason or another Smith contrasts the individual interest to the common good.2 He also demonstrates that this habitual identification of the common good with the pursuit of selfinterest can be seen at work in Stirner’s translation, where a passage that in Smith reads: ‘By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it’ becomes in Stirner: ‘If every individual pursues his own interest, he promotes the interest of the society more effectively than if this had been his intention.’3 Knies points to two other passages where the same elision is made by Stirner, and emphasises that such error only goes to reinforce a general misapprehension of Smith’s position on the pursuit of self-interest and the realisation of the common good: …the two principles – that private selfishness (Privategoismus) is the sole source of individual economic activity, or the sole such source to be considered; and that through free exercise of self interest on the part of the individual the common good will be most effectively promoted – must be emphatically distinguished.4

Knies then passes on to other systems of political economy, but returns to Smith following his account of Physiocratic doctrine, concluding: Not even the most decided admirer of the great Scot can doubt that Smith henceforth stands on the broad shoulders of his Physiocratic friends, once he had become more closely acquainted with their writings; he simply adopted the greater part of their results, together with their argument… …it certainly cannot 1 B. Hildebrand, Die Nationalökonomie der Gegenwart und Zukunft (Literarische Anstalt (J. Rütten), Frankfurt a.M. 1848), pp. 29–33. This was conceived as the first of two volumes, dealing with the economic systems of ‘the present’; no other volumes were however published. 2 K. Knies, Die politische Oekonomie vom Standpunkte der geschichtlichen Methode (C. A. Schwetschke und Sohn, Brunswick 1853), pp. 149–50. 3 K. Knies, Die politische Oekonomie, p. 150. 4 K. Knies, Die politische Oekonomie p. 150.



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be regarded as a matter of coincidence that his stay in France falls between the publication of his Theory of Moral Sentiment [sic] and the political economy of his Inquiry.1

This appears to be the first explicit statement of the idea that there was a shift in approach between Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, and that the explanation for the shift lies in Smith’s encounter with French economists and philosophers. Although here stating the idea, Knies’s book was not responsible for its diffusion, for as he later complained, it sold very slowly, and the second edition only appeared thirty years later.2 Instead, the first real elaboration and propagation of this thought is to be found in the second volume of Buckle’s History of Civilization,3 a work which was not only immediately translated into German by Arnold Ruge,4 but which (unlike Knies’ book) was an immediate literary success in Germany.5 Buckle considered Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations to be ‘two divisions of a single subject’: In the Moral Sentiments, he investigates the sympathetic part of human nature; in the Wealth of Nations, he investigates its selfish part. And as all of us are sympathetic as well as selfish; in other words, as all of us look without as well as within, and as this classification is a primary and exhaustive division of our motives to action, it is evident, that if Adam Smith had completely accomplished his vast design, he would at once have raised the study of human nature to a science, leaving nothing for subsequent inquirers to ascertain the minor springs of affairs, all of which would find their place in this general scheme, and be deemed subordinate to it.6

In principle, Smith’s projected total science of human nature would result from the systematic application of inductive method, establishing in this manner principles that were applicable to all areas of social life. But this objective required vast intellectual and physical resources; and so, suggested Buckle, Smith had instead settled upon a solution to be achieved in stages: he would initially make use of a deductive approach and divide the indivisible – human nature, in two. Thus Theory of Moral Sentiments presupposed that humans were sympathetic in their interaction with others, while Wealth of Nations

1

K. Knies, Die politische Oekonomie, pp. 179, 180. K. Knies, ‘Vorwort’ to Die politische Oekonomie vom geschichtlichen Standpuncte (C. A. Schwetschke und Sohn, Brunswick 1883), pp. III, V. 3 H. T. Buckle, History of Civilization in England Vol. 2 (Parker, Son, and Bourn, London 1861), pp. 432ff. 4 H. T. Buckle, Geschichte der Civilisation in England Bd. 2 (C. F. Winter’sche Verlagshandlung, Leipzig 1861). 5 The second edition of the entire work appeared in 1864 and 1865; it was reprinted in 1868 and 1874 by Carl Winter, while another edition appeared from Heimann of Berlin in 1870. 6 H. T. Buckle, History of Civilization, pp. 432, 433. 2


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presupposed that the fundamental human motivation was selfish. A first approximation of the laws of political economy could be realised in this way: He, therefore, selects one of those aspects, and generalizes the laws as they are exhibited in the selfish parts of human nature. And he is right in doing so, simply because men, in the pursuit of wealth, consider their own gratification oftener than the gratification of others. Hence, he, like the geometrician, blots out one part of his premises, in order that he may manipulate the remaining part with greater ease. But we must always remember, that political economy, though a profound and beautiful science, is only a science of one department of life, and is founded upon a suppression of the facts in which all large societies abound.1

Smith, Buckle suggested, supplied in one line of argument the premises absent in the other, providing in this way a basis for a future unified science of human nature. There was no direct response to this line of argument in Britain. When Thorold Rogers published his new edition of Wealth of Nations in 1869 he noted only as an aside in his preliminary biographical summary that Smith had published Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, and later asserted that Smith had adhered to an inductive procedure, according to Thorold Rogers the only appropriate procedure for a scientific political economy.2 This argument over the proper method to be followed in the science of political economy was the English equivalent to the Methodenstreit, its formal inauguration marked by John Stuart Mill’s 1836 essay ‘On the Definition of Political Economy’3 with a final settling of accounts effected by Neville Keynes’ Scope and Method of Political Economy, whose argument was organised around the contrasting merits of inductive and deductive methodologies.4 In Britain, Wealth of Nations enjoyed an ambivalent status with respect to this debate, being advanced now as an exemplar of inductivism, and then of deductivism.5 In Germany, where those advocating an ‘inductive’ methodology identified themselves as historical economists, this ambivalence was rejected. Historicists argued with increasing vehemence that Smith followed a deductive procedure, that is, he adhered to a conception of human action independent of time and place, and so both his principles and his conclusions should be rejected. But since Buckle had suggested a form of historical explanation for Smith’s arguments, this did permit

1

H. T. Buckle, History of Civilization, p. 436. J. E. Thorold Rogers, ‘Editor’s Preface’ to A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. I ( Clarendon Press, Oxford 1869), pp. x, xli. 3 J. S. Mill, ‘On the Definition of Political Economy; and on the Method of Investigation Proper to It’, in J. M. Robson (ed.) Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Vol. IV (University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1967), pp. 309–39. The essay had been drafted in the autumn of 1831. 4 J. N. Keynes, The Scope and Method of Political Economy (Macmillan & Co., London 1891). 5 See the discussion of this point in ‘The Reception of Adam Smith in the English Language’ above, p. 42 n. 2. 2



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an argument to develop that was to transform all future discussion of the work of Adam Smith. To orient our understanding some comments on the emerging distinction of the ‘Older’ from the ‘Younger’ Historical Schools of Economics might be helpful.1 The ‘Older’ school is conventionally identified with Wilhelm Roscher, Bruno Hildebrand and Karl Knies, and dated from Roscher’s programmatic call for the development of an economics founded upon historical study of human motivation and activity, and not on the more limited consideration of national wealth and the means for its increase.2 This naturally implied a critique of Smithian economics, a task taken up first by Hildebrand and then by Knies. But the wider historical project sketched by Roscher, of studying the variety of human activity and social institutions, was never realised: Hildebrand never wrote the second volume of his book on economic doctrine, stopping short at a detailed critique of existing systems; Roscher’s lasting contribution can be found in his studies of economics and economic policy culminating in his history of German economics;3 and Knies, disappointed with the poor response to his own critique of political economy, only returned to its themes in the 1880s. However, since all of these writers had started out from a historical appraisal of existing economic doctrine, they did in their different ways produce considered re-evaluations of ‘Smithian economics’ – even if they did get little further than this preliminary step. The ‘Younger School’, the second generation of economists who gained professorial status in the 1870s and 1880s, had a different conception of historical method and its object. Representatives of this new wave of historical economists directed their attention to research into economic history, institutions and policy, and omitted the preliminary critique of existing theory that had been undertaken by Roscher, Hildebrand and Knies. Their work did lay the foundation for a new economic history; but their relative indifference to economic theory developed for many into an undifferentiated hostility to contemporary economic doctrine, epitomised by Schmoller’s dismissive response to Menger’s criticisms of the limits of historical method in the development of theoretical argument. From this perspective Smith was part of the problem, not part of the solution; but the very crudity of their attacks upon ‘Smithian’ assumptions of ‘egoism’ prompted in turn responses that brought into clearer focus the exact nature of the intellectual project with which Smith had been concerned.

1 The following is a summary drawn from my essay ‘Historical Schools of Economics: German and English’ in J. E. Biddle, J. B. Davis, W. J. Samuels (eds) The Blackwell Companion to the History of Economic Thought (Blackwell, Oxford 2003). 2 W. Roscher, Grundriß zu Vorlesungen über die Staatswirthschaft. Nach geschichtlicher Methode (Dieterische Buchhandlung, Göttingen 1843). 3 W. Roscher, Geschichte der National-Oekonomik in Deutschland (R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1874).


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So while Buckle’s explanation of the ‘two Smiths’ was not directly integrated into subsequent English discussion of Smith’s works,1 it did meet with a response in Germany. In the early 1860s Hildebrand founded a new journal dedicated to economics and statistics – the first in the German language, strictly speaking. As editor, he opened the first issue with a statement of ‘the present tasks of the science of political economy’, a historical review of the recent development of economics in which the work of Smith played a prominent role. Noting the similarities between the Physiocrats and Adam Smith, Hildebrand suggested that they shared the contemporary moral philosophical view that self-interest is the sole necessary motivation for human action, hence basing their economic laws upon this conception. An appended footnote noted the contrast between Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations and referred to Buckle’s attempt at a resolution of this contradiction by treating them as complementary springs of human action.2 Hildebrand went on to criticise Smith’s association of economic motivation with natural laws, suggesting that natural liberty could just as well lead to a mutually destructive system of exploitation as to national welfare. But while the idea of natural laws based upon self-interest was according to Hildebrand untenable, this did not mean that economic actions were arbitrary. The task of economics was instead to provide a historically-grounded understanding of the prevailing economic culture.3 From this perspective much of Wealth of Nations might be salvaged. When in the mid-1870s the time came to celebrate the centenary of Wealth of Nations, argument had moved on. Rather than simply identify common features between the Physiocrats and the work of Smith as Hildebrand had done, Nasse echoed Knies in suggesting that much of what was important in Smith had originated with the Physiocrats, although, while partially demoting Smith as the founder of a new political economy, Nasse conceded that Smith was generally thought to have been the first to view ‘social economy’ as a whole. Due recognition was also given to Buckle’s thesis concerning Smith’s adoption of a deductive method, but Nasse also drew attention to the way in which Smith constantly made use of his own observation. This could of course be both a strength and a weakness: a strength since it undermined those who dismissed Wealth of Nations as a work simply built around timeless human properties; but also a weakness, since Smith’s own powers of observation were obviously rooted in time and place, and did not admit of wide generalisation.4 1

As outlined above in ‘The Reception of Adam Smith in the English Language’, the publication of the Lectures in 1896 was a clear response to Buckle’s ‘solution’, although there had in the meantime been no sort of debate on the issue. 2 B. Hildebrand, ‘Die gegenwärtige Aufgabe der Wissenschaft der Nationalökonomie’, Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik Bd. 1 (1863) p. 7. 3 B. Hildebrand, ‘Die gegenwärtige Aufgabe’, pp. 139–43. 4 E. Nasse, ‘Das hundertjährige Jubiläum der Schrift von Adam Smith über den Reichthum der Nationen’, Preußische Jahrbücher Bd. 38 H. 4 (1876) pp. 385, 392. Nasse had been invited to address the Berlin Economic Society in the Spring of 1876, but had been prevented from doing so by illness and consequently published his intended speech later in the year.



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August Oncken was another who sought to mark the centenary of Wealth of Nations with a reassessment of Smith, his original working title being The Wealth of Nations from an Ethical Standpoint – but the work came out a year late under the title Adam Smith und Immanuel Kant.1 In the first section of the book he took up the problem raised by Buckle – given that Smith’s economic theory was but one part of a wider system, how might one go about reconstituting that system on the basis of Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments? Oncken’s solution, echoing readings of Smith more common earlier in the century, suggested that a Staatslehre was contained in the fifth book of Wealth of Nations, complete with an exposition of the objectives of a state and the means commanded to achieve those objectives. Wealth of Nations, argued Oncken, was not just an economic treatise, as the great majority of previous writers had supposed: it contained both ‘eine Oekonomik und eine Politik’.2 And since an ethics was to be found in Theory of Moral Sentiments, together the two books presented the classic triad – ethics, politics, and oeconomy, component parts of a practical philosophy that went back to Socrates. As he elaborates these new philosophical foundations for Adam Smith he travels back to the Greeks and then forward to Leibniz, Locke and Hume, missing on the way the connection through Hutcheson to natural law; although this is also obstructed by his attempt to demonstrate with his narrative that Smith and Kant shared common philosophical foundations, not that there is any direct relationship between them. A more critical account of Smith’s system and its genesis was published the same year, by Lujo Brentano, identified with the Younger Historical School and hence generally critical of Smithian economics. Emphasis was placed upon the fact that Smith’s visit to France fell between the publication of Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, and that during his twelve months in Paris he associated with Helvetius and others. The influence this had on Smith, argues Brentano, can be seen in the change that came about in his basic ideas. In Theory of Moral Sentiments, he suggests, Smith explicitly rejects self-love as a motivating factor, citing in support a passage from Smith himself.3 By the time 1 A. Oncken, Adam Smith und Immanuel Kant. Der Einklang und das Wechselverhältniss ihrer Lehren über Sitte, Staat und Wirthschaft (Duncker und Humblot, Leipzig 1877), p. IX. In a lecture published in 1874 Oncken had outlined a very broad appreciation of Adam Smith which drew upon Friedrich List and Henry Carey, but also drew parallels with the development of Kant’s thinking – Adam Smith in der Culturgeschichte (Verlag von Faesy & Frick, Vienna 1874). Over the next twenty years Oncken was to refine his approach to Smith very considerably. 2 A. Oncken, Adam Smith, p. 14. 3 L. Brentano, Das Arbeitsverhältniss gemäss dem heutigen Recht, Duncker und Humblot, Leipzig 1877 p. 61, citing Part VII, Section III Ch. 1: ‘That whole account of human nature, however, which deduces all sentiments and affections from self-love, which has made so much noise in the world, but which, so far as I know, has never yet been fully and distinctly explained, seems to me to have arisen from some confused misapprehension of the system of sympathy.’ A. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael (A. L. Macfie, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1976 ), p. 317.


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he comes to write Wealth of Nations, however, Smith has changed his mind; he fully shares the ideas of Helvetius, who had depicted selfishness as the motivating force behind human conduct. Elsewhere in Wealth of Nations, Brentano continues, we encounter the conception that all men are naturally equal, an idea he shares with the Encyclopaedists, for whom human differences are solely the consequence of variations in education, legislation, or government. State power should according to Smith be restricted to the protection of natural liberty, property and public order, and any care of the legislator for the individual is held to be an imposition. Consequently, Brentano continued, Smith favoured the abolition of all economic legislation and its replacement with rule by natural economic laws.1 Which was in turn the central tenet of the Physiocrats, hence the basic ideas of Smith are Physiocratic: A. SMITH has refuted their theory only with respect to relatively minor doctrines, and in doing so fell into new errors. Apart from these differences, A. SMITH is himself a Physiocrat.2

This might be thought a somewhat bald judgement, but an even more blunt statement of the same position soon followed. Witold von Skarz·yn´ski had completed a doctorate at the University of Berlin on Boisguillebert,3 providing him with a background in early eighteenth century French economic thought. He then sought to complete his Habilitation at Breslau, where Brentano was Professor, possibly thinking that this would lend his own criticism of Smith a readier reception. This turned out to be a mistake, since his thesis was rejected; and so he returned to Poland to run the family estate, later becoming a member of the national assembly.4 But he did publish his second thesis, and this work has long been identified as the most zealous exposition of the ‘Problem’. It is not entirely unfair to say that Skarz·yn´ski’s book on Smith simply amplified and extended the position outlined by Brentano above, although by stretching the argument over four hundred pages and more it becomes more than a little thin and repetitive. He opens with a rhetorical question: 1

L. Brentano, Das Arbeitsverhältniss, pp. 62–3. Ibid. 3 W. von Skarz·yn ´ski, ‘Pierre de Boisguillebert und seine Beziehungen zur neueren Volkswirthschaftslehre’, Dissertation, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Berlin 1873. 4 I would like to thank Stefan Zabieglik for drawing my attention to the fact that Skarz·yn ´ski’s book was also published in Poznan in 1877, and reviewed in the local newspaper: G., Review of Dr. Witold Skarz·yn ´ski: Adam Smith jako moralista i twórca ekonomii politycznej... [Dr Witold Skarzynski: Adam Smith as Moral-Philosopher…] Dziennik Poznan´ski (1878) No. 114, pp. 1–2. Reply from S. No. 152, pp. 1–3. The reviewer suggested that the Habilitationsschrift was rejected because the Faculty was sympathetic to the work of Smith – if anything, the opposite was true. Skarz·yn´ski had taken private lessons with Eugen Dühring while in Berlin (a curriculum vitae is appended to his doctoral thesis), and Skarz·yn ´ski’s critique of Smith is liberally sprinkled with references to his work, which would not have endeared Skarz·yn ´ski to the professoriate in Breslau, or anywhere else for that matter. 2



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Should Adam Smith be considered an original moral philosopher, and subsequently as the creator of political economy and hence as an independent, pathbreaking thinker?1

The short answer, according to Skarz·yn´ski, is no; and he seeks to show that there is absolutely nothing positive to be said about Smith. Nonetheless, it is worth considering how he constructs this position. A reference to Buckle opens the argument, noting how Buckle had contrasted the way Smith in his first book placed human sentiment in the relationship prevailing between people, while in Wealth of Nations this was relocated in man himself and linked to the pursuit of self-interest. He does not mention here the manner in which Buckle sought to resolve the polarity he had introduced. Skarz·yn´ski then proceeds to expand upon Dugald Stewart’s biographical memoir of Smith, blocking in the nature of science in the Enlightenment, the importance of the deductive method and Hutcheson’s allegiance to it, and, importantly, Scotland’s economic and cultural situation in the mideighteenth century. This all comes from Buckle, as does the succeeding account of Smith as a Professor of Philosophy, where Skarz·yn´ski suggests that the principal reason that it took Smith twenty four years from his 1752 lectures to their final development and publication was because this was the time it took to gradually borrow the principles he employed from others.2 The fact that Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals was published in 1751 explains the seven years it took him to publish Theory of Moral Sentiments, while the meeting with Turgot accounts for the twenty four years it took to write Wealth of Nations. This argument, together with illustrative parallels between Smith and Hume, is taken directly from Dühring, for Skarz·yn´ski’s book itself is largely assembled out of passages from Buckle, Dühring and Roscher.3 Basically, argued Skarz·yn´ski, Smith borrowed most of Theory of Moral Sentiments from Hume, without however understanding what he borrowed.4 So much for the period before the trip to France: up to this point his economic thinking had not developed in any respect beyond that of Hume. Under the influence of Hutcheson and Hume Smith was an Idealist, so long as he remained in England. After three years of contact with the Materialism that prevailed in France, he returned to England a Materialist. The contrast between Theory (1759) written before his visit to France and the Wealth of Nations (1776) written after his return can be quite simply explained in this way. There is no need for Buckle’s critical sophistries to explain such a straightforward situation.5 1 W. von Skarz·yn ´ski, Adam Smith als Moralphilosoph und Schoepfer der Nationaloekonomie. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Nationaloekonomie (Verlag von Theobold Grieben, Berlin 1878), p. IV. 2 W. von Skarz·yn ´ski, Adam Smith p. 54. 3 W. von Skarz·yn ´ski also uses emphases so often in the text that he introduces a third-level font, which is larger but normally spaced, for additional emphasis. 4 W. von Skarz·yn ´ski, Adam Smith p. 77. 5 W. von Skarz·yn ´ski, Adam Smith, p. 183.


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As for the substance of Smith’s political economy – that all came from the Physiocrats, and Smith merely systematised what he found in France. He summarises his position as follows: 1. As far as the history of economics goes, not Smith, but the Physiocrats, are the creators of the science of political economy, with Hume as their principal forerunner, Smith building on them. 2. As far as economic theory goes, although Smith made much of ‘labour as the source of wealth’, he did not make this a consistent axiom in his work, nor made it a guide for his practice.1

One might sympathise with the Breslau examiners; Skarz·yn´ski’s argument is derivative and poorly constructed even by contemporary standards. But it is worth outlining here, for while Skarz·yn´ski’s name is frequently cited in connection with ‘Das Adam Smith Problem’, the substance of his argument is never reported. And we might simply dismiss this uncompromising, but illargued, repudiation of Smith’s originality on all scores if it were not that it reproduced relatively accurately the reflex of the ‘more extreme’ members of the Younger Historical School when confronted with Smith.2 In 1897 Gustav Schmoller became Rektor of the University of Berlin, and used his inaugural address to outline his view of the development of economics from the earliest times up to the present day. Since the eighteenth century, Schmoller argued, two tendencies had prevailed in economic doctrine: the liberal and the socialist. The former conceived the world as a harmonious system of independent, selfinterested agents, guided by a benevolent God in such a manner that they only had to be left to themselves to have beneficial results. Smith had had great merit, up to the 1860s and 1870s, suggested Schmoller – he had considered the market mechanism (ökonomische Marktgetriebe) for itself, and outlined the most important dynamics of money economy, bringing together previous knowledge into an ordered system.3 Socialist literature on the other hand sought to identify the supra-individual forces at work in society, and laid a basis for a historical understanding of economic epochs. The literature of 1750–1870 represented the birth pangs of the new science of political economy, suggested Schmoller; W. von Skarz·yn ´ski, Adam Smith, p. 258. Neville Keynes, Scope and Method, pp. 26, 298 placed Schmoller in this group. Others in this generation, such as Hasbach and Zeyss, did on the other hand produce balanced appraisals of Smith’s writing which recognised his originality, employing the philosophical and historical context to emphasise this originality rather than suggest that Smith simply echoed Hume, or the Physiocrats, or Helvetius: W. Hasbach, Untersuchungen über Adam Smith und die Entwicklung der politischen Ökonomie (Duncker und Humblot, Leipzig 1891); R. Zeyss, Adam Smith under der Eigennutz. Eine Untersuchung über die philosophischen Grundlagen der älteren Nationalökonomie (Verlag der H. Laupp’schen Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1889). 3 G. Schmoller, Wechselnde Theorien und feststehende Wahrheiten im Gebiete der Staats- und Socialwissenschaften und die heutige deutsche Volkswirtschaftlehre, Rede bei Antritt des Rectorats gehalten in der Aula der Königlichen Friedrichs-Wilhelms-Universität am 15.Oktober 1897 (printed W. Büxenstein, Berlin 1897), p. 13. 1 2



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and this new science could only begin to develop when these two tendencies had passed their peak of popularity. Major advances in society and economy since the 1870s showed the old theories of economic liberalism and socialism to be out of date: The naïve optimism of ‘laissez faire’, like the puerile, frivolous call to Revolution, the childish hope that the tyranny of the proletariat could lead entire world empires to happiness, increasingly show themselves for what they are, the twin offspring of an unhistorical rationalism, the remnants of the eudaemonist enlightenment of the eighteenth century. The old doctrines of an individualist natural law was now transformed from the humane idealism of Adam Smith into the unrelenting mammonism of the Manchester School and had no response to the great social questions, to say nothing of the reorganisation of enterprise forms, the entirely changed consequences of competition and the entirely changed economic tensions between imperial powers and small states.1

Modern economics, Schmoller went on, had become a historical and ethical approach to state and society, in stark contrast to rationalism and materialism. A great moral and political science has replaced the doctrines of market and exchange of commercial economics. Scientific (academic) economics was historical economics. The line of economic thinking from the Physiocrats, through Smith to the Classical Economists had come to an end. The following year Oncken raised the question: was Smith now misunderstood in much the same way that Smith had misunderstood his predecessors? He referred directly to Schmoller’s address in suggesting that there was now in Germany a systematic downgrading of Smith among academic economists and that no-one would admit allegiance to his work. But what, he asked, if the contemporary image of Smith were false? That Smith in fact occupied a position more progressive than the current received opinion? This would indeed be an ‘Adam Smith Problem’.2 And out of this reappraisal Oncken was able to take stock of the Smith reception in Germany during the second half of the nineteenth century and recover a clearer view of the problem. He could also draw upon Rae’s Life, Bonar’s catalogue of Smith’s library, and also of course Cannan’s edition of the Lectures to dismiss the entire topic of a ‘transition’ in Smith’s work centred upon the period in France. If the transformation theory were correct, Oncken asks how one would explain the following: 1. Smith continued to revise and republish Theory of Moral Sentiments until shortly before his death; 2. There is no mention of this conversion in the later works of the Physiocrats, nor is there any sign of this having been communicated to Hume;

1 2

G. Schmoller, Wechselnde Theorien, p. 22. A. Oncken, ‘Das Adam Smith-Problem’, Zeitschrift für Socialwissenschaft Jg. 1 (1898) p. 26.


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3. Directly after his return from France Smith prepared a third edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments which appeared the following year, 1767; and that in this edition he strengthened his criticism of Mandeville and Rochefoucauld.

Furthermore, if Smith were so influenced by French materialist philosophy how come there are virtually no relevant works in the library as catalogued by Bonar? Brentano had laid great emphasis upon Helvetius’ De l’esprit, but this was not in Bonar’s catalogue; neither was any other work by Helvetius; Holbach’s Système de la Nature was not there either. The Lectures finished the transformation theory off completely; quoting Millar’s comments upon the organisation of Smith’s lectures, Oncken could show that the framework of Wealth of Nations was complete before Smith went to France. And finally, Smith had emphasised the systematic character of his work in 1790, recalling in the Advertisement to Moral Sentiments that he had promised a continuation of his account of the principles of law and government, and that he had not entirely given up on this project.1 So there was no contradiction in the procedure followed by Smith in his two books; and it was also now clear that these two books were part of a larger project. The criticism of ‘Smithian economics’ on the part of historical economists had resulted, not in the eclipse of his work, as Schmoller thought, but in its renewal. 3. The Development of New Scholarship The discovery and publication in 1896 of notes from Smith’s lectures of 1763– 4 had, as Oncken noted, put paid to speculation that Smith had taken up systematic study of political economy following his personal contact with Physiocrats; and by reconnecting the themes of Wealth of Nations to their context in Smith’s teaching the contention that this book was but part of a wider project was lent emphatic confirmation. Cannan’s editor at Oxford University Press received an inquiry the same year from a prospective German translator;2 but nothing seems to have come of this approach. Some years later the Press received another inquiry, this time with an assurance that August Oncken had already agreed to write a preface to the translation.3 This likewise came to nothing; but a translation did finally appear in 1928, with an introduction by Jastrow, who had published a popular selection from Wealth of Nations.4 Of 1

A. Oncken, ‘Das Adam Smith-Problem’ pp. 31–3. Letter from Lyttleton Gell to Cannan, 18 November 1896, Correspondence with Publishers I 1890–1916. BLPES Archive, Cannan Papers File 1018 f. 32. 3 Letter from C. E. Doble for Clarendon Press to Cannan, 9 November 1903, Cannan Papers File 1018 f. 51. 4 J. Jastrow (ed.) Adam Smith, Textbücher zu Studien über Wirtschaft und Staat Bd. 3 (Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1913); the fifth edition was published in 1933. 2



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greater significance was however the publication in 1926 of a new translation of Moral Sentiments, edited by Walther Eckstein, a work which remains a landmark in Adam Smith scholarship. As we have seen, the absence of a current edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments had not obstructed discussion of its relationship to the argument of Wealth of Nations during the final decades of the nineteenth century.1 In any case, by the later part of the nineteenth century it had become more usual for scholars to read English; and Zeyss’s essay on Smith and self-interest did, for example, quote extensively in English from Theory of Moral Sentiments in reviewing the arguments presented by Buckle, Knies, Hildebrand, Bagehot, Delatour, Oncken, Leser, Hasbach and Skarzynksi on the nature of Smith’s project.2 Likewise Hasbach had acknowledged the importance of Farrer’s Adam Smith, stating it to be the ‘best monograph on Adam Smith as a philosopher’.3 But Eckstein went further than providing a new translation: he established a standard text out of the different editions, provided a detailed editorial apparatus including an index of technical terms, and prefaced the whole with a comprehensive survey of the place of Theory of Moral Sentiments in the work of Adam Smith. The principal text of Eckstein’s edition is the sixth edition, based however upon a systematic comparison with the five previous versions of the book. In this he followed the procedure introduced by Cannan for his edition of Wealth of Nations, which is based on the last edition published in Smith’s lifetime (the fifth edition) but where a thorough comparison had been made with the text of the first edition. By default, therefore, Eckstein’s German edition became the standard edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments, and was later acknowledged as such by the editors of the Glasgow Edition.4 The sixty page introduction to the edition provides a thorough survey of the work and its reception. It opens with the remark, ‘Adam Smith’s life was externally uneventful’, a sober recognition of the limitations of biography as an explanatory source for Smith’s project that 1 Although Oncken had claimed in 1877 that no German translation of Theory of Moral Sentiments existed – Adam Smith und Immanuel Kant, p. 108, n. 1. 2 R. Zeyss, Adam Smith und der Eigennutz. Eine Untersuchung über die philosophischen Grundlagen der älteren Nationalökonomie (Verlag der H. Laupp’schen Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1889). 3 Farrer presented a detailed summary of Theory of Moral Sentiments together with an assessment of criticisms that had been made of it – J. A. Farrer, Adam Smith (1723–1790) (Sampson, Lowe, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, London 1881); Hasbach, Untersuchungen, p. 21. 4 D. D. Raphael, A. L. Macfie, ‘Preface’ to The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Oxford University Press, London 1976. The original two-volume edition of Eckstein was reissued by Felix Meiner in 1977 as a one-volume work with a new bibliography in their standard series Philosophische Bibliothek; since then it has twice been reissued with an updated bibliography, in 1985 and in 1994. Since the publishers did not reset the second edition, the important note that Eckstein included on the deviations between the various editions of Theory of Moral Sentiments is now located in the middle of the book (pp. 275–81), and not where one would normally expect it, at the end of the main text.


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was, by this time, well overdue.1 Smith himself, suggests Eckstein, always regarded Theory of Moral Sentiments more highly than Wealth of Nations, an assessment which had in the course of the nineteenth century been reversed – while Wealth of Nations stood at the beginning of the development of political economy, Theory of Moral Sentiments stood rather at the close of a line of ethical theory and had consequently been passed by more recent ethical philosophy. This neglect was however unwarranted, and Eckstein suggests somewhat obliquely that the work had a relevance to the moral sciences that had been largely overlooked. Moreover, not only had the work been an immediate success in Britain, it was very well received in both France and Germany; indeed, in Continental Europe Wealth of Nations when it appeared was generally thought of as a new work ‘by the author of the Theory of Moral Sentiments’. Its decline into relative obscurity in the course of the nineteenth century was moreover assisted by a series of misconceptions concerning the composition and revision of the work. The fact for example that, on his return from France, Smith issued a third edition which varied from the second in very minor respects could have been employed at any time to rebut the idea that Smith underwent some kind of conversion to materialist philosophy while in France; but this did not happen, since even Rae’s biography in 1895 provides an erroneous account of Smith’s successive revisions to the first edition.2 Likewise, speculation regarding Smith’s waning religious belief can be shown to be unwarranted; successive revisions to the text might indicate a growing Deist conviction, and in no respect a convergence with the beliefs of his long-dead friend, David Hume.3 Eckstein also includes a judicious settling of accounts with the debates of the later nineteenth century, emphasising that the moral world comprehends the economic world and not the other way around, while it was equally false to read into Smith’s account of sympathy a conception of benevolence which he clearly rejected.4 As if to underline this new basis for an appreciation of the work of Smith a German translation of the Lectures appeared in 1928.5 In his introduction Jastrow recalled Hasbach’s emphasis upon Dutch, German and Scottish natural law traditions in seeking a lineage for Smith’s own conception of ‘natural lib1 A. Smith, Theorie der ethischen Gefühle (1926), trans. and ed. W. Eckstein, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg p. XI. 2 A. Smith, Theorie (1926) pp. XXXVI, XL. 3 A. Smith, Theorie (1926) p. XLIX. 4 A. Smith, Theorie (1926), p. LVIII. Eckstein also published an overview of Theory of Moral Sentiments the following year which provides a resumé of many of the arguments advanced in his Introduction: ‘Adam Smith als Rechtsphilosoph’, Archiv für Rechts- und Wirtschaftsphilosophie Bd. 20 (1927) pp. 378–95. 5 A summary of the lectures based on the Cannan edition of 1896 had already been published by Artur Sommer as ‘Das Naturrechtskolleg von Adam Smith’, Archiv für Rechts- und Wirtschaftsphilosophie Bd. 20 (1927) pp. 396ff., ie. immediately following on from Eckstein’s article noted above.



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erty’; he also pointed out that if there were similarities here with the Physiocrats, this was because they substantially drew on the same traditions as Smith, not because Smith had borrowed from them. The Lectures, dating as they do from a period before Smith’s encounter with Physiocracy, provide evidence for this and consolidate the advance in Smith scholarship that Oncken had anticipated in 1898.1 Hasbach’s sometimes rather laboured arguments had in turn been published before the discovery of the student notes in 1895, the existence of which now made it easier to place Smith in his intellectual context without resort to argument concerning the inconsistency of his conceptions of human motivation, or speculation over his experiences in France. The implications of this, and the importance of the Lectures, were outlined in greater detail in an article published while the new translation was in the press.2 But nothing was built on these new foundations for a very long time. From the 1930s to the 1970s there was no new complete German editions of Wealth of Nations or Theory of Moral Sentiments;3 no sign of discussion in the periodical literature, and even the entry for Smith in the 1956 edition of the Handwörterbuch der Sozialwissenschaften is translated from the English, suggesting that no resident German academic was considered either competent or sufficiently interested.4 It was, somewhat ironically, the resurgence both of an interest in Marxism and the emergence of neoliberalism in the later 1960s that rekindled an interest in the writings of Adam Smith, echoing the conditions that had prevailed some one hundred years before. And, even more ironically, the new edition of Wealth of Nations that was published in the Federal Republic in 1974 inadvertently stumbled into another, older tradition – criticism directed to the quality of the translation.

1 A. Smith, Vorlesungen über Rechts-, Polizei-, Steuer- u. Heereswesen, Nach der Ausgabe von Edwin Cannan, intr. J. Jastrow (H. Meyer’s Buchdruckerei, Halberstadt 1928), p. VI. 2 J. Jastrow, ‘Naturrecht und Volkswirtschaft. Erörterungen aus Anlaß der deutschen Ausgabe von Adam Smith’ Vorlesungen’, Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik Bd. 126 (1927) pp. 689–730. The last piece that Jastrow published before his death also drew attention to a new Smithian discovery, Scott’s account in Economic Journal Vol. 45 (1935) of an early draft of the Wealth of Nations, concluding with the remark ‘…das missing link ist gefunden’ – see ‘Ein neuer Adam-Smith-Fund und der Aufbau des nationalökonomischen Lehrbgebäudes’, Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie Bd. VIII (1937) pp. 338–80. 3 The sole exceptions are the extracts from Smith published respectively in the American and British Occupation Zones primarily for use in schools – A. Smith, Die Theorie des Aussenhandels. Inquiry into the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations B. IV. Ch. 1–3 1776, ed. A. Skalweit (Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M. 1946); A. Smith, Untersuchungen über Natur und Ursprung des Volkswohlstandes (Georg Westermann Verlag, Brunswick 1949) – and the first part of Peter Thal’s new translation of Wealth of Nations, published in the German Democratic Republic – see p. 111 n. 1. 4 Fritz Karl Mann, ‘Adam Smith’, Handwörterbuch der Sozialwissenschaften Bd. 9 (1956) pp. 288–94. This was a new edition of the old Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften.


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This new one-volume edition even has an aberrant title – The Welfare of Nations. An Investigation of its Nature and Causes.1 The rendering of Smith’s book is marked more by enthusiasm than any skill or historical insight, Recktenwald being an academic economist who developed an interest in the classics of economics, and who seems to have thought that a knowledge of modern economics and of the English language were all that one needed to make sense of Smith. Soon after it had appeared Monika Streissler published a withering critique directed to the poor quality of the translation;2 this appears to have resulted in some revision being made to the paperback version, which is still in print and remains the most accessible version in Germany today.3 In 1999 a new, authoritative version of Wealth of Nations, based on the Glasgow edition, was published, translated by Monika Streissler and edited by her husband, Erich.4 In 1996 a new translation of the Lectures had been published,5 so that this new edition of Wealth of Nations completed the important trilogy of Theory of Moral Sentiments, Lectures and Wealth of Nations in reliable translation. The Essays on Philosophical Subjects and the Lecture on Rhetoric have by contrast never been translated into German.

1 A. Smith, Der Wohlstand der Nationen. Eine Untersuchung seiner Natur und seiner Ursachen, trans. H. . Recktenwald (C. H. Beck, Munich 1974). 2 M. Streissler, ‘Anmerkungen zu H. C. Recktenwald Ausgabe des “Wohlstands der Nationen”’, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft Bd. 132 (1976) pp. 710–17. 3 A. Smith, Der Wohlstand der Nationen. Eine Untersuchung seiner Natur und seiner Ursachen, trans. H. C. Recktenwald (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1978). 4 A. Smith, Untersuchung über Wesen und Ursachen des Reichtums der Völker, 2 vols., trans. M. Streissler, ed. E. Streissler (Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen, Düsseldorf 1999). 5 Adam Smith, Vorlesungen über Rechts- und Staatswissenschaften, trans. and ed. Daniel Brühlmeier (Academia Verlag, Sankt Augustin 1996).


Adam Smith in Russian Translation Tatiana V. Artemieva

From the time of Peter the Great Russian proposals for social and economic reform and the ‘modernisation’ of institutions often drew for their substantive and ideological resources upon imports from Western Europe, a particular idea being endowed with especial force simply by virtue of its origin in Western culture. Russian students attending universities in Western Europe formed an important medium for the transmission of ideas eastwards, and it was in just this way that Adam Smith quickly gained a prominent position in the thinking of liberal and reformist circles in nineteenth century Russia. In 1761 two such students were sent from Moscow University to Glasgow, where they attended Adam Smith’s lectures, the impact that these lectures made on them being reflected in their later work. S. E. Desnitsky and I. A. Tretiakov attended Smith’s Glasgow lectures on ethics, rhetoric and law and also attended those of John Millar, Smith’s pupil.1 The timing of their studies is of especial interest since they attended Smith’s lectures immediately before his visit to France, a period which of course also coincides with the record of Smith’s lectures subsequently published by Cannan in 1896 as Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms. In 1767 they graduated as doctors of law; they then returned to Russia where Tretiakov was appointed to a chair at Moscow University in 1768. His academic career was cut short in 1776 and he died in 1779; the only record of his teaching that has survived is three addresses held in the University, one of which in 1772 was intended to honour the tenth anniversary of Catherine the Great’s accession to the throne.2 Comparison of the text of 1 See A. G. Cross, ‘By the Banks of the Thames’, Russians in Eighteenth Century Britain (Oriental Research Partners, Newtonville 1980), pp. 98–110; A. H. Brown, ‘Adam Smith’s First Russian Followers’, in A. S. Skinner, T. Wilson (eds) Essays on Adam Smith (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1975), pp. 247–73. 2 Speech of 30 June 1772, An Essay on Causes of Abundance and Slow Enrichment of States Both of Ancient and Modern Peoples (Rassuzhdenie o prichinakh izobiliia i medlitel’nogo obogashcheniia gosudarstv, kak u drevnikh, tak i u nyneshnikh narodov). See N. W. Taylor, ‘Adam Smith’s First Russian Disciple’, Slavonic and East European Review Vol. 45 (1967) pp. 425–38, reprinted in Cheng-chung Lai, Adam Smith Across Nations (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001), pp. 248–61.


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this lecture with Cannan’s edition of Smith’s lectures makes abundantly clear that Tretiakov’s address was to a great extent a synthesis from his own Glasgow lecture notes, for of course at this time Smith had not published anything relating to the division of labour, the increase of stock, or the progress of civilisation.1 And it is naturally especially significant that exactly these themes should have been addressed on an occasion designed to honour Catherine. Desnitsky is however the more significant figure of the two, since he became one of the most influential figures in Moscow University from the 1760s to the 1780s, and is regarded as the ‘father of Russian jurisprudence’ by Russian legal historians. In 1768 he wrote A Proposal Concerning the Establishment of Legislative, Judicial and Executive Authorities in the Russian Empire (Predstavlenie o uchrezhdenii zakonodatel’noi, suditel’noi i nakazatel’noi vlasti v Rossiiskoi imperii) and dedicated it to Catherine II. At this time the Legislative Commission, convened by Catherine in 1767, was working on a projected new legal code. Desnitsky’s Proposal discussed the separation of legislative, legal, and executive powers and was in this influenced by Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des lois and Henry Home’s (Lord Kames) Principles of Equity. And, of course, by Adam Smith. Desnitsky’s work had both a direct2 and indirect3 influence upon the second supplement to Catherine’s Instruction (Nakaz). The Russian historian A. B. Kamensky believes that Catherine in fact shared most of Smith’s substantial views, for the arguments of both the Russian Empress and the Scottish philosopher were based upon the same sources and employed a similar logic: Even if she didn’t read Smith’s famous books is it possible to find any similarities between their views? I think so, because their origins were the same. Like Smith, Catherine believed that the fundamental premise of social order is the system of positive law, which must embody our perceptions of the rules of public behaviour: those rules, in their turn, are intimately linked with justice, and are managed by the state, or rather by some institutions of power. … I have no doubt that Smith discussed the latest events in Russia during his stay in Paris in 1765. Indeed, he made the acquaintance of many people with whom Catherine corresponded. One of them was Madame Marie-Therese Geoffrin, whose salon in Paris was very popular at that time. And it was precisely then that Catherine, in her letters to Geoffrin, informed her of various details about her plans for reform in Russia, and about her work on the Grand Instruction. In every book on Catherine we find speculations about her wishing not just to inform Madame Geoffrin but, through her, the Western public in general. The Empress’s letters were cer1 Taylor presents Tretiakov’s address alongside parallel passages from the Lectures, pp. 250– 60 in Adam Smith Across Nations. 2 A. H. Brown, ‘S. E. Desnitsky, Adam Smith, and the Nakaz of Catherine II’, Oxford Slavonic Papers N. S. Vol. VII (1974) pp. 42–59; reprinted in Cheng-chung Lai, Adam Smith Across Nations pp. 262–81. 3 A. B. Kamensky, ‘Adam Smith and Catherine The Great’, Scotland and Russia in the Enlightenment, Conference Proceedings, 1–3 September 2000, Edinburgh; in Philosophical Age No. 15, St. Petersburg 2001 pp. 64–71.


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tainly widely discussed in Madame Geoffrin’s salon, which Smith visited frequently during his stay in Paris.1

Other possible intermediaries might be Diderot, whom Smith met in France; S. R. Vorontsov, the Russian Ambassador in London, who in 1786 sent his brother a copy of Smith’s Wealth of Nations; and his sister, E. R. Dashkova, a close friend of Catherine, who spent some years (1776–9) in Edinburgh where her son studied at the university.2 Dashkova invited William Robertson, Hugh Blair, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson to her salon there. She wrote in Mon histoire that ‘L’immortel Robertson, Blair, Smith et Ferguson venaient diner et passer la journée chez moi deux fois par semaine.’3 Notwithstanding this independent influence, Desnitsky’s own role in the dissemination of Adam Smith’s ideas in Russia was considerable – it is possible that Desnitsky’s lectures were later published in English.4 In his ceremonial Speech on the Causes of Capital Punishment in Criminal Cases, delivered at Moscow University on 22 April 1770, Desnitsky remarked that he intended to publish his own translation of Theory of Moral Sentiments.5 A. A. Zheludkov, the author of a commentary to this text, writes that Desnitsky never carried out this intention, but provides no evidence for this view.6 Although there was no such edition, it is possible that the translation was nevertheless made and then lost. Desnitsky was also known as an English translator for his version of Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England,7 a work translated directly at Catherine’s order. The first direct translation of Smith’s work into Russian was a version of Wealth of Nations, undertaken by N. R. Politovsky at the instruction of the D. A. Guriev, Minister of Finance, appearing in four volumes between 1802 and 1806.8 Politkovsky (1777–1831) was at that time employed in the office of the 1

A. B. Kamensky, pp. 70, 68. Ibid. 3 Princesse Dashkova, Mon histoire. Mémoires d’une femme de lettres russe à l’époque des Lumières (Paris, 1999). 4 A. B. Kamensky p. 68; Georg Sacke, ‘Die Moskauer Nachschrift der Vorlesungen von Adam Smith’, Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie Bd. IX , H. 3 (1939), pp. 351–6. 5 S. E. Desnitskii, ‘Slovo o prichinakh smertnykh kaznei po delam kriminal’nym’, Iuridicheskie proizvedeniia progressivnykh russkikh myslitelei Moscow 1959. He notes that ‘I am going to publish soon a translation of the work of Mr. Smith, a Professor from Glasgow’, p 193. 6 Ibid., p. 575. 7 Istolkovaniia anglinskikh zakonov g. Blakstona, perevedennye po vysochaishemu poveleniiu velikoi zakonodatel’nitsy vserossiiskoi. S podlinnika aglinskago. Kn. 1–3. Moscow 1780–82. Only the first of Blackstone’s four-volume Commentaries on the Laws of England was translated, Of the Right of Persons. See Svodnyi katalog russkoi knigi grazhdanskoi pechati XVIII veka, T. 1 Moscow 1962 p. 108. 8 Issledovanie svoistva i prichin bogatstva narodov. Tvorenie Adama Smita. Per. s anglinskogo, T. 1– 4, St. Petersburg 1802–6. See L. L. Shcheglova, ‘Politkovskii Nikolai Romanovich’ Slovar’ russkikh pisatelei XVIII veka Vyp. 2 «K-P» St. Petersburg 1999, p. 461. 2


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state treasurer Count A. I. Vasiliev, and went on to translate Jean-Baptiste Say’s Catéchisme d’économie politique.1 When this translation of Say was published in 1816 it carried a dedication to Guriev by Politkovsky which suggested that Say’s work was of use in understanding the more complex argument of Smith in his Wealth of Nations.2 The form of the Catéchisme was very important in this respect, for the Russian translator had to create a new economic terminology, a difficulty to which Politkovsky had referred when he wrote in the first volume of Wealth of Nations that he was a novice in the subject himself, although Smith also seemed to have some difficulty in elaborating his ideas with clarity.3 Alongside this edition an original ‘digest’ of Smith’s work was published in the St. Petersburg Journal, the publication of the Ministry of Home Affairs, initiated by M. M. Speransky, who was a Director of a ministerial department from 1803.4 The first part of the journal was devoted to official documents, and the second part was compiled from ‘translations and writings that apply to administration.’ Among those translated were many British writers: Bacon, Bentham, and Ferguson. In the issues for July and September1804, ‘An Account of Adam Smith’s Doctrine and Its Comparison with the Doctrine of French Economists’ (‘Izlozhenie ucheniia Adama Smita i sravnenie onogo s ucheniem Frantsuzskikh Ekonomistov’) was printed, which is of course a translation of the first section of Germain Garnier’s 1802 Preface to his translation of the Wealth of Nations.5 It was not until the following year that this was published in English, and the manner in which Garnier’s preface recurred in later English editions underlines the importance of French readings of Wealth of Nations (by Say and by Garnier) in shaping the European reception process. The writings of Scottish philosophy were widely read by Russian Enlightenment thinkers, among them Mikhail Shcherbatov (1733–90), Piotr Chaadaev (1794–1856), Alexander Turgenev (1785–1846), Henri-Frédéric Storch (1766– 1835), Mikhail Muraviev (1757–1807), and Vasilii Zhukovskii (1783–1852). Mikhail Muraviev was a historian, poet and high-level official who had learned English so that he might read British authors. From 1785 he was tutor to Catherine the Great’s grandsons, Grand Dukes Alexander (the future Alexander I) and Constantine (hypothetically the Byzantine Emperor), teaching them Russian literature, history and moral philosophy. He was also tutor in Russian to their future wives, the Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna and Grand Duchess Anna Fedorovna. Catherine, believing that a good education could not only create an ideal type of people, but also ideal rulers, personally selected her grandsons’ 1 J.-B. Say, Catéchisme d’économie politique, ou Instruction familière qui montre de quelle façon les richesses sont produites, distribuées et consommés dans la société (de Crapelet, Paris 1815). 2 L. L. Shcheglova, Politkovskii Nikolai Romanovich, p. 461. 3 Dedication to Issledovanie svoistva i prichin bogatstva narodov, Vol. 1 (1802). 4 P. I. Levinson, Bekkaria i Bentam (St. Petersburg, 1893). 5 ‘Préface du traducteur’, in A. Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations (Tome I, H. Agasse, Paris 1802), pp. i–xxiii. Sanktpeterburgskii zhurnal, No. VII (July 1804) pp. 109–16; No. IX (September 1804) pp. 128–37.



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tutors, among them Muraviev. His own book Some Features of Morals (Cherty nravoucheniia) was influenced by Ferguson’s Institutes of Moral Philosophy. A manuscript variant of this essay has a subtitle, ‘Following Ferguson’ (‘Posleduia Fergiusonu’)1 or, in another version, ‘After Ferguson’ (‘po Fergiusonu’).2 In late 1790 Muraviev wrote two utopian novels, An Inhabitant of the Outskirts (Obitatel’ predmest’ia) and Emile’s Letters (Emilievy pis’ma), portraying ideal representatives from various social groups. He describes a noble estate owner, an Orthodox priest, a lawyer, an intellectual, and a peasant. A merchant is of special interest. His name is Kormilov (literally ‘feeder’), and is, contrary to the prevailing literary tradition, cast is a very positive light. He is a follower of Adam Smith, primarily of Wealth of Nations, and demonstrates a detailed knowledge of this book in discussing the possibilities of its principles as applied to Russian conditions. This well-educated merchant proclaiming the virtues of Smith is the first and quite possibly the last such figure in Russian literature. The younger brothers and sisters of Muraviev’s pupils – Grand Dukes Nikolai Pavlovich, the future Nicholas I, and Mikhail Pavlovich – also received their ration of Adam Smith’s theory. Their teacher in political economy was Andrei Karlovich (Henri-Frédéric) Storch,3 author of Tableau historique et statistique de l’empire de Russie (Istoricheskoe opisanie Rossiiskoi torgovli). His major theoretical work was the Cours d’économie politique which was developed from the lectures he gave to the grand dukes.4 It is important to note that it was Alexander I, Muraviev’s pupil, who invited Storch to educate his brothers and sisters.5 In his article An Origin of Moral Deeds (or A Common Beginning of Morality) (Nachalo nravstvennykh deianii) he followed Adam Smith in seeking the origin of moral sense. The article begins with a review of the development of Scottish philosophy, referring to Smith’s country as the best place for moral philosophy. Many Russian intellectuals shared his opinion. One of them, a Russian nobleman, Dmitrii Severin (1792–1865) wrote: One branch of human knowledge, it seems to me, has been developed to perfection: the part known as moral philosophy. We know it as metaphysics. Scottish philosophers adopt a broad definition of moral philosophy. They deduce common rules for rational and virtuous conduct from the nature of human beings and a 1 I. Fomenko, „Istoricheskie Vzgliady M.N. Murav’eva’, Xviii Vek Sb.13 L., 1981, p. 170 (Note.) (RO RNB Fond 499 Murav’ev M.N. Ed. Khr. 31 L. 36 ob.; RO RNB Fond.499 Sb. Statei po Istorii, Nravstvennoi Filosofii, Literature, Iazykoznaniiu I Dr. Avtograf S Ispravleniem N.M. Karamzina L. 189.) 2 Fond 499. Murav’ev M.N. Ed. khr. 156. 3 R. E. McGrew, ‘Dilemmas of Development: Baron Heinrich Friedrich Storch (1766– 1835) on the Growth of Imperial Russia’, in Cheng-chung Lai, Adam Smith Across Nations pp. 282–96. 4 Henri Frédéric Storch, Cours d’économie politique, ou exposition des principes qui déterminent la prospérité des nations, 4 vols, ed. J.-B. Say (J.-P. Aillaud, Paris 1823). 5 See the Russian translation by I. V. Vernadsky, A.K. Storkh, Kurs politicheskoi ekonomii, ili izlozhenie nachal, obuslovlivaiushchikh narodnoe blagodenstvie (St. Petersburg 1881).


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concrete situation. Following this method they avoid the speculative discourse of the German philosophers. They discuss matters they understand, and stop where human reason is unable to penetrate. That is why they despise the metaphysical ravings of Kant, Fichte and others.1

Another admirer of Scottish philosophy was the very influential Russian Admiral N. S. Mordvinow (1754–1845). He was brought up together with one of Catherine II’s sons, the future Paul I. In 1806 he wrote to Samuel Bentham that: I wish to lodge in England, and living there to become acquainted with your brother [Jeremy Bentham]. In my opinion he is one of four geniuses who have made and will make all for the greater happiness of mankind – Bacon, Newton, Smith and Bentham.2

Alexander II was also educated from 1826 to 1841 by a person influenced by Scottish philosophy: his tutor Vasilii Zhukovsky was a famous Russian romantic poet. Zhukovsky was the author of the words of the Russian National Anthem (‘God save the Tsar!’) the first line of which corresponds to the British National Anthem (‘God Save the Queen’). In 1817 he was invited to be tutor in Russian for the Grand Duchess and future Empress Alexandra Fedorovna. From 1826 to 1841 he was tutor to the Crown Prince, the future Alexander II. He was such a zealous tutor that his friends called him the ‘children’s Aristotle.’3 Zhukovsky was greatly impressed by the work of David Hume, his copies of Hume’s writings having quite extensive marginal annotations. Like many other Russian nobles, Zhukovsky did not speak English and read Hume in French translation – in his library he had Oeuvres philosophiques de M. D. Hume.4 He translated Hume’s ‘Of Tragedy’ under the title ‘Rassuzhdenie tragedii’, ‘Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing’ as ‘O sloge prostom i sloge ukrashennom’ and ‘Of Eloquence’ as ‘O krasnorechii’,5 all of them published in the magazine European Bulletin (Vestnik Evropy), during April and May 1811. Zhukovsky was for a period editor of this journal, translating and publishing in 1808 Smith’s letter to William Strahan on his friend David Hume.6 Later in the same 1 M. P. Alekseev, ‘Russko-angliiskie literaturnye sviazi’, Literaturnoe nasledstvo T. 91 (Nauka, Moscow 1982), p. 374. 2 A. N. Pypin, ‘Russkie otnosheniia Bentama’ pp. 3–109 of Issledovaniia i stat’i po epokhe Aleksandra I. T. II. Ocherki literatury i obshchestvennosti (Petrograd 1917), p. 6. 3 F. Z. Kanunova, ‘Voprosy mirovozzreniia i estetiki V.A’, Zhukovskogo (po materialam biblioteki poeta) (Tomsk, 1990), p. 144. 4 Seven volumes (London 1788). 5 F. Z. Kanunova, ‘Esteticheskie esse Davida Iuma v vospriiatii V.A.’, Zhukovskogo Rex Traductorica. Perevod i sravnitel’noe izuchenie literatur, K 80–letiiu Iu.D (Levina, St. Petersburg, 2000). 6 Adam Smith to William Strahan, 9 November 1776, Letter 178 in E. C. Mossner, I. S. Ross (eds.) Correspondence of Adam Smith (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1987); in Vestnik Evropy No. 10 (May 1808).



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journal a translation was made of a piece from the Journal des Débats which provided a brief outline of Adam Smith’s ‘system’. In the first half of the nineteenth century Smith’s works were not just popular, but were very fashionable among the educated nobility. A. S. Pushkin wrote about this in his novel Evgenii Onegin. In the draft version Pushkin lists the authors read by Onegin and among them are Hume, Robertson, Rousseau, Mably, Holbach, Voltaire, and Helvétius.1 Onegin quite emphatically steers clear of ‘classical erudition’ in favour of writers on ‘practical topics’: He cursed Theocritus and Homer, in Adam Smith was his diploma; our deep economist had got the gift of recognizing what a nation’s wealth is, what augments it, and how a country lives, and why it needs no gold if a supply of simple products supplements it. His father failed to understand and took a mortgage on his land.2

Pushkin himself probably learned about Adam Smith’s principles from lectures given by his professor at the Lyceum, A. P. Kunitsyn (1783–1840), who is known to have used Smith’s writings in his teaching. Political economy was also taught at Moscow University: the lawyer and philosopher B. N. Chicherin recalled that when he had been a student at the university, during the 1840s, political economy was taught there according to the doctrine of Adam Smith.3 However, by the end of the 1820s social and political theory went strictly out of fashion, following the Decembrist uprising of 1825. In Pushkin’s unfinished Novel in Letters its principal hero Vladimir ** writes to a friend: … you are behind the times – and by a whole decade. Your speculative and grand reasonings belong to 1818. At that time strict rules and political economy were all the vogue. We attended balls without taking off our swords – it was not decent for us to dance and we had no time to devote ourselves to ladies. I beg to inform you that that has all changed. The French quadrille has replaced Adam Smith.’4

The year 1818 was not mentioned casually, for that was when the Union of Welfare (Soiuz Blagodenstviia) was founded by the future Decembrists. In the same year Alexander I made his famous speech to the Polish Seym promising 1

A. S. Pushkin, Poln. sobr. Soch. v desiati tomakh, Vol. V (Leningrad 1978), p. 500. A. S. Pushkin op. cit. pp. 10–11. The translation is taken from A. S. Pushkin. Eugene Onegin (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1979), p. 38. 3 B. N. Chicherin, Studencheskie gody. Moskva sorokovykh godov (Moskovskii universitet v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, Moscow 1989), p. 395. 4 A. S. Pushkin, Poln. sobr Vol. VI p. 52. 2


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to introduce a constitution to Russia. The prospect of political reform was openly discussed in Russia. In 1818 Turgenev published An Essay on a Theory of Taxes in which he reproduced Smith’s principles of taxation: The principle of justice (taxes should correspond to income) The principle of transparency (the date, means and amount of payment should be clear to the payer) The principle of convenience (the tax should be levied when and in a form convenient to the payer) The principle of economy (taxes should be reduced to a reasonable minimum)

Besides, Turgenev added, the tax should be levied on income, and not on capital. He characterised his main objective as follows: In this book I showed what influence the study of political sciences, and especially of political economy, has upon morality. I seek to prove that economical, financial and political theories are true only when founded upon the principle of freedom. In all relevant cases I take as an example England, whose power and wealth results from its institutions, which are unique in Europe.’1

The book was so popular that a second edition followed a year later. A third edition was printed in Moscow in 1937 despite the fact that Turgenev was also the author of the forbidden book Russia and Russians2 that contained a picture of Russian society during the first quarter of the nineteenth century quite different from the prevailing official view, whether Tsarist or, later, Soviet, and the work was first printed in Russia only in 2001. Interest in the work of Adam Smith is a common feature of the writings of the Decembrists, but on the death of Alexander his younger brother Nicholas was enthroned instead of Constantine and the Decembrist Rising followed, its outcome marking the end of reformist thinking in Russia. By the middle of the nineteenth century the first translation of Wealth of Nations was increasingly unsatisfactory to Russian readers working in a language that had developed considerably since the early part of the century. In 1866 a new translation appeared in the Library of Classical European Writers, translated in three volumes by P. A. Bibikov. Other writers included in the series were A. L. Blanqui, Francis Bacon, Cabanis and Malthus.3 Bibikov already had a reputation as a historian, philosopher, and literary critic, and this undoubtedly had a part in the generally high level of presentation of the translations, which have notes, indexes and supplements. However, Bibikov’s translation was not made from the English original, but from Blanqui’s version of Garnier’s 1 Nikolai Turgenev, Opyt teorii nalogov (St. Peterburg 1818) Rossiia i russkie (Moscow 2001), pp. 53–4. 2 La Russie et les Russes (Paris 1847); Russland und die Russen (Berlin 1847). 3 A. Smit, Issledovaniia o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva narodov s primechaniiami Bentama, Blanki, Bukhanana, Garn’e, Mak-Kulokha, Mal’tusa, Millia, Rikardo, Seia, Sismondi i Tiurgo (St Petersburg 1866).



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French edition, including an apparatus that drew upon the commentary of Buchanan, Garnier, McCulloch, and others,1 which Bibikov retained in the Russian translation. Bibikov also translated Theory of Moral Sentiments into Russian for the first time. This appeared in 1868, and had added to it letters by Condorcet to Cabanis on sympathy.2 The most recent Russian edition of this work was based on the same translation, excluding the supplementary material from Condorcet,3 although a systematic comparison was made with the Glasgow version of Theory of Moral Sentiments by A. F. Griaznov. A new translation of two sections from the fifth chapter of Theory of Moral Sentiments was prepared by F. F. Vermel for an edition of aesthetic works in the series The History of Aesthetics in Monuments and Documents.4 The third translation of Wealth of Nations that appeared in A Library of Economists, a popular publication intended for ‘home reading’, also drew upon a French edition and not an English original.5 Shchepkin used the edition of Courcelle-Seneuil that appeared in Petite bibliothèque économique français et étrangere, a series under the general supervision of Chailley, who explained his approach as follows:6 The aim of this enterprise is to publish in French eminent writers in political economy and in short excerpts from selected works through which those writers made their valuable contributions to science. These excerpts are made in full, in chapters, paragraphs, parts or even pages, excluding from every writer’s work all that had been more fully or correctly elaborated by other economists, or that in general seems too special or to be of no importance.7

Some notes on Smith’s life and works were added to this edition, one essay being taken from the 1843 Blanqui version of Garnier’s translation, while another was taken from the essay Courcelle-Seneuil prepared for the first issue of Petite bibliothèque économique. Apart from this a summary of Wealth of Nations 1 A. Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, trans. Germain Garnier, revised edition (Guillaumin, Paris 1843). 2 A. Smit, Teoriia nravstvennykh chuvstv ili opyt issledovaniia o zakonakh, upravliaiushchikh suzhdeniiami, estestvenno sostavliaemymi nami, snachala o postupkakh prochikh liudei, a zatem o nashikh sobstvennykh s pis’mami M. Kondorse k kabanisu o simpatii (St Petersburg 1868). The second edition appeared in 1895. The letters were of course from the French edition, suggesting that this too was translated from the French. 3 A. Smit, Teoriia nravstvennykh chuvstv (Moscow 1997). 4 Part V. Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion upon the Sentiments of Moral Approbation and Disapprobation Consisting of One Section. Chap. I. Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion upon our Notions of Beauty and Deformity. Chap. II. Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion upon Moral Sentiments. ‘O vliianii obychaia i mody na chuvstva moral’nogo odobreniia i poritsaniia’, ‘O prirode togo podrazhaniia, kotoroe imeet mesto v tak nazyvaemykh podrazhatel’nykh iskusstvakh’ Frensis Khatcheson, David Ium, Adam Smit, Estetika. 5 Adam Smit, Issledovanie o bogatstve narodov (Moscow 1895). 6 Adam Smith, Richesse des nations, trans. Courcelle Seneuil (Guillaumin, Paris 1888) (Serie Petite bibliothèque économique français et étrangere). 7 Ibid. p. 7.


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appeared in a translation from the first chapter of L. L. Price’s Short History of Political Economy in England from Adam Smith to Arnold Toynbee.1 Bibikov’s translation, notwithstanding its shortcomings, provided over many decades the basis for reprints,2 including the publication of ‘abridged translations’. These were reduced editions of Wealth of Nations made by Shchepkin and A. Kaufman,3 P. Liashchenko,4 a reader from the series ‘The Economical System of Socialism in Its Development’ edited by I. D. Udaltsov,5 and also full editions of 1931,6 1935,7 and 1962.8 These last three editions were anonymous, and are presented in such a manner as to suggest that Adam Smith wrote in Russian. They have no indications of editors or translators, and the editions of the 1930s do not mention the authors of introductions, commentaries or the basic Russian edition. The reprints of 1931 and 1935 were issued by the Marx and Engels Institute, hence acquiring an official ideological character. The 1935 reprint was edited by Prof. I. D. Udaltsov,9 as was also possibly the edition of 1931. These two complete editions of Wealth of Nations were intended to rebut bourgeois commentators on Smith and to outline the sole correct reading strategy for the book. Adam Smith has always been an officially recognised author in Russia, irrespective of political regime and ideological directive, though only his economical doctrine became widely known. Smith was unknown in Russia as the author of Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Letters and Essays on Philosophical Subjects.10 Soviet ideologists used Smith’s work in their attempt to establish principles for the understanding both of capitalism and the construction of socialism. In Lenin’s pamphlet The Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism, written on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of Marx’s death and first printed in a legal Marxist journal called Enlightenment,11 it was suggested that 1 L. L. Prais, ‘Istoriia politicheskoi ekonomii v ee glavnykh predstaviteliakh. Angliiskie ekonomisty. Adam Smit i dr’, Biblioteka sistematicheskogo znaniia, No. 6 June 1907. Price’s book had appeared in Methuen’s ‘University Extension Series’ presenting summaries of Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, J. S. Mill, Cairnes, Leslie, Bagehot, Jevons, Fawcett and Toynbee. 2 E. M. Maiburd, ‘Ot perevodchika-sostavitelia’, in A. Smit, issledovanie o prirode i prichine bogatstva narodov (Moscow 1993), p. 7. 3 A. Smit, Issledovanie o bogatstve narodov (St Petersburg 1908). 4 A. Smit, Issledovanie o bogatstve narodov (Petrograd 1924). 5 Burzhuaznye predshestvenniki politicheskoi ekonomii. Kene, Smit, Rikardo v izbrannykh otryvkakh, Issue No. 1, Sost B. (Rozov, V. Semenov, Moscow 1926). 6 A. Smit, Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva narodov, V dvukh tomakh (Moscow and Leningrad 1931). 7 A. Smit, Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva narodov, V dvukh tomakh (Moscow and Leningrad 1935). 8 A. Smit, Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva narodov (Moscow 1962). 9 T. G. Semenkova, ‘Izdanie trudov Smita v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii i v sovetskoe vremia’ Adam Smit i sovremennaia politicheskaia ekonomii, ed. N. A. Tsagolova (Moscow 1979), p. 204. 10 The only exception is: ‘On the Nature of that Imitation which takes place in what are called the Imitative Arts’, Essays on Philosophical Subjects. 11 Prosveshcheniie, No. 3 1913.



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Marx’s doctrine was founded upon the most advanced elements of social thought. Lenin argued that Marxism was the logical completion of the development of German classical philosophy, English political economy and French utopian socialism, being the universal social science suitable both for cognition and transformation of the world. The three-part, synthetic character of Marxism (philosophy – political economy – scientific socialism), should according to Lenin lend it universal explanatory power, and turn Marxism into the theoretical basis of a social movement directed against the bourgeois regime. The second part of Lenin’s pamphlet is dedicated to Marx’s economic doctrine. Lenin praised the economic doctrines of Smith and Ricardo, although he notes their inability to disclose the essence of surplus value in the way that Marx did. This testimonial from Lenin secured Smith’s literary heritage in Soviet Russia and led to the publication of excerpts from The Wealth of Nations in numerous reading-books for proletarian political education. Later this ‘source’ of Marxism was studied in various secondary and higher school courses as ‘social science’ (obshchestvovedenie), ‘scientific communism’, ‘historical materialism’, ‘political economy’, ‘history of economic doctrines’, and so forth. It is impossible to list or count the number of small fragments of Smith’s economic work published in various textbooks: I believe there to be more than a hundred, taking into account reprints and internal publications of provincial universities and institutes. All of these were based on the 1931 and 1935 editions. Later, a 1962 edition was issued under the supervision of V. Neznanov with introduction and commentaries by V. S. Afanas’ev.1 Three thousand copies were printed, rather a small number for the USSR, indicating that it was intended only for specialists. No reference was made to previous editions in the text; the foreword suggested that this edition was the first ever publication of Wealth of Nations in Russian. Nor was anything was said about the translator. Most likely the 1962 edition was issued to stop historians citing from editions of 1930s and to supply them with a ‘post-Stalinist’ publication for this classical author. This edition became the source for subsequent versions of Smith’s work in popular and educational textbooks, and also for ad hoc publications of the perestroika period. When the construction of the market economy was embarked upon in the 1990s it provoked a new wave of interest in the famous work of Adam Smith, and a number of reprints of various fragments emerged, the majority of which had no forewords, no commentaries, no notes, and not a word about previous Russian or English editions.2 The only exception was the venture to publish an 1

A. Smit, Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva narodov (Moscow 1962). For example: A. Smit, Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva naroda (otdel’nye glavy) T. I. Petrozavodsk 1993; A. Smit, Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva narodov. Kniga pervaia, Moscow 1997; A. Smit, Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva naroda, Klassika ekonomicheskoi mysli (Moscow 2000). 2


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authoritative edition of Smith by the Institute of Economy, the Russian Academy of Sciences, under the supervision of its director, academician L I. Abalkin.1 This period was one of the most dramatic in Russian post-revolutionary history. Perestroika had begun together with economic and political reform. Abalkin was himself heavily involved in this. From August 1989 until December 1990 he was a vice-premier in the cabinet of N. I. Ryzhkov, and head of the State Commission of the USSR Cabinet Council for Economic Reform. Between May and December 1991 he was Gorbachev’s adviser. Adam Smith was again called upon as a theoretician whose thoughts might be useful to the project of economic reform. It was no coincidence that E. M. Maiburd, translator and author of the introduction to this edition remarked: ‘So-called ‘immortal books’ distinguish themselves by the fact that they can give to every epoch something the epoch needs. Every period reads them with its own eyes.’2 He did however also warn of the dangers of reading such a text only with reference to contemporary issues. This edition was in fact the first Russian scholarly edition of Wealth of Nations. However, only one volume was printed, including the first three books of Wealth of Nations. No second volume has yet been published. Hence even the most authoritative Russian academic publisher, and working with one of the most authoritative research economic institutes, failed to print Smith’s work in full.3 There is therefore still no complete and authoritative Russian edition of Wealth of Nations. Neverthless, the level of interest in Adam Smith is illustrated by the publications of his works in Russian on the Internet. The first two books of Wealth of Nations can be found on a Ukrainian site ‘Ekonomika-2000’ at http:// e2000.kyiv.org/biblioteka/biblio/smit_a.zip and also at http://ek-lit.agava.ru/ smitsod.htm and http://ek-lit.newmail.ru/smit.chm. Book I, Chapter VI ‘Of the component Parts of the Price of Commodities’ can be found at http:// rfvnu.lg.ua/la/stud/asmith/smit007.htm. Other fragments can be found on the web, including among student essays. All of them repeat the text of the edition of 1962 and do not contain any reference to editors and translators, although they refer to an electronic variant of Smith’s text in English at http://www.bibliomania.com/NonFiction/Smith/Wealth/index.htm. It can be said therefore that Smith’s work is both popular and readily available. There is of course an extensive literature of commentary on the writing on Smith, besides that produced by his disciples, and some account of it can be given in conclusion. The first analytical work on Smith was G. M. Tsekhanovetsky’s (1833–98) dissertation for the degree of Master in Political 1

A. Smit, Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva narodov (Moscow, 1993). E. M. Maiburd, ‘Mir Adama Smita’, in A. Smit, issledovanie o prirode i prichine bogatstva narodov (Moscow 1993), p. 12. 3 Naprimer, Smit A. Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva narodov. Kniga pervaia (Moscow 1997). 2



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Economy and Statistics at Kiev University. He suggested that ‘all modern economic literature is a development and clarification of the truths that Smith made the object of a special science.’1 He provides a detailed analysis of Smith’s predecessors, especially Dudley North’s Discourses upon Trade of 1691.2 Tsekhanovetsky believed that Smith’s main ideas on labour, money, and free trade were first suggested by North. This, he considers, disproves the idea that before Smith mercantilist thought had an absolute predominance. The first detailed biography of Smith was written by the scholar and historian of literature V. I. Yakovenko, in F. F. Pavlenkov’s series Life of Remarkable Persons.3 Pavlenkov’s series, which appeared between 1890 and 1915, was intended to induce talented Russian authors to write popular biographies of outstanding scholars, writers, historic figures, artists, and others. The book on Smith was one of the first in the series. Extensive entries on Smith can also be found in popular reference books, above all in Brokgauz and Efron’s Encyclopedic Dictionary, where the entry was written by the well-known Russian economist Tugan-Baranovsky (1865–1919), a representative of ‘ethical socialism’, and a follower and critic of Marx. Tugan-Baranovsky believed that Smith’s main achievement was the doctrine of economic liberty, and he emphasised the interdependence of Smith’s ethical theory and the role and value of labour.4 Another important Encyclopedic Dictionary printed by the association A. & I. Granat Brothers & Co. also included a detailed article on Smith, written by M. Bernatsky.5 This volume was printed in 1929, but it had been prepared before the revolution of 1917, and printed in the earlier composed type in the old orthography. V. M. Shtein wrote a quite comprehensive biography in 1923 to commemorate the bicentenary of Adam Smith. More attention was paid here to Smith’s doctrine than to his private life. Smith’s importance for the economic theory of Marx and that of his followers was analysed in detail. It is noteworthy that this is one of the few instances from the Soviet period in which Marx’s works are subjected to scholarly examination. Shtein examines one of Smith’s contradictions: his assertion, based upon the codex of bourgeois virtues, that the immediate cause of the growth of capitals is rational saving, and not the contribution of labour. Smith’s glorification of thrift provoked a debate which Shtein dealt with in some detail. For example, it was suggested that a penny saved at 1

G. M. Tsekhanovetskii, ‘Znachenie Adama Smita v istorii politiko-ekonomicheskikh sistem’ (Kiev 1859), p. 2. 2 Dudley North, Discourses upon Trade (London 1691). 3 V. I. Yakovenko, Adam Smit. Ego zhizn’ i nauchnaia deiatel’nost’ (Biograficheskii ocherk, St Petersburg 1894. Reprinted, Biograficheskie povestvovaniia, Cheliabinsk 1998). 4 M. I. Tugan-Baranovskii, ‘Smit’, Entsiklopedicheskii slovar, (eds) F. A. Brokgauza, I. A. Efrona, Vol. XXXa (Sliuz-Sofiia Paleolog, St Petersburg 1900), pp. 536–41. 5 B. Bernatskii, ‘Smit’ Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’, Russkogo Bibliograficheskogo instituta, Vol. 39 Simpaticheskaia nervnaia sistema – sobaki (Moscow 1929).


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the moment of Christ’s birth and then increased with compound interest at 5% would amount by the beginning of the nineteenth century to an amount of money greater than 500 million globes of gold.1 Shtein cites an argument by a Russian follower of Smith, N. S. Mordvinov (1754–1845) concerning the organisation of provincial banks as ‘money-boxes for people’s savings.’2 Mordvinov assumed that fertile soil sufficient for the limitless increase of wealth and egalitarian distribution of money in the country existed. Mordvinov sketched a utopian picture: Fields are fertilized abundantly; marshes turn into cornfields; wild forest gives way to gardens and vegetables; farms multiply and are crowded with all kinds of animals, tools and other household requirements; towns grow and everybody become rich by crafts, business and trade; improvement develops everywhere and every condition of people ameliorates. The Earth, on all its surface, produces from its bowels its concealed and hitherto kept riches, and all grounds and every art and knowledge turn into sources of income.3

Shtein explains Adam Smith’s popularity among various strata of non-professionals by Smith’s passionate propagation of freedom for industry, an idea which appealed to popular thinking. During the Soviet period A. V. Anikin was the most authoritative Smith specialist. He wrote a biography of Smith in a Soviet variant of the Life of Remarkable Persons series.4 Anikin also wrote a fictional biography in which Smith’s long dialogues with his contemporaries, including his Russian disciples, were incorporated together with artistic descriptions of events in Europe and Russia of that time. Smith interests the biographer as a thinker who influenced the originators of Marxism, so Marx and Engels are also among the heroes of this biography. In his book about economists of the past, from Aristotle to Robert Owen, The Youth of Science. Life and Ideas of Thinkers-Economists before Marx5 Anikin continues ‘the topic of Smith’ in Chapters 9 and 10, entitled respectively, A Scottish Sage and A System Creator. In June 1976 a Pan-Union conference was staged by the Faculty of Economics of the University of Moscow celebrating Smith’s bicentenary, and a collective monograph Adam Smith and Modern Political Economy6 gathered together the papers. One can mention even more works, dozens of them, written by pre-revolutionary, Soviet and post-Soviet historians of economic doctrines. These works deal more or less in detail with Adam Smith’s life and 1

Ibid. p. 49. Admiral Mordvinov, Rassuzhdeniia o pol’zakh, mogushchikh posledovat’ ot uchrezhdeniia chastnykh po guberniiam bankov (St Petersburg 1829). 3 Ibid. pp. 49–50. 4 A. V. Anikin, Adam Smit (Moscow 1968). 5 A. V. Anikin, Iunost’ nauki. Zhizn’ i idei myslitelei-ekonomistov do Marksa (Moscow 1985). 6 N. A. Tsagolova (ed.) Adam Smit i sovremennaia politicheskaia ekonomiia (Moscow 1979). 2



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doctrine.1 One thing is plain: the works of Adam Smith have always found interested readers, in Russia, and the understanding of these readers has evolved in step with the complexities of Russian history.

1 A. Manuilov, Poniatie tsennosti po ucheniiu ekonomistov klassicheskoi shkoly. (Smit, Rikardo i ikh blizhaishie posledovateli) (Moscow 1901); A. N. Miklashevskii, Istoriia politicheskoi ekonomii (Iur’ev 1909); P. I. Zarrin, angliiskaia klassicheskaia burzhuaznaia politicheskaia ekonomiia (Moscow 1958); A. S. Karabut, Sovremennyi vzgliad na trudovuiu teoriiu stoimosti A. Smita (Briansk 1999); W. M. Maiburd Vvedenie v istoriiu ekonomicheskoi mysli. Ot prorokov do professorov (Moscow 2000).


The Reception of Adam Smith’s Works in Poland from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries Stefan Zabieglik

1. Introduction – The Historical Background The situation of the Polish state1 in the later eighteenth century was a difficult one. Legislative impotence and constitutional chaos had prompted intervention in Polish domestic affairs by neighbouring powers. Attempts at reform by the last Polish king, Stanislaw Augustus Poniatowski (1764–95) was resisted by discontented nobles, a conflict that ended in 1772. This was the year of the first partition of Poland by Russia, Prussia and Austria, a partition in which Poland lost a third of its population and territory. Between 1788 and 1792, while Russia was in conflict with Turkey and Sweden, the Four Years Seym2 sought to introduce radical constitutional reform. A relatively republican Constitution of 3 May 1791 passed by the Seym provoked Russian armed intervention, and consequently the second partition of 1793 (this time without Austrian participation), annulling the short-lived Constitution. The defeat of the Kosćiuszko insurrection of 1794, and the third partition of 1795, brought about the political extinction of the Commonwealth. For 123 years, until 1918, Poland disappeared from the map as an independent state. The Polish people lived on the borders of Russia, Prussia and the Austrian empire, with little autonomy. Following the Napoleonic wars the Vienna Congress of 1815 established the so-called Polish (or Congress) Kingdom, with a Russian tsar as king. It 1 Officially styled ‘the Commonwealth of the two nations’ to reflect the political union existing from the end of the fourteenth century between the Polish kingdom proper and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. By 1772 the Commonwealth had a population of around 14 million people, dominated by a Polish and polonised nobility, the szlachta (which was between six and seven per cent of the total population). See The Penguin Dictionary of Eighteenth–Century History, edited by Jeremy Black and Roy Porter (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1996), p. 577. 2 A Polish parliament, composed of the szlachta and representatives of the clergy.


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included part of central Poland together with Warsaw; after the Third Partition Lithuania had been annexed by Russia. From 1815 to 1846 Cracow was a free city, later included in the Austrian territories. After the unsuccessful November uprising of 1830–1 the autonomy of the Congress Kingdom was further restricted. The Kingdom was entirely abolished after the defeat of the next anti-Russian uprising, of January 1863–4. In 1874 the Tsar appointed governors general for the Vistula Country. The Austrian territory, Galicia, gained limited autonomy in 1861. The Prussian part of Poland was systematically germanised. Political conditions in Poland, after three partitions, were not favourable to economic and scientific development. Two unsuccessful anti-Russian uprisings had led to the death of many leading Poles, the remaining insurgents going into emigration. Given this situation, the greatest influence upon Polish nineteenth-century culture was a form of romanticism centred upon the promotion of an independent, national identity for the Poles. Economic development, especially industrial development, had been uneven: faster in the Prussian part, and extremely slow in the Russian territories, where peasants were given the right to own land only after the January Uprising.1 During this period there were a number of cultural and scientific centres where Polish schools and publishers existed; and some Polish periodicals were also published. In the Kingdom of Poland Warsaw was such a centre; in the Austrian territories Cracow and Lvov played this role; and in the Prussian territories, Poznan. During the first three decades of the nineteenth century a Polish educational system and press developed in Lithuania. In Warsaw, Cracow, Lvov and Vilnius, Polish universities functioned, but their fate varied. Depending on the political situation, they had had less or more autonomy, or had also been closed, or depolonised. The Royal University of Warsaw (1816–31), and Vilnius University (est. 1578, between 1803 and 1831 the Imperial University of Vilnius), as well as the Krzemieniec Lyceum (1805–31) were closed after the November Uprising. The Jagiellonian University (established in 1364) was Germanised in 1853, losing its autonomy and in 1854 becoming a German-speaking, Austrian university. However, in 1861 Polish was restored as a language of instruction. The Main Warsaw School, opened in 1862, closed in 1869, and was then transformed into the Imperial University of Warsaw (1870–1915), using the Russian language and with the majority of its professors from Russia. It therefore became an instrument for the russification of society. Lvov University (1784– 1805, 1817–1918) was a German-speaking Austrian institution, although from 1870 it received greater autonomy and became more Polish.

1 In the Prussian territories similar reforms were passed in 1811, 1823 and 1850; in Galicia, first in 1848.


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2. Wealth of Nations and its Reception in Poland Wealth of Nations found its way to Poland comparatively early, a dozen or so years after its first publication.1 Early editions of the work can be found in some Polish libraries, together with French and German translations (see Appendix). The first Pole to introduce Smith’s political economy was an ex-Jesuit priest, Michał Ossowski (1743–1799). Having read a French translation, he bought copies of Wealth of Nations and gave them to supporters of his liberal economic policy. In January 1791 the King, Stanisław Augustus, ordered that copies of the French translation be bought for his own library. During the Four Years Seym (1788–92) Ossowski tried to introduce Adam Smith’s theories into Polish economic legislation. The Seym had planned to pass three bills: the Government Act, the Economic Constitution, and the Moral Constitution. After lengthy debate only the first was approved, what became known as the Constitution of 3 May. Ossowski elaborated a project for the second bill, printed on 22 June 1791, but the text was later lost. The contents of the document can however be reconstructed from other sources. These sources indicate that a group of Polish politicians, with Ossowski and Hugo Kollataj as leaders, intended to put before the Seym far-reaching reforms founded upon Adam Smith’s principles, but adapted to Polish conditions.2 In his projected Economic Constitution, Ossowski assumed three main ‘origins of wealth’: ‘the beneficence of nature’, ‘human labour’, and ‘expenditure’ (stock and capital). He considered that state capital, realised from a sale of billets d’état, would be capable of stimulating the national economy and accelerating the transition from a feudal society to a commercial one.3 During the nineteenth century Adam Smith’s economic theory was advocated by Polish journalists, politicians and businessmen, together with some university professors and teachers of political economy in secondary schools (Warsaw, Krzemieniec, Poznan, Plock, Cracow). Their knowledge of Adam Smith often came from French translations and French writings on political economy, as well as from their time as students in Paris. The second most important source was German translations of Wealth of Nations and some writings by German economists. Piotr Maleszewski (1767–1828) played a considerable part in disseminating knowledge of Adam Smith’s theory amongst those Poles studying in Paris. Having graduated in Cracow, he had continued his studies in Paris, where he attended lectures delivered by Jean-Baptiste Say;4 1 The first Polish notice of Wealth of Nations (in French translation) was printed in Pamię tnik Historyczny i Polityczny (1783) p. 162, ed. Piotr Świtkowski. 2 By comparison, the Spanish Cortes debated Smith in 1820, when Spanish liberals abolished tithes and the Inquisition, as well as abolished the Jesuit order. 3 J. Dihm, Sprawa Konstytucji Ekonomicznej z 1791 r. (Wrocláw 1959). 4 His Traité d’économie politique had a significant influence in the propagation of Wealth of Nations in France and other European countries, amongst them Poland. See J. Chodorowski, Adam Smith, Life and Works (1723–1790) (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, Wrocl´ aw 1980), p. 133.



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and from 1803 he lived in Paris.1 As a young man, he was a radical liberal and supporter of the French Revolution; later his liberalism became more moderate. From the French philosophes he became a proponent of British philosophers such as Bacon, Locke and Hume; in political economy his authority was Adam Smith, but he also adhered to Say’s doctrines. During 1810 to 1823 Maleszewski organised free seminars for Poles studying in Paris. As Grodek writes, ‘…together with his students, Maliszewski analysed Adam Smith’s work, explained its principles, pointed to its defects and supplemented it with his own comments.’2 Several future academics, journalists and politicians came from the Maleszewski group, and propagated Adam Smith’s principles during the nineteenth century throughout the three parts of Poland. The most sustained interest in Adam Smith’s ideas occurred in the Austrian territories. Two articles, for example, were printed in Pamię tnik Naukowy (Scientific Memoir),3 and in Gazety Lwowska.4 The author of the latter, signing himself ‘rz’, praised the ‘industrial system’ of Adam Smith and suggested that the principles laid down in the Wealth of Nations ‘will for ever determine the foundation of the arts.’ In 1865 Tygodnik Naukowy (Scientific Weekly), published in Lvov, printed as part of its first issue an anonymous piece entitled ‘Adam Smith and his School’, followed by two further parts.5 It begins with a short sketch of the mercantile and Physiocrat schools of political economy, comparing them to the ‘school of real political economy’. This latter, with ‘a rather strange name, the ‘the industry system’’, is the school founded by Adam Smith. The author also gives a short account of Adam Smith’s life, noting that in Poland ‘his biography is very little known.’ The sole source of information for the author was the Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith by Dugald Stewart. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, suggests the author, begins with the premise that ‘sympathy is a moral principle’. But in his opinion ‘the principle is wrong, because morals should be founded on a more solid basis than sympathy’. He also mentions Adam Smith’s dissertation on languages and essays, misreporting some titles.6 He goes on to outline Wealth of Nations, presenting in his notes critical commentaries from Garnier, Müller and McCulloch. The third and last section (in No. 6) concludes with the rent of land. In 1895 Przeglą d Polski (Polish Review) 1 A. Grodek, ‘Piotr Maleszewski (1767–1828) i jego nauka społeczna’, in A. Grodek, Wybór pism. Vol.1 Studia z historii mys´li ekonomicznej, PWN, Warszawa 1963, pp. 47–210. 2 Ibid. p. 94. Evidence of this activity may be found in his unpublished manuscripts from the years 1802 to 1826. 3 ‘O pracach i domach pracy’, Pamię tnik Naukowy, Kraków 1837, t. I, pp. 87–114. 4 ‘rz’, ‘Uwagi nad własnosćią ziemską pod względem społeczno-ekonomicznym. Dodatek Tygodniowy’, Gazety Lwowskiej, 1852, Nos 47–9; see also Idem. ‘Większe posiadłosći i nowożytne gminy’, Gazety Lwowskiej No. 52 pp. 97–8. 5 ‘Adam Smith i jego szkolá.’, Tygodnik Naukowy, (1865) No. 1, pp. 17–19; No. 3, pp. 47– 51; No. 6, pp. 95–97. 6 Ibid., No. 3, p. 48.


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printed a review of John Rae’s biography of Smith.1 The reviewer, signing himself RP, praised the depth and detail of Rae’s account, but expressed disappointment that the book was ‘somewhat dry and prosaic’, regretting perhaps that Adam Smith’s life had not been more colourful. Nevertheless, the review demonstrates that the writer was familiar with Wealth of Nations. In the Russian part of Poland the anglophilia of the young Tsar Alexander I (1801–25)2 might have had some influence on the propagation of Smith’s ideas, together with the influence of a tsarist commissioner in the Polish Kingdom, N. N. Novosiltsev (1761–1836), who had been educated in economics and had learned of Adam Smith’s theory during a visit to London. In the first decade of the nineteenth century a Russian translation of Wealth of Nations and several papers on political economy had been published.3 A tsarist superintendent of the Vilnian Educational District, Duke Adam Czartoryski (1770–1861), also a well-known anglophile (or even scotophile), was persuaded of the importance of Smith’s doctrine by Novosiltsev. In 1803 he took part in an imperial Russian educational reform, introducing chairs of political economy in universities, and including some basic principles of this science in secondary school curricula.4 In 1869, a monograph on Adam Smith by Konstanty Wzdulski, the first in Polish, was published.5 Entitled Adam Smith, Life and Works (1723–1790), it consists of four sections: in the first (pp. 39–62) there is a short biography of Smith; in the other three (pp. 63–118) the contents of Wealth of Nations is summarised. As an epigraph Wzdulski used a quote from Pietro Rossi, successor to Say at the Collège de France, from his Cours d’ Economie politique (1840–2): ‘Adam Smith, c’est le maitre de nous tous’. The author sought ‘to acquaint Polish readers with the contents of the most important work in the field of political economy up to this time. It is still little known in our country’.6 In conclusion, he defends political economy as a science and – quoting Ludwik Wołowski – refutes the imputation, advanced by representatives of the German historical school, that Smith was ‘an apostle of individualism and egoism’.7 Jerzy Chodorowski thought Wzdulski’s refutation of German historicists was significant given that Wzdulski has been thought of as an early exponent of a Catholic trend in economic thought, a trend that has tended to repeat the charges made against Smith by German historicists.8 1

RP, ‘Life of Adam Smith, by John Rae’, Przeglą d Polski XXX, Vol. II (Kraków 1895), pp. 410–14. 2 Duke Simon Vorontsov, Russian ambassador in London, who knew Smith, personally sent in 1786 a copy of Wealth of Nations to the young prince Alexander. 3 See the essay by Tatiana Artemieva pp. 144–5. 4 For the reception of Adam Smith’s economic theory, see Chodorowski, Adam Smith, op.cit., pp. 127–30. 5 K. Wzdulski, ‘Adam Smith, życie i dzieła (1723–1790)’, in K. Wzdulski, Szkice ekonomiczne (Gebethner i Wolff, Warsaw 1869), pp. 39–118. 6 Ibid. pp. 112–13. 7 K. Wzdulski, Adam Smith, op.cit., pp. 116–17. 8 J. Chodorowski, Adam Smith, op.cit., p. 155.



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An early follower of Adam Smith was the first Polish professor of political economy, Dominik Krysiński (1785–1852). He had first encountered Smithian theory during his visit to Paris in 1809, where he attended Say’s lectures. During 1812–14 he taught political economy at the Main School of Law and Administration,1 and in 1817–18 at the recently-established Royal University of Warsaw.2 Following this he was a deputy to a local parliament,3 and continued his scientific activity as a member of the Warsaw Friends of Sciences Society (established 1800). He wrote On political economy (1812) and in 1828 delivered to the Society a paper ‘Some Thoughts on a Science of Home Economy’. He considered Smith to be a genius who demonstrated that the sole path to be followed in political economy was that mapped out by Bacon. The most well-known Polish Smithianist was Count Fryderyk Skarbek (1792–1866), a professor of Warsaw University. He succeeded Krysiński in the chair of political economy and held it until 1830. Skarbek had studied at the Collège de France and had been one of Maleszewski’s students. He described Adam Smith’s theory as an ‘industrial system’, and the Wealth of Nations as an ‘immortal work’.4 In his ‘Introduction’ to National Household (1820), he writes: Adam Smith, Say, and especially C. J. Kraus, one of the best teachers of Adam Smith’s theory, are my guides. The aim of my work is to present, in my own arrangement, their writing and thoughts clearly and plainly, together with some of my own observations.

He dedicated the work to Maleszewski, expressing gratitude and regard for his old teacher. As a foundation for his inquiries Skarbek takes two principles: economic freedom and the private interest of an individual. Among his others economic works the Théorie des richesses sociales5 is noteworthy. Thirty years later it was published in Polish as General principles of a science of home economy, or pure theory of political economy.6 Later, in 1860, Skarbek published in Brussels an essay in which he was highly critical of socialism, in which he was critical of socialism. In Chodorowski’s opinion Skarbek ‘has matched the level of some outstanding western Smithians.’7 In Warsaw, a well known, if moderate, critic of Adam Smith was Witold Zalé¸ski (1836–1908), the last professor of economy at the Main Warsaw School. He suggested that Wealth of Nations was nothing but a theory of financial economy, not a general science of economy; that he ‘had dignified private 1

Adam Smith’s economic theory was taught in Warsaw from 1812. The chair of political economy was a part of the Law and Administration Faculty. 3 The Polish Kingdom had its own parliament (Seym). 4 Introduction to Dykcyonarz ekonomii politycznej z francuskiego dzielá K. Ganilh na polski przeł oz·ony i wł snymi uwagami znacznie pomnoż ony przez Fr. Skarbka (Warszawa 1828), pp. xvi– xxi. 5 F. Skarbek, Théorie des richesses sociales, 2 vols (A. Sautelet, Paris 1829). 6 F. Skarbek, Ogólne zasady nauki gospodarstwa narodowego, czyli czysta teoria ekonomii politycznej, edited and introduced by W. Szubert, 2 vols (PWN, Warsaw 1955). 7 J. Chodorowski, Adam Smith, op.cit., p. 154. 2


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interest as the most important principle in the science’; that he had only discussed market value; that he only considered material labour productive; and that he had not perceived the importance of workers’ associations.1 At the Vilnian University, Jan Znosko held the chair of political economy from 1810 to 1823, succeeded by his pupil Jan Waszkiewicz from 1823 to 1831. Znosko established his credentials with a work entitled A Science of Political Economy according to Adam Smith,2 thought by his contemporaries to be an original work, but which later turned out to be a translation of the second edition of Georg Sartorius’s 1796 Handbuch.3 The book is of course a summary of Wealth of Nations, but in places Znosko inserts some critical observations, printed in a smaller typeface. The longest of these is related to Smith’s conception of ‘fertile’ and ‘infertile’ labour, that is, productive and unproductive labour.4 It appears that Adam Smith’s meaning of the word wealth lies behind his definition of productive and unproductive labour. Since he considered as wealth only those things which had a market value and could be preserved, he did not accept as wealth those objects which were directly consumed. But the labour of a manager, judge, lawyer, teacher of religion and morality, physician, etc. is also useful and satisfies the needs of society; without them all the other kinds of labour would not exist, for no nation would be able to live.5

And of course this criticism of Adam Smith’s conception of productive labour could be taken directly from L. H. Jakob, the German translator of JeanBaptiste Say.6 The first to teach Smithian doctrine at the Jagiellonian University was Ferdynand Kojsiewicz (1801–74).7 In a paper read on 28 February 1833 to the Cracow Scientific Society he suggested that Wealth of Nations was an ‘immortal work (…) which raises political economy to the level of a mathematical 1

W. Załęski, Zasady ekonomiki (Warszawa 1889), pp. 51–2. J. Znosko, Nauka ekonomii politycznej podł ug ukł adu Adama Smith …w krótkoś ci zebrana, Drukarnia XX Bazylianów (Vilnius 1811). The book included a list of 218 subscribers. 3 G. Sartorius, Von den Elementen des National-Reichthums, und von der Staatswirthschaft, nach Adam Smith, Göttingen 1806, outlined above in ‘The German Reception of Smith’ pp. 130ff. See A. Grodek, Wybór pism, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 42. Waszkiewicz did the same – in 1823 he published in Dziennik Wileń ski two fragments allegedly from his manuscript O rozmaitych udł adach ekonomii politycznej and Teoria cywilizacji; but they were translations of two chapters taken from Cours d’economie politique (1821) by H. Storch. In 1829 Waszkiewicz translated and published in Vilnius another of Storch’s work under the title Uwagi nad przyrodzeniem dochodu narodowego. 4 J. Znosko, Nauka ekonomii politycznej …, pp. 81–8. 5 J. Znosko, Nauka ekonomii politycznej …, p. 87. 6 L. H. Jakob, Grundsätze der Nationalökonomie, Halle 1805. This work was translated by Michał Chołski, a pupil of Maleszewski, and a teacher of political economy at the Krzemieniec Lyceum (Zasady ekonomii narodów czyli umieję tnoś ci narodowego gospodarstwa (Krzemieniec–Warszawa 1820). 7 In 1828–47 Professor of Political Sciences, his lectures covered natural law (jurisprudence) and political economy. 2



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science.’1 Kojsiewicz was evidently also acquainted with the writings of J. R. McCulloch on political economy, but unfortunately his papers have since been lost and there is no way of knowing how closely he followed McCulloch in his paper. Although there was clear interest among Polish political economists in the work of Adam Smith, few of them learned of his doctrine from reading Wealth of Nations – they took their ideas instead from German and French writers, the most popular of whom was J.-B. Say. Between 1800 and 1830 nineteen translations of economic works appeared that might be broadly characterised as Smithian in content. In 1808 a translation of Christian Schlözer’s Anfangsgründe der Staatswirthschaft2 was published, Schlözer being one of the earlier Smithian ‘modernisers’ of the German cameralist tradition, whose book, importantly in this respect, had been published in Riga. Three years later Znosko’s translation of Sartorius appeared, followed by books by Jakob, Soden and Storch. Four works by J.-B. Say3 and two by S. de Sismondi 4 were also translated, while from the English Ricardo’s Principles5 and two of McCulloch’s books were published in translation.6 There was however no complete translation of Wealth of Nations. A fragment from Book V, Chapter IV relating to the corn trade was published in 1814, translated by Stanisław Kłokocki (b. 1763); but this was translated from the Garnier edition, and not directly from the English.7 Kłokocki is said to have translated the whole of Wealth of Nations, but is then supposed to have

1 F. Kojsiewicz, ‘Rozprawa o początku, wzroście i obecnym stanie ekonomii politycznej’. Roczniki Towarzystwa Naukowego z Uniwersytetem Jagielloń skim połą czonego, Poczet nowy, vol. 1 (Kraków 1841), pp. 58–98. 2 C. Schlözer, Począ tki ekonomii politycznej, czyli nauka o gospodarstwie krajowym, trans. A. Gliszczyński (Warszawa 1808). 3 J.-B. Say, Katechizm ekonomii politycznej, trans. K. Szaniawski (Warszawa 1815); Wykł ad ekonomii politycznej, trans. D. Dzierożyński (Warszawa 1821). 4 S. de Sismondi, author of De la richesse commerciale ou principes d’économie politique apliqués a la legislation du commerce (Geneva 1803), was offered by Duke Adam Czartoryski the chair of economy at the Vilnian University, but Sismondi declined. See also W. Piątkowski, ‘J.C.L. Simonde de Sismondi jako ekonomista liberalny (Sismondi a Smith)’, Ekonomista No. 5 (1976) pp. 1047–60. 5 D. Ricardo, O zasadach ekonomii politycznej i podatku, trans. S. Kunatt (Warszawa 1826). As Szefler writes, Ricardo ‘had little influence on Polish economic thought in the period 1800– 1830.’ S. Szefler, ‘Smithowska ekonomia w Polsce w latach 1800–1830’, Studia z historii myś li spoleczno-economicznej (1961), No. 1, pp. 83–4. 6 J. R. McCulloch, Zasady ekonomii politycznej trans. S. Kunatt (Warszawa 1828); Rozprawa o począ tku, postę pach, przedmiocie i waż noś ci ekonomii politycznej, trans. K. Sienkiewicz (Warszawa 1828). 7 Stanisław Kłokocki, Rozprawa o handlu zboż owym i o ustawach tyczą cych się handlu tego, wyję ta z dzieł a Adama Smitha o naturze i przyczynach bogactwa narodów – z księ gi IV–ej, rozdział u V–go (Warszawa 1814).


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abandoned the project after severe criticism from Skarbek.1 Further sections from Book III Chapters II and IV appeared in 1816, in the newspaper Pamię tnik Lwowski [Lvov Memoir], but in neither case was a translator’s name given.2 One reason for the failure to translate Wealth of Nations into Polish could well be that Polish writers had become convinced that there were errors in the work, and that Smith’s French and German followers had improved on it. This would explain why they chose to translate the works of commentators, rather than the original. In his preface to his translation of Schlözer’s Anfangsgründe A. Gliszczyński wrote: …despite the authority which Smith’s works have gained in England, they lacked for system and order, both of which are necessary to comprehend all truths. Schlözer’s work … makes up for this deficiency.3

Skarbek likewise wrote in the ‘Preface’ to his translation of Ganilh’s Dictionnaire of Smith’s doctrine that ‘many later authors have won fame in the world of science by introducing order to this theory and correcting those things which were found not to be part of the life of a nation.’ The most prominent place among these writers is taken by Jean-Baptiste Say.4 Although there was a resurgence of translation in the second third of the nineteenth century under the influence of Comtean positivism, no translation of Wealth of Nations was undertaken. Not until 1904 did R. Męciński delivered a paper at Lvov University entitled ‘Adam Smith, a great English economist in the Context of his Time’.5 Six years later the Warsaw quarterly Ekonomista6 published a paper ‘Back to Adam Smith’ by J. St. Lewiński7, who took this slogan from August Oncken.8 We can detect in Lewiński’s paper the influence of German authors, such as (besides Oncken) Feilbogen and Huth.9 His 1

Pamię tnik Warszawski Vol. IV (1815) pp. 225–232. ‘Jakim sposobem po upadku Państwa rzymskiego zaczęło upadać rolnictwo w Europie’, Pamię tnik Lwowski, Vol. II (March 1816) No. 3 pp. 213–35; ‘Jakim sposobem handel miast przyłożył się do ulepszenia i uprawy wieyskich gruntów (Wyiątek z dzieła Adama Smitha o naturze i przyczynach bogactw narodowych)‘, Ibidem, No 5 (May 1816) pp. 3–31. 3 C. Schlözer, Począ tki ekonomii politycznej, op. cit., p. v. 4 C. Ganilh, Dykcjonarz, op. cit., pp. xix–xxi. Even McCulloch expressed his respect for Say: ‘his digest of Adam Smith’s principles accelerated dissemination of the [Smith’s] science on the Continent,’ J. R. McCulloch, Rozprawa, op.cit. (Warszawa 1828), p. 69. 5 R. M ęciński, Adam Smith, wielki ekonomista angielski wobec swego wieku, (Lwów 1905). 6 A Polish economic periodical, one of the oldest in the world, published from 1865. 7 J. St. Lewiński, ‘Powrót do Adama Smitha’, Ekonomista. Kwartalnik poń wiś cony nauce i potrzebom ż ycia X, Vol. III (1910) pp. 1–22. Its contents were: I. New trends in economics; II. Economic psychology and aspiration for harmony in Adam Smith’s system; III. Adam Smith’s method. The relation of deduction to induction; IV. Smith and the doctrine of laissez faire; V. The importance of Adam Smith’s method for further development of economics. 8 A. Oncken, ‘Adam Smith und Adam Ferguson’, Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft No. 4 (1909) p. 215. 9 S. Feilbogen, Smith und Turgot, Wien 1903; Huth, Soziale und individualistische Auffassung im 18 Jahrhundert vornemlich bei Adam Smith und Adam Ferguson, (Leipzig 1907). 2



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interpretation of Adam Smith’s economic policy is clearly marked by the contemporary debates on the ‘social question’. Lewiński was opposed to the historical school of political economy, many of whose members had criticised Smith as a theorist of self-love and private interest. Following Oncken’s Adam Smith und Immanuel Kant,1 he argues that Adam Smith’s two books represented a whole, and not contrary systems of thought. Lewiński cites in support of his argument Edwin Cannan’s edition of Smith’s Lectures, Dugald Stewart’s Account and Rae’s Life of Adam Smith. He quotes a fragment from Theory of Moral Sentiments (II, ii, 3.3), using a French translation,2 and writes: ‘The sentiments of sympathy and of private interest are for Smith the two factors upon which harmony in the social world is founded. Harmony follows necessarily, for it is dictated by a law of nature … The two great works of Smith’s are … parts of a larger philosophical synthesis. In the Theory of Moral Sentiments he distinguishes the sentiment of sympathy, and in the Wealth of Nations the sentiments of interest. Smith examines here how an invisible hand directs all affairs for the best by natural laws.’ Emphasising the principle of economic liberty, Lewiński states that ‘almost all reforms of the last hundred years were a realisation of Smith’s principles.’3 Later, however, with the emergence of class conflict, Smith was ‘rejected as a one-sided visionary.’ Lewiński considers that the lengthy dispute over Smith’s method had recently been decided in favour of ‘a genial connection’ of deduction and induction. He also rejects the accusation that Smith was an insensitive, doctrinaire idealist who believed that the laws of nature strictly governed social processes. ‘It is astonishing, but one can find in Adam Smith’s work anti-Manchester opinion concerning the privileged position of employers with respect to workers.’4 Turning to the duties of the state as presented in Book V of Wealth of Nations, Lewiński writes that the reforms of which Adam Smith approved, or proposed, ‘are in accord with the spirit of the nineteenth century, or even of this century. … As to social problems, Adam Smith’s sympathy is with the working class. … To identify his science with the doctrine of laissez faire, laissez passer is essentially a false. … In his lectures on jurisprudence he is an historical materialist par excellence; all political change is traced to economic factors.’5 According to Lewiński, Adam Smith’s system was for many years presented in a false light. The historical school had enriched the history of the economy, but it completely lacked any theory. Adam Smith had created an abstract homo oeconomicus 2

1 See the discussion of Oncken’s work above in ‘The German Reception of Smith‘ pp. 147–8. 2 ‘Society may subsist among different men, as among different merchants, from a sense of its utility, without any mutual love or affection; and though no man in it should owe any obligation, or be bound in gratitude to any other, it may still be upheld by a mercenary exchange of good offices according to an agreed valuation.’ 3 J. St. Lewiński, Powrót do Adama Smitha, op. cit., p. 7. 4 Ibid. p. 10. 5 Ibid. pp. 13–18.


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and analysed its behaviour not with respect to reality, but to the ideal condition of perfect liberty. He then failed to analyse how his premises are realised in concrete historical conditions. After the First World War the war Lewiński published another sketch of Adam Smith’s economic ideas, preceded by a short outline of the philosopher’s life.1 As in his earlier paper, from which he borrowed a great deal, he sees Smith’s principal merit in his method of investigation: Smith first takes an ‘economic principle’,2 next by abstraction and deduction he formulates some economic laws, and then verifies and develops them by induction. However, this time Lewiński criticises the composition of Wealth of Nations, and also suggests that Smith’s theory of production is lacking in ‘the most important foundations’. He criticises in particular the theories of the division of labour, productive and unproductive labour, capital, rent, and profit. ‘In his analysis of some complex economic problems Smith was unsuccessful. He achieved much better results in his observation of some aspects of everyday economic life.’3 Lewiński rated Adam Smith’s writings on economic policy in Book V much more highly. At the end of his paper, Lewiński writes: ‘The trend to free commerce, declared by Smith, never had much success in our country. Our economic policy … was always protectionist.’4 In 1902 L. Kryzwicki and H. Forszteter had announced the creation of a ‘Library of Economic Classics’ headed by Wealth of Nations, but nothing ever came of this proposal, nor of a later one made in 1914 when the Editorial Board of the Economics Classics Library was established in Cracow, and translator August Zaleski and editor F. Bujak began work on a Polish translation of Wealth of Nations. The outbreak of war put a stop to this, and it was not until the early 1920s that the project was revived. A Polish translation by O. Einfeld and S. Wolf of Wealth of Nations Book I (based on Cannan’s edition) was published in 1927. In the Preface they wrote that ‘The present translation, the first in Polish, is a commemoration, for it appears on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the original edition. This very evident delay can be partly explained by political conditions, which have limited and obstructed a normal course of development, denying us the opportunity for scholarly work. But the appearance of this edition testifies to the freshness and topicality of the work of that great Scot.’5 In 1930 Stanisław Piotrowski published a lengthy critical sketch containing several critical comments on Wealth of Nations. We can find here a critique of Adam Smith’s ideas on the division of labour, value, natural and market prices, 1 J. St. Lewiński, Twórcy ekonomii politycznej. (Fizjokraci–Smith–Ricardo). Wstę p do historji doktryn ekonomicznych (Nakładem Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, Lublin 1920) Ch. III. Adam Smith, pp. 51–84. 2 Earlier Lewiński used the term ‘private interest’. 3 J. St. Lewiński, Twórcy ekonomii politycznej, op. cit., p. 76. 4 Ibid. p. 152. 5 A. Smith, Badania nad naturą i przyczynami bogactwa narodów, trans. from the English by Oswald Einfeld and Stefan Wolff, Vol. I (Gebethner and Wolff, Warszawa 1927), p. 7.



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wages, profits, rent, and the relation of silver to gold as money forms. ‘For us Adam Smith’s book is first of all a polemic [mostly with mercantilists], criticism founded on observations and deductions which are not related to each other. This is the main defect of Adam Smith’s work.’1 Piotrowski did however see some favourable aspects of the work: ‘But his lack of theoretical precision is compensated by his practical reason, which prompts Smith to abandon his erroneous theory of value; in the second book of the work he has forgotten all about it.2 He also shared with Lewiński a positive evaluation of Smith’s economic viewpoint: ‘Wealth is a necessity if trade is to develop with other countries, for no-one will exchange with the poor. This principle is very important for Smith and represents a point of contact between economy and ethics’.3 After the Second World War Poland became included in that part of Europe controlled by the Soviet Union, and understanding of the history of economics became dominated by Marxism. The importance of classical economics to Karl Marx’s analysis of the capitalist mode of production had of course been outlined by Lenin in his essay on the three sources and component parts of Marxism,4 and so as elsewhere in areas under the control of the Soviet Union it was possible to translate and publish the writings of Adam Smith. Hence in 1954 the first complete Polish translation of Wealth of Nations was published,5 with a detailed introduction by Seweryn Żurawicki which presented a Marxist evaluation of Smith’s economic theory.6 Likewise, the bicentenary of the publication of Wealth of Nations was celebrated with a conference at Jaszowiec during October 1976, and articles were also published in the periodical literature.7 Especially noteworthy is a paper by M. Mieszczankowski which was described editorially as ‘controversial’ since the neutral evaluation that was made of Smithian economic theory exposed certain ideological aspects of the way that the orthodox Marxist literature approached Adam Smith. In 1980 Jerzy Chodorowski published a very lengthy monograph on Adam Smith.8 It presents the life, personality, and inspiration for Smith and his 1 S. Piotrowski, Szkice socjologiczne, ed. E. Arnekker (Nakładem Wyższej Szkoły Handlowej, Warsaw 1930), p. 157. 2 Ibid. p. 120. 3 Ibid. p. 161. 4 Together with German philosophy and French utopian socialism. 5 A. Smith, Badania nad naturą i przyczynami bogactwa narodów, 2 vols, general eds J. Drewnowski and E. Lipiński (PWN, Warszawa 1954). 6 Ibid. pp. V–L. 7 M. Mieszczankowski, ‘Bogactwo narodów’ Życie Gospodarcze No 51/52 (1976) p. 11; B. Minc, ‘O rewolucjach naukowych w ekonomii politycznej’, Czł owiek i ś wiatopoglą d’ No 5 (1976); S. Żurawicki, ‘Rola Adama Smitha w kształtowaniu się myśli ekonomicznej’, Ekonomista No. 5 (1976); W. Piątkowski, ‘J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi jako ekonomista liberalny (Sismondi a Smith)’ Ekonomista No. 5 (1976) pp. 1047–60. 8 J. Chodorowski, Adam Smith (1723–1790) (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskeigo, Wrocław 1980). The book contains a summary in English.


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method. Most of the space is however devoted to an exposition of the economic theory of Wealth of Nations, together with an account of its reception in Poland and in Europe (chapters 6–7). In the final chapter Chodorowski considered the question of where Smith belonged in the history of economic thought. He concludes: Smith was not the founder of political economy, the earliest scientific system of economics having been composed by R. Cantillon (Essai sur la nature du commerce en général, 1755). Smith’s proper place in the history of economic thought is as the originator of a scientific economics. He was not its founder, nor a substantial innovator, but he was the first to initiate its development. He had many forerunners, but none as the inspiration for the development of economics. This fact renders his place in the history of economic thought a unique one.1

In his Epilogue, Chodorowski points to three reasons for the topicality of Adam Smith work: 1. The substantial content of much of Wealth of Nations, especially Books I to III 2. Smith’s outlook as an economist and scholar 3. As a source of scientific inspiration

On this last point Chodorowski quotes Paul Samuelson’s opinion that ‘…the more important contemporary economic theories can all be derived from the arguments of Wealth of Nations, down to those theories influenced by the Club of Rome reports.’ The work remains a ‘constant source of inspiration, and Smith himself a champion of a broadly-based liberalism.’2 3. Theory of Moral Sentiments in Poland Most Polish authors writing about Smith focussed on his political economy; Theory of Moral Sentiments was not well-known in Poland, and was first translated into Polish in 1989.3 Polish writers on Smith’s philosophy have put forward quite widely varying perspectives, relating to his research method, the relationship between Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments, and his position with respect to his predecessors. The first Polish author to write about Adam Smith’s life and works was as already mentioned K. Wzdulski. His Adam Smith, Life and Works (1723–90), published in 1869, dealt first of all with Wealth of Nations, but also presented a short critique of Theory of Moral Sentiments. This latter work he considered to be founded on two fragile principles: sympathy and antipathy, according to how we judge the actions and characters of our neighbours. Wzdulski evidently confuses ‘conscience’ with the ‘impartial spectator’, 1

Ibid. p. 189. Ibid. pp. 193–4. 3 As Teoria uczuć moralnych, translated and introduced by Banuta Petsch (Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1989). 2



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in writing: ‘In support of his system Smith invoked conscience, which he considered to be a necessary power in judging human sentiments’. He did not think that Adam Smith differed a great deal from Hutcheson and ‘all those of the Scottish school who found their philosophy upon Christian and to some extent Platonic principles: the good, and benevolence’1 However, he adds that ‘Adam Smith’s philosophy compensates for these defects by the purest love of God and of his fellow men, and conception which lives and breathes on every page. It may not be recognised, but cannot be disregarded.’2 It was not however until 1927 that the first work on Smith’s ethics was published in Poland, a long essay entitled ‘From the Studies of Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy’3 written by Edward Frauenglas (1905–39), noteworthy for the manner in which the author considers Adam Smith’s work as a whole. Frauenglas criticised August Oncken’s interpretation of Smith’s ethics,4 H. Buckle5 and H. Vaihinger.6 All of them had claimed that Smith’s method of research was deductivist and abstract. Frauenglas thought by contrast that Smith’s ethics were empirical and derived inductively. In this there was no discrepancy between Wealth of Nations and the Theory of Moral Sentiments. The division into ethics and economics was not dictated by methodological and structural considerations, but corresponds to the two different spheres: of moral and economic phenomena. He rejected any comparison of Smith’s ethics with those of Kant, which had been argued by Oncken. According to Frauenglas, Smith’s ethics were psychological and analytical in character, and also the first significant attempt to base ethics on sociology. Smith departed from the abstract altruism of Hutcheson and brought ethics closer to actual life; his ethics are an important step towards the creation of an autonomous ethics, based upon psychosocial developmental processes. Smith, he went on, laid great emphasis upon the value of the harmonious character of man, a conception which is rooted in the essentially aesthetic orientation of Smith’s intellect. This is evident in his opposition to utilitarianism – the utility of an action follows from its beauty, not the other way around. Smith also saw nature as a harmonious order, admiring the universe as beautiful machinery

1

K. Wzdulski, Adam Smith …, op. cit., p. 52. Ibid. p. 55. 3 E. Frauenglas, ‘Ze studiów nad filozofią moralną Adama Smitha’, in Księ ga Pamiątkowa W. Heinricha, ed. F. Znaniecki and others (Księgarnia Jagiellońska, Kraków 1927), pp. 123–70. 4 A. Oncken, Adam Smith und Immanuel Kant, Leipzig 1877. Idem, ‘The Consistency of Adam Smith’, Economic Journal Vol. 7 (1897) pp. 443–50. 5 H. T. Buckle, ‘An Examination of the Scotch Intellect during the Eighteenth Century’, in his Introduction to the History of Civilisation in England, Vol. 2, 1861. See also his On Scotland and the Scotch Intellect, edited by H. J. Hanham, Chicago 1970. In Buckle’s opinion the Scottish philosophers of the eighteenth century employed deductive, not inductive, methods. 6 H. Vaihinger, Die Philosophie des Als Ob, Leipzig 1911. Vaihinger ascribes to Smith’s conception of man an egoistical nature and considered it to be an example of a ‘fiction’. 2


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controlled by God. Frauenglas ascribed this orientation to the influence of Shaftesbury.1 In 1949 Zygmunt Borawski published an essay entitled ‘Foundations of Adam Smith’s Theory in the Light of the Theory of Leon Petrazycki’.2 In Borawski’s view, Theory of Maral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations are based on an analysis of the individual human psyche, and the difference between the system of ethics and the system of economics follows from a consideration of the different motivations of human action. Smith distinguished only two kinds of emotion in the human psyche, altruistic and egoistical, and this posed a difficulty, which made it impossible for him to complete his philosophical synthesis. To overcome this obstacle Smith would have had to develop a science dealing with human motivation, which is what, suggests Borawski, Petrazycki did a hundred years later. For instance, Smith understood ‘profit’ only in its narrow economic sense. Nonetheless, by identifying ‘profit’ as a natural product of human action, he was able to represent the market operating under conditions of economic freedom as a self-regulating mechanism. Chodorowski in his monograph concentrates mainly on Wealth of Nations and its international reception, but he also takes up the problem of philosophical assumptions, and discusses the various approaches employed in Wealth of Nations – abstraction, induction, concretisation, deduction, and verification. He believes that two themes are to be found in Smith’s philosophy, based upon rationalism and historicism. This dualism does not lead to any contradiction between Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations. In the first, Smith investigates man endowed with virtues of a higher order; here the main motive of human actions is sympathy (understood as compassion), and the principle governing social cohesion is benevolence (understood as altruism). In the Wealth of Nations, Smith analyses homo oeconomicus guided by qualities of a lower order; here the main motive for action is personal gain, and justice is the principle of social cohesion. According to Chodorowski, the opposition between the principle of individualism and the social principle in Smith’s philosophy is illusory, since the good of the individual is identical with public good; therefore the interpretations which suppose that Smith preached the primacy of individual interest over that of society, or the reverse, are considered to be unfounded. But it is of course evident from this bare outline that Chodorowski rehearses and combines many of the common misconceptions of Smith’s ethics. 1 See Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, and Times (1714). 2 Z. Borawski, ‘Podstawy teorii Adama Smitha w świetle teorii Leona Petrażyckiego’, Teka Bejrucka (Beirut 1949), pp. 95–112. Leon Petrazycki (1867–1931) was an outstanding Polish scholar, best known for his philosophy of law and a precursor of emotivism – see: H. W. Babb, ‘Petrazhitskii: Theory of Law’, Law Review, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Boston 1938); N. S. Timaszew, Leon Petraż ycki Law and Morality, Harvard 1955; M. Laserzon, ‘The Work of Leon Petrazhitskii: Inquiry into Psychological Aspects of the Nature of Law’, Columbia Law Review, Vol. 51 (1951).



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Despite the publication of a complete edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1989, the work of Adam Smith in Poland continues to be identified almost exclusively with Wealth of Nations – an ‘Adam Smith Center’ established in 1989 for example continues in existence propagating free-market principles in books and pamphlets. Nonetheless, the manner in which Wealth of Nations has continued to be read throughout the tortuous path of Polish cultural history since the late eighteenth century is itself striking. 4. Appendix: Early editions of the Adam Smith’s works in Warsaw and Gdań ńsk1 Essais philosophiques… trans. P. Prevost (Paris 1797). [OSD BUW: 13.22.9.34] Essays on philosophical subjects. … To which is prefixed, an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author; by D. Stewart, J. Black and J. Hutton (eds) (J. Dekker, Basil 1799) [Gd: Fa 16483.80] An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2nd. ed., 2 vols (W. Strahan and T. Cadell, London 1778). [Gd: Kd 507.4o] An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 6th ed. (A. Strahan and T. Cadell, London 1791). [Gd: Kd 507.8o] Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, Trad. de l’anglois de M. Adam Smith par M***, 4 vols, (La Haye 1778–9). [BNW.XVIII.1.10058] Theorie der moralischen Empfindungen, Nach der dritten Englischen Ausgabe übers. Ch. G. (Rautenberg, Meyer, Brauschweig 1770). [BNW.XVIII.1.13980] Theorie der sittlichen Gefühle, Übers., vorgeredet und … kommentirt von L. T. Kosegarten, Bde. 1–2 (Gräffschen Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1791–5). [BNW XVIII.2. 21657] Théorie des sentiments moraux, trad. nouv. … l’Abbé Blavet…, T. 1–2 (Valade, Paris 1774–5). [przedruk w 1782 r.]. [BNW.XVIII.2.11239] The Theory of Moral Sentiments, or, An Essay towards an Analysis of the Principles by which men naturally judge concerning the conduct and character, first of their neighbours, and afterwards of themselves. To which is added, a dissertation on the origin of languages, 5th ed. (W. Strahan and F. Rivington, London 1781) [OSD BUW: 13.46.5.1] The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 6th ed., 2 vols (A. Strahan, and T. Cadell; W. Creech, and J. Bell & Co., London and Edinburgh 1790). [Gd: Fa 16472.8o] The Theory of Moral Sentiments, A new ed. 2 vols ( Basil 1793)(. [OSD BUW: 145393] Untersuchung der Natur und Ursachen von Nationalreichthümern (Weidmanns Erben,Leipzig 1776–8). [BNW.XVIII.2.23723] Untersuchung über die Natur und die Ursachen des Nationalreichthums Bde. 1–4 (W. G. Korn, Breslau 1794–6). [BNW.XVIII.2.1778]

1 OSD BUW: Warsaw University Library, Special Collection; Gd: The Polish Academy of Sciences Library, Gdańsk; BNW: The Polish National Library, Special Collection, Warsaw.


Adam Smith in the Spanish- and Portuguese- speaking World John Reeder and José Luís Cardoso

For the first few decades following 1776 reading Wealth of Nations was a quasiclandestine activity in a Spain where inquisitorial prohibition and censorship were still a major part of cultural life. It is therefore difficult to form a clear picture of its reception during this period, for all we have are a few scattered references and occasional glimpses of more direct contact with Smith’s text, as in the case of Campomanes’ commissioning of a translation as early as 1777.1 Until the 1790s, when the first full translation and various commentaries in Spanish begin to appear, the evidence we have in both Spain and Portugal is largely fragmentary and anecdotal, often hearsay. In Spain it is not clear whether this is attributable to reticence on the part of readers conscious of the power of the Inquisition or, more simply, to a lack of direct knowledge of the text, either in English or in French translation. The second phase, from 1790 to 1812, sees the first translations of Wealth of Nations into Spanish and Portuguese, first via a Spanish version of Condorcet’s résumé in 1792; then a full, relatively accurate, though slightly expurgated, Spanish translation in 1794–5, and the first Portuguese version, minus Book V, published in Rio de Janeiro in 1811– 12. This is the period when Smith’s direct influence – never, it should be said, very great in Spain and Portugal – was at its height. It inspired Jovellanos’s agrarian reform project of 1795, Alcalá Galiano’s essay on fiscal reform of 1793 and Souza Coutinho and José da Silva Lisboa’s plans for the liberalisation of colonial trade and industry in Brazil, which prompted an interesting debate between a physiocrat and a Smithian liberal in Portugal – the controversy between Rodrigues de Brito and José da Silva Lisboa in 1804–5. It also gave rise to what is probably the most genuinely Smithian work published in the Peninsula, the Essay on Paper Money by Alonso Ortiz, who was also the first Spanish translator of Smith. This important text will be examined later. 1 See Pedro Schwartz, ‘The Wealth of Nations Censored. Early Translations in Spain’, in A. E. Murphy, R. Prendergast (eds) Contributions to the History of Economic Thought. Essays in Honour of R. D. C. Black (Routledge, London 2000), p. 119–21.


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Translation, Influence, and the Dissemination of Smith’s Ideas Smith’s chief influence was to be short-lived in both the Spanish and the Portuguese speaking worlds. Bento da Silva Lisboa’s Portuguese incomplete translation of Wealth of Nations, published in Brazil in 1811–12, went largely unnoticed and unread in metropolitan Portugal,1 and it was to be a century before a third edition of Alonso Ortiz’s Spanish translation was to appear.2 In Spain, a veritable flood of translations of the works of Jean-Baptiste Say swept all before it – no less than twenty different editions of translations of six different works made their appearance between 1804 and 1839, above all of the highly influential Traité d’Économie Politique of 1803. Say’s works were also quite prominent in Portugal during the same period. Say’s Traité was perceived especially by Iberian readers as better organised, more methodical and less digressive than Wealth of Nations. From another perspective one might be tempted to add that Say’s work was also more simplistic, less richly suggestive, but more attuned to the new mind set of early nineteenth century Spanish and Portuguese liberal politicians. Only through the direct use of Smith’s ideas by José da Silva Lisboa in a series of essays, written between 1808 and 18203 in his crusade for the establishment of freedom of trade and industry in Brazil, and perhaps as an underlying factor in the works of the Spanish liberal economist Alvaro Florez Estrada did Wealth of Nations continue to be a living source of influence in the Iberian world after the second decade of the nineteenth century. Other later Spanish works, the titles of which might suggest otherwise, such as the defence of mercantilist and interventionist ideas which Ramón Lázaro de Dou deceptively entitled The Wealth of Nations newly Explained,4 reproduced large parts of Smith and then attempted to refute his ideas. Similarly, the curiosity which Gonzalo de Luna published under the misleading title Essay on an Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations relative to Spain, or Universal Economic Theory applied to the Spanish Nation5 has little to do with Smith’s ideas. Complete with strange diagrams, the work is in reality an eclectic jumble 1 The first complete Portuguese translation of Wealth of Nations was only to appear in the 1980s. 2 Adam Smith, Investigación de la Causa y la Riqueza de las Naciones. Obra Escrita en Inglés por Adam Smith, Doctor en Leys … La traduce al Castellano el Lic. Josef Alonso Ortiz, con Varias Notas y Ilustraciones Relativas a España (Viuda e Hijos de Santander, Valladolid 1794; 2nd edition: Valladolid, 1804–5; 3rd edition: Barcelona, 1933–4). 3 Collected in José da Silva Lisboa, Escritos Económicos Escolhidos (1804–1820), 2 vols (Banco de Portugal, Lisbon 1993): (New edition, Series of Portuguese Economic Classics, edited with an introduction by António Almodovar). 4 R. L. Dou y de Bassols, La Riqueza de las Naciones, Nuevamente Explicada con la Doctrina de su Mismo Investigador (Imprenta Universidad, Cervera 1817). 5 Gonzalo de Luna, Ensayo Sobre la Investigación de la Naturaleza y Causa de la Riqueza de las Naciones Relativamente a España, o sea la Economía, 2 vols (Espinosa, Valladolid 1819–20).


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of an earlier Spanish ‘arbitrista’ protectionist and interventionist tradition of mercantilist economic thought, together with an eccentric reading of Smith and other contemporary writers such as Alonso Ortiz, Say, or Filangieri. The most interesting of the manuals of political economy published in Spain during the first half of the nineteenth century, Florez Estrada’s Course of Political Economy1, still displays the residual influence of Smith. But as befits a liberal who had spent the years 1823–30 in exile in London and Paris, Florez Estrada already shows a greater awareness of later developments in classical economics, suggesting familiarity with McCulloch, James Mill, Ricardo, Richard Jones and Sismondi. What then was Smith’s legacy in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking worlds? One answer must be that, however distanced Smith’s subtly presented arguments might seem from the crudities of mid-century debates over free trade and protection, his arguments for ‘the natural system of liberty’ lie at the origins of the increasingly doctrinaire free trade beliefs of Spanish and Portuguese liberals. But even this is difficult to measure with any accuracy. One should not forget the anti-interventionist, anti-Colbertist free market arguments of such French mid-eighteenth century economists as Gournay or Herbert, to mention but two writers frequently cited in the Spanish literature of the 1760s and 1770s. Campomanes’s Report on the Fixed Price of Cereals of 1764 is a good example of a pre-Smithian argument in favour of liberalising the internal Spanish grain market. Similar arguments could also be found in the Portuguese economic literature of the period, mainly borrowed from French Physiocratic writers. It is therefore important to discriminate between later eighteenth century argument in Spain and Portugal over the merits of laissezfaire trade policies, and the possible direct influence of Wealth of Nations. One of the main features of Iberian economic thought in the later eighteenth century is an ability to combine physiocratic, Smithian and cameralist rhetoric in the construction of reformist economic discourse. A desire to overcome the obstacles raised by social, economic and financial structures of the ancien régime without recourse to violent political revolution led to the creation of institutions (societies, associations, academies) directed to the production and dissemination of useful knowledge, and seeking a better understanding of economic resources and their best employment. Apart from practical knowledge with direct implications for the organisation of the structures of production and trade, a great deal of importance was also given to the knowledge provided by political economy: that is, the science concerned with the explanation of the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. 1 A. Florez Estrada, Curso de Economía Política, 2 vols (Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, Madrid 1980) (New edition, Series of Spanish Economic Classics, introduction by Ernest Lluch, edited with a preliminary study by Salvador Almenar). The first exile edition was printed in London, 1828. Six other editions followed, the last one in Madrid 1852.



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One should not assume that an acquaintance with Smith’s writings was necessarily effected through reading an English original or a translation into the reader’s first language. The process of diffusion appears to have been much more complex among Spanish and Portuguese speakers. Knowledge of English was uncommon in this world; knowledge of French, the lingua franca of the party of the enlightenment in eighteenth century Europe, was on the other hand certainly not rare amongst an enlightened class of professionals, administrators, scholars and statesmen in both Spain and Portugal and their colonies.1 From scattered references2 there is some evidence that the first French translation by Blavet seems to have circulated relatively unimpeded in Spain prior to the French Revolution, and certainly by the 1790s Roucher’s new translation seems to have been readily available, despite increased inquisitorial vigilance in the wake of the Revolution. Indeed, the attention of the Spanish Inquisition was first drawn to Wealth of Nations by the presence in Spain of Blavet’s French translation. The Edict of Prohibition of March 1792, where the reading of Wealth of Nations is forbidden ‘since, in an obscure, deceitful style, the author favours religious tolerance and promotes naturalism’, specifically refers to this French edition.3 Secondly, perhaps we should add another caveat with respect to the difficulty of assessing the impact of Wealth of Nations in the Iberian world. Even the reading of more or less accurate translations of Wealth of Nations, whether into French, Spanish or Portuguese, or indeed even reading the work directly in English as Jovellanos and Lisboa apparently did, does not imply complete understanding of the full implications of Smith’s book. Accessibility does not necessarily imply understanding. Rather, in the same way that most Spaniards and Portuguese read Physiocratic literature as general recommendations on agricultural policy (the abolition of internal barriers to the national grain market, and a fiscal reform project based on a single agricultural tax), with little evidence of a complete appreciation of the body of economic analysis and doctrine motivating these proposals, so it appears that few fully understood the new Smithian system of political economy. Wealth of Nations was largely read in Spain, Portugal and Brazil as a menu of policy recommendations which happily coincided with the liberalising agenda of the reformist parties in these countries – men such as Campomanes, Jovellanos, Souza Coutinho or Silva Lisboa. With a few notable exceptions – Alonso Ortiz and Silva Lisboa, for instance – there is no evidence that there was any 1 See John Reeder, ‘Bibliografia de traduciones al castellano y al catalán durante el siglo XVIII de obras de pensamiento económico’, Moneda y Crédito, Vol. CXXVI (1973); and John Reeder, ‘Economía e Ilustración en España: traduciones y traductores, 1717–1800’ Moneda y Crédito, Vol. CLVII (1978). 2 See P. Schwartz, ‘Wealth of Nations’. 3 See J. Lasarte, Economía y Hacienda al Final del Antiguo Régimen (Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, Madrid 1976) and P. Schwartz, ‘Wealth of Nations’. The Edict refers to a 1789 edition of Blavet’s translation, clearly a mistake for 1786.


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great appreciation of the theoretical implications of the first two books of Wealth of Nations. In the case of Silva Lisboa, his use of the theory of the division of labour to defend greater economic autonomy for Brazil, for example, or his invocation of the Smithian version of the labour theory of value to attack the physiocratic belief that only agricultural activity creates real surpluses, the produit net, is an obvious exception within the prevailing complete lack of interest in the theoretical aspects of Smith’s political economy. The same applies to Alonso Ortiz and his slavish adherence to Smithian monetary theory, which we will discuss below. Generally speaking, Spanish and Portuguese writers read Wealth of Nations as an embodiment of ‘the science of the legislator’, to use Smith’s own words. This is hardly surprising, given the very nature of the ‘arbitrista-projectista’ traditions of economic discourse over the previous two centuries in the two countries – little inclined to abstract theorising, almost exclusively devoted to policy matters – and therefore providing the principal context for the reception of Smith’s ideas in late eighteenth century Spain and Portugal. Thus, for example as early as 1777, Campomanes, at the time Spain’s First Minister, seems to have entrusted John Geddes, Rector of the Scottish College in Valladolid,1 with the translation of extracts from Wealth of Nations. Significantly, among Campomanes’ remaining papers is a translation into Spanish of the summary of English Poor Law legislation made by Smith in Book I of Wealth of Nations,2 and which clearly provided Campomanes with raw material for his deliberations on the framing of a new Poor Law for Spain. This imperfect understanding of Smith’s theoretical contribution, or perhaps more accurately, a lack of interest in such a contribution on the part of the majority of Spanish and Portuguese economists, conditions the reception of the ideas of the classical school as a whole.3 Understanding of various elements of classical theory was hazy at best, as a brief examination of the most important economic treatises – Florez Estrada excepted – will show. The full significance of the Malthusian population debates, Ricardian analysis of long-run decreasing returns and economic growth, or the later Millian synthesis were rarely fully appreciated in nineteenth century Spain and Portugal.4 The Principles of 1

The College trained catholic priests. Wealth of Nations (Glasgow edition), pp. 152–7. 3 For an overall presentation of this issue see José Luís Cardoso, ‘Classical Economics in Portugal and Spain’, in Heinz D. Kurz and Neri Salvadori (eds), The Elgar Companion to Classical Economics, Vol. I (Edward Elgar, Aldershot 1998) pp. 154–9. For a detailed account concerning the Spanish case, see Salvador Almenar, ‘El desarollo del pensamiento económico clásico en España’, and Ernst Lluch, Salvador Almenar, ‘Difusion y influencia de los economistas clásicos en España’, in E. Fuentes Quintana (ed.), Economía y Economistas Españoles. Vol. 4: La Economía Clásica (Fundación de las Cajas de Ahorros Confederadas, Barcelona 2000). 4 The principal exception to this panorama of incomprehension is the francophile Portuguese resident in Paris and translator of Ricardo and Malthus into French, Francisco Solano Constâncio, a moderate critic of Say’s law who evolved towards a position directly opposed 2



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Political Economy of both Ricardo and J. S. Mill remained untranslated into Spanish until the mid-twentieth century, and Malthus’ Essay on Population was only published in Spanish (translated from the French) in 1846. In Portugal the delay in translation is even more marked, the Principles of Ricardo first appearing in translation as late as 1975.1 The most important Smithian debates Let us then return in this brief survey of the influence of Adam Smith in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world to the period of the high watermark of that influence, 1790–1820, and consider in detail those works which show most clearly the traces of that influence.2 The author of the first complete translation of Wealth of Nations into Spanish was José Alonso Ortiz,3 ‘complete’ apart from some relatively unimportant omissions, largely the result of self-imposed censorship on the part of Ortiz. The Royal Academy of History, which acted as civil and government censor, suggested that Alonso Ortiz introduce a series of modifications in his translation that would suppress those references contrary to ‘the dogmas of an Holy Religion, good morality and healthy politics’.4 Interestingly, the censors of the Royal Academy of History saw their sanitising role as a positive contribution to the diffusion of Smith’s ideas. According to their Report, without this necessary process of expurgation the translation would simply be prohibited from publication, thus denying those who could read only Spanish access to such a useful political and scientific text. to the abstract theoretical approach of Ricardo. Constâncio was to write: ‘Political economy is a science, not one that is made up of abstractions, but rather a practical science, whose principles cannot be judged on an absolute basis, but only by comparing the situation of each nation with the situation of the others’. For Constâncio see José Luís Cardoso, ‘The road to heterodoxy: F. S. Constâncio and the critical acceptance of classical political economy’ History of Political Economy Vol. 31 (1999) pp. 473–92. 1 For more detail on what exactly was translated into Spanish in the nineteenth century see Francisco Cabrillo, ‘Traduciones al español de libros de economía política (1800–1880)’, Moneda y Crédito, Vol. CXLVII (1978); and for the fortunes of classical economics in Portugal, see António Almodovar, A Institucionalização da Economia Política Clássica em Portugal (Edições Afrontamento, Porto 1995). 2 For other minor references and greater detail in general on Spanish writers influenced by Smith, see the longer synthesis of Perdices 2000 and Schwartz 2000. For Portugal see José Luís Cardoso, ‘Economic Thought in Late Eighteenth-century Portugal: Physiocratic and Smithian Influences’, History of Political Economy Vol. 22 (1990) pp. 429–41. 3 A translation of Condorcet’s Compendium of Wealth of Nations had been made by Carlos Fernando Martinez de Irujo (C. F. Martinez de Irujo, Compendio de la Obra Inglesa Intitulada Riqueza de las Naciones, Hecho por el Marqués de Condorcet, Imprenta Real, Madrid 1792), republished in Madrid, 1803 and Palma de Mallorca, 1814). This abridgement is however full of inaccuracies and fails to convey with a minimum degree of precision and clarity Smith’s economic theories. 4 For a reprint in full of the report see J. Lasarte, Economía y Hacienda al Final del Antiguo Régimen (Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, Madrid 1976).


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Apart from various minor alterations,1 the major excision made by Alonso Ortiz is a long section on religious education2 referring to the education of the young in the principles of religious tolerance, where Smith quotes with approval the opinions of both Hume and Machiavelli. Alonso Ortiz appears to have carried off his self-imposed role as censor with some success, since when the translation was sent to the Inquisition, the ecclesiastical censor could only quibble over a distinction between licit and illicit usury not even in Smith’s original, but added by the translator. Another explanation of this minimal interference might possibly be related to the fact that Alonso Ortiz’s translation was made under the direct patronage of Godoy, the Royal favourite and de facto ruler of Spain at that time. Despite a number of petty alterations and omissions, the translation is reasonably accurate and written in an attractively unrhetorical eighteenth century Spanish. Perhaps even more interesting than the passages and phrases Alonso Ortiz leaves out are the extensive notes he appends to the text, adding pertinent information about Spanish practices, legislation or history, occasionally directly modifying or contradicting Smith’s views. An example is the long note in Volume II, pp. 290–1, where the translator expresses his reservations about absolute freedom of importation of overseas manufactures in the case of Spain, a commonly held opinion amongst Spanish writers on economic issues in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Very few Spanish economists of the period felt able to accept undiluted Smith’s advocacy of absolute freedom of trade, whether domestic or overseas. Most, whilst vigorously supporting the abolition of any obstacle to the free working of the internal domestic market, baulked at complete freedom of imports and zero tariffs. Like Alonso Ortiz they put forward a limited protectionist argument, a crude version of the infant industry thesis: short-term tariffs to protect a developing manufacturing sector. The most extensive addition to Smith’s original text made by Alonso Ortiz is a lengthy appendix on the new Spanish central bank, the National Bank of San Carlos, which he adds to Smith’s digression concerning banks of deposit at the end of volume II of the translation of Wealth of Nations.3 This extremely welldocumented study appears to be the fruit of his personal experience as a civil servant directly implicated in the running of this first central bank in Spain. Originally a professional translator – he had learnt his English at the same Scottish catholic college in Valladolid to which Campomanes had turned for help with his studies of Smith sixteen or seventeen years previously – Alonso Ortiz has clearly learnt his economics from translating and studying Wealth of Nations. This will be more clearly seen from his next, and last, work of political 1

For a detailed list of notes added by J. Alonso Ortiz , and passages suppressed, see Schwartz, ‘La recepción inicial de ‘La Riqueza de las Naciones’ en España’, in E. Fuentes Quintana (ed.), Economía y Economistas Españoles. Vol. 4: La Economía Clásica (Fundación de las Cajas de Ahorros Confederadas, Barcelona 2000), pp. 223–37. 2 Wealth of Nations, Vol. II pp. 788–814. 3 J. Alonso Ortiz, Investigación Vol. II, pp. 352–91.



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economy, another study of monetary problems and banking theory and practice, the Economic Essay on the System of Paper Money and on Public Credit,1 perhaps the most interesting work of classical (Smithian) political economy produced in Spain. This essay can be viewed in the same way as its Portuguese counterpart, the reports presented between 1797 and 1803 by Rodrigo de Souza Coutinho. They were drafted against the background of the experimental introduction of paper money in Europe during the Napoleonic Wars, where every state suffered from acute silver shortages – the same circumstances which would give rise to the long-lasting bullionist controversy in Britain during the two first decades of the nineteenth century. Alonso Ortiz’s Essay is an extensive – some 350 pages – and detailed study of monetary practice and theory. His first-hand experience at Spain’s first central bank allows him to see clearly most of the problems involved in the transition from a monetary system based on a metallic-silver coinage – coins whose face value corresponds in Alonzo Ortiz’s thomistic terminology to their intrinsic metallic value – to a system where paper money circulates at the same time as the silver coins. His basic error comes from too close an adherence to Smith’s rather obscure explanation of his views in the second chapter of Wealth of Nations Book II. In fact, Alonso Ortiz does not appear to understand clearly the need for one hundred per cent convertibility to avoid over-issue and guarantee public confidence. The negative experiences of two failed eighteenth century attempts to introduce paper money in France – John Law’s system, and the revolutionary bills, the assignats – served Alonso Ortiz as counter-examples to highlight the pitfalls involved in introducing paper money into the prevailing monetary system. If the collapse of Law’s system was in part due to a failure in public confidence in the new paper bills, the inflation caused by the over-issue of assignats during the revolutionary republic was the result of a failure to understand exactly what limits a government authority should set on the issue of paper money. Alonso Ortiz in his lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of paper money shows that he understands the nature of the two inter-related problems of the criteria for issue and the need to generate public confidence in the new fiduciary money. Like Smith, Alonso Ortiz mistrusts government monopolies, which means in this case that a monopolistic central bank can in his words ‘extremely easily increase the quantity of this kind of (paper-) money, because it costs it nothing to sign as many bills as it feels fit’.2 However, by following Smith to the letter, the Spanish translator does not put enough emphasis on the remedy: the legal requisite of one hundred per cent convertibility. That is to say that the central bank should be obliged to hold reserves in silver (or more unlikely in the period, in gold) to cover any paper 1 J. Alonso Ortiz, Ensayo Económico Sobre el Sistema de la Moneda-Papel: y Sobre el Crédito Público (Imprenta Real, Madrid 1796). 2 J. Alonso Ortiz, Ensayo Económico, pp. 91–2.


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issue. This also means that the public should have the right to exchange their paper money at any given moment at the central bank at its full face value in silver. Whilst this idea seems to be implicit in Smith’s theory, he never spells it out clearly, and Alonso Ortiz, writing at a period of acute silver shortages, is more interested in Smith’s argument about reducing the costs of production of money. In short, the Spanish writer appears not to have completely understood the need for full convertibility. Nevertheless, the Essay on Paper Money remains almost unique in the literature as a fascinating study in Smithian monetary theory. Curiously, Alonso Ortiz was not to write anything more in the field of economics. As said before, parallel in time and circumstances are the monetary writings of the Portuguese statesman Rodrigo de Souza Coutinho. A politician of greater stature than the minor functionary Alonso Ortiz – Souza Coutinho was minister of the Realm from 1796 to 1803 – he also wrote on the problems arising from the circulation of paper money which was introduced in Portugal in 1797 (against his advice) after an unsuccessful attempt to create internal public debt. The sharp depreciation of paper money and the rapid loss of public confidence in the Court’s financial operations were justification enough to make Coutinho try to implement a coherent programme of financial re-organisation. Among the main goals of this programme were the establishment of a central bank, the gradual withdrawal of existing paper money, the operation of a carefully administered internal public loan, strict adherence to the rules and dates of loan repayments, the reform of the tax system, the reduction of superfluous public expenditure, and the rationalisation of local and central financial institutions. In his writings on these subjects1 the Portuguese minister shows a detailed knowledge of Wealth of Nations – indeed at one point he strongly advises that Smith’s work should be read thoroughly – especially when he discusses the advantages and disadvantages of paper money. On this very subject he shows himself to be more careful than Smith and Alonso Ortiz when discussing the precautions to be taken concerning the control of the amount of circulating paper money, and when presenting his recommendations about guarantees of convertibility. We can now deal briefly with three further Spanish writers who were inspired by their reading of Wealth of Nations: Alcalá Galiano, Ramon Campos and Gaspar de Jovellanos. The short essay by Vicente Alcalá Galiano, On the need for, and justice of taxes, sources on which they should be levied, and the means of collecting them,2 published by the Segovian Economic Societies, reveals that at least 1

A series of reports and speeches collected in Rodrigo de Souza Coutinho, Textos Políticos, Económicos e Financeiros (1783–1811), 2 vols (Banco de Portugal, Lisbon 1993; new edition, Series of Portuguese Economic Classics, edited with an introduction by A. Dinis Silva). 2 V. Alcalá Galiano ‘Sobre la necesidad y justicia de los tributos, fondos de donde deben sacrse y medios para recaudarlos’, in Actas y Memorias de la Real Sociedad de los Amigos del País de la Provincia de Segovia (Segovia 1793).



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one Spaniard had fully understood Smith’s exposition in Book V of Wealth of Nations. Presenting almost a strict paraphrase of Smith’s criteria for an efficient and just tax system, Alcalá Galiano goes further and even anticipates Ricardo in his analysis of why taxes on the income of landowners are to be preferred above all others. The work of the engineer Ramon Campos, ‘The economy reduced to clear and simple principles’,1 reads like a summary of Wealth of Nations, appearing to be a précis of the text, noted down from a reading of Smith’s book. The structure and the subdivisions in the text closely correspond to the organisation of Wealth of Nations: Part I, Value and Distribution; Part II, Capital and Growth; Part III, Public Expenditure and Income. Campos shows that he has broadly understood Smith’s theories and policy recommendations, although the finer distinctions are lost. Curiously, however, and yet another example of how difficult it is to appreciate the exact context of an innovatory scientific work, he remarks on the eminence which Smith had achieved: ‘Smith became immortal because of the lucidity with which he brought before us those subjects previously written by Steuart.’2 Gaspar Melchior de Jovellanos, who claimed to have read Wealth of Nations right through on three occasions, showed no interest in the theoretical contributions of Smith, but sought to use his teachings in support of an agrarian reform plan. A lawyer by training and future Minister of Justice (1797–8), the Smith of Jovellanos is he who offers advice on ‘the science of a statesman or legislator.’ The agrarian reform proposed by Jovellanos is one to which Smith could have subscribed wholeheartedly: the abolition of all legal privileges granted to monopolistic groups such as the syndicate of sheep-raisers (the Mesta), and the revoking of the traditional obligatory land inheritance laws of entail, so as to create a freer market in agricultural property. Probably the best written of all Spanish economic works, the Report on Agrarian Reform by Jovellanos is also probably the most Smithian text in inspiration and expression of all those considered in this survey. Let the brief paragraph which follows serve as an example: In a word, Sir, the great and general principle of society comes down to one thing: that the only protection our laws should afford to agriculture should consist in the removal of those obstacles which limit the free interaction of the interests of individuals, within the framework of justice.3

As regards Spanish America, evidence of direct knowledge of Wealth of Nations is even more elusive and fragmentary than in the case of Spain, 1 Ramon Campos, La Economía Reducida a Princípios Exactos, Claros y Sencillos (B. Cano, Madrid 1797). 2 R. Campos, La Economía, Prologue. 3 Gaspar M. Jovellanos, Escritos Económicos (Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, Madrid 2000; new edition, Series of Spanish Economic Classics, edited with a preliminary study by Vicent Llombart), p. 200, par. 28.


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consisting largely of mentions of Smith’s name amongst lists of other economists. Thus, for instance, the founders of Chile’s National Institute recommend in 1817 the works of Genovesi, Say and Smith for the course in political economy, or an anonymous writer in a Santiago de Chile journal of 1819 puts forward the view that export duties on precious metals should be so light that it would not be worth the risk of confiscation to engage in contraband. Adam Smith, he says, ‘explains this doctrine very well.’1 As for the Portuguese colonial empire, in the early years of the ministerial career of Rodrigo de Souza Coutinho (1797–8), it is possible to find several statements in favour of a process for the reform and opening up of the economic administration of the Brazilian territory, even some comments that actually defend the superiority of the principles of free competition, largely grounded on the reading of Wealth of Nations. At this stage, however, there is never any praise for the merits of complete freedom in international trade. Accepting this principle would have meant the renunciation of an autonomous development strategy and would have subordinated the Portuguese economy to the distortions imposed by British economic power. Nevertheless, after 1808, both Rodrigo de Souza Coutinho and José da Silva Lisboa were to become the most committed supporters of the free-trade principles of ‘sound political economy’ expounded in Smith’s work. This change of attitude resulted from a crucial strategic option taken up under political and diplomatic circumstances where maintenance of political sovereignty required concessions and compromises. The opening of Brazilian ports in 1808 and the conclusion of the ‘Treaties of Commerce and Friendship’ between Portugal and England in 1810, themselves drawn up in the name of free trade, rewarded the English crown for its military assistance in the struggle against the Napoleonic invasion. As a result, Souza Coutinho was able to justify his pro-British stance and adopted these doctrinal principles in formulating new strategic guidelines for the development of the Portuguese economy. The same occurred with José da Silva Lisboa. However, their adherence to free-trade ideology can also be understood as the natural corollary of a process of doctrinal assimilation strongly influenced by their reading of Wealth of Nations. The adoption of liberal precepts at the level of overseas relationships was certainly influenced by a higher national interest related to the maintenance of political independence. But it was also the fruit of firm doctrinal conviction that now had an opportunity to express themselves. The liberal ideal of political economy had made a triumphant incursion into Brazilian territory. Hence Silva Lisboa, clearly thoroughly soaked in Smithian political economy, could defend the opening of Brazil to international trade and to flows of overseas capital and labour: 1 Robert S. Smith, ‘The Wealth of Nations in Spain and Latin America, 1780–1830’ Journal of Political Economy Vol. LXV (1957) remains the locus classicus for this and other references to Smith in Spanish America.



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Insofar as there is justice, that is, security of both people and property, freedom of rights, industry and trade, each nation and each individual will find the most productive employment of its labour and capital.1

Given this strong Brazilian interest in Smith’s work one can better understand why the first Portuguese translation of Wealth of Nations appeared during 1811–12 in Rio de Janeiro. This is a partial translation, with the omission of Book V and half of Books I and IV. The translator’s preface makes clear that Wealth of Nations was translated and studied as a doctrinal blueprint, to promote the liberalisation of economic relations between Portugal and her most important colony, fostering in this way the independent development of the Brazilian economy. Portuguese writers on economics for the period 1790–1810 did not consistently grasp the theoretical and analytical structures of mainstream lateeighteenth century European economic thought. Although statements about the importance of the study of political economy do appear in their works, they do not seem to have clearly perceived the importance of this new science in the understanding and explanantion of economic conditions. Like the majority of their Spanish counterparts, they saw political economy as an ancillary to the ‘art of ruling’. Hence the Portuguese assimilation of Smithian and physiocratic ideas was by and large conditioned by their perceived utility for the solution of particular practical problems. Thus, as in Spain, Portuguese writers used the principles of laissez-faire as an argument against the excessive role of the state in the economy and as a slogan in their efforts at the gradual programme of ancien régime institutions. These authors may have acknowledged their debt to the physiocrats or Adam Smith, but this clearly did not involve a general acceptance of the whole body of theories and ideas that rendered each of each of these coherent and distinctive. Like the writings of the physiocrats, Wealth of Nations only became influential in Portugal some considerable time after 1776. The few Portuguese texts written between 1792 and 1802 which contain scattered references to Wealth of Nations nearly always refer to the ideas of the division of labour and freedom in production and trade. As in the case of Spain, therefore, an increasing audience for laissez-faire doctrines was a strong incentive for the wider diffusion of the book. In short, Smith’s influence in Portugal was directly related to the degree of contemporary influence of laissez-faire ideas. A new phase in the assimilation of Smith’s work in Portugal begins in 1803 with the writings of Joaquim José Rodrigues de Brito, professor of law at the University of Coimbra and a writer fundamentally influenced by the French physiocrats. In the first volume of his Political Memoires,2 he devoted a whole 1

J. Lisboa, Escritos Económicos, Vol. I, p. 37. J. J. Rodrigues Brito, Memórias Políticas sobre as Verdadeiras Bases da Grandeza das Nações (1803-1805) (Banco de Portugal, Lisboa 1992; new edition, Series of Portuguese Economic Classics, edited with an introduction by J. Esteves Pereira). 2


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chapter to a refutation of Smith’s labour theory of value, proposing a subjectivist alternative theory based on ideas taken from the French tradition: he quotes as support for his thesis Condillac and Canard, for example. He follows this by advancing a competitive conception of market price, also however accepting Smith’s idea of a long-term natural equilibrium price, the result not of the selfadjusting spontaneous market mechanism, but of ‘wise government’ which ensures there is no long-term disequilibrium between supply and demand. Once again, scepticism about the efficiency of the unhindered workings of a competitive market economy resurfaces, asserting a need for government supervision and intervention common to so many Spanish and Portuguese writers on economic matters of the period. In 1804, a year after the first two volumes of Brito’s Memoires appeared, José da Silva Lisboa published a rejoinder to Brito’s critique of Smith in his Principles of Political Economy (Lisboa 1993). This initiated an economic debate of great importance between an eclectic supporter of physiocratic agrarianism and a wholehearted defender of Smithian liberalism. Silva Lisboa devoted more than a quarter of his book to an attack on Brito’s physiocratic view that the agricultural sector was the only true source of productivity, a statement of his version of Smith’s theory of value, and a defence of Smith’s dual price theory, in particular the idea that market forces guided the long-term ‘natural price’ towards equilibrium without the need for intervention by a ‘wise government.’1 In 1805 Brito published the third and final volume of his Memoires in which he reaffirmed his theses, especially those relating to the primary importance of agriculture as the unique source of wealth, and accused Smith of plagiary with respect to the physiocrats. Silva Lisboa wrote an appendix to his Principles the same year, with the significant subtitle Containing interesting discussions against the critique written by an apologist for rural philosophy. Lisboa’s position was that of a dogmatic Smithian individualist. Indeed, he described his feelings for the ideas contained in Wealth of Nations as being characterised by ‘passion and devotion’, noting Smith’s clear-cut support of economic freedom and his total opposition to any type of restraint upon individual action. Conclusion The direct influence of Adam Smith and Wealth of Nations in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking worlds was relatively short-lived, restricted to a small circle of enlightened statesmen and writers on economic issues in the last decades 1 As a Brazilian it was perhaps inevitable that Silva Lisboa should show open hostility to any doctrine such as physiocracy which gives preference to agriculture over manufactures and trade, for he believed that these doctrines would necessarily hinder the economic development of colonies such as Brazil.



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of the eighteenth century and the first two decades of the nineteenth century. Some of them expressed the greatest admiration for Smith, as in the case of the Portuguese translator of Smith’s essay Considerations concerning the first formation of languages,1 who praised the author of Wealth of Nations and of the Theory of Moral Sentiments for the clarity of his thought and for its utility in the education of a political elite. It is also true that some other readers of Smith were highly influential and were important figures in political and administrative life, such as Campomanes and Jovellanos in Spain, or Souza Coutinho and Silva Lisboa in Portugal. Notwithstanding the stature of such men, it is worth stressing that Wealth of Nations either circulated clandestinely (mostly in French translation) in the case of Spain, or later in the Spanish and Portuguese expurgated translation. Neither form appears to have had a very great or lasting impact. Alonso Ortiz’s 1805 Spanish translation was not republished until 1933, and Bento da Silva Lisboa’s translation of 1811–12 into Portuguese remained virtually unknown outside Brazil. Rapidly forgotten then in Portugal, and superseded in both Iberian countries by the more accessible, less complex texts of Jean-Baptiste Say, the Smith that survives into the mid-nineteenth century is a disembodied name in the pantheon of the champions of free-trade and laissez faire.

1 This essay, originally published in 1761, when it was entitled ‘Considerations concerning the first formation of languages’, was later to be inserted as an appendix to the 3rd edition of Theory of Moral Sentiments (1767), with the new title ‘A dissertation upon the origin of languages’, the same title that Smith himself gives to his essay (see Smith, Correspondence, letter 100). This surprising and rare Portuguese translation of 1816 was conceived as a part of a larger programme addressed to an educated elite.


Translations of Adam Smith’s Works in Japan Hiroshi Mizuta

Prehistory The Tokugawa Shogunate government deliberately isolated the Japanese nation from Western culture from around 1639 to 1854. A Christian monotheism which presupposed the equality of human beings before one God was thought dangerous to official political doctrine, that of the Chu sect of Confucianism, which understood the structure of society through an analogy with that of the family – that is to say, in terms of domination and subordination. This hierarchical ethic hinders Japanese understanding of Western moral philosophy, including that of Adam Smith, which is founded upon mutuality. Even after opening up to the West the Japanese were taught in government-issued textbooks about the evils and dangers of individualism. During the isolationist period, Dutch merchants were allowed to trade with the Japanese people resident in Nagasaki and its vicinity since the traders were more interested in profit than religion. Some branches of Western sciences were imported through them and called ‘Dutch Studies.’ However, both the Shogunate government and the feudal lords were interested exclusively in medicine and military sciences, not in social sciences. Adam Smith might have been known by name by any Japanese readers of the following Dutch books: Nederlandsch Handelsmagazijn of Algemeen Zamenvattend Woord en bock voor Handel en Nijverheid (A General Dictionary of Commerce and Industry), 1843, and E. W. De Rooy’s Geschiedenis der Staathuishoudkunde in Europa van Vroegste Tijden tot Heden (A History of the Ideas of State Householding in Europe from the Earliest Times to Today), 1851. A.Sandelin’s Répértoire Générale d’Economie Politique Ancienne et Moderne, 1846, was also imported, but the readership was much more limited than that of Dutch books. The case must be the same with Max Stirner’s German translation of the Wealth of Nations (Untersuchungen über das Wesen und die Ursachen des Nationalreichthums, 1846) which was brought to Japan by P. F. J. von Siebold when he made his second visit to Nagasaki in 1859. The first systematic knowledge of Western social sciences came from private lectures by Simon Vissering of Leiden between 1863 and 1865. Two young Japanese students were sent to the Netherlands as junior members of a naval


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mission with strict orders that they should not change their religion or their dress. It is not known whether Vissering referred them to Adam Smith or not, though he mentioned Smith several times in his book, Handboek van Praktische Staathuishoudkunde (Handbook of Practical State Householding). The two students, Nishi and Tsuda, played an important part in the Japanese Enlightenment called ‘Liberty and Rights of People Movement’ during the Meiji Restoration. On the other hand, the name of Adam Smith was carried into Japan by the tide of the Pacific Ocean. During skirmishes between the Shogunate and Imperial armies north of Tokyo in 1868, another future leader of the Enlightenment, Yukichi Fukuzawa, was giving lectures on political economy in the private school which was later to become Keio University. His textbook was Francis Wayland’s The Elements of Political Economy, which he had brought back home from America. With his students he also studied Wayland’s Elements of Moral Science, where they could have found a substitute for the feudal and Confucian ethics with which they were familiar. Fukuzawa wrote that reading Wayland was such an exciting experience for him and his students that they forgot to eat and sleep. They did learn some introductory economics, but in spite of their excitement it is doubtful whether they found in Wayland a new ethics. Fukuzawa relied in one of his earliest books1 on the economic analysis of John Hill Burton’s anonymous work, Chamber’s Educational Course: Political Economy for use in Schools, and for Private Instruction (1852). It was quite natural that the Scottish biographer of Hume should mention the Wealth of Nations as the first book on political economy, although he did not name its author. From the later 1860s several Western books on political economy were imported and translated. McCulloch’s 1863 edition of the Wealth of Nations was acquired by the library of the Shogunate Institute for Enlightenment (Kaiseisho) before 1868. The works of Nassau Senior, Joseph Garnier and some others economists were also purchased by the library at about the same time. There was another great difficulty in transplanting of the Western learning into the untrodden land of Asia. As Christian Garve confessed in his translation of the Wealth of Nations, he had to work hard to find German words that properly corresponded with Smith’s English terminology. In less developed countries translators had to invent new words to express facts and ideas that were still quite unfamiliar in their language. Japanese words to express ‘political economy’, ‘philosophy’, ‘reason’ and the like were invented at this time. Chinese translators had the same problem, and there were some imports and exports of these neologisms in the Chinese characters that were shared by both cultures. Sometimes translators failed to understand the meaning of the original words. A typical example is found in the first Japanese translation of J. S. 1

Seiyo Jijo (Conditions in the West) published in 1866–9.


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Mill’s On Liberty, published in Tokyo in 1871. The translator could not find a proper Japanese word to express ‘society’ and chose to translate it as ‘government (seifu)’ or ‘village elders (nakama-renju)’, completly distorting Mill’s meaning in referring to the ‘tyranny of the majority’. But ironically enough, thanks to this distortion the translation played an important part as a textbook for the Liberty and People’s Rights Movement against the semi-feudal government. Early Translations The first translation of Wealth of Nations was begun by Eisaku Ishikawa (1858– 87), and after his early death completed by Shosaku Saga (1853–90). The first part of the translation, including Book I Chapters 1 to 7, was published in the bulletins of the Tokyo Society for the Study of Political Economy between February and December 1883. The remainder was published in twelve instalments by the same society from December 1883 to April 1888. The bulletin and the Smith instalments were published by subscription, and there were said to have been more than one thousand subscribers during the summer of the initial year. Three properly bound volumes were published as the instalments appeared, in 1884, 1885, and 1888. The translation was made from the 1812 reprint published by Murray in 1870, which K. Okochi was able to confirm in his 1993 reprint of the edition. Ishikawa was a son of a local distiller. After studying at Fukuzawa’s private school he entered the banking section of the new government’s exchequer, an organisation which was sorely in need of young recruits trained in the Western way of business. In 1882 he joined the Tokyo Society, and, young as he was, he devoted himself to the movement to purge Japanese society of its feudal remnants. Among other things he led a movement to modernise women’s hair style so that they might be more convenient for work. He was also one of the founders of the Meiji Women’s High School; but overwork and tuberculosis killed him at the age of 28. His translation of the Wealth of Nations was continued by his colleague Shosaku (or Seisaku) Saga (1853–90), picking up from the later part of Book IV, Ch. 7 Part 3 and concluding the work. In 1889 Saga also translated A. Mongredian’s History of the Free Trade Movement (1881). The society to which Ishikawa and Saga belonged was sponsored by Ukichi Taguchi (1855– 1905), a die hard free-trader. Needless to say the translation of the Wealth of Nations, especially of Book IV, was intended as a strong ideological statement of free-trade conceptions. However, it was inevitable that in a late-comer country like Japan that the protectionist ideas of Friedrich List, H. C. Carey, and R. E. Thompson became more popular than those of Smith. German thought had become predominant in Japan even before the translation of the Wealth of Nations. Influenced by the victory of Germany in the Franco-Prussian war, the Japanese government resolved to follow the German



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model in constructing a new imperial state. Herman Roesler was invited to become an adviser, especially on constitutional law. He had written the first academic review of Marx’s Capital and was also the author of Ueber die Grundlehren der von Adam Smith begrundeten Volkswirthschaftstheorie (1868). He supported the establishment of the Society for German Studies, and repeatedly expressed his hostility to both socialism and liberalism. He argued that the ideas of English liberals, including those of Adam Smith, were not suitable for the Japanese. Despite Roesler’s hostility to Smith and political economy, no Japanese scholars sought to deny the importance of Adam Smith’s position as the founder of political economy. Wealth of Nations continued to be one of the most popular economic classics and was translated several times after the first version which Ishikawa and Saga completed. Although Smith himself thought the Theory of Moral Sentiments to be a better book than Wealth of Nations, his first book was during this early period only introduced through the publication of a fragment, and none of his other writings were translated. In 1891, Tamotsu Shibue translated a paragraph from Theory of Moral Sentiments1 as an appendix to the July issue of the monthly journal Nihon Taika Ronshu (Great Writers of Japan). Smith began the paragraph as follows: The great source of both the misery and the disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another.

Shibue ended his translation short of the end of the paragraph, omitting the section beginning ‘Examine the records of history’. He gave his translation the title ‘The equality of human fortunes’, and commented that Smith taught here the importance of resignation to given circumstances. Later in the 1920s, during the period of the so-called Taisho Democracy, we find several references to Theory of Moral Sentiments, but none of them connected it to Wealth of Nations except as a corrective to the supposed conception of self-interest underlying that work. The Interwar Period Kenji Takeuchi started the second full translation of the Wealth of Nations in October 1919. He had graduated from Tokyo Imperial Universiy in 1918 and entered the Ohara Research Institute for Social Problems, an institution founded by an enlightened capitalist. The first volume, containing Books I and II, was published by Yuhikaku Publishing Company the following year. He later confessed that he had worked so hard that by the time he finished the 1 A. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments ed. D. D. Raphael, A. L. Macfie (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1976), Part III, Ch. 3 para 31, pp. 149–50.


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translation at the age of 25 he had lost all sexual desire. This might also have been related to the fact that the Institute ran short of funds in the post-war depression and he continued his translation while working in a steel mill in the north. The second volume, covering Books III and IV, and the final volume, which included Book V, were published in 1922 and 1923 respectively. Takeuchi was then in 1923 appointed to a chair at Kyushu Imperial University. The third volume was published on 10 August, but three weeks later, on 1 September, there was a great earthquake in Tokyo and its surrounding area. 91,802 were killed and nearly all of the centre of Tokyo was destroyed by fire. Everything related to the translation was reduced to ashes. The first volume of a revised edition was then published in 1924, but the flood of cheap editions after the First World War prevented the publishers from publishing properly bound books. From 1930 to 1933, three volumes of the revised translation were published in the cheap edition of the Kaizo Library. It was then twice revised after the Second World War. The final, fifth revised edition was published in 1959 and 1960. Michie and Mitsuo Takashima, of Chuo and Yokohama National Universities respectively, revised the work. Reviewing the first translation, Seiichiro Takahashi, professor at Keio University, noted that its style was not elegant. In 1926 Iwanami Publishing Company initiated the new series ‘Classical Political Economy’ (Keizaigaku Koten Sosho) with the first part of a translation of the Wealth of Nations by Kanju Kiga (1873–1944), who was professor at Keio University. This was followed by the works of Say, Senior, Malthus and Ricardo and translated by Kiga’s colleagues, but the continuation of Wealth of Nations did not materialise. In 1927 this incomplete version was republished in the Iwanami Library cheap pocket edition, but the translation was never completed. Discontinuation might have been caused partly by the competing translation published by Takeuchi, and in part by the older literary style of the translator, a style quite different from the vernacular. In 1926 Takeuchi published a book entitled Adam Smith Studies (Adamu Sumisu Kenkyu) which included Part 2 ‘Of Police’ from Cannan’s edition of the Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms. Takeuchi prefaced the translation with a long essay in which he tried to explain the unity of Smith’s thought. In 1949 this was republished in a different imprint but without substantial change, and reprinted again in 1961. The flood of cheap editions that Takeuchi complained about did have a byproduct in the form of a new translation of the Wealth of Nations. From 1927– 31, Shunju Publishing Company published The collection Sekai Daishiso Zenshu (the Great Thoughts of the World) in 55 volumes. It was partly a project designed to give work to unemployed intellectuals during the great depression. The Wealth of Nations was translated by Suekichi Aono (1890–1961) in two volumes in 1928–9. Aono was a son of a failing landlord and distiller in the rice-producing area. As a Marxist literary critic he emphasised proletarian class consciousness in literary work; he was also for a time a member of the illegal



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Communist Party and narrowly escaped arrest. His translation of Smith was based on the ninth edition of the original, with some selected notes from Cannan’s edition. His style was perhaps more readable than Takeuchi’s, but Takeuchi’s edition had the advantage of being in a cheaper pocket edition. Early in the morning on 1st February 1938 Hyoe Ouchi, Regius Professor of Public Finance at the Imperial University of Tokyo, was arrested as leader of the Professors’ group of the so-called Popular Front. The group included Hiromi Arisawa (who would after the war become important in the formation of Japanese economic policy) and also Ryokichi Minobe, who likewise after the war was to become a metropolitan governor. They both belonged to the RoNo (Labourer and Peasant) school in the ‘Japanese Capitalism Debate’ of the early 1930s. They contended that Japanese capitalism had become quite developed, and that the height of rural rent was caused by competition among peasants. The other school was called Koza (lectures) school since they expressed their views in a series of lectures entitled Nihon Shihonshugi Hattatsushi Koza (Lectures on the Development of Japanese Capitalism) published by Iwanami during 1932–3. According to them, the fundamental character of Japanese capitalism was feudal, exemplified by the height of rents enforced by feudal and other non-economic powers exercised by landlords. One of the leading members of the school was Eitaro Noro (1900–34), a member of the illegal Communist Party who was tortured to death in a police station. The school as a whole was loyal to the Theses on the Situation in Japan and the Task of the Communist Party which was issued by the Communist International in 1932. The theses defined Japanese society as feudal or semi-feudal, awaiting ‘a bourgeois-democratic revolution that would rapidly develop into a socialist revolution.’ Because it believed that a bourgeois revolution was necessary before socialism could be established, the school even attracted non-Marxist democrats. It was for this reason that the work of Adam Smith continued to be studied during the period of political repression. Although it was said that Ouchi started the translation in prison, the draft was among those papers lost by the prison authority. When he was freed by the Court of Appeal on 7 July 1939, he was asked by Iwanami Publishing Company to translate the Wealth of Nations for their pocket edition Iwanami Library. Later he said that he translated it simply to eat while unemployed. His translation, assisted by Sumi and Kinji Minami, was published in five volumes from 1940 to 1944. Ouchi’s son, Tsutomu, helped him by comparing his draft with Stirner’s German translation.1 Kinji Minami (1904–43) was a professor of Hosei University in Tokyo and was among those professors arrested together with Ouchi. He had planned to translate the Theory of Moral Sentiments but his ill treatment at the hands of the police damaged his health, and he was not able to continue with the project; he 1 Later, Ouchi’s translation was revised in collaboration with Shichiro Matsukawa and appeared under a different title in the same pocket library edition.


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died before being pronounced not guilty. His friend Yonebayashi took up and completed the translation after the war. Smith Publication during The Second World War In 1940 Zenya Takashima (1904–90) published the first Japanese excerpt from William Ashley’s abbreviated edition of the Wealth of Nations. Only the first half of the text was covered, up to Book III, Ch. 1 , 230 pages; later in 1955 he enlarged it. In March 1941 Takashima published his first book Keizaishakaigagu no Konponmonda – Keizaishakaigakusha toshiteno Sumisu to Risuto1 which contained the first attempt by Japanese Adam Smith scholarship to identify Smith’s system of thought as a trinity of Moral Philosophy, Jurisprudence, and Political Economy. In 1943 Kazuo Okoch published Sumisu to Risuto – Keizai Rinri to Keizai Riron2 in which he read Theory of Moral Sentiments from the point of view of the Wealth of Nations. The first part of the book began to appear in the faculty journal simultaneously with Takashima’s book. Takashima was then professor at Tokyo University of Commerce (later Hitotsubashi University) while Okochi was at Tokyo Imperial University. In 1933 Takashima had been arrested as a sympathiser of the Communist Party. He taught on the introductory course at Tokyo, and also translated Marx’s Theories of Surplus Value; his translation was later seized and lost. Okochi also had a narrow escape. Nonetheless, their two books laid the foundation for post-war Smith studies in Japan. The Pacific War began on 8th December 1941. From that time almost no English books were imported, although there was one exceptional case when Hicks’s Value and Capital was bought in occupied Singapore by an army cadet fresh from the Faculty of Economics of Tokyo Imperial University. A pirate reprint of the Modern Library edition appeared in about 1948 on coarse paper and without any publication data. The first full translation of Cannan’s edition of the Lectures on Justice, Police and Arms appeared under the title Seiji Keizai Kokubo Kogian (Notes for Lectures on Politics, Economics, National Defence), edited by Shin-ichi Kashihara and published in Kyoto during the autumn of 1943. The words ‘National Defence’ might have helped the publishers obtain an allocation of paper in wartime. Unfortunately, a few days earlier, on 2 October, it was decided that all the students of social sciences and humanities should be mobilised directly for the war. To make the situation worse the translation was published in Kyoto when the railways were being paralysed by bombing, and distribution was inevitably very limited. The translator was from the Faculty of Letters at the Imperial 1 2

The Fundamental Problem of Economic Sociology – Smith and List as Economic Sociologists. Smith and List – Economic Ethics and Economic Theory.



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University of Kyoto, and was later professor at the Koyasan Buddhist college located south of Kyoto. A second full translation of the Lectures was completed during 1940–1 by three students of the Tokyo University of Commerce, including the present writer, under the supervision of Zenya Takashima. Although the draft was ready for publication in 1942, wartime control of materials did not allow us to proceed. After the war, the draft was revised and published in 1947 by Zenya Takashima and Hiroshi Mizuta. An introductory essay of 32 pages was written by Mizuta under the supervision of Taskashima. Post-war Editions The ‘Early Draft’ was translated by Yasujiro Daido (1904–87), professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, under the title of Kokufuron no Soko sonota (The Draft of the Wealth of Nations and others) and published in Osaka in June 1948. Following the substantial translator’s essay the main part of the translation was based on the appendix to W. R. Scott’s 1937 Adam Smith as Student and Professor, with some notes added by the translator. Smith’s contributions to the Edinburgh Review were translated from the fifth volume of the Works published in 1811–12 together with another essay by the translator. A second translation of the ‘Early Draft’ was completed by myself, Hiroshi Mizuta (1919– ), and published in Tokyo in a pocket book series called Sekai Koten Bunko (World Classics) in November 1948. It was possible to remove some of the errors that had been made in the earlier Daido translation A translation of Theory of Moral Sentiments was finally published in Tokyo in two volumes between November 1948 and April 1949. The translator, Tomio Yonebayashi, seems to have graduated in about 1928 from the Department of Sociology of Tokyo Imperial University. He began the translation using Bohn’s Library edition, that is to say by the sixth edition of the original. But as all the draft translation was lost, together with the text, in the bombing, he had to start again using Murray’s edition. He also made use of Eckstein’s German translation, to the extent that in some places he translated from German into Japanese. Even after the publication of a translation of the Glasgow variorum translation, this version is still useful as a translation of the sixth edition, and it is available in a new imprint. In 1949 the first few chapters of Wealth of Nations were independently translated by Seiichi Kato and Tsuneo Hori (1896–1981). Kato’s translation covers the first seven chapters only, and is based on Ashley’s abridged edition. Miyakawa’s introductory essay described Smith simply as a forerunner of Karl Marx with respect to the labour theory of value – perhaps this was one of the reasons why the translation was never reprinted. This was a bilingual edition, perhaps as a textbook for English. Both Kato and Miyakawa were teachers of Rikkyo


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(Saint Paul’s) University in Tokyo; Miyakawa was a famous translator of Marx’s works, including Das Kapital. Hori’s translation was based on the fifth edition of the original and annotated by the translator together with Yasujiro Daido (1902–85), both were professors at Kwansai-Gakuin University. Their original plan for a full translation in five volumes was not completed; they only completed one volume, including the first ten chapters. Ouchi’s translation of Wealth of Nations was completely revised by Shichiro Matsukawa (1906–80), strictly following Cannan’s edition. It was first published in four volumes in a pocket edition as one of Iwanami Library in 1959. In his new preface Ouchi made it clear that his name as a co-translator was nominal, and that the work was entirely done by Matsukawa. When a revised edition was published as two volumes cloth-bound in 1969, Ouchi’s preface disappeared, though his name and his rewritten postscript essay remained. In this latter edition Matsukawa used the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) for the first time in the history of Japanese translations of Adam Smith. For example, the word ‘equipage’ was translated as stated in OED, with a quotation from the Wealth of Nations. Hitherto it had been translated as ‘a set of carriages’ or simply omitted. Matsukawa was professor at the Institute for Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo. In both editions of the Ouchi-Matsukawa translations the title changed from Kokufuron to Shokokumin no Tomi to place emphasis on the plural form of ‘nation.’ In 1976 an anthology was published by Heibonsha, selected and translated with an introduction by Chuhei Sugiyama (1921–99). As the Glasgow edition was not then available, the selection was made from several convenient editions: the Theory of Moral Sentiments from a New York reprint of Bohn’s edition, the Wealth of Nations from the Modern Library edition, the Lectures on Jurisprudence from Cannan’s edition, and the Lectures on Rhetoric and Bellers Lettres from Lothian’s edition. A variorum translation based on the first edition of Wealth of Nations was published by Hiroshi Mizuta as Volumes 14 and 15 of a collection entitled Sekai no Daishiso (Great Thoughts of the World) in 1965, assisted by Masao Hamabayashi, Takuya Hatori and others. In the second edition of 1974, in the same collection but in paperback, the translator revised the whole and took sole responsibility for whole the edition. The first attempt to translate from the first edition was made in 1961 as a volume in Sekai Daishiso Zenshu (Collection of Great Thoughts of the World) but it contained only Books 1–3 without the digression. On the eve of the Second World War, Roy Pascal had criticised the reactionary character of German historicism in contrast with the Scottish Historical School of the eighteenth century. His essay was included in the second, 1963 edition of this partial translation. The translation was extended to cover, though not fully, the fifth book of the original in a volume entitled Igirisu no Kin dai Keizai Shiso (Modern British Economic Thought) edited by Mizuta in 1964.



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A variorum translation of Theory of Moral Sentiments was published in 1976, based on the first edition unlike the Glasgow edition which was based on the sixth edition. Yoshie Funahashi, who was a post graduate student of Nagoya University and later professor at Hiroshima University, assisted the translator with editorial notes . The eighth translation of Wealth of Nations was based on Cannan’s edition, that is to say the fifth edition of the original, but all the marginal- and footnotes and the indexes were replaced by the translators. The translation was completed by Yoshiro Tamanoi, Akio Okochi, Kazuo Okochi, Kyoji Tazoe, and supervised by Kazuo Okochi. A short history of Japanese translation of the Wealth of Nations by Kazuo Okochi and a chronology of the life of Smith by Kyo were appended. Kazuo Okochi (1905–84) was then professor emeritus of Tokyo University and President of the Adam Smith Society (Japan). He was the author of Sumisu to Risuto (Smith and List, 1943) which marked the starting point of the new Adam Smith scholarship together with Zenya Takashima’s book mentioned above. Essays on Philosophical Subjects was intially translated from the first edition of the original by Chikakazu Tadakoshi, Hisashi Shinohara, Yoshiaki Sudo and Koko Fujie, professors of Yokohama City University, Kwansei Gakuin University, Keio University and Toho Gakuen University respectively, and supervised by Hiroshi Mizuta. Mizuta’s translation of the letter to the Edinburgh Review and Sudo’s translation of the review of Johnson’s Dictionary and the preface and dedication to Hamilton’s poems were appended. Mizuta published in 1975 a reprint of the letter to the Edinburgh Review as No. 55 of Economic Research, a journal of the Faculty of Economics, Nagoya University. A second translation followed, based on the Glasgow edition but without editors’ introductions and notes. ‘Of affinity between certain English and Italian verses’ was omitted, and Hume’s ‘The Sceptic’ was added with the translator’s preface. The translator was a postgraduate student at Tokyo University and was to become professor at Toyama International University. The translation was entitled Tetsugaku, Gijütsu, Sozoryoku (Philosophy, Technology, Imagination) with a subtitle Tetsügaku Ron bunsh u (Philosophical essays). The ninth complete translation of Wealth of Nations was drafted by Chuhei Sugiyama, but serious illness made it impossible for him to complete the work. The draft was subsequently revised, and annotated and indexed by Hiroshi Mizuta. Bibliographical references to Smith’s own library were also made by the item numbers of Adam Smith’s Library; A catalogue (edited with an introduction and notes by Hiroshi Mizuta, OUP, 2000). This new edition was published in four volumes from May 2000 to October 2001. A revised edition of the first volume was published in April 2002.


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Epilogue Since 1884, the Wealth of Nations has been translated nine times in Japan. First it was translated by two young students who fought desperately to modernise Japanese society. It was read and studied even when Western liberal thought was believed to be dangerous, encompassing Marxism and communism. Sometimes it was read as a substitute text for the Marxian labour theory of value. Sometimes, especially when Smith’s other magnum opus was taken into consideration, it was read as a picture of Western democratic society, of ‘civil society.’ However strange it may seem to Western readers, Adam Smith Studies in Japan after the Great War were more or less influenced by the Comintern’s ‘Theses on the situation in Japan.’ Laying emphasis on the necessity of a bourgeois democratic revolution before a socialist revolution, it attracted many democrats, including those who were interested in Adam Smith and other thinkers of the Western Enlightenment. Even after the Second World War, some Adam Smith scholars, including the present writer, are of the opinion that Japan’s bourgeois democratic revolution has not yet finished.


Adam Smith in China Zhu Shaowen

2001 was the centenary of the publication of the first Chinese edition of Wealth of Nations (under the Chinese title Yuan Fu, or The Origin of Wealth), translated by Yan Fu, an outstanding representative of China’s Enlightenment. Yan Fu’s contribution was commemorated during the Annual Meeting of Chinese Economists at The Research Center of Chinese Economy, Beijing University, where the importance of Wealth of Nations for China’s transformation to a market economy was emphasised. It was certainly gratifying that the meeting was organised by young Chinese economists; when I presided over the session, I stressed how important to China’s modernisation that this important work of the European Enlightenment was, reminding those attending of the importance of discriminating between Smith’s economic liberalism and modern New Classical economic liberalism. Two new translations of Wealth of Nations were published at around the same time. One was translated by Professor Xie Zong-lin and Li Hua-xia and appeared in June 2000; this edition was clearly critical of the former Chinese version of Wealth of Nations. The other was translated by Professor Yang Jingnian in Nankai University, and published in January 2001. Professor Yang’s aim was to ‘show the book’s impact upon world history’, and he added Schumpeter’s introduction to Wealth of Nations from his History of Economic Analysis. Thus it can be seen that after one hundred years ‘Adam Smith in China’ is again in the ascendant. With the development of China’s market economy and the intensification of the contradictions in modem New Classical economic liberalism, I believe that Smith’s social philosophy and political economy will have a great impact upon China’s modernisation. The Spread of Wealth of Nations in China Yan Fu (1853–1921), the first and the most outstanding representative of those who introduced Western Enlightenment thought into China, was Wealth of Nations’ first Chinese translator. He entered a naval school in his early teens to study Western naval technology, and at the age of 25 he was sent to study in


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England, where he became acquainted with English society and the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers and their successors, such as Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Charles Darwin and T. H. Huxley. China’s humiliating defeat by Japan in 1895 forced the corrupt Qing court to surrender territory and pay indemnities. This prompted Chinese intellectuals to initiate a modernisation movement for reform and national revival. Chen The (? –1899), the writer of Xu Eu Guo Ce (Supplement to Ways to Enrich a Country), established Qiang Xue Hui (Associations for National Strength) to conduct the reform. Yan Fu was himself an advocate of Darwinistic conceptions of ‘natural selection’, ‘survival of the fittest’ and ‘struggle for existence’. To aid China and render it prosperous and strong he set about translating works of the representative thinkers from the West.1 The first work that he translated was Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics (the 1891 edition), which was published in China by the Commercial Press in 1898. The book made a powerful impact on Chinese intellectuals and greatly helped them in their efforts towards modernisation through reform. Many outstanding Chinese Scholars were influenced by the books translated by Yan Fu, including Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Hu Shi, Cai Yuanpei, Lu Xun and even Mao Zedong. Yan Fu began work on his translation of the Wealth of Nations in 1897. The name of Adam Smith and his Wealth of Nations was already known in China. In 1862 the Qing court established the Translation School, in which economics was taught. The first economic writing introduced from the West to China was Millicent Fawcett’s Political Economy for Beginners.2 The Chinese translation of the work, titled Fu Guo Ce (Ways to Enrich a Country), was published in 1880 by the Shanghai Meihua Press. Four years later, it was retranslated under the pseudonym Tong Cheng Zhai Ren, although the translator was under the impression that this work was Smith’s Wealth of Nations, which he had read about. In 1885, the General Tax Authority of China published Xi Xue Lue Shu (A General Summary of Western Science), translated from an obscure English work. Smith’s work was outlined in Chapter VIII of this book. During the Qianlong period (1736–1796) of the Qing Dynasty, Adam Smith, a professor of the University of Glasgow, wrote a book in which discussed the origin of the wealth of nations. The book was highly praised by the people of the time. In general, many people thought that the origin of wealth lay in the amassing of money or in cultivating more land, both of which were denied by Smith. In his opinion, the origin of wealth was the division of labour. He said that if in a 1 Yan Fu translated the following books: T. H. Huxley, Evolution and Ethics, 1891 (Chinese version 1898); A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776 (Chinese version 1901–2); H. Spencer, The Study of Sociology, 1873 (Chinese version 1903); J. S. Mill, On Liberty, 1859 (Chinese version 1903); E. Jenks, A History of Politics, 1900 (Chinese version 1903); Montesquieu, L’ esprit des Lois, 1743 (Chinese version 1904–9); J. S. Mill, A System of Logic, 1843 (Chinese version 1905); W. S. Jevons, Logic (Chinese version 1909). 2 Macmillan, London 1870.


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country the people were industrious enough, then the country would be wealthy naturally.1

One year later, the General Tax Authority published a translation of W. S. Jevons’s Political Economy, an outline that had appeared in Huxley’s ‘Science Primers’ series. The Chinese title was Fu Guo Yang Min Ce (Ways to Enrich a Country and Its People). The book also introduced Smith’s economic theory, such as in Chapter 4, Section 26, ‘Adam Smith’s Theory of the Division of Labour’, and Section 45, ‘Adam Smith’s Wages Theory’. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, more and more books mentioned Adam Smith and his Wealth of Nations. In 1894, Richard Timothy, a British missionary working in China, assembled a Chinese summary under the title Tai Xi Jin Bai Nian Da Shi Ji (Chronicles of the Last Century in the West), which was published in the Wan Guo Gong Bao (Review of the Time) in Shanghai. This book refers to Smith and his work many times. The title of Smith’s Wealth of Nations was rendered here into Chinese as Fu Guo Ce (Ways to Enrich a Country), which was the same as in the translation of Fawcett. Discussing the disadvantages of Britain’s mercantile system in Chapter IX of the Chinese survey, it notes that the publication of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith in 1776 helped reshape trade policy and facilitated the modernisation of British trade policy, contributing to rapid economic growth.2 Although the name of Adam Smith and the title of his book Wealth of Nations was known in China, much of what was known came from the oral accounts of missionaries, which were prone to be simplified, or which included a number of misunderstandings. By comparison Smith’s name was known in Japan before the Meiji Restoration. In 1863, Nishi Amane and Tsuda Mamichi were sent to study in the Netherlands by the Shogunate Government of Tokugawa, and they introduced E. W. De Rooy’s Geschiedenis der Staathuishoudkunde in Europa (1851) to Japan, a book in which Smith’s work was discussed.3 The earliest Japanese translation of Wealth of Nations was also twenty years earlier than Yan Fu’s Chinese translation, who used an everyday Japanese that was widely understood. When Yan Fu was sent to England in 1876 his principal area of study was naval technology. Because of aggression on the part of Western powers and the backward nature of the Qing Dynasty, he was concerned about his country’s future. Having seen the prosperity of England, he gave up natural science and concentrated on the study of social science. He read many works on social philosophy, logic, politics and economics, and these made a profound impact 1

Xi Xue Lue Shu (The General Tax Authority of China, 1885), Ch. VIII p. 56. Economics. A Greater Encyclopedia of China, Vol. III p. 1045; and the article by Ye Shichang in Economic Studies (July 1980). 3 See C. Sugiyama, ‘Nishi Amane and Tsuda Mamichi’, in C. Sugiyama, H. Mizuta, (eds) Enlightenment and Beyond. Political Economy comes to Japan (University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo 1988), Ch. 3. 2


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upon him. When he returned to China he embarked on the translation programme that we have already noted. The first time that he mentioned Adam Smith and Wealth of Nations was in Yuan Qiang (The Origin of Strength) published in 1895. He said that ‘the Chinese often feel puzzled at the West’s prosperity. Having seen the good management of their affairs, the Chinese always attribute this to the success of Adam Smith’s book, and assume that it is the West’s generally acknowledged truth’. Yan Fuhad both theoretical as well as practical ends in view when he translated Wealth of Nations. It took Yan Fu six years to complete the translation. The book was published by the Translation Department of the Shanghai Nanyang Public Academy in 1901–2 in eight volumes, printed lithographically and bound in the traditional Chinese style. In 1903, the Commercial Press took over the copyright and printed the book by stereotype. In 1929, the book appeared in nine volumes in a smaller format, and the next edition in 1930 was in three volumes. Yan Fu based his translation on Professor Rogers’s second 1880 edition of the book. The book contains a preface written by Yan Fu’s teacher Wu Rulun, Yan Fu’s Life of Adam Smith and the translator’s comments. Attached to the book are chronological tables, geographical and biographical notes specially prepared for the book by Zhang Jusheng and Zheng Yaxin, both scholars active during the last years of the Qing Dynasty. Yan Fu translated very conscientiously. For example, he used the Chinese term Ji Xue (a science dealing with people’s livelihood) for the English word economics. He considered Jing Ji (taking an active interest in public affairs), a term borrowed from Japan, too general and Li Cai (management for money matters), an old Chinese expression for economy, too narrow in sense to cover the meaning of the English word. He explained: ‘The book inquires into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations and discusses the principles of producing wealth, but does not concern itself with money management.’ In general, Ji Xue concerns Chinese wealth and poverty, and the prospects for prosperity or decline. Yan Fu added in his translation more than three hundred comments totalling some 60,000 characters. His translation was however intended not for the ordinary Chinese, but rather intended to rouse those wellversed in classical Chinese – in other words, for the literati and officialdom. Yan Fu wrote that ‘the classical style of Chinese writing is good for accurate and scientific analysis, while the vernacular style is not.’ Therefore, though Yan Fu advocated ‘truly, accurate and concise’ translation, he insisted on using classic style in his Yuan Fu. Commenting on Yan Fu’s translation in an article published in the Xin Min Cong Bao (Xin Min Gazette) in 1903, Liang Qichao (1873– 1929), a reformer and prolific writer, praised Yan Fu as ‘a man whose Chinese and Western learning is unparalleled in China.’ He added, ‘Yan Fu’s Chinese version of the book is perfect because the translator had spent years working on it and revised his translation several times before sending it to the press.’ However, Liang Qichao was dissatisfied with Yan Fu’s choice of the classical style of Chinese writing for his translation: ‘Yan Fu tried his utmost to make his style as


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classic and concise as possible. Thus this translation is comprehensible to only a small number of people who are versed in classical Chinese.’ Benjamin Schwartz in his book In Search of Wealth and Power – Yan Fu and the West, praised Yan Fu as the first Chinese scholar to study Western philosophy in any depth while keeping his country’s future in mind.1 After his Chinese versions of Evolution and Ethics and Wealth of Nations appeared, Yan Fu wrote to Zhang Yuanji, who was in charge of the Commercial Press, saying, ‘there are still several important Western works worth translating. But I am sure nobody will translate them in the next thirty years or so if I do not do so.’ Translation after the First Publication of Yuan Fu Yan Fu’s translation of Western works on social science and economic theory of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as Evolution and Ethics, and Wealth of Nations, had a very great impact upon on China’s own early twentieth century Enlightenment. The influence of Evolution and Ethics was more widespread and profound. Apart from the difficulties in reading Wealth of Nations, there were many unfavourable conditions, including colonial aggression and the backwardness of the economy. Nevertheless, being a classical work on modernisation, Smith’s thought still attracted the attention of China’s academic circles. The first to criticise Yan Fu’s translation was Liang Qichao. In 1903, he published his Shengji Xue Xueshuo Yange Xiao Shi (History of Economics), which was the first work to deal with the history of Western economic thought. Liang based his work on Japanese economic works, and the Chinese title ‘Xiao Shi’ also came from the Japanese. In his work, Liang pointed out the drawbacks of Yan Fu’s translation. He wrote: Although Yan Fu’s translation of The Wealth of Nations was published last year, few scholars can read it, and fewer scholars can understand it, which is rather regrettable. It would take me more than one hundred thousand words to summarise Smith’s book, and as an introduction to those who want to learn about Smith’s thought I wish to make such an introduction for those who want to read Yuan Fu.

Yan Fu used the Chinese Ji Xue for the English word economy, while Liang used the Chinese word Shengji Xue. In fact, Liang’s book was a straightforward history of the development of Western economic thought. He was also a pioneer of China’s Enlightenment, and his book was well-received by enlightened Chinese economists. Without Liang’s introduction of Smith’s thought in an easy, fluent Chinese, the Chinese influence of Wealth of Nations would be considerably less. 1 Benjamin L. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power. Yan Fu and the West (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1964).


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After Yuan Fu was published, the Qing Dynasty was overthrown in the 1911 Revolution, the founding of the Republic of China followed in 1912, and then there were years of fighting among warlords. During the following thirty years China was riven by feuding, external aggression and civil war. This made life in China very hard, but intellectual activity was not entirely suspended. Being a classic work about ‘wealth’ and ‘strength’, interest in Smith’s Wealth of Nations was maintained. For example, in 1923 the Eastern Journal, a prominent social science periodical, published a special issue celebrating the bicentenary of the borth of Smith. Another example was in 1936, marking the one hundred and sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Wealth of Nations, when a journal for the history of society and economy, Shi Huo (Commerce), also published a special edition to commemorate Yuan Fu. In October 1929, the Commercial Press in Shanghai published a ninevolume edition of the book. The book was also included in Wan You Wen Ku (The Complete Library), a very well-known Chinese book series. And since the language Yan Fu used in his translation of the book was difficult to read, a new translation under the Chinese title Guo Fu Lun (On the Wealth of Nations) was published in August 1931 by the Cathay Guoguang Press in Shanghai. The new translation which, like the previous version, was based on the 1880 Thorold Rogers edition, was co-authored by Guo Dali and Wang Ya’nan, economists famous for their joint translation of Capital. The new translation was an improvement on Yan Fu’s translation, not only in the understanding of English idiom, but also in the guidance it offered for learning and understanding classical economics among China’s academics. Unlike Yan Fu, who translated the book for the purpose of ‘saving China’ and making it prosperous and strong, Guo and Wang intended their translation of the book as preparation for their Chinese version of Capital. In his preface to the revised edition of Guo Fu Lun, Wang Ya’nan wrote: We found that there was no future in practicing capitalism in China after the 1917 socialist October Revolution in Russia. With a view to preparing our translation of Capital for the dissemination of Marxist political economy, we then drew up a plan for the translation of some classical works of bourgeois economics, including the Wealth of Nations. We will as a result be able to understand Capital better.

Unlike Yan Fu, they did not think the Wealth of Nations to be a classical work on national modernisation. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China was greatly influenced by the economic model and theories of the Soviet Union. During this period, Smith ‘s work was denounced as bourgeois ideology and subjected to criticism and rebuttal. It was only because Lenin had once written that classical economics was one of the three sources of Marxism that Wealth of Nations was allowed to continue in circulation, although treated as a sort of ancient document. In December 1962, Smith’s Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms delivered by Adam Smith (under the Chinese title Yadang Simi Guanyu


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Falv, Jingcha, Suiru Ji Junbei De Yanjiang) was first published in Chinese by the Commercial Press in Beijing. Adam Smith’s first book, Theory of Moral Sentiments, was published by the Commercial Press in Beijing in November 1997. The translators were four professors from Hangzhou University who for some reason unfortunately based their translation on an 1833 London edition. It might also be noted that a new two-volume translation of the Wealth of Nations was published in Taiwan in 1964 also under the Chinese title Guo Fu lun. The translation, based on Cannan’s edition, was completed by Zhou Xianwen and Zhang Hanyu. It includes neither Smith’s own footnotes nor those of Cannan. The translation was published by the Bank of Taiwan, and has since then republished at least eight times. Zhou Xianwen had also translated Smith’s Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms into Chinese as Zhengzhi Jingji Guofang Jiangyi, using the same title as the Japanese version of Sinichi Kashibana. While preparing their translation of the Wealth of Nations, both Zhou and Zhang used two Japanese versions of the book for reference. One was Ouchi’s translation, published in the Iwanami Library, and the other was Takeuchi’s. In Taiwan Smith’s economic thought is of course accepted as the theoretical basis of classical economics and it is not made a target of criticism and rebuttal. In August 1977 the Taiwan Commercial Press in Taipei republished Yan Fu’s translation in three volumes in its Ren Ren Wen Ku (Everyman’s Library) format. Later, in November 1981, a two-volume edition of Yan Fu’s translation was re-published by the Commercial Press in Beijing. It has been a century since Yuan Fu was first published in 1901–2, and many translations and exlanatory essays have been published. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that there has been a great deal of progress in scholarly research on the work of Smith. As to the biography of Adam Smith, as well as Yan Fu’s simple biographical essay of Smith in his translation, Yuan Fu, some brief accounts were published in the 1930s. In July 1983 the Beijing Commercial Press published a translation of John Rae’s Life of Adam Smith, together with a translations of Dugald Stewart’s ‘Account of the Life and Writing of Adam Smith’, taken from the 1880 George Bell edition. Finally, in June 1990 the Chinese Social Science Press of Beijing published D. D. Raphael’s Adam Smith, a translation of his short 1985 biography. Adam Smith in China Today Yan Fu’s translation was a pioneering effort in China’s Enlightenment, but while Evolution and Ethics aroused interest throughout the country, Wealth of Nations did not really ever come to play an important part in Chinese debates. It was always thought that this was because Yan Fu’s translation was too difficult, but even after the new translation by Guo and Wang, Smith’s political economy has still had little impact, and study of Smith’s complete system of social


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science, including social philosophy, politics, law and economics, has barely begun in China. I think that the reason for this is that political and cultural conditions in China have since the late nineteenth century been unsuited to an appraisal of Smith’s project. Although China established a unitary nation and government after 1949, the predominance of the Soviet model militated against any adequate understanding. While Marxist dogmatism was in vogue and historical materialism misrepresented, Smith’s Wealth of Nations survived merely as one of three origins of Marxism – along with German philosophy and French socialism. It was not until the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, convened in 1978, that China decided to initiate economic reforms. In 1992 the government decided to establish a Chinese socialist market economy aimed at modernising both economy and society. Today, serious study and understanding of Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments would be extremely important for China’s newlyemergent market economy. The reason that I stress ‘serious study and understanding’ of Wealth of Nations is that debate always stop short at theoretical discussion, and ignores the importance of China’s history and current circumstances. Yan Fu pointed out in his Jiu Wang Jue Lun (Discussions concerning National Salvation) that the objective was to ‘use the theory of the West to eliminate China’s actual social evils.’ When we study Smith’s Wealth of Nations, we should not quote it out of the context or be opinionated. For example, it is always said that Adam Smith was an economic who advocated laissez-faire policy, but of course the term laissez-faire is not used in Wealth of Nations. Moreover, Smith’s emphasis on ‘freedom’ concerned those who Marx termed ‘the people of eighteenth century.’ This was not ‘freedom’ for the ruling class to rig the market economy. Smith’s social philosophy and economics guide the transformation from feudal to a modern bourgeois society, and provide the weapons with which the bourgeoisie could fight against the remnants of this feudal society. Wealth of Nations is a classical work because it showed ‘the nature and causes of the wealth of nations’. For developing countries, it has special historical and practical significance. In closing, the following points can be made about the practical significance of Smith’s theory. First of all, what is the modern ‘wealth of nations’, and how does it increase? Gold, silver and jewellery are still thought of as ‘wealth’, and today cash and bonds are also thought as ‘wealth’. To increase such ‘wealth’, one might deposit money in a bank, or invest in stocks and shares. But a country cannot support its people or expand its production by bank deposits and the stock exchange. Adam Smith pointed out at the beginning of his book that a country’s wealth was the daily necessities and conveniences that the country produced. He said: The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which


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consist always, either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. According therefore, as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniences for which it has occasion. But this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances; first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied; and, secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed. Whatever be the soil, climate, or extent of territory of any particular nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must, in that particular situation, depend upon those two circumstances.1

Smith’s words are still watchwords for the survival and development of a modern economy. Secondly, the ‘rights’ and ‘economic freedom’ of the middle and lower classes should be guaranteed. Smith was the first advocate of economic liberalism. Smith’s freedom was for the ordinary citizen and worker. Ordinary workers have to possess the many moral characters of ‘economic man’, such as adherence to the rule of law, and the exercise of prudence and forethought in dealings with others. The government should guarantee their ‘rights‘ according to the constitution and laws. Yan Fu said in a note to Yuan Fu: ‘no free country has been found in which its people are not free, and no government can be an authoritative institution while its people do not enjoy freedom and democracy. If the people are denied freedom and democracy, the power of the government will be abused, resulting in great disasters. Therefore, it is the most stupid thing under heaven to deny people’s freedom and democracy.‘ Thirdly, Smith’s political economy argued that the pursuit of wealth and morality should be linked. Modern Western economics has sometimes suggested that competition in a market economy is a life-and-death struggle. The founder of political economy, Adam Smith, pointed out in his book two hundred years ago that people should obey the natural order of mankind’s life, and should not ride roughshod over undeveloped nations and peoples by economic methods. Smith also pointed out that the road to profit and the road to morality should be integrated. The economic behaviour of economic actors should be integrated with morality, accepting the supervision of laws and social justice. Morality was not an external factor of people’s behaviour, but was the code of human conduct. Yan Fu’s understanding of the relationship between self-interest and justice was penetrating. He stressed in his notes to Yuan Fu, ‘Although the ruled are concerned for their own interest, they will be at one with the ruler if he takes 1 A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 1 (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1976), p. 10.


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their real, long-term interests into full consideration’. He also wrote, ‘If selfinterest and justice are joined closely together, the people will be more than willing to do good works. Consequently, good order and fair government can be realised sooner than expected. This, perhaps, is the greatest feat the economist hopes to achieve.’ He went on: ‘…to make a country prosperous and strong is to benefit its people. First of all, the people should be allowed to pursue wealth for themselves. Their pursuit of democracy and freedom must necessarily go before their pursuit of wealth.‘ It is evident that Smith’s political economy still has great practical significance for today’s China.

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Notes to Bibliographies This bibliography is directed to all editions and translations of the writings of Adam Smith that have been published as books, together with biographies, catalogues and other related work. It specifically excludes individual selections from Smith’s writings included in general readers and collections, as well as commentary of all kinds, except that centred on Smith’s life and work. Some minor exceptions are made for important translations that first appeared in journals, or in collections where Smith’s work is very prominent; but for most purposes a collection or reader is understood here as a book which presents a selection of Smith’s writings. Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations have appeared, both in English and in translation, in complete editions, abbreviated versions, and selections – abbreviations typically presenting a summary of the work in whole or in part, a selection presenting verbatim parts of the book. Typically abbreviations appear under the name of the individual who made the abbreviation, while selections were usually published under the name of Adam Smith and only secondarily that of the editor. Since the contributors to this bibliography have in most case been able to physically examine a text, or, failing this, a microfilm, it is possible to discriminate reliably between complete texts, abbreviations and selections, and the relevant details are provided where appropriate. The entries are broadly descriptive and contain a limited amount of bibliographic information. The broad purpose of the full form of bibliographic description as elaborated by Bowers1 was to enable researchers reliably to identify individual texts through a systematic listing of physical features in the printed work. W. B. Todd, whose experience was so important to the establishment of a reliable text for the Glasgow edition of Wealth of Nations, applies this approach to his own bibliography of Edmund Burke,2 providing a reliable overview of Burke’s works from 1748 to the final issue of his collected works in 1827. Significantly, this chronology falls almost entirely within the handpress period, ceasing at the point where mechanical reproduction of printing plates themselves began to be more common in the issue and reissue of printed 1 F. T. Bowers, Principles of Bibliographic Description (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1949). 2 William B. Todd, A Bibliography of Edmund Burke (Rupert Hart-Davis, London 1964).


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books. Henceforth it is far more difficult to distinguish between printing variants and bibliographic description alone cannot entirely substitute for physical examination and comparison of the books themselves.1 The scope of this present bibliography is more extensive than that of Todd’s bibliography of Burke, encompassing all editions and translations of the writings of Adam Smith; but completeness would require extensive physical comparison not only of works in different libraries, but on different continents. This involves for the most part however only two books, whereas Todd identified 79 individual publications, inherently a much more varied publication history than that related to Smith. Secondly, although one might in principle be able to generate detailed bibliographic descriptions for all versions of Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations here recorded, this would require years of library research the utility of whose end result would certainly be quite incommensurate with the effort involved. David Foxon has raised a third point – that a division of labour between literary scholars on the one hand and pure bibliographers on the other is inherently undesirable, since a great deal of the work of modern bibliography implies a knowledge of texts normally the specialist province of literary scholars.2 Assuming, heroically, that a bibliographer can work on the texts for four years at a rate of fifty hours a week for fifty weeks of the year unhindered by any other constraint (such as travelling to libraries, other correspondence, and writing or reading other work), Foxon points out that the 10,000 hours that this hypothetically generates was in his case spread over fifteen years in the completion of English Verse, 1701–1750, and that even this calculation provides merely one hour from blank page to finished typescript for each entry that he completed.3 Since final arrangement and indexing of such a large scale work is so demanding, it would be more realistic to estimate forty five minutes per entry, during which time only a bare minimum of work could be done. If nothing else, Foxon’s hypothesis and projection highlight the way in which bibliographies devour research and writing effort. It can therefore be said, with some certainty, that this bibliography is incomplete; but this is because Theory of Moral Sentiments, and especially Wealth of Nations, have been published and reprinted so many times in scarcely distinguishable editions that exhaustive physical comparison is quite impractical, from both scholarly and financial considerations. Copyright libraries in Britain gave up on this problem by the later nineteenth century at least, as is clear from a comparison of holdings of the Shield Nicholson edition of Wealth of Nations. 1 For example, some detail relating to the quality of binding and of paper which would be obvious in a side-by-side comparison might not adequately be captured by pure description. 2 David F. Foxon, Thoughts on the History and Future of Bibliographic Description (School of Library Service, Los Angeles, School of Librarianship, Berkeley, University of California 1970), p. 24. He cites here in support of his argument a vehement statement to this effect from Greg’s 1930 survey of bibliographic studies. 3 D. F. Foxon, Thoughts, p. 27.


NOTES TO BIBLIOGRAPHIES

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The 1939 Vanderblue catalogue lists the first edition of this as 1884, with an 1886 reprint, a revised 1887 edition, in turn reprinted in 1891, 1895 and 1901. Although not described as such by the publisher, this amounts to a first edition with a reprint, and a second edition with three reprints. One might expect that a publisher would deposit copies of new editions, but not of reprintings; so that the British Library at least should have copies of the 1884 and the 1887 editions. But it does not. Its catalogue lists only copies of the 1884 edition, and that of 1901. The Bodleian holds only a copy of the 1884 edition, and none of the others. Furthermore, my own copy of the 1886 edition has no indication of any kind that this is a reprinting of an 1884 edition – it looks as though it is a first edition of the work, for all that has been changed in the plates is the date of publication, there being no reference of any kind to the previous printing. Were it not for the physical presence of six separate copies in the Kress Collection a bibliographic researcher consulting the collections of the British Library and the Bodleian might quite reasonably assume that the book was printed in 1884 with a second edition in 1901. There are of course sources other than library catalogues, especially those of the contemporary book trade itself, but here we encounter a separate problem. When publishers began to use stereotyping, the printed page no longer necessarily betrayed anything of the real date of publication, and the researcher would need to consider features such as paper and binding if different printings from the same plates were to be detected. But this in turn requires the physical comparison of variants, and this becomes a laborious and time-consuming task. That this approach can have worthwhile results is however demonstrated by Ken Carpenter in relation to two separate French editions of Wealth of Nations. The 1806 Roucher edition is in fact a reissue of the 1794 sheets with a new title page, showing the difficulty the publisher had in selling off his stock once the Garnier edition had been published.1 Conversely, around 1810 the original Garnier edition was reissued with an 1802 date, but in a different and corrected setting. This is a publisher’s counterfeit probably intended to circumvent the new law of February 1810 requiring prepublication censorship of all works, whether new publications or new printings, the publisher was required to deposit five copies of the printed work with the police.2 Hence some ‘new editions’ might not be new, while on the other hand some ‘old editions’ might not after all be old. And from the later 1820s new printing technology would make it far more difficult to detect either of these variant cases. Trade catalogues would merely reflect whatever the publisher wished the market to believe. Further problems arise with English-language editions simultaneously published in Britain and in the USA. The larger publishers typically had offices in both countries, but in many cases British works published in the United States 1 Kenneth E. Carpenter, The Dissemination of the Wealth of Nations in French and in France, 1776–1843 (The Bibliographical Society of America, New York 2002), p. 219. 2 Carpenter, Dissemination, p. 223.


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were reset there, since this was the only way that the work might formally enjoy copyright protection under the new American 1891 legislation.1 However, it is not clear that this happened with many nineteenth century editions of Smith’s writings. References to early American editions that seem to relate to parallel English editions have been collected in the course of work on this Bibliography that cannot be traced either in the Harvard combined catalogue (HOLLIS) or in the Library of Congress. These items have been excluded. In addition, some American editions listed in the Vanderblue catalogue2 that evidently link to English editions have been excluded, since positive identification of a separate printing would require direct physical comparison, and this has not proved possible within the scope of this bibliography. The problems involved in such cases can be illustrated by reference to the 1896 Oxford University Press edition of Smith’s Lectures. This was published in Britain and the sales record distinguishes between home, US and export sales – there was therefore presumably no separately-licensed American printing.3 Oxford University Press itself has virtually no record of correspondence or sales in respect of this title, and the last statement in the Cannan Papers is dated 1934,4 when there were perhaps fifty copies of the work remaining unsold. But in 1956 Kelley and Milman reprinted the work in the United States, which one might have thought would involve some correspondence with Cannan’s literary estate – no trace of this can be found in Cannan’s papers, however, which cease with his death. And so in the case of the Lectures, it would seem that a United States printing only followed once the original was exhausted. For the Methuen 1904 edition of Wealth of Nations, Cannan was informed by the publisher that of the 1500 copies printed, 600 were directly sold to the United States, whether in sheet or bound it is not indicated, but this could be ascertained if one were able to compare directly an edition purchased in Britain with one purchased in the United States.5 However, an annotation to the ledger record for the 1920 edition records ‘Stereos for America July 23 /20’, indicating presumably that with later editions stereotype plates were supplied to an American printer, rather than sheets or bound volumes to an American distributor.6 1

See the discussion of this in P. Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oak Knoll Press, New Castle 1995), pp. 355–6. 2 See pp. 20–2 of the Catalogue. 3 See ‘Publishers’ Statements of Sales’, BLPES Archives, Cannan Paper File 1016. However, the two copies in the Widener Library, Harvard University differ slightly from the copy in the Kress, which in turn is identical to the London Library copy – the last is certainly an English edition, the Kress copy also probably an English purchase, but why there should be this variation is entirely unclear. My thanks to Karen Bailey of the Baker Library for bringing this to my attention. 4 Cannan died in 1935. 5 Methuen to Cannan 7 May 1919, regarding plans for reprinting; ‘Correspondence with Publishers II 1917–1936’, Cannan Papers File 1019 f. 19. 6 Methuen Printing Ledgers, Vol. 6 p. 336, copies in Reading University Library; I would like to thank Michael Bott for making copies from the Library’s publishing and printing archive.



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Under such conditions it becomes very difficult to reconstruct with any certainty the numbers printed and pattern of distribution of the work. All of these factors must qualify the uses to which this bibliography might be put; nevertheless the picture that it reveals is very striking, both in terms of overall quantity of imprints and their chronology. Smith’s writings have been arranged in three bibliographies, all items being included in each case. The main bibliography (Bibliography I) is chronological, ordering items first by year of publication;1 then by individual text in the sequence Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS), Wealth of Nations (WN), Essays on Philosophical Subjects (EPS), Lectures on Justice (LJ), Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (Belles Lettres), other writings, Readers, and Biography; and then by country of publication in the sequence Great Britain, Ireland, North America, other English-speaking countries, and then the rest of the world in alphabetical order. The resulting sequence of items is then numbered, this number being printed first in the principal reference line (author, text, editor, publisher, place of publication, date of publication) and used elsewhere in the volume to identify individual texts. Following these particulars is a second level of information detailing translator(s), pagination, distribution of text through a multipart edition, introductory material, appendices and index, the height of the book in centimetres, price, copies printed and where possible a national library location. A third level adds additional information relating to the significance of the particular text. Bibliography II is organised around the individual works, listing the first level of information for all versions ordered by year and then by language, starting with English and then following an alphabetical sequence for all other languages. The unique number identifying texts in Bibliography I exchanges places here with a text/number identifier. Bibliography III adopts the same format, but orders texts according to language of publication, each sequence being organised chronologically according to the rules adopted in Bibliography I. As noted above, from the mid-nineteenth century it becomes very difficult to identify consistently new editions, or reliably discriminate between new editions and reprints of older ones (whatever might be indicated on the titlepage). The exhaustive physical comparison of texts required to resolve issues such as these is beyond the scope of this bibliography. Instead, a pragmatic approach has been taken. In some cases, individual printings of important editions are listed as separate items, principally as a way of drawing attention to the regularity of their reprinting. In other cases, reprints, or simultaneous publication in Britain and the United States, are simply noted in the comments. This helps cut down on sheer repetition, but the reader should bear in mind that it also truncates the item numbering of Bibliography I. Where translations have been made into languages whose written form does not use roman characters all details have been transliterated according to cur1 Or by year of publication of the first part or volume of a multipart work appearing over several years.


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rent conventions. In some cases this results in a modification of translated names, such as ‘Adam Smit’ in Russian; for the sake of consistency these have been retained as representative of what can be found on the title-page of a particular text. Place of publication presents a rather different problem; the convention has been followed of employing the anglicised version (‘Brunswick’ for ‘Braunschweig’), but where the name of a place has been changed (St. Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, St. Petersburg) the version in use at the time of publication, and which appears on the title-page, has been used. Abbreviations Where possible one call mark relating to relevant national collections have been given in the main bibliography for each item, or the reel number of the Goldsmith-Kress microfilm. This microfilm collection is organised in as follows:1 Segment I (Reels 1–1669) monographic literature published between 1460 and 1800 Segment II (Reels 1670–3380) monographic literature published between 1801 and 1850 Segment III (Reels 3381–833) Serial literature commencing publication before 1850 Supplement to Seegment III (Reels 1–356) monographic literature published between 1468–1800 Supplement to Segments I and II, Unit 85 (Reels 257–426) monographic literature published to 1850 (published 1989) Unit 86 (Reels 427–72) titles appearing in Goldsmiths’ Catalogue Vol. 5, Printed Books, Periodicals and Manuscripts to 1850 from the University of London Library (published 2000) Reference is also made to Kenneth Carpenter’s The Dissemination of the Wealth of Nations in French and in France, 1776–1843, The Bibliographical Society of America, New York 2002; and The Vanderblue Collection of Smithiana, Baker Library, Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, Boston 1939. Library Abbreviations AW BibCenUniv BibNac BL 1

Alfred Weber Bibliothek, Heidelberg, Germany Iasi Biblioteca Centrala Universitara Mihai Eminescu, Iasi, Romania Biblioteca Nacimal, Lisbon The British Library, St. Pancras, London

My thanks to Karen Bailey for providing this information.



BNBMilan BNC BNF BNMV BNMadrid BNW Bod BSE BSM BSt.G BULille Cujas FlorEcon Gd GKM Helsinki HDUB Kress Kress VB LibCon METU NatSerb NDL NL NLAnk NLI NSUB OSD BUW OxonEcon PaviPhil PisaFacEcon PisaPhilHist RNL SB SBMün SBuB St. Anne’s St. Geneviève StPAS StPUL TC UBKop UL UnivSãoPauloLib

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Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milan Biblioteca Nazionale CentraleFlorence Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid The Polish National Library, Special Collection, Warsaw The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford Bibliothèque Maison des Sciences Economiques, Paris Biblioteca Sormani, Milan Bibliothèque St. Geneviève, Paris Bibliothèque universitaire Lille Bibliothèque Cujas, Paris Economics Library, University of Florence Polish Academy of Sciences Library, Gdańsk Goldsmith–Kress Microfilm Collection Helsinki Library Universitätsbibliothek, Heidelberg, Germany Kress Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School Vanderblue Memorial Collection, Kress Collection Library of Congress, Washington D.C. Metu Library, Ankara National Library, Belgrade National Diet Library, Tokyo Polish National Library National Library, Ankara National Library, Israel State and University Library, Göttingen Warsaw University Library, Special Collection Economics Library, University of Oxford Faculty of Philosophy Library, University of Pavia University of Pisa, Library of the Faculty of Economics University of Pisa, Philosophy and History Library Russian National Library, St. Petersburg Staarsbibliothek, Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Munich Sistema Bibliotecario U ¸rbani, Brescia Library of St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford Bibliothèque St. Geneviève, Paris Library of the Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg University Library, St. Petersburg Trinity College, Dublin Universitetsbiblioteket, Copenhagen University Library, Cambridge University Library, SãoPaulo

Two sample pages from the 1811 Edinburgh (left) and London (right) editions of Wealth of Nations, selected for the unusually large number of hyphens in the second paragraph. Although this is halfway through volume I, the text is identical, showing the degree of consistency with which setters worked – this meant that a book could be worked on simultaneously by a number of setters, each being given a section of copy-text. Small variations in setting show up on closer examination, confirming that these are indeed two separate settings, and not common sheets.


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Main Bibliography: All Editions, Chronologically Ordered 1. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (A. Millar, London 1759) pp. xii, 1–551, no index. 21 cm. 6s., Printing 1,000 [BL] C.119.dd.43

Also published by A. Kincaid and J. Bell, Edinburgh, who held one-third of the copyright. 2. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 2nd edition (A. Millar, London 1761) pp. x, 436, 21cm. 6s., Printing 750, [BL] Cup.407.kk.46

Printed in September 1760. The revisions made by Smith to this edition are outlined by the editors of the Glasgow edition (1976, p. 37). Besides some stylistic improvements, a footnote at I.iii.1.9 replies to criticisms from Hume, and sixteen paragraphs are added to the account of the impartial spectator at III.2. 3. Adam Smith, Métaphysique de l’âme ou théorie des sentiments moraux, 2 vols (Briasson, Paris 1764) Trans. Marc-Antoine Eidous, pp. 1–302, 1–370, 17.5 cm. [BSt.G] R 8º 371

This first translation was reported at the time to be deficient. 4. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 3rd edition (A. Millar, London 1767) pp. viii, 1–436 + 437–78, 21. cm., 6s., Printing 750, [BL] 1609/5030

‘A Dissertation on the Origin of Languages’ added to this and subsequent editions, together with some minor revisions, especially to passages involving comment on religion. 5. Adam Smith, Theorie der moralischen Empfindungen, (in der Meyerischen Buchhandlung, Brunswick 1770) Trans. Christian G. Rautenberg from 3rd English edition, pp. 1–2, 3–576, no index, 17.5 cm. [HDUB] 21236/1


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This first German translation of Theory of Moral Sentiments appeared without any introductory matter regarding Adam Smith or the translation, the text following title-page and blank verso and concluding without any additional notes. The Kosegarten translation of 1791 had more impact, partly because of its timing and also because it did provide some contextualisation for work and author. 6. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 4th edition (W. Strahan, London 1774) pp. viii, 1–436 + 437–78, 6s., Printing 500 [BL] 526.i.1

Set from third edition, incorporating corrections. 7. Adam Smith, Théorie des sentiments moraux, 2 vols (Valade, Paris 1774–5) Trans. Jean-Louis Blavet from 3rd edition, pp. v–xii, Table raisonnée de l’ouvrage pp. xiii–lvi, 1–249; 1–329, no index [BNF] R–12179

8. Adam Smith, Théorie des sentiments moraux (1774) Trans. Louis Alexandre, Duc de la Rochefoucauld d’Anville

Manuscript, now lost. Rochefoucauld abandoned his translation, having completed Pt. I, when Blavet’s edition was published. 9. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols (W. Strahan, T. Cadell, London 1776) Vol. I pp. i–xi, 1–510 (Books I–III); Vol. II pp. i–iv, 1–587 (Books IV–V); 30cm. £2 2s., Printing 750, [BL] 31.e.9

1966 Augustus M. Kelley facsimile edition; 1986 Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen facsimile edition; 1994 Classics of Liberty facsimile edition. 10. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols (Whitestone, Dublin 1776 22 cm. 19s. 6d., [BL] 8205.dg.2

Vol. I contains Book I; Vol. II Books II, III, IV Chs. I–VII; Vol III Books IV Ch. VIII, V. 11. Adam Smith, Richesse des Nations, manuscript (1776) Trans. André Morellet, Lyon BV. mss. 2540, 2541, 2542, 2543

The manuscript is described in Carpenter (2002) pp. 1–3. Books I–IV are complete, together with Book V ch. 1.


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12. Adam Smith, Untersuchung der Natur und Ursachen von Nationalreichthümern, 2 vols (bey Weidmanns Erben und Reich, Leipzig 1776–8) Trans. J. F. Schiller from 1776 edition, pp. 1–632, 1–740, 21cm. [NSUB] 8o Polit. III 4830

13. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, (John Beatty, Christopher Jackson, Dublin 1777) ‘6th.’ Edition, pp. 426, 21 cm. 5s. 5d., [TC]

14. Adam Smith, ‘Lettera del Sig. Adamo Smith al Sig. Strahan riguardo al Sig. Davide Hume’, Giornale enciclopedico, 6 June 1777, pp. 39–43 (Vicenza 1777) Translation of Letter 178 of the Correspondence, Smith to William Strahan 9 November 1776

15. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, 2nd edition (W. Strahan, T. Cadell, London 1778) Vol. I pp. i–vii, 1–510 (Books I–III); Vol. II pp. i–viii, 1–589 (Books IV–V); 30 cm. £2 2s., Printing 500, [BL] 522.1.12, 13

Number of minor corrections incorporated in this printing. 16. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 4 vols (La Haye 1778–79) Trans. ‘M’, Vol. I pp. 5–688; Vol. II pp. 5–499; Vol. III pp. 1–484; Vol. IV pp. 1–523; 16 cm. [AW] B II 113–1,2,3,4

Carpenter (2002, p. 22) notes that section V.I.g, ‘Of the Expence of the Institutions for the Instruction of People of All Ages’ is missing entirely, presumably on the grounds that the institutions concerned were primarily religious foundations. The Catalogue entry for the sole Dutch copy (Tilburg) states this to be a translation of ‘Inquiry into the nature and the causes of the wealth of nations. 1775’ [sic]. 17. Adam Smith, Fragment sur les colonies en générale et sur celles Anglois en particulier (Jean Jacques Flick, Basel 1778) Trans. E. S. F. Reverdil, pp. VIII, 1–170, 18 cm. [GKM]

Translation of Wealth of Nations Book IV Ch. VII ‘Of Colonies’. 18. Adam Smith, Fragment sur les colonies en générale et sur celles anglaises en particulier (Société typographique, Lausanne 1778) Trans. E. S. F. Reverdil, pp. VIII, 1–170, 22 cm. [GKM]

Translation of Wealth of Nations Book IV Ch. VII ‘Of Colonies’.


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19. Adam Smith, Undersøgelse om National-Velstands Natur og Aarsag, 2 vols (Gyldendals Forlag, Copenhagen, 1779–80) Trans. Frants Dræbye from 1776 edition, Vol. I 1779: Books I & II; frontmatter 11pp., Introduction 6 + 6 pp.; text pp. 557; Vol. II 1780 pp. 7 frontmatter; main text pp. 676; + Governor Pownall’s letter 91 pp.; 20 cm. [UBKop]

Smith acknowledged this translation in Letter 208 to Holt, 26 October 1780, and 209 to Anker, 26 October 1780 in Correspondence. 20. Adam Smith, ‘De la nature et les causes de la richesse des Nations’, Journal de l’agriculture (Paris 1779–80) Trans. Jean-Louis Blavet. Published in 23 monthly parts February 1779–December 1780

Outlined in Carpenter (2002 pp. 24–8). The first French translation of Wealth of Nations, this serial publication was quickly followed by republication in book form (→ # 23). 21. Adam Smith, Abhandlung über die Colonien überhaupt und die amerikanischen besonders (Beat Ludwig Walthard, Bern 1779) pp. IV, 152, octavo

Translation of Wealth of Nations Book IV Ch. VII ‘Of Colonies’. Recorded in K. M. Walthard, G. Weigelt, Der Berner Verleger Beat Ludwig Walthard 1743–1802. Sein Leben und Werk, Bibliographie, Bern 1956 p. 73, but not recorded in the catalogue of Bern Library. 22. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 5th edition (W. Strahan, London, 1781) pp. viii, 1–436 + 437–78, 6s., Printing 750 [BL] 526.1.19

Some small revisions to accidentals and punctuation. 23. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 3 vols (Paris 1781) Trans. Jean-Louis Blavet, reprint of the 1779–80 Journal de l’agriculture version, 16.8 cm. Printing in a limited edition of 20

Carpenter (2002, pp. 32–4) notes that this used a slightly rearranged form of the Journal de l’agriculture setting; he also suggests that this offprint was made to promote the publication of Wealth of Nations, copies presumably not being publicly sold. 24. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 6 vols (F. B. De Felice, Yverdon 1781)



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Trans. Jean-Louis Blavet, based on the 1779–80 translation, pp. 8 + 1–296, 1–363, 1–237, 1– 308, 1–365, 17.9 cm. [BNF] R24 599–24605

Carpenter (2002 pp. 34–7) notes that Blavet claimed not to have been involved with this edition, which did not carry his name. Printed in Switzerland, it appears to have been largely distributed outside France. 25. Adam Smith, Théorie des sentiments moraux, traduction nouvelle, 2 vols (Laporte, Paris 1782) 2nd edition, trans. Blavet, pp. v–xii, 1–249; 1–329, 18.7 cm. [BNF] R 51401

26. Adam Smith, Additions and Corrections to the First and second Editions of Dr. Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1783) pp. 12–79, 0, 30 cm. 2s., [BL] 31.e.11

This supplementary volume reprints all the changes made in the 3rd edition of Wealth of Nations and reprints them in a layout suitable for inclusion in the quarto format of the first two editions. The Kress copy has a letter to Vanderblue from a bookseller in Newcastle upon Tyne (dated 11 March 1932) who assures him on the authority of ‘one of the oldest dealers in books on economics in London’ who has seen fifteen copies in thirty-six years, that every copy commenced with sig:B and that there was no title-page. 27. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3rd edition (W. Strahan, T. Cadell, London 1784) pp. 499, 518 + appendix, 465 + index. 21 cm. £1 1s., Printing 1,000, [BL] 1027.d.9

With the alteration to a three volume octavo format the price was reduced to half that of the previous two volume quarto editions. Vol. I includes Bks. I, II Chs 1 & 2. Vol. II includes Bk II Chs 3–5; Bk. III; Bk. IV Chs 1–8, Ch. 8 ‘Conclusion of the Mercantile System’ is not announced in the Table of Contents; Vol. III includes Bk. IV Ch. 9, Bk. V. There are a large number of alterations to this edition, principally the insertion of a new chapter in Book IV, ‘Conclusion of the Mercantile System’, and the section ‘Of the Publick Works and Institutions which are necessary for facilitating particular Branches of Commerce’ Book V. See Cannan’s discussion of the significance of the changes (1904 pp. xv–xvi). 28. Adam Smith, Extracts from Blavet’s Richesses des Nations, Encyclopédie méthodique. Économie politique et diplomatique (Paris 1784– 88) Trans. Jean-Louis Blavet as in the 1779–80 version


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The extracts on political economy during the period 1784–88 drew heavily from Blavet’s edition of Wealth of Nations, covering around half of the English translation. See the listing provided by Carpenter (2002 pp. 51–3). 29. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols (W. Colles, R. Moncrieffe, Dublin 1785) Based on the 3rd ed, 21 cm. [Bod] Vet A5 e.4797, 4798

Also printed for G. Burnet, W. Wilson, C. Jenkin, L. White, H. Whitestone, P. Byrne, J. Cash, W. M’Kenzie. Title-page states that is ‘The Fourth Edition, with Additions’. Vol. I Title-page [p. iii]; Advertisement [p. v]; Contents pp. vii–xiii; Introduction pp. 1–4; Book I pp. 5–267; Book II pp. 269–374; Book III pp. 375–418; Book IV Chs 1–4 pp. 419–98. Vol. II Halftitle [p. i]; Title-page [p. iii]; Contents [pp. v–viii]; Book IV Chs 5–9 pp. 1–204; Book V pp. 205– 489; appendix [pp. 491–4]; unpaginated index pp. 51. 30. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols, 4th edition (W. Strahan, T. Cadell, London 1786) 21 cm. Printing 1,250, [BL] 08207.1.5. 3 vols Octavo pp. 499, 518 + App. 465 + Index.

The ‘Advertisement to the Fourth Edition’ announces that no alterations of any kind have been made to this edition. Cannan noted some small variations, which can be attributed to misreadings or unauthorised corrections by the printers. The division between volumes is identical to that in the 3rd Edition, and Vol. II Bk. IV Ch. 8 is this time included in the Table of Contents. 31. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 6 vols (Poinçot, Paris 1786) Trans. Jean-Louis Blavet, pp. i–viii, 1–296, 1–363, 1–292, 1–237, 1–308, 1–365; 16.4 cm. [St. Geneviève] R 958 /3

This is a reissue of the Yverdon sheets (→ # 24), and represents the first book form of Wealth of Nations available in France. See Carpenter (2002 pp. 53–4). 32. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 2 vols (Duplain, Paris, 1788) Trans. Jean-Louis Blavet, as in the 1779–80 version; Vol. I pp. iv, I–IV, 1–503, table of contents pp. 505–8; Vol. II pp.iv, 1–492, table of contents pp. 493–6. 19.4 cm. [BL] 1027. e. 2

The Preface was reprinted from the Yverdon edition, but with some excisions, which are noted by Carpenter (2002 p. 60). The British Library edition has extensive handwritten notes, revising the translation, with additions pasted in and a note made of the way in which Book IV Ch. VIII becomes Ch. IX following the insertion in the third edition of ‘Conclusion of the Mercantile System.’



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33. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols, 5th edition (W. Strahan, T. Cadell, London 1789) pp. 499, 518 + App., 465 + Index, 21 cm. 18s. Printing 1,500, [BL] G.13889, –90, –91

As in the 4th, this is an almost exact reset of the 3rd edition. The textual variations that can be identified clearly originate with the setter, rendering this a less reliable version of the work than the 4th edition. Cannan based his 1904 edition on this version on the grounds that it was the last in Smith’s lifetime, but there is no evidence that Smith authorised any significant changes to either this or the previous editions, virtually all of the variations that can be identified therefore degrading rather than improving the text. 34. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols (Thomas Dobson, Philadelphia 1789) pp. 412, 430 incl Appendix, 387 + index, 17 cm. [Kress VB]

This version carries the Advertisements to the 3rd and 4th editions, referring to ‘Henry Hop’, instead of ‘Henry Hope’ in the latter; and so it is a version of the 4th edition since the 5th corrected this error. 35. Anon., Recherches très-utiles sur les affaires présentes, et les causes de la richesse des nations, 4 vols (Amsterdam 1789) Reissue of 1778–9 (→ # 16) edition, 15.6 cm.

Carpenter (2002 pp. 79–80) has identified this as a reissue of the La Haye sheets of 1778–9 together with a new title, anonymising Smith’s authorship. 36. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 2 vols, 6th edition (W. Strahan, T. Cadell, London 1790) pp. 14s., Printing 1,000, [BL] 526.i.2, 3

Whereas Wealth of Nations originally appeared in an expensive two volume quarto format, and with the third edition was reissued in a cheaper three volume octavo, Theory of Moral Sentiments followed an opposite path. With this, extensively revised, edition the work altered from one volume octavo to two, and more than doubled in price. As Richard Sher notes in his essay above, Smith at least in part made extensive revisions so that he might bequeath a refreshment of copyright to his publisher, in which he was successful. The changes and additions made are very significant and listed in the Editorial ‘Introduction’ to the Glasgow edition, pp. 43–4, and itemised in Eckstein (→ # 303) pp. 281–305. Haakonssen’s 2002 edition (→ # 604) follows the 1790 version.


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37. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature & les causes de la richesse des Nations, Bibliothèque de l’homme publique, Vols III, IV (Buisson, Paris 1790) Trans. Roucher, Vol. III pp. 108–216; Vol. IV pp. 3–115, 19.6 cm.

This was a summary in Vols III & IV of Bibliothèque de l’homme publique, and was based on the new Roucher translation up to Book IV Ch. 1, after which the Blavet version was used; see Carpenter (2002 pp. 80–2). 38. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 4 vols (Buisson, Paris 1790) Trans. Jean-Antoine Roucher from the 4th edition, pp. vii–ix, 1–570; 1–312; 1–602;1–579, 4 livres 10 sous each vol., 14.5 cm. [BNF] R–24607

A new translation from the fourth English edition, the title-page announced that Condorcet would supply a volume of notes, but these never materialised and Gilbert Faccarello suggests that they were never written – see Carpenter (2002 pp. 85–8). 39. Adam Smith, Ricerche sulla natura, e le cagioni della ricchezza delle nazioni, 5 vols (Presso Giuseppe Policarpo Merande, Naples 1790–1) Translated from the Blavet edition, Vol. 1 pp. i–iv, 269–270; Vol. 2 pp. 264–265; Vol. 3 pp. 259–270; Vol. 4 pp. 297–299; Vol. 5 pp. 288–290; 20 cm. [PisaFacEcon] BP/I 42–46

The first translation into Italian; despite reference on the title-page to its being translated from the most recent English edition, it is in fact based upon Blavet. 40. Adam Smith, Theorie der sittlichen Gefühle, ed. Ludwig Theobul Kosegarten (In der Gräffschen Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1791) Trans. Ludwig Theobul Kosegarten, pp. 463, 21 cm. [SBMün] Ph. pr. 1130, 11.

Translated from a pre-1790 edition of the work, see # 54. This translation was better received than # 5 because Kosegarten’s notes linked the work to the reception of Kantian philosophy. 41. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols, 6th edition (A. Strahan, T. Cadell, London 1791) pp. 499, 518 + App., 465 + Index. 21.5 cm. Printing 2,000 [BL] 8206.cc.18

42. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 4 vols (Fortia d’Urban, J. J. Niel, Avignon 1791) Trans. Jean-Antoine Roucher, Vol.1 pp. x, 11–540; Vol. II pp. 5–296; Vol. III pp. 5–528; Vol. IV pp. 5–519. 20.3 cm.



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This is a pirate edition of the Roucher translation with some additional notes, also announcing that Xenophon’s tract on oeconomy would be appended to Vol. 2. In that volume it was then stated that it would be sold separately, but there is no record of it ever having circulated – see Carpenter (2002 pp. 117– 19). 43. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 4 vols (J. J. Tourneisen, J. L. Legrand, Basel 1791) Reprint of 4th edition, 21 cm. [BL] 1570/1722

Vol. I: Advertisements for 3rd and 4th editions, pp. i–viii, 1–406; Vol. II pp. i– vii, 1–344; Vol. III: pp. i–iv, 1–358; Vol. IV pp. i–v, 1–374 + unpaginated index. 44. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 2 vols, 7th edition (A. Strahan, T. Cadell, London 1792) Vol. I pp. xvi, 488; Vol. II pp. viii, 462. 14s., Printing 1,000 [BL] 1609/4117

Some minor changes over the 6th edition. 45. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 5 vols (L. Fauche-Borel, Neuchâtel 1792) Trans. Jean-Antoine Roucher, 16 cm.

Carpenter (2002 pp 127–9) identifies this as a pirate, with two issues, one with and one without publisher’s name. 46. Adam Smith, Untersuchung der Natur und Ursachen von Nationalreichthümern (Weidmannischen Buchhandlung, Leipzig, 1792) pp. 140, 20.5 cm. [Kress VB]

This volume was separately published as a translation of Additions and Corrections to the First and second Editions (→ # 26), with some delay because of the poor sales of the Schiller edition. The publishers also expected Condorcet’s notes to be published, and so this was entitled ‘Dritten Bandes. Erste Abtheilung’, the second being reserved for Condorcet. But since Condorcet’s text never appeared, neither did the second part. 47. Adam Smith, Compendio de la obra inglesa intitulada Riqueza de las Naciones, hecho por el Marques de Condorcet, y traducido al castellano convarias adiciones del original, por Don Carlos Martinez de Irujo, 2 vols (En la Imprenta Real, Madrid 1792) pp. i–xii, 1–296, + subject index 297–302, 18.5 cm. [BNMadrid] 3/34683


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This is a translation of the Roucher/Blavet condensation of Wealth of Nations in the Bibliothèque de l’homme publique (→ # 37) to which Condorcet lent his name. The translator restores to the text a summary of Smith’s Digression on the Bank of Amsterdam (WN IV iii.b. 479–88), + a five-line qualification of the argument for free trade. The criticism of Catholic clergy is omitted. Reprinted 1803 Madrid, 1814 Palma de Mallorca. 48. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 2 vols (J. J. Tourneisen, Basil 1793) Reprint of 1790 edition, Vol. I Parts I–IV pp. x, 1–326; Vol. II Parts V–VII pp. vi pp. 1–274; 20.5 cm. [HDUB] M 2136; [BL] 8405.h.14

49. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols, 7th edition (A. Strahan, T. Cadell, London 1793) 21 cm. Printing 2,500 [BL] 8206.ccc.26

50. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols (G. Burnet, L. White, Dublin 1793) 21 cm. [BL] 1250.h.27

51. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 5 vols (Buisson, Paris 1794) Revised trans. By Jean-Antoine Roucher, Vol. I pp. vi, 1–438; Vol. II pp. iv, 1–494; Vol. III pp. iv, 1–624; Vol. IV pp. iv, 1–411; Vol. V pp. iv, 1–370; 21.5 cm.

Roucher is reported to have completed his revisions to his translation of 1790– 1 during the ten months that he was awaiting the guillotine. Carpenter (2002 pp. 131–2) notes that this edition did not achieve the success of the first, and it was reissued in 1806 (→ # 91) by Arthur Bertrand. 52. Adam Smith, Untersuchung über die Natur und die Ursachen des Nationalreichthums, 4 vols (Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn, Breslau 1794–6) Trans. by C. Garve, A. Dörrien, from the 4th edition, Vols 1794, 1794, 1795, 1796, 20.5 cm. [AW] B II 1/1–1,2,3,4

Christian Garve was an experienced translator of Adam Ferguson and familiar with writers of the Scottish Enlightenment. This edition also met with a more appreciative readership than the first translation, for in the meantime familiarity with Scottish philosophy had become more widespread. Vol. I 1794: Titlepage = p. I; Vorrede des Uebersetzers pp. III–XIV; Book I pp. 1–466 + prices pp. 467–76 errata 477–80; Vol. II 1794: Title-page, Contents, Books II, III pp. 1–274 errata p. 275; Vol. III 1795: Title-page, Contents; Book IV pp. 1–446 Fish 447–51 Vol. IV 1796: Title-page, Contents; Book V pp. 1–484.



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53. Adam Smith, Investigacion de la Naturaleza y Causas de la Riqueza de las Naciones, 4 vols (En la Oficina de la Viuda e Hijos de Santander, Valladolid 1794) Trans. Jose Alonso Ortiz, from 1784 edition, 20.2 cm. [BNMadrid] 3/51611–14

Vol. I Dedication, 5 unnumbered pages; ‘El Traductor’ pp. 10 (unnumbered); Book I pp. 1–464; Vol. II: Books II, III Ch. I viii.1 main text pp. 1–392; ‘Apendice sobre el Banco Nacional Español titulado de San Carlos’ pp. 352–92 (Reprint 1805 does not have this appendix); Vol. III: Book IV, Ch. III,2 – Ch. IX, Main text pp. 1–392; Vol. IV: Book V pp. 1–430; subject index pp. 431–99. 54. Adam Smith, Theorie der sittlichen Gefühle. Zusätze (Ludwig Theobul Kosegarten, Leipzig 1795) Trans: Ludwig Theobul Kosegarten [SBMün] Ph. pr. 1130.12

Kosegarten published Smith’s revisions to the sixth, 1790, edition separately, since he had translated # 40 from an earlier version. 55. Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. J. Black, J. Hutton (T. Cadell, jun., & W. Davies, London 1795) pp. xiv, 244, Printing 1,000 [BL] 28.e.17

Although this posthumous edition of Smith’s essays did not sell as well as his other two books were selling, perhaps the most significant part of this text was Dugald Stewart’s ‘Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith, LL.D.’ Presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in two sessions during 1793, it was first published in the Transactions of the Society in 1794. Dugald Stewart did not publish his biography of Smith separately until his Biographical Memoirs of 1811, and so this publication formed the basis upon which everyone drew for the biographies of Smith that began to appear in the early nineteenth century, mainly as prefaces to editions of Wealth of Nations, and then later in editions of Moral Sentiments. 56. Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. J. Black, J. Hutton (Dublin 1795) 21 cm. [Bod] Vet. A5 2562

A pirate edition of → # 55. 57. Adam Smith, Considérations sur la première formation des langues et le différent génie des langues originales et composées (Baillio et Colas, Paris 1795) Trans. Boulard, pp. 3.74, + notes and bibliography pp. 75–80, 19 cm. [BNF] X–5910


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58. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols, 8th edition (W. Strahan, T. Cadell, London 1796) £2 7s., Printing 2,500, [BL] 8206.ccc.27

59. Adam Smith, Untersuchung über die Natur und die Ursachen des Nationalreichthums, 4 vols (Frankfurt a.M. 1796–7) Trans. C. Garve, A. Dörrien, pirate edition of their 1794–6 translation (→ # 52), no bookseller named, 21 cm.

60. Adam Smith, Naspeuringen over de natuur en oorzaken van den rijkdom der volkeren, 2 vols (Amsterdam 1796) Trans. Dirk Hoola van Nooten, 200 fl.

Wealth of Nations Book I Chs I–IX only, with 300 pages of notes. 61. Georg Sartorius, Handbuch der Staatswirthschaft zum Gebrauche bey akademischen Vorlesungen, nach Adam Smith’s Grundsätzen ausgearbeitet (Johann Friderich Unger, Berlin 1796) pp. I–II, III–XXXXIX, 1–234, 17.5 cm. [BL] 08207.e.4

Abbreviated edition of Wealth of Nations. 62. Adam Smith, Dissertation sur l’origine des langues (Paris 1796) Trans. A. M. H. Boulard

The Vanderblue catalogue (p. 44) records a 1796 version of # 57 marked as confirmed but unseen. 63. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 2 vols, 8th edition (T. Cadell and W. Davies, London 1797) £ 3, Printing 1,000, [BL] 231.g.25

64. Jeremiah Joyce, A Complete Analysis or Abridgement of Dr. Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Benjamin Flower, Cambridge 1797) pp. i–iv, iii, 1–290, no index, 20cm. [BL] 8207.g.13.

The first précis of Wealth of Nations, this work was reissued in 1804, and in an extended form in 1821. The third edition contained a version of Garnier’s ‘Preface’; this also served as the basis for the primer for Books I and II of Wealth of Nations edited by Emerton in 1877 (→ # 199), Emerton’s treatment of Books III, IV and V in the second part (→ # 208) of 1880 introducing extensive revisions into Joyce’s original account. In his Advertisement, Joyce suggested that for ‘those, then, who are engaged in the pursuit of political science, this com-



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pendium, if properly executed, cannot fail of being highly useful. It will also be found convenient as a text book in those institutions of liberal education, in which the ‘Wealth of Nations’ makes an essential branch of their lectures’ (p. iii). 65. Adam Smith, Essais philosophiques, précédés d’un précis de sa vie et de ses écrits par Dugald Stewart (Agasse, Paris 1797) Trans. Pierre Prévost, pp. 139–282; Dugald Stewart, ‘Account of the Life and Writings of A. Smith’ pp. 1–137; Pierre Prévost, ‘Réflexions sur les oeuvres posthumes d’A. Smith’, ‘Avis du traducteur’, ‘Notes’, pp. 299–312. 11.5 cm. [BNF] R–51398

66. Adam Smith, Théorie des sentiments moraux, 2 vols (Buisson, Paris 1798) Trans. Sophie de Grouchy from 1790 edition, pp. 459, 301, 19.5 cm. [BSt.G] Z8 1526 inv 3818

This became the standard French translation of Moral Sentiments, being reprinted in 1820, 1830, 1860, and 1981; appended were Smith’s essay on the first formation of languages, and Sophie de Grouchy, ‘Lettres sur la théorie des sentiments moraux’. 67. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols, 9th edition, A. Strahan, T. Cadell, London 1799 21 cm. £2 1s., Printing 2,000 [BL] 8206.bb.22

68. Adam Smith, Untersuchung über die Natur und die Ursachen des Nationalreichthums, 3 vols, 2nd edition (Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn, Breslau 1799) Trans. C. Garve, A. Dörrien, Vol. I Stewart’s ‘Nachricht’ pp. XIX–CXLVI; Book I pp. 460; Vol. II: Books II, III, IV pp. 1–702; Vol. III Book V pp. 1–474, 21 cm. [Kress VB]

‘Zweytes, mit Stewarts Nachricht von dem Leben und den Schriften des Autors vermehrte Ausgabe’. Dörrien explains in a preface to this edition that Garve had been too ill to complete the survey of Wealth of Nations as he had wished, but had instead translated Dugald Stewart’s ‘Account’ published in 1795. Dörrien also revised the translation in places. 69. Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. J. Black & J. Hutton (J. Decker, Basel 1799) Reprint of 1795 edition, 18 cm. [BL] 526.i.5

70. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 4 vols (Laran, Paris 1800–1)


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Revised trans. by Jean-Louis Blavet, Vol. I pp. L–XXVII, 1–500; Vol. II pp. 1–521; Vol. III (1801) pp. 1–458; Vol. IV (1801) 1–329, 19.5 cm. [Cujas] 34061

This translation was revised with the assistance of Abraham Guyot, incorporating the alterations made by Smith to his 3rd edition and including a translation of the index. Carpenter (2002, p. 150) notes that what appears to be Guyot’s annotated copy of the 1781 Yverdon copy of Blavet’s translation is in the Edinburgh University Library. 71. Adam Smith, Undersökning om Kongl. stora sjö- och gränse-tullar, samt acciser och små-tuller med Flera consumtions-afgifter (C. Deleen o J. G. Forsgren, Stockholm 1800) Trans. Erik Erl. Bodell, pp. 1–89, 17.2 cm.

The is a translation of part of Book V Ch. 2 of Wealth of Nations. 72. August Ferdinand Lueder, Ueber Nationalindustrie und Staatswirthschaft. Nach Adam Smith bearbeitet, 3 vols (Heinrich Frölich, Berlin 1800–4) pp. I–IV, IV–XVI, 1–462; 1–623, 22.5 cm. [BL] 1027.g.10

This is a free adaptation of Wealth of Nations which starts out with the intention of abbreviating the work, but winds up extending it. See the discussion above pp. 132–3. 73. Georg Sartorius, Handbok för statshusållningen efter Adam Smiths grundsattser (Kumblinska tryckeriet, Stockholm 1800) Trans. Johan Holmbergson, pp. 4, 230, 18 cm. Kress

A translation of # 61. 74. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 2 vols, 9th edition (T. Cadell, W. Davies, London 1801) Vol. I pp. xv, Parts I–IV pp, 1–406; Vol. II pp. viii, Parts V–VII pp. 1–340, ‘First Formation pp. 341–92, no index. 21 cm. £1 5s., Printing 1,000, [BL] RB.23.a2021; [GKM] 1708

75. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, Sixth edition with additions (Printed by N. Kelly for P. Wogan, Gilbert and Hodges, W. Porter, J. Moore, and B. Dornin, Dublin 1801) ‘Sixth edition’ spurious, Vol. I pp. xiii, Books I–IV Ch. 4 pp. 1–498; Vol. II Books IV Chs, 5– 9, V pp. 1–489 + 55 pp. index. [GKM] 1686

76. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 4 vols (James Decker, Basil 1801)



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Reprint of 4th edition, Vol. I Book I pp. 6–406; Vol. II Books II, III IV to Ch. 3 pp. 1–334; Vol. III Book IV Chs 4–9, Book V Ch. 1 Parts I & ii pp. 1–358; Vol. IV Book V Ch. 1 iii to Ch. 3 pp. 1–374 = 52 pp. index. 21 cm. [HDUB] K 415C::1–4; [BL] 1027.d.12

Edition prefaced by translation of Turgot, ‘Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Riches’. This follows straight on from the contents, with cover page then opening p. (3). p. (2) facing opening of text: ‘The following Reflections were first published in the Ephémérides Economiques, a French periodical work; as they are affirmed by the Marquis de Condorcet, the author’s biographer, to be the germ from which Mr. Adam Smith formed his excellent treatise on the Wealth of Nations, it is hoped the curious reader will not be displeased to find them here in an English dress.’ Book V Ch. I ‘Of the Expenses of the Sovereign or Commonwealth’ mis-set as ‘Ch. V’. 77. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols, 10th edition (T. Cadell and W. Davies, London 1802) Vol. I Books I, Chs 1–2 pp. 1–499; Vol. II Book II Ch. 3–5 pp.1–72, Book III pp. 73–137; Book IV Chs 1–8 pp. 138–518, Vol. III Book IV Ch. 9, Book V pp. 1–465, index pp. 49. 21 cm. £2 7s., Printing 2000, [BL] 1570/3737

78. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 5 vols, ed. Germain Garnier (Agasse, Paris 1802) Trans. Germain Garnier, 20.3 cm. [Cujas] 75797

This is perhaps the most influential edition of Wealth of Nations to appear during the nineteenth century. It became the standard French translation, reprinted and reissued until Paulette Taieb’s 1995 edition replaced it with a modern translation of the 1776 edition. It also formed the base for versions of Wealth of Nations in several other languages. In addition, the first two parts of Garnier’s introduction were widely translated, and it was the single most common introduction to the work in English for the first half of the nineteenth century. Vol. I: Pagination begins with Garnier’s ‘Préface du traducteur’ pp. i–cxii (The third part, ‘Un parallèle entre la richesse de la France et celle de l’Angleterre, d’après les principes du même auteur’ pp. xlix–lxxxvij; ‘Post-scriptum’ pp. lxxxvij–cxij). Followed by ‘Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de Smith’ pp. cxiii–cxxvii. Advertisement to Third edition pp. 1–2; Advertisement to Fourth edition pp. 3–4; Introduction and Plan of the Work pp. 5–10; Book I Chs 1–11 Section 2 pp. 11–366 followed by contents pp. 367–8. Vol. II Book I Ch. 11 Section 3 pp. 1–189; Book II Chs 1–v pp. 190–402; Book III pp. 403–89. Vol. III Book IV pp. 1–518 + appendix on herring fisheries. Vol. IV Book V pp. 1– 554. Vol. V Notes du traducteur pp. 1–444 – 42 separate notes in all; Table of currency, weights and measures in use in UK pp. 445–51; Table of Notes, pp. 452–6; Index pp. 457–88, Errata. Carpenter (2002, p. 175) notes that the translation was completed in 1794. The work was reissued around 1810 as a new printing, but with the 1802 title, presumably to evade government controls.


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79. Adam Smit, Issledovanie svoistva i prichin Bogatstva narodov. Tvorenie Adama Smita, 4 vols (Tipografiia Gosudarstvennoi Meditsinskoi Kollegii, St Petersburg 1802, 1803, 1805, 1806) Trans. N. Politkovskii, Vol. I pp. 1–577; Vol. II pp. 1–354; Vol. III pp. 1–644; Vol. IV pp. 1– 561. 21 cm. [RNL] 18.75.4.77/1–4

The first complete translation of Wealth of Nations into Russian. 80. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 2 vols, 10th edition (T. Cadell, W. Davies, London 1804) Vol. I pp. xv, Parts I–IV pp, 1–406; Vol. II pp. viii, Parts V–VII pp. 1–340, ‘First Formation pp. 341–92, no index. 21 cm., £1 7s., Printing 1,000 [BL] 8412.bb.25; [GKM] 1821

81. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ‘New Edition’ (Oliver D. Cooke, Hartford 1804) Vol. I Books I, II, III, IV Chs 1–4 pp. 9–387; Vol. II Books IV Chs V–IX; Book V pp. 7–361, + Appendix on herring fisheries pp. 363–5; Index pp. 367–415. 21 cm. [GKM] 1798

82. Jeremiah Joyce, A Complete Analysis, or Abridgment of Dr. Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2nd edition, B. Flower, Cambridge 1804 pp. 324, 20 cm. [GKM] 1796

‘Introduction and Plan of the Work’ takes just under two pages. Book I Ch. III takes two pages. ‘Digression concerning the variations in the value of silver’ pp. 77–87. Book I pp. 7–100; Book II pp. 101–45; Book III pp. 144–61; Book IV pp. 162–245 (The Introduction in entirety: ‘Political œconomy proposes two distinct objects: (1.) To provide subsistence for the people; and, (2.) To supply the state with a revenue sufficient for public services. The different progress to opulence in different ages, has given occasion to two system of political œonomy, with regard to enriching the people. The one a system of commerce, the other that of agriculture.’); Book V pp. 246–324. 83. Adam Smith, Politisk undersökning om lagar, som hindra och tvinga införseln af sådana utlåndska varor, som kunna alstras eller tillverkas inom landet (S. Norberg, Gothenburg 1804) Trans. Erik Erl. Bodell, based on 1776 edition, 19 cm.

Is a translation of Book V Ch. 2. Includes two pages of information to the King, five pages on Adam Smith, and two and a half pages of notes from the translator.



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84. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols, 11th edition) ed. William Playfair (T. Cadell and W. Davies, London 1805), Ch. I, pp. 484–513 23 cm. £2 13s., Printing 2,000, [GKM] 1828

As outlined above (pp. 32–4), on the expiry of copyright Cadell and Davies sought to renew their title to Smith’s Wealth of Nations through the publication of an ‘authorised’ new edition which they called the ‘11th edition’, continuing the numbering of the copyright series. The quality of the editorial comment was however severely criticised at the time and they never reissued this edition. Instead, when in 1812 they published a Works – which can be seen as a renewed attempt to establish their authority in the market – they issued a new separate edition of Wealth of Nations bound from the same sheets. Vol. I: Title-page p. i; Advertisement to the Third Edition p. iii; Advertisement to Fourth edition p. iv; Advertisement to this Edition [By the Editor] p. v; Preface [By the Editor] pp. vii–ix; ‘The Life of Dr. Adam Smith’ pp. xi– xxxvi. Contents of the First Volume pp. xxxvii–xl. Books I, II Chs 1 & 2 pp. 1– 515. Vol. II: Book II Chs 3, 4, 5; Book III; Book IV Chs 1–8 pp. 1–562 + appendix. Vol. III Book IV Ch. IX; Book V pp. 1–483 (includes supplementary chapter pp. 238–53); Supplementary Ch. ! pp. 484–513; Ch. II pp. 513–24; Ch. III 524–37; Index pp. 539–90. 85. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols (Greenland and Norris, London 1805) Vol. I pp. xii, 326, Books I, II, III, IV Ch. 1 pp. 1–326; Vol. II pp. i–ii, 327–717, unpaginated single col. Index pp. 44, Books IV Ch. 2–9, Book V. 22cm. [GKM] 1832

This is a simple octavo version of Wealth of Nations without any introductory matter besides the Advertisements to the Third and Fourth editions. Unusually, it is through-paginated. 86. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 4 vols, New Edition (R. Chapman, Glasgow 1805) Vol. I pp. viii, 304, Book I; Vol. II pp. 1–286 Books II, III IV Chs 1–5; Vol. III pp. 1–284, Books IV Chs 6–9; Book V Ch. 1 to end of Part III First Article pp. 1–284 + Herring appendix unpaginated; Vol. IV pp. 1–280, Book V Ch. 1 from Article Second ‘Of the Expences of the Institutions for the Education of Youth’ pp. 1–238, index pp. 239–280. 22cm. [GKM] 1833

Portrait of Adam Smith faces the title-page. 87. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols (J. & J. Scrymgeour, Glasgow 1805)


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Vol. I pp. iii, lv, 360, Book I; Vol. II pp. 512 + Herring appendix, Books II, III, IV Chs 1–7; Vol. III pp. 448 + unpaginated 50pp. index, Books IV Chs 8 & 9, Book V. 21 cm. [GKM] 1833

This is the first post-copyright three volume edition of Wealth of Nations, a ‘New Edition’ as stated on the title-page, since it includes a ‘Life of the Author’ and Germain Garnier’s ‘View of the Doctrine of Smith, compared with that of the French Economists’, a translation of the first two parts (the ‘View’ and the ‘Method’) of Garnier’s ‘Préface du traducteur’ of his 1802 edition of the Recherches (→ # 78). This translation is the base from which all later editions worked, modifying in time only spelling and punctuation. It is also the first edition to carry a ‘Life’, which draws heavily upon Dugald Stewart but includes later biographical material; this ‘Life’ was also reprinted many times in the first half of the nineteenth century. It was printed for J. & J. Scrymgeour at the University Press, and also for Mundell & Son and Arch. Constable & Co., of Edinburgh. 88. Adam Smith, Investigacion de la Naturaleza y Causas de la Riqueza de las Naciones, 4 vols, 2nd edition (En la Oficina de la Viuda e Hijos de Santander, Valladolid 1805) Trans. Jose Alonso Ortiz from 1784 edition, 20.2 cm.

This is a revised edition of # 53, with some stylistic improvements and omitting the appendix, 89. Anon., Life of Adam Smith (J. & J. Scrymgeour, Glasgow 1805) pp. (i–ii), Life of the Author pp. i–xxvii; Garnier, Short View pp. xxix–xl; Garnier, Method pp. xl–lv, Unbound, 21.3 cm. [Bod.] 8o BS.M.204(1)

This is the same text, published separately, that forms the introduction to the Glasgow 1805 3 volume edition (→ # 86), which explains why the pagination restarts at p. i with the ‘Life of the Author’ in that book. 90. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols (William Creech, Edinburgh 1806) Vol. I Garnier, ‘A Short View of the Doctrines of Smith, compared with that of the French Economists’ pp. xxxiii–xlvi; ‘Method of Facilitating the Study of Dr. Smith’s Work’ pp. xlvii– lxiii – Book I pp. 1–360; Vol. II Books II, III, IV Chs 1–7 pp. 1–512; Vol. III Book IV Chs 8–9, Book V pp. 1–448 + unpaginated index 56 pp. 21 cm. [GKM] 1872–73

There is some irregularity in the numbering of the frontmatter to this edition that persists in later versions. The ‘Advertisement to the Present Edition’ p. i notes that ‘an Account of the Life of the Author’ has been drawn up for this edition, and that although it contains no new facts, it is a more satisfactory account of his ‘Studies and Doctrines’ than has been prefixed to any other version of Wealth of Nations. Garnier’s ‘Comparative View’ and ‘Method’ are also prefixed. A footnote p. ii cites from a Review of the Garnier edition, appended



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to the Monthly Review for 1802, to the effect that if Smith had followed Garnier’s suggested plan his book would have been more readable and its doctrines more easily understood. Although the 1805 Glasgow edition was the first to include Garnier, the format of this edition was the one copied through many editions up to 1820. 91. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 5 vols (Arthus Bertrand, Paris 1806) Vol. I Book I Chs 1–11 pt. 2 pp. 1–436; Vol. II Book I Ch. 11 pt. 3 Digression, Books II, III pp. 1–490; Vol. III Book IV + appendix and contents pp. 1–617, 618–22, 623–4; Vol. IV Book V Chs 1 and 2 pt. 1 pp. 1–407 Vol. V Book V Ch. 2 pt. 2 On Taxes, Ch. 3 pp. 1–203, + index pp. 205–370. Trans. J.-A. Roucher, New Edition, 19 cm. [GKM] 1873

Carpenter (2002 p. 219) identifies this as a reissue of the 1794 (→ # 51) sheets with a new title-page. 92. G. Sartorius, Von dem Elementen des National-Reichthums, und von der Staatswirthschaft, nach Adam Smith (Johann Friedrich Römer, Göttingen 1806) pp. I–II, I–XVIII, 1–268, 19 cm. [BL] 8205.bb.32

A revised edition of # 61. 93. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 2 vols (Bell and Bradfute, Edinburgh 1808) 11th edition, Vol. I pp. viii; Parts I–IV pp. 1–466; Vol. II: pp. v, Parts V–VII pp. 1–380; First Formation pp. 381–438, no index. 21.5 cm. [GKM] 1808

This is not the same as the Cadell and Davies impression (→ # 80), the typeface differs and p. 386 does not correspond at all. 94. C. J. Kraus, Staatswirtschaft, 5 vols, ed. H. von Auerswald (Friedrich Nicolovius, Königsberg 1808–11) 19 cm. [SB] Fe 2611

Based on Kraus’ lectures at the University of Königsberg, this text is a synthetic synopsis of Wealth of Nations; see the discussion above pp. 134–5 concerning the degree to which Kraus draws directly on Smith. The work was reprinted by Schletter of Breslau in 1837. 95. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (R. Chapman, Glasgow 1809) 12th edition pp. 1–15, i–xxviii, 29–494, 23 cm. [BL] 8463.de.23; [GKM] 1956

Includes a ‘Life of the Author’ pp. i–xxvii, and ‘First Formation’ pp. 463–94. This is a one-volume edition in a modern typeface.


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96. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols (Mundell, Doig, and Stevenson, Edinburgh 1809) Vol. I Book I pp. 1–352 + wheat prices pp. 353–60; Vol. II Book II, III, IV Chs 1–7 pp. 1–512 + Appendix pp. 513–14; Vol. III Book IV Chs 8, 9, Book V pp. 1–448 Unpaginated index 50pp. 21 cm. [GKM] 1951–52

‘A Short Account of the Life and Writings of Dr. Adam Smith’ pp. i–xxxii. Appears to be same text as Creech (→ # 90) but the footnote quotations linked to the criticisms of Playfair have been omitted, hence the slight shortening. The ‘Life’ is Followed by Garnier’s two pieces pp. xxxiii–xlvi, xlvii–lxiii. Collophon ‘Printed by Mundell, Doig, and Stevenson, Edinburgh’. 97. W. Enfield, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; Containing the Elements of Commerce and Political Economy (Thomas Tegg, London 1809) pp. 352, 12 cm. [GKM] 1952

The entire work summarised in sixteen chapters, beginning with ‘Chap. 1 Division of Labour etc.’ which has got to the division of labour by p. 3. No Introduction and Plan, this is simply dealt with in the first two or thee paragraphs. 98. Adam Smith, Essai sur la première formation des langues (Manget et Cherbuliez, Geneva 1809) Trans. J. Manget, from TMS 3rd edition, pp. v–xix, 1–79, + ‘Notes’ pp. 81–108; translation of F. Schlegel ‘Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier’ (1808) pp. 111–229, 14 cm. [BNF] M-216

Reprinted 1971 99. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 5 vols, ed. Germain Garnier (Agasse, [1802] Paris 1810) Trans. Germain Garnier, 20.3 cm.

This is a new printing of # 78 (Carpenter 2002 p. 223), but with a false date on the title-page. Carpenter tentatively dates the work as 1810, while noting that it could have been rather later; but not earlier. 100. Adam Smith, Untersuchung über die Natur und die Ursachen des Nationalreichthums, 3 vols (Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn, Breslau 1810) Trans. C. Garve, A. Dörrien, 3rd. edition, Vol. I pp. 1–412, Vol. II pp. 1–631, Vol. III pp. 1– 422. 20 cm. [GKM] 1979

Vol. I Title-page = p. I; August Dörrien, ‘Vorbericht zu der zweiten Ausgabe der Uebersetzung’ pp. III–VI; Christian Garve, ‘Vorrede zu der ersten Ausgabe der Uebersetzung’ pp. VII–XII; ‘Stewarts Nachricht von dem Leben und den



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Schriften Adam Smiths’ pp. XIII–XCVIII; ‘Vorbericht des Autors zu der dritten Ausgabe’ p. XCIX; ‘Vorbericht zu der vierten Ausgabe’ p. C; Inhalt des ersten Bandes pp. CI–CIV. 101. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols (Silvester Doig and Andrew Stirling, Edinburgh 1811) Vol. I Book I pp. 1–360; Vol. II Book IV Chs 1–7 pp. 1–512 + appendix pp. 513–4; Vol. III Book IV Chs 8 & 9, Book V pp. 1–448 + 50 page unpaginated index. 22 cm. [GKM] 1999– 2000

Vol. I collophon ‘Printed by Mundell Doig and Stevenson, Edinburgh’ – no commas between names, see # 96; Vol. II printed John Brown, Edinburgh; as is Vol. III. 102. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols (J. Maynard, London 1811) 21 cm. [GKM] 2000

Vol. I Book I pp. 1–352 + prices 353–60 Collophon – Printer W. Lewis, Paternoster-row, London; Vol. II Books II, III, IV 1–7 pp. 1–512 + appendix pp. 513–14. Collophon p. 514 is ‘W. Flint, Printer, Old Bailey, London’; Vol. III Books IV 8 & 9, Book V pp. 1–448 + unpaginated index 50 pp. Collophon final index page is ‘Hamblin and Seyfang, Printers, Queen Street, Cheapside’. Frontmatter identical to Edinburgh 1809, 1811; single number top of second page of ‘Advertisement to the Present Edition’ is ‘vi’. Contents of first volume pp. vii–viii, and ‘A Short Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith’ continuously paginate with preceding, so runs pp. ix–xl; Garnier’s two pieces pp. xli–lxi. 103. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. William Playfair (Oliver D. Cooke, Hartford, 1811) Reprint of 11th London edition, 23 cm. [GKM] 2003

This is a two-volume version of the three-volume Playfair edition. Title-page p. i, Advertisement to the Third Edition p. iii, Advertisement to the Fourth Edition p. iv, Advertisement to this Edition [by the Editor] pp. v–vi, Preface [By the Editor] pp. vii–ix. ‘The Life of Dr. Adam Smith’ pp. xi–xxiv; Contents of the First Volume pp. xxv–xxviii; Vol. I Books I, II, III, IV Chs 1–4 pp. 1–355; Vol. II Book IV Chs 5–9, Book V pp. 1–349 + Supplementary Chs pp. 349–70, Appendix pp. 375–7, Index pp. 379–424. 104. Adam Smith, Compêndio da Obra da Riqueza das Nações de Adam Smith, Traduzida do Original Inglês, 3 vols (Impressão Régia, Rio de Janeiro 1811)


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Trans. Bento da Silva Lisboa, from 3rd 1784 edition, Vol. I – p. 1, Introduction pp. II–XII; text pp. 13–203; Vol. II – p. 1; pp. 126; Vol. III p. 1 pp. 18723 cm. [BibNac] SC 164455 P.

Translated as selections from Books I–IV, no translation of Book V. 105. Dugald Stewart, Biographical Memoirs, of Adam Smith, LL.D. of William Robertson, D.D. and of Thomas Reid, D. D. (W. Creech, Bell and Bradfute, Edinburgh 1811) pp. 1–152, 30 cm. [BL] 134.b.8

106. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (T. Cadell, W. Davies, London 1812) pp. xv, 611, Quarter leather with marbled paper boards, 21 cm. Printing 750 [GKM] 2028

This is the same printing as the Works (→ # 110) and is therefore in one volume. 107. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols (Cadell and Davies, London 1812) Vol. I Book I pp. 1–499; Vol. II Book II, Book III, Book IV Chs 1–8 pp. 1–518 + Fisheries appendix pp. 519–21; Vol. III Book IV Ch. 9, Book V pp. 1–465, + index pp. 467–515. 22 cm. Printing 1,250 [GKM] 2022

This is bound from the additional sheets printed with the Works (→ # 110). The general organisation of the volume mirrors that established in the 1806 Creech edition, viz. ‘Sketch of the Life of Dr. Adam Smith’ pp. viii–xxv, with pp. xxii–xxv direct quotation from Stewart on character of Smith; and also Garnier’s ‘Comparative View’ pp. xxvii–xxxix, which however runs directly into ‘Method’ without any indication pp. xxxix–xliii, omitting the reform of Smith’s narrative structure proposed by Garnier at the end of this piece. 108. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols (William Baynes, London 1812) Vol. I Book I pp. 1–360; Vol. II Book II, Book III, Book IV Chs 1–7 pp 1–514; Vol. III Book IV Chs 8 & 9, Book V pp. 1–448 + unpaginated index pp. 50. 21cm. [GKM] 2027–28

The Advertisement follows the 1806 edition exactly in stating the novelty of prefixing an account of Smith’s ‘Studies and Doctrines’ to an edition of Smith, although this is by 1812 scarcely a novelty any more. ‘A Short Account of the Life and Writings of Dr. Adam Smith’ pp. i–xxxiv here is the one that originally appeared in 1806, revised as in the Edinburgh 1809 edition excising the quotations in criticism of Playfair, but also with a new section added on the end which refers to Smith’s character and then, two-thirds down p. xxxiii, becoming a straight plagiarism of Stewart as in EPS p. 329 last paragraph, p. 330 to the end of the paragraph.



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109. F. von Coelln, Die neue Staatsweisheit. Oder Auszug aus Adam Smiths Untersuchung über die Natur und die Ursachen des Nationalreichthums (Gottfr. Hayn, Berlin 1812) pp. I–II, II–IV, 1–502, no index. 20.5 cm. [BL] 8206.dd.16

Synthetic treatment of Wealth of Nations. 110. Adam Smith, The Works of Adam Smith, LL.D., 5 vols (T. Cadell and W. Davies, London 1812) 21 cm. Printing 750 [GKM] 2022

Strahan Papers, Add. MS 48819 f.134 dates this as December 1811. Apparently this could be bought as separate works, Vol. I being priced at £2 19s. Also recorded here under the entry for Wealth of Nations are 2500 copies of a ‘Life and Doctrine of Smith’, which must in part refer to the separately published Wealth of Nations of 1812. It cannot be Stewart’s ‘Account’ since it only takes up 2 sheets, ie. 32 pp. Vol. V is dated 1811 unlike the rest which are 1812. Vol. I The Theory of Moral Sentiments ‘Advertisement to the Sixth Edition’ pp.xv–xvii; TMS pp.1–611; Vol. II The Nature and the Causes of the Wealth of Nations Contents pp. v–viii, Advertisement to Third Edition p. ix, Advertisement to Fourth Edition p. x, Book I, Book II Chs 1 & 2 pp. 1–499; Vol. III WN Book II Chs 3–5, Book III, Book IV Chs 1–8 pp. 1–518 + Fisheries appendix; Vol. IV WN Book IV Ch. 9 Book V pp. 1–465, Index to WN pp. 467–515; Vol. V ‘Considerations concerning the First Formation of Languages’ prefaces EPS pp. 1–48. Then p. 49 is EPS flyleaf, Advertisement by the Editors pp. 51–2; ‘The History of Astronomy’ pp. 53–190; ‘The History of Ancient Physics’ pp. 191–215; ‘History of Ancient Logics pp. 217–40; ‘Imitative Arts’ pp. 241–318; ‘Affinity’ pp. 319–30; ‘External Senses’ pp. 331–99; Stewart’s ‘Account of the Life and Writings’ pp. 401–522 + notes pp. 523–52; Appendix Review of Johnson form Edinburgh Review pp.553–66; Letter to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review pp. 567–84. 111. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 2 vols (W. Creech, Edinburgh 1813) 21 cm. [BL] RB.23.a.17103 [GKM] 2066

112. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols, ed. David Buchanan (Oliphant, Waugh & Innes, Edinburgh 1814) Vol. I Book I, Book II Chs 1 & 2 pp. p. 1–525; Vol. II Book II Chs 3–5, Book III, Book IV 1–8 pp. 1–538 + Appendix pp. 539–42; Vol. III Book IV Ch. IX, Book V pp. 1–482 + 55 pp. index [GKM] 2070

Buchanan substantially annotated Wealth of Nations, inserting new chapters and appending an entire volume of commentary, Observations on the Subjects Treated of


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in Dr. Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. In the second edition this was formally listed as the fourth volume. 113. Adam Smith, Untersuchung über die Natur und die Ursachen des Nationalreichthums, 3 vols (B. P. Bauer, Vienna 1814) Pirate edition of Garve & Dörrien translation, Vol. I: Vorberichte, Stewart’s ‘Life’ pp. XIII– CXX; 2 Advertisements, Book I pp. 1–400; Vol. II Books II, III, IV pp. 1–616; Vol. III Book V pp. 1–412. 21 cm. [GKM] 2073

114. Adam Smith, Rozprawa o handlu zbozem i o ustawach tyczacych się handlu tego; Wyjeta z dziela Adama Smitha o naturze i przyczynach bogactwa narodow. Z Ksiegi IVtey Rozdzialu Vgo (Drukarnia Gazety Warszawskiej, Warsaw 1814) Trans. S. Klokocki from the Garnier 1802 edition, pp. 2–10, 11–59, 19.2 cm. [NL] I 80.693

This Polish translation is of Wealth of Nations Book IV Ch. 5, ‘Of Bounties’. 115. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols (D. Hanna, Philadelphia 1816) Vol. I Books I, II Chs 1 & 2 pp. 1–412; Vol. II Book II Chs 3–5, Book III, Book IV Chs 1–8 pp. 1–425 + Appendix pp. 427–30; Vol. III pp. i–v, Book IV Ch. 9; Book V pp. 1–387 + pp. 53 unnumbered index. 17cm. [GKM] 2119

116. Adam Smith, ‘Ekonomia polityczna’ Pamietnik Lwowski, (Karol Wild, Lvov 1816) 30 golden rubles, [NL] 20054 (microfilmed journals)

Polish translation of Wealth of Nations Book III, Chapters 2–4: Ch. 2 published in the March issue of the journal Pamietnik Lwowski pp. 213–35, Ch. 3 in April issue pp. 507–29, and Ch. 4 in the May issue, pp. 3–31. 117. F. von Coelln, Die neue Staatsweisheit (Gottfr. Hayn, Berlin 1816) Second edition of 1812 edition (→ # 109)

118. Adam Smith, Observações sobre a Primeira Formação das Línguas do Differente Genio das Originais, e Compostas F. António Ribeiro de Sampaio (Impressão Régia, Lisbon 1816) Trans. Francisco Xavier Ribeiro de Sampaio, 24 cm. [BibNac] L. 645//2 P.

119. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 2 vols (Wells and Lilly, Boston 1817) 24 cm. [GKM]2164



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Vol. I: Extract from Dugald Stewart’s Account, = p. ii (where Stewart praises TMS); Title-page = p. iii; Advertisement pp. v–vi; Contents of First Volume pp. vii–ix; Contents of Second Volume pp. xi–xii; Parts I–IV pp. 1–262; Vol. II no title-page, Parts V–VII pp. 1–216; Languages pp. 217–50. 120. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments; or, An Essay towards an Analysis of the Principles, by which Men naturally judge concerning the Conduct and Character, first of their Neighbours, and afterwards of themselves. To which is added, A Dissertation on the Origin of Languages, First American from the Twelfth Edinburgh Edition (Anthony Finley, Philadelphia 1817) Based on 12th Edinburgh edition, pp. i–vii, ii, 1–598, 22 cm. [GKM] 2147

121. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, with Notes, and an Additional Volume, by David Buchanan. In Four Volumes (Oliphant, Waugh & Innes, Edinburgh, and Ogles, Duncan & Cochran, London 1817) Second edition, Vol. I Book I, Book II Chs 1 & 2 pp. p. 1–525; Vol. II Book II Chs 3–5, Book III, Book IV 1–8 pp. 1–538 + Appendix pp. 539–42; Vol. III Book IV Ch. IX, Book V pp. 1– 482 + index 55 pp. 22 cm. [GKM] 2141–2

The pagination of this edition corresponds exactly with that of the first (→ # 112). The Fourth volume, Observations on the Subjects treated of in Dr. Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, is likewise identical to the 1814 version with no reference to it being a ‘fourth volume’ on the titlepage – pp. i–xvi; 1–316, 1–88 + index. 122. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols (Silvester Doig and Andrew Stirling, Edinburgh 1817) 22 cm. [GKM] 2142

The Frontmatter is the same as the 1811 Edinburgh edition, with the addition of ‘October 1811’ at the conclusion of ‘Advertisement to the Present Edition’, which still persists in the claim that the ‘Account of the Life’ prefixed is more satisfactory than that of any other edition. 123. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, From the Eleventh London Edition, with Notes and Supplementary Chapters by William Playfair (Cook and Hale, Hartford 1818) 24 cm. [GKM] 2169

This is another two-volume version of the Playfair edition, but with Stewart’s ‘Account’ substituted for Playfair’s ‘Life’. Advertisement to Third Edition p. iii;


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Advertisement to Fourth Edition p. iv; Advertisement to this Edition [By the Editor] pp. v–vi; Preface [By the Editor] pp. vii–viii; D. Stewart ‘Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith LL.D’ pp. iv–xlviii + Notes pp. xlix–lviii – title-page attributes to D. Stewart. Vol. I: Contents of Vol. I pp. lix–lx. Books I, II, III, IV Chs 1–4 pp. 1–355; Vol. II Title-page Contents of Vol. II pp. i–iv; Book IV Chs 5–9; Book V pp. 1–349 + index in two columns pp 380–412 numbered. Supplementary Chapters ‘On the Commerce of Grain, Monopolies and Forestalling’ pp. 29–40 following IV 5; ‘On Treaties of Commerce’ pp. 50–3 following IV 6; on Education pp. 239–45 following V 1; + the three final supplementary chapters pp. 349–73 + Appendix pp. 375–7. 124. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols (William Allason, J. Maynard, London 1819) Vol. II: Title and Contents pp. i–v; pp. Book II, Book III, Book IV Chs1–7 pp. 512 + Appendix pp. 513–14; Vol. III: pp. i–v; Book IV Chs 8 & 9; Book V pp. 1–448, Index pp. 449–99. 22 cm. [GKM] 2198

125. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols (Stirling and Slade, Adam Black, and Fairbairn and Anderson, Edinburgh 1819) 22 cm. [BL] 8208.bb.75

Same as London 1819 (→ # 123). 126. Adam Smith, Vita di David Hume scritta da lui stesso, aggiunta una lettera di Adamo Smith 9. Novembre 1776 circa la morte e il carattere del suo amico Londra 1792 Ed. Cadell, ed. Pietro Antoniutti (privately printed [probably Tipografia di Andrea Santini] (Venice 1820) pp. 1–2, 3–11, 12–13 24 cm. [BNMV] 198, D.37

[D. Hume] la mia propria vita, pp. 3–11; Lettera di Adamo Smith L.L.D. 9. Novmebre 1776. A Mr. Guliemo Strahan Esq. circa l’ultima malattia di David Hume, pp. 12–13. 127. Jeremiah Joyce, A Complete Analysis; or, Abridgment of Dr. Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3rd edition, G & W. B. Whittaker, London 1821 pp. xii, 395. 20 cm. [BL] 8207.bb.12

This edition has been ‘carefully collated with the last and improved edition of the original work’, notes added, and a synopsis provided in the Appendix, ‘condensing even the Analysis, and presenting it under the natural order of the subject, according to the most logical division of which it is susceptible, though it thereby alters the arrangement of Dr. Smith’ (p. iv). This is in fact taken from



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Garnier. On p. 379 Joyce writes: ‘I would begin by remarking, that the whole doctrine of Smith, upon the origin, multiplication, and distribution of wealth, is contained in his two first books; and that the three others may be read separately, as so many detached treatises, which, no doubt, confirm and develop his opinions, but do not by any means add to them.’ 128. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 2 vols (J. Richardson, London 1822) Vol. I: Parts I–III pp. 1–250; Vol. II: Parts IV–VII pp. 1–244; First Formation pp. 245–78. 19 cm. [GKM] 2281

This is a variation on all the others and though close to the 1809 Glasgow version is not identical. 129. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 2 vols (Evert Duyckinck, New York 1822) Vol. I: Parts I–IV pp. 1–161; Vol. II Part V–VII pp. 1–130; Essay pp. 131–49, no index. 22 cm. [GKM] 2280

Reprinted 1900, 1983. 130. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols (G. Walker, J. Akerman, E. Edwards, London 1822) Vol. I Book I, Book II Chs 1 & 2 pp. 1–499; Vol. II Book II Chs 3–5; Book III; Book IV Chs 1–8; pp. 1–518; Vol. III Book IV Ch. 9; Book V pp. 1–365 + unnumbered index 49 pp. 21 cm. [BL] 8208.ee.12

131. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 6 vols, Germain Garnier (Agasse, Paris 1822) Revised trans. by Germain Garnier, Vol. pp. 368; Vol. II pp. 493; Vol. III pp. 564; Vol. IV pp. 556; Vol. V pp. 670; Vol. VI pp. 572. 21.7 cm. 25 francs [Cujas] 125730

Reprint of the 1810 Garnier edition with completely revised notes, including additions, making up Vols 5 and 6. See Carpenter (2002 pp. 234–5). 132. Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects (J. Richardson and Co., London 1822) pp. 1–201, 18.5 cm. [GKM] 2280

Includes: History of Astronomy pp. 1–79, p. 80 Note by the Editors; History of Ancient Physics pp. 81–94; History of Ancient Logics pp. 95–108; Imitative Arts pp. 109–52; Affinity pp. 153–9; External Senses pp. 161–201.


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133. Adam Smith, The Whole Works of Adam Smith, LL.D, in five volumes. A New Edition, with a Life of the Author (J. Richardson, London 1822) 18 cm. [GKM] 2277

The ‘Advertisement’ notes that, while Wealth of Nations has been printed many times, the Works have not, and that this is the first time they have appeared in a duodecimo edition, which while containing the whole works ‘it is hoped its condensed and accessible form will render it more generally accessible. A Life of the Author, written for this edition, is also added.’ This ‘Life’ Vol. I pp. xiii– lx is a lightly edited version of the TMS Glasgow 1809 ‘Life’. Vol. I TMS pp. 1– 404; First Formation pp. 405–32; Vol. II WN Bks. I and II Chs 1–2, pp. 1–336; Vol. III WN Bks II Chs 3–5; Book III; Book IV Chs 1–8 pp. 1–345; Herring pp. 347–8; Vol. IV WN Book V pp. 1–312 + unpaginated index 46 pp.Vol. V: EPS pp. 1–201. 134. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 2 vols (Longman, Hurst, Lees, Orme & Brown, London 1825) 24 cm. [BL] 8409.a.5

135. Adam Smith, The Works of Adam Smith, L.L.D F.R.S. With a Life of the Author, 5 vols (T. and J. Allman, London 1825) Vol. I ‘Life’ pp. 1–41; Garnier ‘Short View’ pp. 43–58; Garnier ‘Method’ pp. 58–77; WN Introduction pp.79 Book I pp. 79–491; Vol. II WN Book II, Book III, Book IV Chs 1–7 pp. 1– 580 + Herring pp. 581–4; Vol. III WN Book IV Chs 8 & 9; Book V pp. 1–500, Index pp. 501– 84; Vol. IV TMS Pts. I–IV pp. 1–360; Vol. V TMS Pts. V–VII pp. 1–291; Formation of Languages pp. 295–336.

This edition does not include the 1895 Essays, while the ‘Life of the Author’ is taken from the Glasgow 1806 version including the criticisms of the Playfair edition of Wealth of Nations, together with the revised conclusion added in the 1812 London edition (→ # 108). 136. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (J. F. Dove, London 1826) pp. i–vii, 9–904, index 909–33, 22 cm. [GKM] 2385

One-volume edition. 137. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson and Peter Brown, Edinburgh 1827) pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, index 25 pp., 22 cm. [GKM] 2408

Title-page = p. i; Contents pp. ii–iv double columns. ‘A Short Account of the Life and Writings of Dr. Adam Smith’ pp. i–xvi – this is as originally published



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in Baynes, London 1812. Is reset into a smaller type. Garnier View pp. xvii– xxii; Method xxiii–xxx (both single column). Text double column pages in one volume pp. 1–404 + 25 pp. index unnumbered. Collophon: ‘Stereotyped. Edinburgh: – Duncan Stevenson, Printer to the University’. This is the first edition of a one-volume edition that would be reprinted twenty one times, the last being in 1869. 138. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson and Peter Brown, Edinburgh 1828) 2nd edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [GKM] 2447

Larger format version of # 137. 139. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith, LL.D. With a Life of the Author, an Introductory Discourse, Notes, and Supplemental Dissertations, 4 vols, ed. J. R. McCulloch (Adam Black and William Tate, Edinburgh 1828) Based on 1786 edition. Vol. I: Editor’s Preface V–XII; Sketch of the Life of Dr. Smith XIII– XLI; Introductory Discourse pp. i–xcvi; Advertisement to Third Edition p. 3; Advertisement to Fourth Edition p. 4; Contents of First Vol. pp. 5–7; Book I Chs I–XI pp. 9–420; Vol. II Books II, III & IV to Ch. VII pp. 1- 505; Vol. III Book IV Ch. VII – IX, Book V Chs I & II 1– 507; Vol. IV Book V Ch. III 1–70; Index pp. 581–634; Supplemental Notes and Dissertations pp. 71–580. 22 cm., 2 ½ guineas, [GKM] 2432–33

This is the most well-known of the early nineteenth century English editions of Wealth of Nations because McCulloch was a distinguished political economist in his own right. The second edition published in 1838 as a single volume in two columns was repeatedly reprinted well into the later nineteenth century. In his Editorial Preface he wrote that ‘the great and leading merits of Dr. Smith’s work continue unimpaired. Nothing of importance has hitherto been added to his full and masterly exposition of the benefits arising from the freedom of industry: And even those parts where he is least sound as to principle, uniformly abound in the most sagacious remarks and disquisitions, and are illustrated with unrivalled skill and felicity.’ (p. VIII). However, he continued to argue that his annotations and supplementary notes would ‘alert the reader to the fallacy of some principles advocated by Smith,’ (p. IX) and indicate the progress of science, and of commercial and financial legislation. McCulloch’s editorial style therefore takes the form of additions and corrections to Smith’s work, the major points being collected together as a series of notes in the final volume. He also prefixed the first edition with a substantial ‘Introductory Discourse’ which sketched the history of political economy and Smith’s place in it. 140. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson and Peter Brown, Edinburgh 1829)


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3rd edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [GKM] 2463

Reprint of # 137 141. Adam Smith, Théorie des sentiments moraux ou essai analytique sur les principes des jugements que portent naturellement les hommes, d’abord sur les actions des autres , et ensuite sur leurs propres actions, 2 vols (Barrois, Paris 1830) 2nd edition, Trans. Sophie de Grouchy, pp. v–viii, 1–394 ; 1–263, no index, + Adam Smith, ‘Consideration sur l’origine et la formation des langues’, Sophie de Grouchy, ‘Lettres sur la sympathie’, pp. pp. 264–442, 21 cm. [BNF] R 51402 R51403

Reprinted 1860, 1981. 142. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson and Peter Brown, Edinburgh 1831) 4th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [GKM] 2525

Reprint of # 137. 143. [?] Draper, Life of Dr. Adam Smith (Baldwin and Cradock, London 1833) pp. 1–32, 8vo, [BL] 737.d.9

Published as part of the Society for the Dissemination of Useful Knowledge’s Library of Useful Knowledge, ‘Lives of Eminent Persons’. 144. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson and Peter Brown, Edinburgh 1834) 5th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [GKM] 2651

Reprint of # 137. 145. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, with a Commentary by the author of ‘England and America’, 6 vols (Charles Knight, London 1835, 1835, 1836, 1839) 17 cm. [GKM] 2696

Announced in Vol. I as ‘Six Volumes’, the edition concluded in four without an index. Vol. I: Title-page = p. i, facing Frontispiece of Tassie Medallion. ‘In Six Volumes’. ‘Preface to this Edition’ pp. iii–xviii; D. Stewart, ‘Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith’ pp. xix–cx; Garnier’s Short View pp. cxi–cxxiii; Method pp. cxxiii–cxxxix; Advertisement to the Third edition p. cvli; Advertisement to the Fourth Edition cxlii; Book I pp. 1–327. Note on Ch. 1 pp. 21– 52; Note on Ch. 2 pp. 59–64; Note on Ch. 3 pp. 73–83; Note on Ch. IV pp. 95–99; Note on Chs 5, 6 and 7 pp. 157–70; Note on Ch. 9 pp. 227–54; Note on



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Ch. X Book I Chs 1–10 pp. 328–9. Vol. II: Title-page – faces portrait of Ricardo. Title-page makes no reference to six vols, this is just Vol. II. Text pp. 1–473: Book I Ch. 11; Note on Ch. 11 185–248; Book II, Notes to Chs 2 pp. 341–54, 3 pp. 386–96; 4 pp. 411–46; 5 pp. 473–8. Vol. III: Published 1836. Portrait facing title-page is Quesnay. Books III, IV pp. 1–491 + Appendix pp. 493– 6. Vol. IV Published 1839 Portrait facing title-page William Penn. Book V pp. 1–425. Gibbon Wakefield’s ‘Preface’ drew attention to the easy style of Smith’s work: ‘Adam Smith is a teller of stories about political economy. His book entertains those even whom it does not instruct, and instructs others by means of entertaining them. One reason, then, for its lasting popularity appears to be, not so much the importance of the truths which it teaches, as the manner in which it teaches these truths.’ (p. vii). This contrasted with more recent writing in political economy, which was ‘…not only unpopular, but, to vulgar minds, thoroughly repulsive.’ (p. viii). He also criticised the way in which McCulloch had appended long notes to his edition, separated from the text they were intended to elucidate, and taking the form of a commentary which might as well have been published separately. Wakefield set himself five objectives in approaching his work: 1. Note those things to which Smith did not attach sufficient importance, and point out what are generally considered to be the errors of his work; 2. Vindicate some of his doctrines which have been criticised by modern writers; 3. Note errors and defects hitherto overlooked; 4. Warn the student of political economy against too ready an embrace of a science whose principles as yet unfinished, and point to those questions relating to which next to nothing has been done; 5. Apply the doctrines of Adam Smith and others to some new circumstances in state of the country. 146. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Peter Brown and Thomas Nelson, Edinburgh 1836) 6th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [GKM] 2727

Reprint of # 137. 147. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson and Peter Brown, Edinburgh 1836) 7th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [GKM] 2727

Reprint of # 137. This is counted as a second printing in 1836 since there are two copies in the Kress microfilm, distinguished only by the variant order of the publishers’ names. 148. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Peter Brown, Edinburgh 1837) 8th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [GKM] 2770


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Reprint of # 137. 149. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. R. McCulloch (Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh 1838) New edition, pp. i–lv, 1–431, ‘Supplemental Notes, and Dissertations’, + index pp. 622–48. 21.7 cm. [GKM] 2795

This is the first edition of a one-volume two-column edition that was stereotyped and reprinted with only minor variation through to 1889. The ‘Editor’s Preface’, dated London, May 1838, for example reproduces the 1828 version, with the addition of a paragraph claiming new notes and dissertations have been added, concluding with the remark that the more condensed form permitted the publishers ‘to offer it for less than half the price of the preceding edition’. McCulloch died in 1864 but his work still continued to appear largely unaltered from the original of 1828. 150. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Peter Brown, Edinburgh 1838) 9th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [GKM] 2797

Reprint of # 137. 151. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. R. McCulloch (Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh 1839) New edition, pp. i–lv, 1–431, 432–621 + index, 621–48, 21.7 cm. [HDUB] K 415 D

‘A New Edition, corrected throughout and greatly enlarged’ according to the title-page, although such changes as can be detected are very minor. 152. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Ross and Co., Edinburgh 1839) 10th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [GKM] 2836

Reprint of # 137. 153. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 4 vols (Charles Knight and Co., London 1840) 17 cm. [GKM] 2696

This edition appears to be a reprint of Vol. I together with a reissue of Vols II, III and IV, in which a portrait of Huskisson is substituted for that of William Penn.



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154. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson, Edinburgh 1840) 11th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [GKM] 2888

Reprint of # 137. 155. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments; or, An Essay towards an Analysis of the Principles, by which Men naturally judge concerning the Conduct and Character, first of their Neighbours, and afterwards of themselves. To which is added, A Dissertation on the Origin of Languages (P. S. d’Rozario, Calcutta 1843) pp. 1–414; First Formation pp. 415–442. 22 cm. [GKM] 3035

No printer is indicated, so it is unclear where this work was printed. 156. Adam Smith, An Inquiry in the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith, LL.D. With Notes from Ricardo, McCulloch, Chalmers, and other Eminent Political Economists, 4 vols, ed. Edward Gibbon Wakefield (Charles Knight & Co, London 1843) ‘New edition’, based on 1786 edition, 17.2 cm. [GKM] 3011

Vol. I: Portrait of Smith and Title-page o–ii, Editor’s Preface pp. iii–xviii; D. Stewart, ‘Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith’pp. xix–cx; M. Garnier, ‘A Short View of the Doctrine of Smith, compared with that of the French Economists’ pp. cxi–cxxxix; Advertisement to Third Edition p. cxli; Advertisement to Fourth Edition p. cxlii; Book I Chs I–X 1–329. Vol. II Portrait of Ricardo and Title-page pp. o–ii; Book I Ch. XI; Book II Ch. I–V pp. 1–478. Vol. III Portrait of Quesnay and Title-page pp. i–iv; Book III; Book IV; pp. 1–496; Vol. IV Portrait of Huskisson and Title-page pp. o–iii; Book V pp. 1–425. No Index. 157. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations par Adam Smith, traduction du Comte Germain Garnier entièrement revue et corrigée et précédée d’une notice biographique par M. Blanqui, membre de l’Institut; avec les commentaires de Buchanan, G. Garnier, Mac Culloch, Malthus, J. Mill, Ricardo, Sismondi; augmentée de notes inédites de JeanBaptiste Say, et d’eclaircissements historique par M. Blanqui, 2 vols, ed. Adolphe Blanqui (Guillaumin, Paris 1843) Revised version of translation by Germain Garnier, Vol. I pp. lxxix, 520; Vol. II iv, 714. 24.1 cm. 20 francs per vol. [Cujas] 75420

Blanqui’s edition of Garnier’s translation of Wealth of Nations, revised by Blanqui and Binet, established an authoritative French edition that, by including textual notes culled from the writings of leading political economists, relaunched the text as the basis of a new systematic political economy forming,


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as he stated in his Preface, the obligatory starting point for ‘the science’. Vol. I frontmatter includes A. Blanqui, ‘Préface de cette nouvelle edition’ pp. v–viii; A. Blanqui, ‘Notice sur la vie et travaux d’Adam Smith’ pp. ix–xiv; ‘Préface de Garnier’ pp. xxv–lxxix. See Carpenter (2002, pp. 242–9). 158. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. R. McCulloch (Adam & Charles Black, Edinburgh 1846) pp. i–lv, 1–431, index pp. 622–48, 23 cm. [Bod.] 46.444

This ‘New Edition’ has identical pagination to the first one-volume edition of 1838 (→ # 149). Comprises Tassie portrait and Title-page, ‘A New Edition, corrected throughout and greatly enlarged’. Followed by Editor’s Preface, dated London, May 1838; Portrait of Smith at writing table facing ‘Sketch of the Life of Dr. Smith’ pp. i–xiii; ‘Introductory Discourse’ pp. xv–lv; Text pp. 1– 431; ‘Supplemental Notes and Dissertations’ pp. 433–621; Index in two cols. pp. 622–48. 159. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson, Edinburgh 1846) 12th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [GKM] 3136

Reprint of # 137. 160. Adam Smith, Untersuchungen über das Wesen und die Ursachen des Nationalreichthums, 4 vols, ed. Max Stirner (Otto Wigand, Leipzig 1846, 1847) Trans. Max Stirner, Vol. I 1846 – Book I pp. 5–359; Vol. II 1846 – Books II, III, pp. 5–213; Vol. III 1847 – Book IV pp. 5–367; Vol. IV 1847 – Book V pp. 5–331. 21 cm. [AW] C IV 17/7:1–4

This edition became the basis of several subsequent editions, especially in the early 1900s; but this version contains neither index nor contents page, and there is no introductory material of any kind. Notes are appended to each chapter, for the most part excerpts from Garnier, Buchanan, Blanqui, McCulloch. 161. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson, London 1847) 13th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [GKM] 3204

Reprint of # 137. 162. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson, London 1848) 14th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [GKM] 3251



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Reprint of # 137. 163. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (George Clark and Son, Aberdeen 1848) pp. i–v, v–x, 11–636, + contents pp. 641–5. 19 cm. [GKM] 3255

This is a one-volume version, but not a copy of the 1827 edition since it is in single column and the frontmatter differs. Collophon p. 645 ‘James Clark, Printer, Aberdeen’. The ‘Memoir of Adam Smith’ pp. v–x is a condensed version of the memoir appearing in the 1827 edition. 164. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (John D. Lowe, Edinburgh 1849) pp. x, 538, no index. 21 cm. [Kress VB]

Verso of title-page – ‘Stereotyped and printed by Stevenson & Co.’ 165. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. R. McCulloch (London 1850) pp. i–lv, 1–431, 433–621 + index pp. 622–48, 23 cm. [BL] 8205.f.22

166. Adamo Smith, Ricerche sopra la natura e le cause della ricchezza delle nazioni, ed. Francesco Ferrara (Pomba, Turin 1851) Based on the McCulloch1828 edition, pp. vi, vii–lxxx, 1–660, 664–704, 24.9 cm. [PisaFacEcon] BP B 127

The title-page states that this translation was made from the 1839 version of McCulloch’s edition (→ # 151). It also contains Victor Cousin, ‘Adamo Smith. La sua vita e le sue opere’; ‘Giudizio del sig. A. Blanqui intorno al Saggio sulla ricerca delle nazioni [some parts are omitted]’; and ‘Metodo di Germano Garnier per facilitare lo studio dell’opera di Smith’. The original edition was paperback and published in separate portions, issued periodically and sold by subscription. 167. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson, London 1852) 15th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. GKM VB

Reprint of # 137. 168. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Henry G. Bohn, London 1853) pp. i–x, xi–lxix, 1–503; 505–538, no index, 19 cm. [Bod] 2652.e.58


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Bohn’s Standard Library edition; Dugald Stewart, ‘Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith’ pp. xi–lxix; with First Formation of Languages appended. Vanderblue p. 39 records a reported 1846 edition in the Bohn’s Standard Library; this is presumably a reference to the entry in the British Library Catalogue which is however dated according to the series, not the work – 2504. n. 9 is an 1853 edition. 169. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. R. McCulloch (Adam & Charles Black, Edinburgh 1853) 4th edition, pp. lxvi, 1–431, 433–621 + index pp. 622–48, 23 cm. [Kress VB]

170. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson, London 1854) 16th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [Kress VB]

Reprint of # 137. 171. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. R. McCulloch (Adam & Charles Black, Edinburgh 1855) 4th edition pp. lxvi, 685, 23 cm. [Kress VB]

172. Adam Smith, Adam Smith Buch IV Kapitel I, ed. C. W. Asher (Nolte & Köhler, Hamburg 1857) pp. 1–2, 2–28, no index. 21 cm. [BL] 8206.c.31/4

Subtitled ‘Ein ABC und Lese-Buch aus der zweiten Hälfte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts für Leser aller Stände in der zweiten Hälfte des neunzehnten’. 173. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. R. McCulloch (Adam & Charles Black, Edinburgh 1859) 4th edition, pp. lxvi, 685, 23 cm. [Kress VB]

174. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 3 vols, ed. Joseph Garnier (Guillaumin, Paris 1859) Trans. Germain Garnier, Revised by Joseph Garnier, pp. I–LXXXVIII, 89–404; 1–466; 1–367. 17.5 cm. [Cujas] 34061

Revised and corrected by J. Garnier, with additional material



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175. Adam Smith, Théorie des sentiments moraux ou essai analytique sur les principes des jugements que portent naturellement les hommes d’abord sur les actions des autres, et ensuite sur leurs propres actions (Guillaumin et Cie, Paris 1860) 3rd edition, trans. Sophie de Grouchy, pp. v–xvi, pp. 1–405 no index. [BNF] R-51404

Introduction and notes by Henri Joseph Léon Baudrillart. 176. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson, London 1860) 17th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm., [Kress VB]

Reprint of # 137. 177. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (H. G. Bohn, London 1861) pp. lxix, 538, 21 cm. [Kress VB]

Bohn’s Standard Library edition as in # 168. 178. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, J. R. McCulloch (Adam & Charles Black, Edinburgh 1861) 5th edition, pp. lxvi, 685, 23 cm., [Kress VB]

179. Adam Smith, Ueber die Quellen des Volkswohlstandes, 2 vols, ed. C. W. Asher (J. Engelhorn, Stuttgart 1861) Trans. C. W. Asher, from the 1850 McCulloch edition (→ # 165) 21.8 cm. [AW] B II 1/1–2

Vol. I Title-page = p. I; Vorwort pp. III–X; Books I, II, III pp. 1–488; Vol. II Title-page, Books IV, V pp. 1–481, Tables and notes pp. 481–88. Wakefield Supplement to Book II Ch. IV , 1835 Vol. II pp. 411ff. pp. 488–502. Contents pp. XIII–XVI. 180. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson, London 1863) 18th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [Kress VB]

Reprint of # 137. 181. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. R. McCulloch (Adam & Charles Black, London 1863) New edition, pp. lxvi, 669, 23 cm. [BL] 8207.r.2


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182. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (T. Nelson and Sons, London 1864) 19th edition [Kress VB]

Reprint of # 137. 183. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson, London 1865) 20th edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [Kress VB]

Reprint of # 137. 184. Adam Smit, Issledovaniia o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva narodov s primechaniiami Bentama, Blanki, Bukhanana, Garn’e, Mak-Kulokha, Mal’tusa, Millia, Rikardo, Seia, Sismondi i Tiurgo, 3 vols, ed. P. A. Bibikov (v tipografii I. I. Glazunova, St Petersburg 1866) Trans. P. A. Bibikov, from the 1843 Blanqui edition, 13.9 cm. 2 rubles per vol., [RNL] 18.56.6.8/1–3

Vol.1 ‘Introduction’ pp. p.27–90; pp. 91–494; Vol. 2 p.5–69; Vol.3 p.5–381, Index pp. 389–462. Reproduces the notes and apparatus of the 1843 Blanqui edition. 185. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson, London 1867) 21st edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [Kress VB]

Reprint of # 135. 186. Adam Smith, Teoriia nravstvennykh chuvstv ili opyt issledovaniia o zakonakh, upravliaiushchikh suzhdeniiami, estestvenno sostavliaemymi nami, snachala o postupkakh prochikh liudei, a zatem o nashikh sobstvennykh s pis’mami M. Kondorse k kabanisu o simpatii, ed. P. A. Bibikov, Tipografiia I. I. Glazunova (St Petersburg 1868) Trans. P. A. Bibikov, possibly from 1830 edition, pp. 1, 5–13, 15–447, no index. 25 cm. 2 Rubles [RNL] 18.122.5.44

187. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. James E. Thorold Rogers (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1869) Based on 1786 edition, 21.8 cm. [Bod.] 23211.d.127/128

Vol. I Editor’s Preface pp. v–xlvi; Advertisement to the Third Edition (p. xlvii); Advertisement to the Fourth Edition (p.xlviii); Contents of Vol. I pp. xlix–lii; Books I–III pp. 1–423; Vol. II: Title-page (p. iii); Contents of Vol. II pp. v–viii;



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Books IV, V pp. 1–550; Index pp. 551–594. Rogers’ argued in his Preface that Smith should be regarded as a mainly inductive, historical thinker, and also set down a new charter for editorial work: ‘I am, however, disposed to think that the editor of a great work, like that of the ‘Wealth of Nations,’ should submit to the functions of a clerk, rather than assume those of a partner, however deferential his language may be towards the author which whom he associates his name.’ (p. xlv) He showed himself rather less restrained than he suggests in his comments to Books I and II. 188. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Thomas Nelson, London 1869) 22nd edition, pp. i–iv, i–xxx, 1–404, pp. 25 index, 23 cm. [Kress VB]

Reprint of # 137. 189. Adam Smith, Essays (Alex. Murray & Son, London 1869) pp. (i–ii), 1–2, 9–473, no index 19 cm. 3s. 6d. [Bod.] 265.j.81

On title half page has ‘Essays of Adam Smith’, but not on the title-page. Contains Biographical Notice pp. 1–2 (condensed from Stewart’s ‘Life’); Advertisement to the Sixth Edition [of Theory of Moral Sentiments] p. 3; Essays by Adam Smith on Philosophical Subjects. Advertisement by the Editors (Joseph Black and James Hutton) p. 4; Contents pp. 5–8; TMS pp. 9–325; History of Astronomy pp. 325–85; History of Ancient Physics pp. 385–95; History of Ancient Logic pp. 395–405; Imitative Arts pp. 405—34; Music, Dancing and Poetry pp. 434–8; External Senses pp. 438–68; English and Italian Verses pp. 468–73. Is therefore not a straightforward edition of the 1895 Essays, since it omits Dugald Stewart’s ‘Account’, while it adds to the essays Moral Sentiments. 190. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Alex. Murray & Son, London 1870) Reprint of 3 vol. 1812 in one, pp. (1–2), 5–14, 17–760, index pp. 761–81, 19 cm., 5s., [Bod] 232.f.104

This version of Wealth of Nations is reprinted several times through to the end of the century, taking over where the Nelson edition (# 137) leaves off; but it is inexact in its claim to be an ‘exact reprint’ of the 1812 edition. There were two 1812 editions, from Cadell and Davies (→ # 107) and Baynes (→ # 108). Both of these contained Garnier’s ‘Comparative View’ and ‘Method’, neither of which are reproduced in this edition. The claim would seem to relate to the text of Wealth of Nations itself, rendering it very difficult to determine from which edition it is supposed to derive.


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191. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. R. McCulloch (Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh 1870) New edition, pp. i–lvi, 1–431, index pp. 635–69, 22 cm. [AW] B II 1

The ‘Introductory Discourse’ coincides with the 1839 version exactly, apart from a slight change in page numbering. The notes are overwhelmingly the same as in the first (1828) edition, including for instance ‘Note XIII Impressment – Plans for it Abolition’, and Note XXV ‘Colonial Policy’ (renumbered). New Notes appear to be Note XI Credit; Note XXI Foundations; Note XXIII Scotch System of Parochial Education; Note VVVIV Public Revenue; Note XXXV Public Expenditure. 192. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (H. G. Bohn, London 1871) pp. lxix, 538, no index. 18 cm. [Kress VB]

Bohn’s Standard Library edition. 193. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Alex. Murray & Son, London 1871) Reprint of 3 vol. 1812 in one, pp. (1–2), 5–14, 17–760, index pp. 761–81, 19 cm., 5s. [Kress VB]

Reprint of # 190. 194. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. R. McCulloch (Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh 1872) No Library details for this version, copy in John Reeder’s private collection. 195. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Alex. Murray & Son, London 1872) Reprint of 3 vol. 1812 in one, pp. (1–2), 5–14, 17–760, index pp. 761–81, 19 cm., 5s.

Reprint of # 190. 196. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Alex. Murray & Son, London 1873) Reprint of 3 vol. 1812 in one, pp. (1–2), 5–14, 17–760, index pp. 761–81, 19 cm., 5s.

Reprint of # 190. 197. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Alex. Murray & Son, London 1874)



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Reprint of 3 vol. 1812 in one, pp. (1–2), 5–14, 17–760, index pp. 761–81, 19 cm., 5s., [BL] 8207.bb.36

Reprint of # 190. 198. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Ward, Lock, and Tyler, London 1875) Reprint of 3 vol. 1812 in one, pp. (1–2), 5–14, 17–760, index pp. 761–81, 19 cm., 5s., [Bod.] 232.f.188

Reprint of # 190. 199. Wolseley P. Emerton, An Analysis of Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Pt. I (James Thornton, Oxford 1877) pp. (i–iv), (v–vi), xv–xvi, 1–149, index 151–9, 18 cm. 4s. 6d., [Bod.] 232.g.320a; [BL] 8207.aa.44

Reprinted, with additions, from the Third Edition of Jeremiah Joyce’s Abridgement. Part I = sections covering Wealth of Nations Books I and II. Titlepage (p. iii); Preface to Part I. By the Editor pp. v–vi; Contents pp. vii–x; List of Authorities referred to pp. xi–xii; Introduction and Plan of the Work pp. xv– xvi; Book I pp. 97; Book II pp. 98–139; Appendix. Synopsis of Books I. and II. Of the Wealth of Nations by General Garnier pp. 141–9; Index pp. 151–9. The University of Oxford Board of Studies had prescribed Books I and II of Wealth of Nations for the Pass Schools, and Emerton stated this the text was intended ‘…to assist beginners in acquiring a clear and accurate knowledge of that portion of Adam Smith’s great work’. Nearly all of Joyce’s notes are omitted as obsolete, and there are changes in the typeface; references inserted to Fawcett’s Manual of Political Economy (5th edition, 1876) ‘now universally read at Oxford’, and to Rogers’ 1869 edition, page references to which are given at the end of each paragraph of the analysis. 200. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Ward, Lock & Co., London 1878) Reprint of 3 vol. 1812 in one, pp. (1–2), 5–14, 17–760, index pp. 761–81, 19 cm. [Bod.] 232.e.453

Reprint of # 190, World Library of Standard Books. 201. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (R. Worthington, New York 1878) pp. 780, 19 cm. [LibCon] HB 161.S625


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202. Adam Smith, Untersuchung über das Wesen und die Ursachen des Volkswohlstandes, 4 vols (Expedition der Merkur, Berlin 1878) Trans. F. Stöpel, 21 cm. [Kress] HB 161.S655

203. Adam Smith, Natur und Ursachen des Volkswohlstandes, 2 vols (E. Staude, Berlin 1879) Trans. Wilhelm Loewenthal, 21 cm. [Kress VB]

204. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (G. Bell & Sons, London 1880) pp. lxix, 538, 19 cm. [BL] W16.7828

Bohn’s Standard Library. 205. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. James E. Thorold Rogers (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1880) 2nd. Edition 22cm. [BL] W59/0876

206. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (George Routledge and Sons, London 1880) pp. i–xiii, 1–760, index pp. 761–80, 18.5 cm. [Bod.] 232.g.370

Standard Works. Also New York 1880, reprinted 1893. 207. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 2 vols, ed. Joseph Garnier (Guillaumin, Paris 1880–1) Trans. Germain Garnier, Revised 5th edition, pp. 506, 661 23 cm. [Kress]

Germain Garnier’s preface is replaced by an analytical summary from Joseph Garnier. 208. Wolseley P. Emerton, An Analysis of Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Pt. II (James Thornton, Oxford 1880) pp. (i–iv), (v–vi), 1–209, no index, 18 cm. [Bod.] 232.g.320b

Covers Wealth of Nations Book III pp. 1–20; Book IV pp. 21–110; Book V pp. 111–209. Unlike its predecessor (→ # 199), it is intended for more advanced students presenting themselves for the Honour Schools of Modern History and Literae Humaniores, or as candidates for the Indian Civil Service. The name of Jeremiah Joyce has been omitted from the title-page, since the work has been completely recast with whole passages substituted, sometimes drafted by Emerton and sometimes taken from paraphrases of other authors.



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209. Adam Smith, Essays Philosophical and Literary (Ward, Lock, & Co., London 1880) pp. (i–ii), 1–2, 9–473, no index, 19 cm. [Bod.] 265.j.260

World Library of Standard Books. Exact reprint of 1869 essays (→ # 189) with an altered title-page. 210. Wolseley P. Emerton, An Abridgment of Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (James Thornton, Oxford 1881) pp. i–xviii, v–vi, 1–374, index pp. 375–406, 17.5 cm. [BL] 8207.s.21

Revised, one-volume edition of # 199 and # 208, Appendices on the Rent of Land, and II and IV ‘Is Political Economy a Science?’ and ‘Is Political Economy Selfish?’ reprinted with additions from his ‘Questions and Exercises in Political Economy’. 211. Adam Smith, Natur und Ursachen des Volkswohlstandes, 2 vols (E. Staude, Berlin 1882) Trans. Wilhelm Loewenthal, 21 cm. [Kress VB]

212. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations ed. J. Shield Nicholson, (T. Nelson and Sons, London 1884) Introductory Essay pp. 3–32; pp. 1–404; Notes pp. 405–20; Index pp. 421–45. 22.5 cm. 4s. [Kress VB]

One-volume, two-column edition of Wealth of Nations with ‘Introductory Essay’ which provides a contemporary academic overview of the work. 213. Adam Smith, Fukokuron, 3 vols (Keizaigaku Koshukai, Tokyo 1884) Trans. Eisaku Ishikawa, Shosaku Saga, 21 cm. [NDL] 28–17. [Keizaigaku Koshukai = Society for the Study of Political Economy]

Vol. 1 – Book I of WN; trans. Eisaku Ishikawa, supervised by Shinpachi Seki. Preface Ukichi Taguchi pp. 1–9; Brief Life of the Author pp. 1–4; Author’s Preface pp. 1–7; text pp. 1–754. Price 75 sen; Vol. 2 – includes Books II and III, and up to Ch. 7 Part I of Book IV. Translated by Eisaku Ishikawa; Contents pp. 1–3; Book II pp. 1–290; Book III pp. 1–114; Book IV pp. 1–383; Vol. 3 – Remainder of Book IV trans. Eisaku Ishikawa, Book V trans. Shosaku Saga. Book IV Ch. 7 Pts. 2 & 3, Chs 8, 9 pp. 385–714; Book V pp. 1–640. Ishikawa’s translation was published in the monthly journal Tokyo keizaigaku koshukai kogiroku (Lectures of the Tokyo Society for the Study of Political Economy) from No. 1 April 1882 to No. 15 June 1883 with some gaps, competing the translation to the beginning of Book II Ch. 7. The remainder of the translation was published in twelve instalments by the Society from September 1883


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to 1888, and then rebound in three volumes. As Shosaku Saga appeared as a single translator in the title-page of the tenth instalment he might have been responsible for the translation of Book IV Ch. 8 to the end of the work, following Ishikawa’s early death. The translation appears to have been based on Murray’s 1870 Reprint (→ # 190). The three-volume edition was reprinted by Yushodo, Tokyo in 1993, with an afterword by Akio Okochi. 214. F. A. Basford de Wilson, Analysis of Adam Smith’s "Wealth of Nations". Books I and II (A. Thomas Shrimpton and Son, Oxford, 1885) pp. 1–92, 2s. [BL] 8207.aaa.24

Title continues: ‘Arranged on a New and Easy Method, and Specially Adapted for the Use of Candidates for Examination in the Elements of Political Economy’. Basford is from Hertford College. Summary of Book I Ch. I begins after title-page. Provides a chapter-by-chapter précis up to Book II Ch. V. Probably reissued 1887 by Simpkin @ 3/6d., but no library copy located. 215. Adam Smith, Fukokuron Ranyo, 2 vols (Keizai Zasshisha, Tokyo 1885) Trans. Eisaku Ishikawa, based on 1884 edition pp. 1–9, 1–4, 1–4, 1–714, 21 cm. [NDL] 28–30

Printed June 1885, December 1886 – reprint of Book IV from 1884 translation. 216. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. Shield Nicholson (T. Nelson and Sons, London 1886) pp. vi, 1–32, 1–404, index pp. 421–45, 22.5 cm. [Kress VB]

Reprinting of # 212. 217. Albert Delatour, Adam Smith, Sa vie, ses travaux, ses doctrines (Librairie Guillaumin, Paris 1886) pp. I–VIII, 1–313, 22 cm. [BL] 10854.h.11

Delatour argues strongly for the unity of Smith’s work in his first chapter, before turning to an outline of Theory of Moral Sentiments and the various essays. The third chapter, pp. 133–313, deals with Wealth of Nations in a standard Saytype approach. 218. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Little, Brown, & Co., Boston 1887) pp. lxix, 538, no index, 19 cm. [Kress VB]

Bohn’s Standard Library edition.



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219. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (G. Bell & Sons, London 1887) pp. lxix, 538, no index, 19 cm. [Kress] BJ1005 .S6 1887

Bohn’s Standard Library edition. 220. .Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. Ernest Belfort Bax (George Bell and Sons, London 1887) 19 cm., 3s. 6d. [Bod.] 23211.e.26, 27

Vol. I ‘Introductory Sketch of the History of Political Economy’ pp. xiii–xxxix; Books I–IV Chs 1–3 pp. 1–502; Vol. II Book IV Chs 4–9; Book V pp. 492, + appendix pp. 493–6, Index pp. 497–502. Bax’s ‘Introductory Sketch’ is a rough and ready survey that seeks to put Smith in the context of the history of political economy, while suggesting that Jevons’ political economy is similar to that of Smith, although he is ‘…often credited with the obviously absurd theory that the ultimate criterion of value is the current estimation of a commodity…’. 221. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. Shield Nicholson (T. Nelson and Sons, London 1887) pp. vi, 3–32, 1–447, 22.5 cm. [Kress VB]

A revised edition with a note on bimetallism inserted. 222. R. B. Haldane, Life of Adam Smith (Walter Scott, London 1887) 1–9, 11–157, index 159–61, 18 cm. 1s. [BL] W47/2122

Bibliography by John P. Anderson pp. i–x; octavo edition 2/6. Very much an essay on Smith from the standpoint of contemporary politics. 223. Adam Smith, Richesse des Nations, J. G. Courcelle-Seneuil (Guillaumin, Paris 1888) Trans. Germain Garnier, based on 1843 edition, pp. i–xxviii, 264, no index 14 cm. [Cujas] 75126

Abbreviated edition, Book I Chs 1–8; Book II Chs 1–5; Book III Ch. 1. Reprinted Alcan 1908. 224. A. W. Roberts, The Student’s Edition of the ‘Wealth of Nations’ (J. Vincent, Oxford 1889) pp. viii, 151 + 85, 22 cm. [Kress VB]

Books I & II abridged, Books IV and V selected.


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225. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. R. McCulloch (Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh 1889) New edition, pp., i–lvi, 1–431, index pp. 635–669, 22 cm. 9s. [Kress VB]

The final impression of McCulloch’s 1838 one-volume edition. 226. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (George Routledge and Sons, London 1890) pp. xvi, 780, 20 cm. [BL] 012207.e.30

This Routledge one-volume edition was in a more readable one-column format than the Shield-Nicholson edition and went through a number of reprints. 227. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. R. McCulloch (Ward, Lock & Co., London 1891) Reprint of 1812 edition in one volume, pp. (1–4), 5–14, 15–760, index pp. 811–31 [St. Anne’s] 330 SMI: Wea ( C )

Reprint of # 190. Acquired by St. Anne’s as part of bequest 1959. Introduction is from Dugald Stewart; pp. 761–810 endnotes from McCulloch, numbered 1– 272; Printed by Woodfall and Kinder, Long Acre, London. Attribution of 1891 from Vanderblue catalogue p. 9 where is listed as reported but not seen. 228. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. Shield Nicholson (T. Nelson and Sons, London 1891) pp. vi, 3–32, 1–447, 22.5 cm. [Kress VB]

Reprint of # 221. 229. Smith Ádám, Vizsgálódás a nemzeti vagyonosság természetéröl és okairól, 3 vols, ed. Gyula Kautz (Pallas irodalmi és nyomdai részvénytársaság, Budapest 1891) Trans. Lukács Enyedy, Jakab Pólya, Vol. I. 1891 pp. VII–LXXV, 376; Vol. II. 1892 pp. 235 + IV; Vol. III. 1893 pp. 414 + II

Complete edition of Wealth of Nations, reprinted in 1899. 230. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (G. Bell & Sons, London 1892) pp. lxix, 538, no index, 19 cm. 3s. 6d. [Kress] BJ1005 .S6 1892

Bohn’s Standard Library; also New York 1892 231. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (George Routledge and Sons, London 1892)



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pp. xvi, 780, no index 19 cm. [BL] 012207.1.1/31

Sir John Lubbock’s Hundred Books No. 31. 232. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. Ernest Belfort Bax (G. Bell and Sons, London 1892) 6th edition, Vol. I pp. xiii–xxxix, 1–502; Vol. II i–vi, 1–496 + index 497–502. 18.5 cm. [Kress VB]

Bohn’s Standard Library; reprinted 1896 233. Adam Smith, Fukokuron, 3 vols (Keizai-zasshi-sha, Tokyo 1892) Trans. Eisaku Ishikawa, Shosaku Saga, 2nd edition, 18 cm.

234. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (George Routledge and Sons, London 1893) pp. xvi, 780, no index, 20 cm. [BL] W72/9386

235. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (J. D. Lowe, Edinburgh 1894) pp. x, 538, 20 cm. [Kress VB]

236. J. Bonar, A Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith (Macmillan & Co., London 1894) [BL] B*819*

The first systematic attempt to catalogue the dispersed library of Adam Smith as a means of establishing the sources available to him. A revised edition was issued in 1932, and then Hiroshi Mizuta followed on from Bonar’s work, finally publishing a definitive catalogue in 2001. 237. V. I. Iakovenko, Adam Smit. Ego zhizn’ i nauchnaia deiatel’nost’. Biograficheskii ocherk (F. Pavlenkov, St Petersburg 1894) pp. I–IV, 5–88, index pp. VI, 19 cm., 4 Roubles [RNL] 33 Б/ Я–47

Brief biography of Adam Smith. 238. Adam Smith, Teoriia nravstvennykh chuvstv ili opyt issledovaniia o zakonakh, upravliaiushchikh suzhdeniiami, estestvenno ostavliaemyi nami, snachala o postupkakh prochikh liudei, a zatem o nashikh sobstvennykh, ed. P. A. Bibikov (Tipografiia Doma Prizreniia maloletnikh bednykh, St Petersburg 1895)


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Trans. P. A. Bibikov, based on 1868 edition, pp. 5–13, 15–447, no index 21cm. 15 Roubles [StpUL] B II 1378a

This edition of Moral Sentiments includes a translation of Condorcet’s letters to Cabanis, and makes use of material from a Russian translation of Buckle’s History of Civilization in England by K. Bestuzhev-Riumin, St.Petersburg, 1863–4. 239. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. Shield Nicholson (T. Nelson and Sons, London 1895) pp. vi, 3–32, 1–447, 22.5 cm. [Kress VB]

Another edition of # 221. 240. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (George Routledge and Sons, London 1895) pp. xvi, 780, 19 cm. [Kress VB]

Sir John Lubbock’s Hundred Books No. 31 241. Adam Smit, Issledovaniia o bogatstve narodov, ed. M. P. Shchepkin, I. A. Verner (K. T. Soldatenkov, Moscow 1895) Trans. M. P. Shchepkin, based on 1888 edition, pp. 2, 3–13, 1–252, no index, 20.9 cm. [RNL] 18.279.3.35

Based on Courcelle Seneuil’s 1888 abbreviated version of the Garnier translation of Wealth of Nations (→ # 223), and including material from Adolphe Blanqui. 242. Adam Smith, Select Chapters and Passages from The Wealth of Nations of Adam Smith 1776, ed. W. J. Ashley (Macmillan and Co., New York 1895) Based on 1776 edition, pp. i–iii, v–vii, 1–285, no index 17.2 cm. 3s. [Bod.] 23211 f.11

A selected and abbreviated version of Wealth of Nations. Book I pp. 1–145; Book II 146–88 (Ch. on Money excluded); Book III pp. 189–95 Ch. 1 summarised only; Book IV pp. 196–257 Chs III, IV, V, VI, VII excluded; Book V Chs I and II heavily cut, Ch. III excluded. Ashley stated that his intention had been ‘…to present in a brief compass a general view of the whole of Adam Smith’s economic philosophy’ (p. vi). Whole sections, for example, colonial policy and action of the East India Company, have been omitted. Reprinted 1908, 1926, 1936. 243. John Rae, Life of Adam Smith (Macmillan & Co, London 1895) pp. i–xv, 1–440, + index 441–49, 22 cm., 12s. 6d. Printing 1,250 [Bod.] M91.FO7193



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The first full biography of Adam Smith that goes beyond the details provided by Dugald Stewart’s 1793 ‘Account’, using records from the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, together with the Hume correspondence in the possession of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Rae provides as reliable a report of Smith’s time in Kirkcaldy, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Oxford, London, Paris and Toulouse as can be done with the available evidence, and outlines the writing and immediate reception of his two major works within the chronology of his life. Macmillan printed 1250 copies and never reissued the work; the Kelley reprint of 1965 therefore played an important part in the revival of the study of Smith’s writings, and Rae’s Life was only superseded in 1995 with the publication of Ian Ross’s biography in the Glasgow Edition (# 565). Reprinted New York 1965 with Introduction by Jacob Viner → # 413; reprinted Bristol 1991 → # 538. 244. E. L. Hawkins, An Abstract of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (A. Thomas Shrimpton & Son, Oxford 1896) pp. 119, index pp. 119–20, 18 cm. 2s. 6d. [BL] 8207.b.51

‘Containing Book I Chapters I–XI (Part I); Book II, Chapters I, III, IV, V; Book IV Chapters I, II, VII; and Book V Chapter II (Articles 1, 2,3): Being the Portions required in the Oxford Pass School’ 245. Adam Smith, Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms, ed. E. Cannan (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1896) pp. i–ix , xi–xxxiv, 1–280, index pp. 281–93, 23.8 cm. 10s. 6d., Printing 1,034 [BL] B. 23e.18

Based on a set of student notes from Smith’s lectures, probably delivered during the session 1763–4, that came into Cannan’s hands in the spring of 1895. Cannan and his colleague Thomas Raleigh, Reader in English Law at Oxford, worked intensively on the notes over the winter, and produced a text in which the editorial apparatus was designed to elucidate obscurities in the text, or refer the reader to other relevant sources. With respect to all existing editions of Smith’s writings, this was a completely novel idea. Cannan provided an account of the provenance of the Report, outlined its significance for contemporary understanding of Smith’s work, and appended a table of parallel passages between the lecture notes and the Wealth of Nations. Curiously, although the importance of the edition was quickly accepted by contemporary scholars, the work sold quite slowly, the edition not being exhausted until the mid–1930s. 246. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (George Routledge and Sons, London 1898) pp. xvi, 780, 19 cm. [Kress VB]


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247. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. Ernest Belfort Bax (George Bell and Sons, London 1899) Vol. I pp. xiii–xxxix, 1–502; Vol. II i–vi, 1–496 + index 497–52. 18.5 cm. [AW] B II 1–1 (1899)

248. Hector C. Macpherson, Adam Smith (Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier, Edinburgh 1899) pp. i–viii, 1–156, no index, 18 cm. [BL] 10803.ccc.36

Chapter 1–5 outline his life, while Chapters 6–8 devoted to Wealth of Nations, although these are very generalised. Concludes with Chs 9–10 ‘Closing Years’ and ‘Personal Characteristics’, and Ch. 10 ‘The Future of Political Economy’. 249. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (George Routledge and Sons, London 1900) pp. i–xiii, 1–760, index 761–80, 19 cm. [Bod.] Cary C 1463

Bodleian copy flyleaf inscribed ‘Joyce Cary, 1942 from the Park’. 250. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. J. Shield Nicholson (T. Nelson and Sons, London 1901) pp. i–vi, 3–32, 1–404, 422–47, 22.5 cm. [BL] 8206.dd.25

Reprint of # 221. 251. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. Ernest Belfort Bax (George Bell and Sons, London 1901) pp. 497–52, 18.5 cm. [Kress VB]

252. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. C. J. Bullock (P. F. Collier & Son, New York 1901) pp. 590, 22cm.

Series Harvard Classics: ‘The Five Foot Shelf of Books’; reprinted 1902, 1905, 1909. 253. Adam Smith, Yuan Fu, 8 vols (Nan-yang College, Shanghai 1901) Trans. Yen Fu, from 1880 (Rogers) 2nd edition, pp. 582, 24 cm.

Appeared 1901–2; Preface by Wu Ruluan, ‘Life of Adam Smith’ by Yan Fu; over 300 pp. of notes. Written in a classical Chinese style.



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254. S. H. Hodwala, An Analysis of Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Books III–V (Commercial Press, Bombay 1901) pp. 1–140, no index, 24 cm. [BL] 8207.s.21

Abbreviated version of Books III– V of Wealth of Nations. The British Library copy has the author’s compliments written in blue inside the front cover, a Professor of History and Economics, Bahandraa (?) College, Illeg. 255. Adam Smith, Essay on Colonies, ed. A. T. Hadley (M. W. Dunne, New York 1901) pp. 1–88, [LibCon] JV418.L67

256. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 3 vols (P. F. Collier & Son, New York 1902) 22 cm. [Kress VB]

257. Adam Smith, Yuan Fu, 8 vols (Commercial Press, Shanghai 1903) Trans. Yen Fu, 18.4 cm.

Commercial Press bought the copyright and stereotyped this edition. 258. Adam Smith, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. A New and Condensed Edition, ed. Hector Macpherson (Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, Edinburgh 1903) pp. i–vi, vii–xvi, 1–218, 219–232, 18 cm. [Bod.] 23211 e.103

Introduction pp. vii–xvi; Summary pp. xvii–xxvii; Book I Introduction pp. 1–4; Chs 1 pp. 5–13; Ch. II p. 13–16; Ch. III pp. 16–19; Ch. IV pp. 19–23; Ch. V pp. pp. 23–31; Ch. VI pp. 31–36; Ch. VII pp. 36–44; Ch. VIII pp. 44–59; Ch. IX pp. 59–68; Ch. X pp. 68–88; Ch. XI pp. 88–105; Book II Introduction pp. 106–8; Ch. I pp. 108–14; Ch. II Of the Accumulation of Capital pp. 114–25; Ch. III Of Stock lent at Interest pp. pp. 125–128; Ch. IV Of Different Employments of Capital pp. 128–41; Book III Ch. I Of the Natural Progress of Opulence pp. 142–7; Book IV Introduction p. 148; Ch. I Of the Principle of the Commercial or Mercantile System pp. 148–54; Ch. II Of Restraints upon Importation pp. 154–65; Ch. III Of the Unreasonableness of those Extraordinary Restraints …pp. 165–72; Ch. IV Of Colonies pp. 172–89; Ch. V Of the Agricultural Systems pp. 189–92; Book V Ch. I Of Taxes. 259. Adam Smith, Select Chapters and Passages from The Wealth of Nations of Adam Smith 1776, ed. W. J. Ashley (Macmillan and Co., New York 1903) pp. i–iii, v–vii, 1–285, no index 17.2 cm. 3s.


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Reprint of # 242. 260. Adam Smith, Free Trade and Protection, ed. Thomas Allan Ingram (George Routledge and Sons, London 1903) pp. 1–2, 3–31, 323–760, 772–77, 18.5 cm. [Bod.] 23226 e.98

Subtitle ‘Being a Reprint of Books IV & Chapters II & III of Book V’. Also published by E. P. Dutton, New York 1903. Introduction pp. 3–31; Book IV begins on p. 323, all chapters start immediately following last line of previous; Books I–IV, Chs II, III of Book V; Appendix, Value of the Total Imports and Exports of Merchandise into and from the United Kingdom, 1887–1901 pp. 762–71; Index pp. 772–77. 261. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. E. Cannan (Methuen & Co., London 1904) Trans. from 5th edition, 22 cm. 6s. Printing 1,500 [BL] 8205.ff.15

Vol. I: Preface pp. v–vii; Editor’s Introduction pp. xiii–xlviii; Introduction and Plan pp. 1–4; Book I pp. 5–250 + prices pp. 251–7; Book II pp. 258–354; Book III pp. 355–94; Book IV Chs 1–3 pp. 395–462; Vol. II: Book IV Ch.4–9 pp. 185; Book V pp. 186–433; Appendix on fish pp. 435–37; Index pp. 439–506 Cannan appears, while working on his edition of the Lectures, to have been very struck by the deficiencies of the available editions of Wealth of Nations. He was commissioned by Methuen to produce a new, scholarly edition of the work. Although he chose the 5th edition as his base, on the dubious ground that it was the last to appear in Smith’s lifetime, he did collate it with the first edition and therefore identified the great majority of existing printing errors and revisions. This was the first time that anyone had thought of systematically comparing editions of Wealth of Nations to identify clearly Smith’s revisions; besides annotating the changes that he discovered, he also supplied notes to the text, a running marginal summary as an aid to reading, and an index which was used in the 1976 Glasgow edition. Cannan’s edition went through many editions in English, and was translated into several languages, rightly surviving as the standard edition of the work until the appearance of the new Glasgow edition in 1976. 262. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols (Grant Richards, London 1904) Vol. I Books I, II, II pp. 1–468; Books IV, V pp. 1–627, index pp. 629–87. 15.5 cm., 1s. Per vol., [Bod.] 23211.f.18/1, 18/2

The World’s Classics Nos. LIV, LIX.



279

263. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols (H. Frowde, New York 1904) Vol. I Books I, II, II pp. 1–468; Books IV, V pp. 1–627, index pp. 629–87. 15.5 cm.

World’s Classics, reprinted 1908, 1909, 1923. 264. Adam Smith, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, ed. H. C. Macpherson (T. Y. Crowell, New York 1904) pp. xxvii, 232, no index 19.5 cm.

Reprint of # 258. 265. Francis W. Hirst, Adam Smith (Macmillan & Co, London 1904) pp. i–viii, 1–236, + index pp. 237–40, 19 cm. [BL] 2326.bb.2

Reprinted 1977 by Folcroft Library Editions, Folcroft, Pennsylvania; and in 1978 by Norwood Editions, Norwood, PA in 23 cm. format. 266. Adam Smith, Untersuchung über das Wesen und die Ursachen des Volkswohlstandes (Robert Prager, Berlin 1905) Trans. F. Stöpel, 2nd edition

267. Adam Smith, Select Chapters and Passages from The Wealth of Nations of Adam Smith 1776, ed. W. J. Ashley (Macmillan and Co., New York 1905) Based on 1776 edition, pp. i–iii, v–vii, 1–285, No index 17.2 cm. [Kress VB]

Reprint of # 242; also reprinted 1906, 1908, 1913. 268. E. L. Hawkins, An Abstract of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (Hubert Giles, Oxford 1905) pp. 99, index p. 100, 18 cm. 2s. 6d. [BL] 8207.f.24 [Bod.] 23211.e.244(9)

269. K. Jentsch, Adam Smith (Ernst Hoffmann & Co, Berlin 1905) pp. I–V, VI–X, 1–283, index pp. 284–9, 19.5 cm. [AW] B II 62

Acknowledges importance of Rae’s biography, but structured very much like Delatour’s biography (→ # 217) in three chapters: I. Lebensgeschichte pp. 1– 104; II. Die philosophischen Werke pp. 105–75; III. Die Untersuchung der Natur und der Ursachen des Wohlstands der Nationen pp. 176–283. 270. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (G. Bell & Sons, London 1907) pp. lxix, 538, 19 cm. 3s. 6d. [Kress] BJ1005 .S6 1892


280


Bohn’s Standard Edition; p. 538 collophon: ‘Reprinted from Stereo-Plates by William Clowes and Sons’. 271. Adam Smith, Systems of Political Economy (Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, Heidelberg 1907) pp. 1–4, 5–30, 31–154, no index, 20.5 cm. [HDUB] S 7995

‘Englische Schriftsteller aus dem Gebiete der Philosophie, Kulturgeschichte und Naturwissenschaft Nr. 4’ – for use in schools. English Text is made up of Book IV Chs I, II, III; edited version of Ch. IX leaving out the excursus on Chinese systems; plus ‘Of the System of Labour’ pp. 150–4 which is the ‘Introduction and Plan of the Work.’ 272. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. Ernest Belfort Bax (George Bell and Sons, London 1908) pp. 1–502, 18.5 cm. [Kress VB]

Bohn’s Standard Library. 273. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1908) 15 cm. [Kress VB]

The World’s Classics LIV, LIX 274. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, ed. Courcelle Seneuil (Alcan, Paris 1908) Trans. Germain Garnier, based on 1843 edition, pp. i–xxviii, 264, no index. 14 cm

Reprint of # 223. 275. Adam Smith, Eine Untersuchung über Natur und Wesen des Volkswohlstandes, 3 vols (Verlag von Gustav Fischer, Jena 1908) Trans. Ernst Grünfeld, based on Max Stirner’s translation, 18 cm. 4 Marks [HDUB] K 3260/ 5

Bde. 11, 12/1, 12/2 Sammlung sozialwissenschaftlicher Meister, edited by Heinrich Waentig. Bd. I reprinted 1920, 1923; Bd. II reprinted 1923 – ie. with the publication of Bd. II Bd. I republished, and with Bd. III Bde. I & II republished. Does not necessarily mean they were entirely reprinted, Amano indicates that the 3rd 1923 ed. of Bd. I has pp. xviiii, 351. 276. Adam Smit, Issledovanie o bogatstve narodov, ed. M. Shchepkin, A. Kaufman, & A. A. Manuilov, (M. V. Prokopovich, St. Petersburg 1908)



281

Trans. M. Shchepkin, A. Kaufman, based on 1888 edition, pp. 1–2, 3–24, 25–217, 23 cm. 1 rouble 20 kop. [RNL] 38.12.7.66

This edition adds in a biography of Smith by Emanuel Leser, from the Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, Jena 1898–1901. 277. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (P. F. Collier & Son, New York 1909) pp. 590, 19.5 cm.[Kress VB]

Ed. C. J. Bullock, The Harvard Classics. 278. Adam Smith, En undersökning av folkens välstånd, dess natur och orsaker (C. W. K. Gleerups Förlag, Lund 1909) Trans. Emil Sommarin, based on 1786 edition, pp. 4, V–XVI, 1–179, 25 cm., 2 skr 25 öre

Abbreviated version of Books I–III. 279. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. Edward R. A. Seligman (J. M. Dent & Sons, London 1910) 17.5 cm. 1s. each volume [Bod.] 23211 f.32/33

Vol. I Introduction pp. vii–xvi; Book I pp. 1–240; Book II pp. 241–335; Book III pp. 336–74; Book IV Chs I – III pp. 375–441; Vol. II Book IV Chs IV–IX pp. 1– 181; Book V pp. 182–430; Appendix on herring pp. 431–4; Index pp.435–55. This is the first impression of the two-volume Everyman edition, which was reprinted 1911, 1914, 1920–21, 1924, 1926–27, 1930, 1931, 1933, 1937–38, 1947, 1954, 1960, 1975. These are all essentially identical, apart from the 1991 edition for which see below # 530. 280. Adam Smith, Der Reichtum der Nationen, 2 vols, ed. H. Schmidt (Alfred Kröner Verlag, Leipzig 1910) Vol. I: Title-page, ‘Vorbemerkung’ pp. III–IV, pp. V–VI, Books I, II, III pp. 1–245; Vol. II Books IV, V pp. 1–324, no index or notes, 21.5 cm. [AW] B II 1/1

In his ‘Vorbemerkung’ Schmidt expresses admiration for the clarity with which WN employed selfishness as the founding principle of all action. But properly understood, this also includes altruism; so it leads both to individualism and to socialism, but even more to a synthesis of the two; for economics shows more clearly than any other perspective how the fate of one depends upon that of another, and the highest individual is part of a collective body. P. IV recommends, besides Jentsch, Roscher’s System der Volkswirtschaft, and Damaschke’s Geschichte der Nationalökonomie. 281. Adam Smith, Fukokuron, ed. W. J. Ashley (Nisshindo, Tokyo 1910)


282


Trans. Masatake Mikami from Ashley 1895 edition, pp. 1–9, 1–4, 1–5, 7–12, 1–367, 14.6 cm. [NDL] 328–338

Preface by Count Okuma; Translator’s Preface; Ashley’s Preface. 282. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (George Routledge and Sons, London 1913) pp. i–xiii, 1–760, index pp. 761–80, 19 cm. [Kress VB]

283. Adam Smith, Adam Smith, ed. J. Jastrow (Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1913) Trans. Max Stirner (1846 edition), pp. I–II, III–VI, 1–163, 15.3 cm.

284. Adam Smith, Adam Smith, ed. J. Jastrow (Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1919) Trans. Max Stirner (1846 edition), pp. I–II, III–VI, 1–163, 15.3 cm.

285. Adam Smith, Adam Smith, ed. J. Jastrow (Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1920) Trans. Max Stirner (1846 edition), pp. I–II, III–VI, 1–163, 15.3 cm. [London Library]

In this edition Wakefield’s commentary to the first chapter on the division of labour is added to the appendix. Jastrow notes that it has become neglected both in Germany and in England, although it offers intellectually independent contributions to understanding and criticism of Adam Smith. The extract is printed in English, which also has advantages for the teaching of English. Also the contents of the first two books are given in English as a way of teaching beginners the technical terms of the discipline. WN has been used in the education of generations of academics and politicians, but it was only in the 1880s and 1890s that it was pushed to one side. Jastrow was himself brought up on Smith, but among the small number of modern economists not impressed by fashion he maintained an interest in Smith. Jastrow considered that the existing German translations are much of a muchness – they all useable, though none ideal. The translation is that of Stirner, without the notes that Stirner appended to the chapters. Jastrow states that the source appears to be 17864 or 1789.5 286. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. E. Cannan (Methuen & Co., London 1920) 2nd edition, based on 5th edition, Vol. I pp. i–xii, xiii–xlviii, 1–462; Vol. II 1–437, index pp. 439–506, 22.5 cm. x 14.5 cm. Printing 950

Lightly revised edition of the 1904 printing.



283

287. Adam Smith, Eine Untersuchung über Natur und Wesen des Volkswohlstandes, 2 vols (Verlag von Gustav Fischer, Jena 1920) Trans. Ernst Grünfeld, based on Max Stirner’s translation, 18 cm.

288. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. William Robert Scott (G. Bell and Sons, London 1921) Based on 6th edition, 18.5 cm. [Bod.] 23211e.896/7

Bohn’s Standard Library. Scott confines himself to writing an general introduction to Smith and his work, with no further editorial intervention. 289. Adam Smith, Zenyaku fukokuron, 3 vols (Yuhikaku, Tokyo 1921, 1921, 1923) Trans. Kenji Takeuchi, from the Cannan 1920 edition, 15 cm.

Based on Cannan’s 1920 edition omitting most of the footnotes. Vol. I: Books I and II; Translator’s Preface pp. 1–2, General Rules pp. 1–2; Contents 4pp.; Text pp. 1–517; Vol. II Book III & Book IV Chs 1–9; Preface p. 1; Contents 3 pp.; Text pp. 1–439; Vol. III Book V Preface p. 1; text pp. 1–366. (published August 1923). All the stock together with the premises of the publisher and printer were destroyed in the great earthquake of September 1923. Vol. I was republished in 1925 as a second edition with a long translator’s introduction and full translation of Cannan’s Introduction. Most of Cannan’s notes were newly translated. 290. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. E. Cannan (Methuen & Co., London 1923) Based on 5th edition, revised Vol. I pp. i–xii, xiii–xlviii, 1–462; Vol. II 1–437, 439–506, 22.5 cm., Printing 1,006

Third edition. 291. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols (Oxford University Press, London 1923) [BL] W11/1474, 1475,

Reprint of 1904 World’s Classics. 292. Adam Smith, Eine Untersuchung uber Natur und Wesen des Volkswohlstandes, 3 vols (G. Fischer, Jena 1923) Trans. Max Stirner from 1786 edition, 20 cm. [Kress] HB 161.S6553

293. Adam Smith, Zenyaku fukokuron, 3 vols (Yuhikaku, Tokyo 1923)


284


Trans. Kenji Takeuchi, based on Cannan 1920 edition, 15 cm.

All copies destroyed in September 1923 earthquake. 294. V. M. Shtein, Adam Smit. Lichnost’ i uchenie. K 200-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia (Izdatel’stvo ‘Nauka i shkola’, Petrograd 1923) pp. 1–2, 3–79, 23.9 cm. [RNL] 17.154.4.24/15

295. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. R. Ritter (M. Diesterweg, Frankfurt a.M. 1924) 19 cm. [Kress VB]

Diesterwegs neusprachliche Lesehefte 10, 36. 296. Adam Smith, Der Reichtum der Nationen, 2 vols, ed. Heinrich Schmidt (A. Kröner, Leipzig 1924) Translated by Max Stirner, 21 cm. [Kress VB]

Also edited on basis of Cannan. 297. Adam Smith, Adam Smith, ed. J. Jastrow (Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1924) Trans. Max Stirner (1846 edition), pp. I–II, III–VI, 1–163, 15.3 cm.

298. Adam Smit, Issledovanie obogatstve narodov, ed. P. I. Liashchenko (Izdatel’stvo ‘Priboi’, Petrograd 1924) Trans. P. I. Liashchenko, pp. 2, 3–28, 29–209 + index 209–17, 22.6 cm. [RNL] 10/18

Abbreviated edition of Wealth of Nations: Book I Ch. 1–9 Ch. 10, Pts I–II, Ch. 11, Parts I–II, Ch. 11 – Conclusion of the Chapter; Book II Chs 1–5; Books III–V Chs 1–2. 299. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2vols, ed. E. Cannan (Methuen & Co., London, 1925) 4th edition, Vol. I pp. i–xii, xiii–xlviii, 1–462; Vol. II 1–437, + index pp. 439–506, 22.5 cm. Printing 1,000

300. Adam Smith, Zenyaku fukokuron (Yuhikaku, Tokyo 1925) Trans. Kenji Takeuchi, based on Cannan 1920 ed., 15 cm. [NDL] 512–274

Vol. I only published with supplementary material; is a ‘second’ edition because the original was destroyed in 1923 – see # 289. 301. Adam Smith, Fukokuron, ed. W. J. Ashley (Shincho-sha, Tokyo 1925)



285

Trans, Bunzo Kaminaga, based on Ashley 1895, pp. 1–6, 1–7, 1–228, no index, 17.5 cm. [NDL] 527–68

302. Adam Smith, Fukokuron, ed. W. J. Ashley (Shincho-sha, Tokyo 1925) Trans. Bunzo Kaminaga, Based on Ashley 1895, pp. 7, 5–6, 7–179, 16.3 cm. [NDL] 630–4,

Paperback version. 303. Adam Smith, Theorie der ethischen Gefühle, 2 vols, ed. Walther Eckstein (Verlag von Felix Meiner, Leipzig 1926) Trans. W. Eckstein, from 1790 edition, pp. 570 + notes, index pp. 597–618, 18.5 cm. [HDUB] M 38 1 351

As with Cannan’s work on Wealth of Nations, hitherto no scholar had thought to examine systematically the revisions made by Smith in the various editions of Moral Sentiments. Eckstein’s careful work of collation and annotation of the various editions, selecting the 1790 6th edition as his base edition, resulted in a standard edition upon which the Glasgow editors leaned. Eckstein’s introduction is a balanced overview of the various discussions surrounding Theory of Moral Sentiments. The work is still in print. 304. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. Edward R. A. Seligman (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1926) Everyman edition, with a new publisher.

305. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. H. Gade (Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld 1926) 17 cm. [Kress VB]

Französische und englische Lesebogen Nr. 58 306. Adam Smith, Kokufuron (Iwanami Publishing Company, Tokyo 1926) Trans. Kanju Kiga, Leather, 22 cm. [NDL] DA22–5,

First volume of a series Keizaigaku Kotensosho (Economic Classics). Vol. I Introduction to the Series pp. 1–7 by Kanju Kiga; Contents pp. 1–6; Introduction by Seiichiro Takahasshi pp. 1–132; General Rules pp. 133–6; Advertisements to Third and Fourth editions pp. 137–9; Books I & II text pp. 1–810. 307. Adam Smit, Ekonomicheskaia sistema sotsializma v ee razvitii/ Burzhuaznye predshestvenniki sotsialisticheskoi ekonomii. Kene, Smit, Rikardo v izbrannukh otryvkakh / Smit A. Issledovanie o prirode i


286


prichinakh[ bogatstva narodov, ed. I. A. Udal’tsov (Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, Moscow 1926) Trans. P. I. Liashchenko, Based on Cannan 1924/1904, pp. 3, 3–54, 95–199, 22.6 cm. [RNL] 10/18

Second edition of # 298. 308. Adam Smith, Adamu Sumisu kenkyu, ed. E. Cannan (Yuhikaku, Tokyo 1926) Trans. Kenji Takeuchi, based on Cannan 1896, 1–331, 343–453, 21.1 cm. 4 yen

A translation of Cannan’s 1896 edition of Smith’s Lectures; with a Preface ‘Adam Smith Studies’. 309. Adamo Smith, Ricerche sopra la natura e le cause della ricchezza delle nazioni, ed. Achille Loria (Unione tipografico-editrice torinese, Turin 1927) Trans. A. Loria, from 1828 edition, pp. I–X, XI–XXII, 1–757, + pp. 759–803, 25.7 cm., 60 lira [PisaPhilHist] 330.153 SMI

Based on McCulloch’s first edition, this became the standard complete Italian edition of Wealth of Nations. 310. Adamo Smith, Il Capitale e l’Interesse. Da ‘La ricchezza delle nazioni (Istituto Editoriale Italiano La Santa, Milan 1927) pp. 6, 7–250, 15.7 cm. [BSM] E.328

Translation of Wealth of Nations Book II (Ch. I–V), and Book III (Ch. VI–IX). No mention in the text of Smith’s original division into books and chapters. Chapters are simply numbered from I to IX and given general headings. 311. Adam Smith, Kokufuron (Iwanami Publishing Company, Tokyo 1927) Trans. Kanju Kiga, pp. 2, 3–5, 9–489, 15.6 cm.

Iwanami Pocket Library. 312. Adam Smith, Badania nad natura i przyczynami bogactwa narodow (Gebethnera i Wolffa, Warsaw 1927) Trans. Oswald Einfeld, Stefan Wolff, from Cannan (1904), pp. 5–10, 11–271, 19.8 cm. [NL] II. 510.713

Translation of Book I of Wealth of Nations only. 313. Adam Smith, Blahobyt národu°. Vybrané kapitoly, ed. Josef Macek (Laichter, Prague 1928)



287

Trans. Antonín Patočka, pp. 345 15 cm. [Kress VB]

314. Adam Smith, Kokufuron, 2 vols (Shunjasha, Tokyo 1928) Trans. Suekichi Aono, 9th ed., 18.5 cm. [NDL] 545–59

Part of Sekai Daishiso Zenshu (Collection of the World’s Great Thoughts). Some notes from Cannan included. Vol. I Books I, II, III pp. trans. Intro pp. 1– 8; text 9–540; Vol. II Books IV & V Contents pp. 1–4 text pp. 2–528. 315. Adam Smith, Vorlesungen über Rechts-, Polizei–, Steuer- u. Heereswesen, ed. J. Jastrow (H. Meyer, Halberstadt 1928) Trans. S. Blach, from Cannan 1896, pp. I–V, V–VIII, 1–199, no index, 24.5 cm., RM 18.50, [HDUB] K–415–1

The editors state that Cannan’s commentary has, with the agreement of OUP, only been taken into account for matters of clarification. Title-page = p. III, ‘Geleitwort’ by J. Jastrow, Professor der Staatswissenschaften and der Universität Berlin pp. V–VIII; p. IX reproduction of 1896 title-page and the title-page as on the notes. Text pp. 1–199. All the paragraph titles taken from Cannan. No footnotes. 316. Adam Smith, Yuan Fu, 9 vols (Commercial Press, Shanghai 1929) Trans. Yen Fu, based on 1880 (Rogers) ed., 17.5 cm.

Printed in series Wan You Wen Ku (The Complete Library) 317. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. E. Cannan (Methuen & Co., London 1930) 5th edition, Printing 1,025 [BL] W2/3971, 3972

318. Adam Smith, Yuan Fu, 3 vols (Commercial Press, Shanghai 1930) Trans. Yen Fu, based on Rogers (1880) edition, 18.9 cm.

319. Adam Smith, Guo Fu Lun, 2 vols (Cathay Guoguang Press) Shanghai 1931) Trans. Kuo Tal-li, Wang Ya-nan, based on 1880 edition, pp. 1077, 21.3 cm.

320. Adam Smith, Kokufuron, 3 vols (Kaizosha, Tokyo 1930) Trans. Kenji Takeuchi, from Cannan 1920, 15 cm. [NDL] 569–142

Vol. I: Books I and II; Illustrated with Title-page of the First edition, and portrait of Smith by Kaye; Translator’s Preface pp. 7–8; General Rules pp. 9–14; Advertisements to Third and Fourth editions pp. 15–16; Cannan’s Introduction pp. 17–88; Contents pp. 89–92; Text pp. 93–786; Vol. II Books III & IV;


288


Illustrated with Smith’s portrait, and his letter to Hume, pp. 5–9; Contents pp. 11–13; Text pp. 15–602; Vol. III: Book V; Photograph of Canongate (wrongly captioned as) the plan of Smith’s house in Kirkcaldy (taken from Bonar’s Catalogue), Smith’s tombstone; Contents pp. 5–7; Text pp. 9–521; Index pp. 523–38. Pocket edition printed 1931–33; stock destroyed by air-attack during war. 321. Adam Smit, Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva narodov, 2 vols (Institut K. Marksa i F. Engel’sa, Gosudarstvennoe sotsial’noekonomicheskoe izdatel’stvo, Moscow-Leningrad 1931) Introduction pp. I–VII; V. I p.5–443, V.II p.5–550. 24.9 cm. [RNL] 31–19/430–1,2

322. J. Bonar, A Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith (Macmillan & Co., London 1932) 2nd edition

323. Adam Smith, Kansojen varallisuus. Tutkimus sen olemuksesta tekijöistä (Werner Söderström osakeyhtiö, Helsinki 1933) Trans. Toivo T. Kaila, pp. II, III–IX, 1–601. 21.3 x 14.2, [Helsinki]1972 Yleisit sarjat 1, Sivistys ja

Vol. I: Text made up of Books I – IV; Vol. II, Book V never published. Explanatory footnotes taken from Cannan edition. Life of Smith in Introduction pp. XIII–L taken from Rae’s Life. 324. Adam Smith, Natur und Ursachen des Volkswohlstandes, ed. I. F. Bülow (Alfred Kröner Verlag, Leipzig 1933) Trans. F. Bülow, pp. I–XII, XIII–XXXVIII, 1–258, + index pp. 342–48, 18 cm. [AW] B II 1/1

Contents pp. VII–XII; Einleitung pp. XIII–XXXVIII; Text pp. 1–258; Kommentar pp. 259–341; Index pp. 342–48. A severley condensed version of Wealth of Nations. 325. Adam Smith, Kokufuron, 4 vols (Shunjasha, Tokyo 1933) Trans. Suekichi Aono, based on 1928–9 edition, 17 cm. [NDL] 629–42

Reprint of 1928–9 in Shunju Library. 326. Adam Smith, Investigacion de la Naturaleza y Causas de la Riqueza de las Naciones, 2 vols (España Bancaria, Editorial Bosch, Barcelona 1933–4) Trans. Jose Alonso Ortiz, based on 1784 edition, 24.4 cm. [Not in BN Madrid]

Vol. I 1933: 4 unnumbered pages; ‘Prologo’ Jose Maria Tallada pp. 5–25; Book I pp. 27–339, 3 page index; Vol. II 1934: 2 unnumbered pages; Books II, III and



289

IV pp. 5–455; 4 page index. A revised, corrected and modernised version of Ortiz’s 1794 translation, by the staff of España Bancaria, a financial journal published in Barcelona during the 1930s. 327. Adam Smith, Adam Smith, ed. J. Jastrow (Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1933) Trans. M. Stirner, based on 1846 edition, pp. I–II, III–VI, 1–163, no index, 15.3 cm.

328. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Rengersche Buchhandlung, Bielefeld 1934) pp. vi, 130 [Kress VB]

Französische und englische Schulbibliothek Reihe A Bd. 250 329. Adam Smith, Avutia Natiunilor, 4 vols (Editura Bucovina, Bucuresti 1934, 1935, 1938) Trans. Alexandru Hallunga, based on 1928 Oxford World’s Classic edition; Vol. I pp. 3–5, 7– 190; Vol. II pp. 193–340; Vol. III pp. 343–401; Vol. IV pp. 403–59. 22.6 cm. [BibCenUniv] 330.101

Vol. I (1934) Book I; Vol. II (1935) Book II–III; Vol. III (1935) Book IV; Vol. IV (1938) Book V. Reprinted 1962–5, 1992. 330. Adam Smith, O Ploutos ton ethnon (Vassileiou, Athens 1935) Trans. Manos Vatalas, 20 cm.

Trans. of Book I Chs 1–8; first translation of Wealth of Nations into Greek. 331. Adam Smit, Issledovaniia o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva narodov, 2 vols, ed. I. Udal’tsov (Gosudarstvennoe sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoe izdatel’stvo, Moscow-Leningrad 1935) 22.7cm. [RNL] 3518/39–1; 3518/39–2

332. Adam Smith, Guo Fu Lun, 2 vols (Zhonghua Book Store, Shanghai 1936) Trans. Kuo Tal-li, Wang Ya-nan, based on 1880 edition, 21.3 cm.

333. António Lino Neto, Adam Smith, Fundador da Economia Política (Instituto Superior de Ciências Económicas e Financeiras, Lisbon 1936) Trans. António Lino Neto, based on Cannan 1904, pp. 1–4, 5–40, 41–85, 19 cm.

Extracts from WN: I.xi; II.iii; III.iv; IV.iii; IV.v; IV.vi; IV.vii; V. Notes from John Rae, Life of Adam Smith (1895); Francis W. Hirst, Adam Smith (1904); Albert


290


Delatour, Adam Smith, sa vie, ses travaux, ses doctrines (Paris, 1886); James Bonar, A Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith (1932). 334. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. E. Cannan (Random House, New York 1937) Cannan 1904 edition, pp. i–iv, v–lvi, lvii–lx; 1–903, + index pp. 907–76, 21 cm. [Bod.] 23211 e.3715

The Modern Library Edition one volume edition of Cannan, with a brief introduction by Max Lerner, was distributed very widely and formed the base for several translations. 335. Adam Smith, The Synthetic Wealth of Nations, ed. M. K. Graham (The Parthenon Press, Nashville, TN 1937) pp. 319, + 23 pp. index [LibCon] HB161 .S666

336. William Robert Scott, Adam Smith as Student and Professor (Jackson, Son & Company, Glasgow 1937) pp. i–xxiv, 1–431, 433–45, 25 cm. [BL] Ac. 1487. [no. 46]

Part I Text pp. 1–128; Part II Documents pp. 129–231; Correspondence pp. 232–314; Part III ‘An Early Draft of the Wealth of Nations (c. 1763)’ pp. 317– 56; Part IV Facsimiles of Handwriting pp. 359–92. This book amounts to a synthesis of all existing sources related to Smith, and importantly reprints the ‘Early Draft’ that Scott had been instrumental in bringing to light. 337. H. B. Vanderblue, The Vanderblue Memorial Collection of Smithiana, Baker Library, Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, Boston (Mass.) 1939 pp. I–iv, v–xiv, 1–68, no index, 26 cm.

338. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ed. J. W. Edwards (Ann Arbor 1940) 24 cm.

Book I Chs 1–9; reprinted 1949. 339. Smith Ádám, Vizsgálódás a nemzetek jólétének természetérõl és okairól, 2 vols, ed. Ede Theiss (Magyar Közgazdasági Társaság, Budapest 1940) Trans. Ernõ Éber, pp. 1–495, 1–482 + index pp. 483–532. 17 cm.

Translated from the Cannan 1920 edition of Wealth of Nations.



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340. Adam Smith, Kokufuron, 5 vols, Hyoe Ouchi (Iwnami Publishing House 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944) Trans. Hyoe Ouchi, Paper, 14.8 cm., 80 sen, [NDL] 331.321kQ(s) (1948–9 imprint)

Vol. I – Advertisements to Third and Fourth editions pp. 11–12; Text pp. 15– 481; Vol. II – Books II & III pp. 5–253; Vol. III – Book IV: pp. 5–484; Vol. IV – Book V Chs 1 & 2: pp. 5–465; Vol. V – Book V Ch. 3: pp. 5–99; Analytical essay by translator pp. 101–46; Indexes pp. 1–167. 341. Adam Smith, Selected Chapters and Passages from the Wealth of Nations of Adam Smith, ed. Zenya Takashima (Dobunkan, Tokyo 1940) 1937 Modern Library edition, pp. 1–3, 1–230, 20.5 cm. 2 yen [NDL] a330.55

Selection from Books 1–3 of Cannan edition. 342. Adam Smith, Teoria de los Sentimientos Morales (Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico 1941) Trans. Edmundo O’Gorman, based on 1790 edition, pp. 6, 7–28, 31–162, 16.8 cm. [LibCon] BJ1005 .S64

Introduction by Eduardo Nicol. Reprinted 1978. 343. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. E. Cannan (Tokyo 1942) Pirate edition of 1937 Modern Library edition, printed on coarse paper.

344. Adam Smith, Seiji keizai kokubo kogian, ed. E. Cannan (Yamaguchi– shoten, Kyoto 1943) Trans. Shin’ichi Kashihara, based on Cannan 1896, pp. 10, 11–43, 44–328, 20.2 cm. 3 yen 80 sen [NDL] 304c64sK

Translator’s Preface pp. 1–2; Cannan’s preface pp. 5–10; Cannan’s Introduction pp. 11–43. 345. Adamo Smith, Ricerche sopra la natura e le cause della ricchezza delle nazioni, ed. Augusto Graziani (Unione tipografico-editrice torinese, Turin 1945) 3rd. edition, based on 1828 edition, pp. IV, V–XXIX, 1–863, + index pp. 865–70, 24.5 cm. [PisaFacEcon] 8 collez 2/1

Despite a reference in the Bibliography to Cannan’s edition (London 1904), the base is still that of Ferrara’s translation of 1851 (→ # 166), i.e. J.R. McCulloch’s edition, Edinburgh 1828, repr. 1839.


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346. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1946) [BL] W.P. 1089/1

347. Adam Smith, Die Theorie des Aussenhandels. Inquiry into the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations B. IV. Ch. 1–3 1776, ed. A. Skalweit (Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M. 1946) Trans. M. Stirner, based on 1846 edition, pp. 1, 2, 3,–14, 15–79, no index, 19.3 cm. [AW] B IX 314/1

This is Heft 1 in a series Sozialökonomische Texte edited by Skalweit; fourteen parts appeared up to 1948. The introduction states that this selection made since it lays bare the historical background of Smith’s arguments, and the power of his arguments – WN is a ‘revolutionary book’ (p. 3). Introduction then settles into a biographical sketch. 348. Adam Smith, Selected Chapters and Passages from the Wealth of Nations of Adam Smith, 5 parts, ed. Zenya Takashima (Dobunkan, Tokyo 1946) Based on 1937 Modern Library edition, pp. 1–3, 1–230, 21 cm., 37 yen [NDL] TOKU 41.010

Enlarged edition of 1940 version, omitting Cannan’s marginal and footnotes. 349. Adam Smith, Kokufuron, 6 vols (Kaizosha, Tokyo 1947) Trans. Kenji Takeuchi, based on Cannan 1920 edition, 17 cm. [NDL] 331.321kT

Vol. I = Book I Chs 1–10; General Rules pp. 5–7, Cannan’s Introduction pp. 11–57; Advertisements from Thrid and Fourth editions pp. 58–9; Text pp. 63– 267; Vol. II Book I Ch. 11 and Book II Chs 1–5; text pp. 3–287; Vol. III Book III, Book IV Chs 1–5; pp. 3–204; Vol. IV = Book IV Chs 6–9, Book V Ch. 1; pp. 3–194 Vol. V Book V Ch. 2 pp. 3–160; Vol. VI Book V to end, pp. 3–185. 350. Adam Smith, Gurasugo daigaku kogi, ed. E. Cannan (Nihon hyoronsha, Tokyo 1947) Trans. Zenya Takashima, Hiroshi Mizuta, based on Cannan (1896), pp. 6, 1–32, 87–488, 1– 27, 21 cm., 230 yen

Rules of translation pp. 1–2; Translator’s Introduction pp. 1–32; Editor’s Introduction pp. 35–85 351. Adam Smith, Investigacion de la Naturaleza y Causas de la Riqueza de las Naciones, 3 vols (España Bancaria, Editorial Bosch, Barcelona 1947) Trans. Jose Alonso Ortiz (1784) 24.4 cm.



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New edition of 1933–34 (→ # 326), adding third volume of Book V pp. 5–262; index pp. III–XLVI. Reprinted 1954, 1955–56, 1983, 1985, 1996, 1997, 1999. 352. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Henry Regnery Co., Chicago 1948) pp. 106, 18 cm.

Great Books Foundation Edition – Book I Chs 1–9 353. Adam Smith, Adam SmithToday; An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Arthur Hugh Jenkins (R. R. Smith, New York 1948) pp. viii, 9–26, [27]–456 + index pp. 457–80, 24 cm, [LibCon] HB 161.S652

Second Edition Kennikat Press, Port Washington, NY 1969 354. Alexander Gray, Adam Smith (G. Philp, London 1948) Historical Association General Series, G10, 27 pp., 22cm. [UL]

Reprinted 1968 pp. 28. 355. Adam Smith, Ereynai peri tis fyseos & ton aition toy ploytoy ton ethnon, ed. Dimitrios Kalitsounakis (Estia, Athens 1948) Trans. Dimitrios Kalitsounakis, from Cannan 1904, pp. 1–26, 27–247, + index 252–55, 21 cm. [NatLib Athens] 330.1 SM9-E

356. Adamo Smith, Ricerche sopra la natura e le cause della ricchezza delle nazioni, ed. Augusto Graziani (Unione tipografico-editrice torinese, Turin 1948) Revised version of translation by Alberto Campolongo, based on 1828 rev., pp. IV, V–XXX, 1–873, 875–80, 24.5 cm. [PisaFacEcon] A 1851

Reprinted 1950, 1958, 1965. 357. Adam Smith, Dotoku-josu-ron, 2 vols (Nikko-shoin, Tokyo 1948) Trans. Tomio Yonebayashi, from the 1869 Murray edition (→ # 189), 20.7 cm., 800 yen, [NDL] 150.1cS64dY

Vol. I: Translator’s preface pp. 3–12; Translator’s Introduction pp. 19–32; Translation of original title-page; Preface to 6th edition, pp. 3–4; text pp. 1–380; Vol. II: pp. 381–786; First Formation pp. 743–86. 358. Adam Smith, Milletlerin Zenginligˇ i, 2 vols (M. E. B., Istanbul 1948) Trans. Haldun Derin, 17.5 cm., 2.75 TL, 2.60 TL [NLAnk] 1956.AD 603 K3


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Translation of Books I and II only: Vol. I: pp. I–IV; pp. 3–393; Vol. II: pp. 7–415. 359. Adam Smith, Adam Smith’s Moral and Political Philosophy, ed. Herbert W. Schneider (Hafner Publishing Company, New York 1948) pp. i–xiv, xv–xxviii, 3–484, no index , 21 cm. [LibCon] BJ 1005 .S59

Introduction pp. xv–xxiv; Bibliographical Guide pp. xxv–xxvii; Note on the Text p. xviii; TMS pp. 3–277; Lectures pp. 281–335; WN 339–467; Complete Table of Contents of TMS, Lectures and WN 471–84. This collection is unusual in that it deliberately leads the reader to Wealth of Nations through the Moral Sentiments, which is placed first and in a slightly altered sequence. 360. Adam Smith, Kokufuron no soko sonota, ed. W. R. Scott (Sogensha, Osaka 1948) Trans. Yasujiro Daido, from Scott (1937), pp. 2, 5–74, 75–216, 18 cm., 150 yen [NDL] a330.55

Translation of the ‘Early Draft’ of Wealth of Nations as published in Scott (→ # 336). 361. Adam Smith, Kokufuron-soko, ed. W. R. Scott (Nihonhyoron-sha, Tokyo 1948) Trans. Hiroshi Mizuta, from Scott (1937), pp. 10, 11–31, 35–171, 14.3 cm. 70 yen [NDL] a330.232

An alternative translation of the ‘Early Draft’; Translator’s Preface pp. 3–7; Scott’s Preface pp. 11–31; Translator’s Note pp. 149–51. 362. Adam Smith, Theorie der ethischen Gefühle, ed. Hans Georg Schachtschabel, Georg Kurt Schauer (Frankfurt a. M. 1949) Trans. Eisa von Loeschebrand-Horn from 6th English edition, pp. 338, Printing 2,000 [NSUB] 8 Phil 600

This new translation was undertaken because of the importance of Smith’s writings to contemporary social and economic developments; but also because Eckstein’s exact editorial work in the 1926 edition (→ # 303) was thought to have been coupled with an unfortunately defective translation. This new translation is clearer, suggests Schachtschabel (p. 21), because numerous historical examples and references have been eradicated, the better to maintain the main line of argument. For the same reasons Part II, section I, Ch. 4 is left out entirely; as is Part VII, on the grounds that it is purely a history of moral philosophic ideas. 363. Adam Smith, Kokufuron (Shunjusha, Tokyo 1949) Trans. Tsuneo Hori, pp. i–ii, 1–3, 3–268, no index. 18.3 cm. 200 yen [NDL] a330–597



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Translation of Wealth of Nations discontinued after ten chapters. 364. Adam Smith, Kokufuron ed. W. J. Ashley (Kenshin-sha, Tokyo 1949) Trans. Seiichi Kato, from Ashley (1895), pp. 1–2, 1–2, 1–12, 13–85; 1–65 Eng., 18 cm., 130 yen [NDL] 331–321kK

Second Preface pp. 1–12 by Minoru Miyakawa. 365. Adam Smith, Untersuchung über Natur und Ursprung des Volkswohlstandes (Georg Westermann Verlag, Brunswick 1949) pp. 1–2, 3–6, 7–74, no index. 17 cm. [HDUB] 82 A 4285

This selection is Wealth of Nations Vol. I Chs 1–3; Book IV, Chs 1–8 (with some excisions). Heft 7 in series ‘Westermanns Quellen und Darstellungen zur Gemeinschaftskunde’, edited by Ministerialrat Dr. G. Rönnebeck, Hannover, and Volkshochschuldirektor H. Vogts, Hamburg. ‘Genehmigt für den Gebrauch an Schulen durch Control Commission for Germany (B. E.)’, p. 2. 366. Adam Smith, Adamu Sumisu shiso to keizaigaku-kogi, ed. E. Cannan (Keiyu-sha, Tokyo 1949) Trans. Kenji Takeuchi, 2nd revised edition., based on Cannan (1896), pp. 1–331, index 343– 453, 18.2 cm. [NDL] 331.321Ta5677a

Revised translation of the 1896 Lectures. 367. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. E. Cannan (Methuen & Co., London 1950) 6th edition [BL] X.529/20082

368. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations (Alfred Costes, Paris 1950) Trans. Germain Garnier, from 1802 edition, pp. 44, 1–394, 22.4 cm. [Cujas] 128537

Planned as 4 volumes, only Vol. 1 was published; F. Debyser translated material from Cannan 1904 (→ # 261). 369. Adam Smith, Adam Smith: textes choisis, ed. G. H. Bousquet (Dalloz, Paris 1950) Trans. Germain Garnier, based on Garnier (1843), pp. 37, 258, no index. 19.5 cm. [BULille] 44.934–4

An abbreviated edition of Wealth of Nations, with selections from Book I Chs 1–12; Book II Chs 1–5; Book III Ch. 1 Paras 1 & 2; Book IV Chs 1–8; Book V Chs 1–2.


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370. Burt Franklin, Francesco Cordasco, Adam Smith. A Bibliographical Checklist. An International Record of Critical Writings and Scholarship Relating to Adam Smith and Smithian Theory 1876–1950 (Burt Franklin, New York 1950) pp. 7–12, 13–63, no index. 22 cm. [London Library]

371. T. Yanaihara, A Full and Detailed Catalogue of Books which belonged to Adam Smith Now in the Possession of the Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo (Iwanemi Shoten, Tokyo 1951) 372. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Encyclopedia Britannica, Chicago 1952) [BL] X.972/10.(39)

373. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Franklin Library, Franklin Center, PA 1952) Reprinted 1958

374. Adam Smith, Istrazivanoe Prirode I Uzraoka Bogatstua Naroda, 2 vols, ed. Rudolf Bicanic (Kultura, Belgrade 1952) Trans. Marijan Hanzekovic, from 5th edition 1789, 21.6 cm. [NatSerb] II 6702/1 & 2

Based on the 1904 Cannan edition. Vol. I: Introduction pp. IX–XXXII; pp. 1– 449; Vol. II: 9–436; Index pp. 439–518; Bibliography pp. 519–25; Table of English Measures p. 527. 375. F. W. Hirst, Adamu Simusu (Kobundo, Tokyo 1952) Trans. Kyuzo Asobe, from 1904 edition, pp. 2, 1–6, 1–233, 18.5 no index [NDL] 331.321.cH66a-A

376. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations ed. L. von Mises (H. Regnery Co., Chicago 1953) pp. i–xii, 1–139, 18 cm. [LibCon] HB 161.S6522

Gateway edition. 377. Adam Smith, Dotoku-josu-ron, 2 vols (Shisei–shoin, Tokyo 1954) Trans. Tomio Yonebayashi, 20.7 cm., 1380 yen [NDL] 150.1c64dYs

Second edition of 1948–9 edition with new preface by translator. 378. Adam Smith, Badania nad natura i przyczynami bogactwa narodow, 2 vols (Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1954)



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Trans. S. Wolff et. al., based on 1927 edition; Vol. I pp. V–L, 3–537; Vol. II 5–765 + index pp. 773–808. 19.4 cm., Printing 5,280, [NL] II. 674.362A

Book One is revised translation of Oswald Einfeld and Stefan Wolff, published in 1927. The remaining books translated from ‘Everyman’s Library’, edition, London 1950: Z. Sadowski (Book II and III), A. Prejbisz (Book IV), B. Jasinska (Book V), editors: J. Drewnowski and E. Lipinski. 379. Adam Smith, Feudatario e Mercante (da ‘An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’), ed. Umberto Russo (Tipografia Studio Tipografico, Ragusa 1955) pp. 34, 24 cm.

380. Adam Smith, Selected Chapters and Passages from the Wealth of Nations of Adam Smith, 2 vols, ed. Zenya Takashima (Dobunkan, Tokyo 1955) Modern Library 1937 edition , 360 yen

Vol.I: Editor’s Preface pp. 1–2, pp. 1–140; Explanatory notes by the editor pp. 1–21; Vol. II: Editor’s Preface pp. 1–2; pp. 142–293; Brief life of Smith p. 1; Explanatory Notes pp. 3–15; list of obsolete words p. 16. 381. Adam Smith, Milletlerin Zenginligˇ i, 2 vols (M. E. B., Istanbul, 1955) Trans. Haldun Derin, 16.5 cm. [METU] HB 161.S652

Books III–V, completing the Turkish translation. 382. Adam Smith, Investigacion de la Naturaleza y Causas de la Riqueza de las Naciones, ed. Amando Lazaro Ros (Editorial Aguilar, Madrid 1956) Trans. Amando Lazaro Ros, based on 1904 Cannan edition, pp. 8, IX–XII, 3–790, XV–XVI, + index 793–847. 22.5 cm. [BNMadrid] F 5348

New revised edition 1961 under the title Indagacion Acerca de la Naturaleza y Causas de la Riqueza de las Naciones, prologue by German Lazaro Ros. 383. Adam Smith, Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms, ed. E. Cannan (Kelley and Millman, New York 1956) Reprint of # 245. 384. Adam Smith, Selections from the Wealth of Nations, ed. George J. Stigler (Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York 1957) 19 cm. [LibCon] 86–23951

Reprinted 1986 Harlan Davidson, Arlington Heights, Ill.


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385. Adam Smith, Gukburon (Jeong-yeon-sa Press, Seoul 1957) Trans. Min-gi Choi, from 5th Cannan edition, pp. 1–17, 18–69, 70–251, 18.2 cm., 900 Hwan

386. Adam Smith, Gukburon, 3 vols (Chunjosa, Seoul 1957–62) Trans. Ho-chin Choi and Hai–dong Chyung, from 6th Cannan (1950), pp. 13, 1391, 18.2 cm.

3 vols, Vol. 1 in 2 parts, 1957–62. 387. Adam Smith, Pojednani o podstate a puvodu bohatstvi narodu, 2 vols (State Publishing House for Political Literature, Prague 1958) pp. 401, 572.

388. Adam Smith, Investigacion sobre la Naturaleza y Causas de la Riqueza de las Naciones ed. Gabriel Franco (Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico City 1958) Trans. Gabriel Franco, Manuel Sanchez Sarto, from Modern Library 1937 edition, pp. VII– LXXVI, 1–847, + index pp. 849–917, 23 cm. [BNMadrid] ST/11/2

Translation based on the 1937 Max Lerner edition, acknowledged on the titlepage. Manuel Sanchez Sarto translated Cannan’s notes. Ten reprintings. 389. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Keizaigakushi– Gakkai (Nihon), Kyoto 1959) Reprint of Bohn edition, pp. vii–viii, 1–432, 17.5 cm. [NDL] 171.2S642t

390. Adam Smith, A nemzetek gazdagsága ed. Antal Mátyás (Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1959) Trans. Rudolf Bilek, pp. 9–47, 48–413, 20.5 cm., 60 forint

The First and Second Books of Wealth of Nations, but apart from a Roman I. on the inner title-page there is no indication that this volume does no’t contain the whole text. 391. Adam Smith, Tharwat al-umam (Daral-gahira li–tibà, Cairo 1959) pp. 95, Kress VB

12 selections from Wealth of Nations. 392. Adam Smith, Kokufuron, 5 vols (Keiyu-sha, Tokyo 1959) Trans. Kenji Takeuchi, from Cannan (1920), 16.3 cm., 80 & 150 yen [NDL] 331.321kT(t)



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393. Adam Smith, Shokokumin no tomi, 5 vols, trans. Hyoe Ouchi, Shichiro Matsukawa (Iwanami Publishing Company, Tokyo 1959, 1960, 1965, 1966) Trans. Hyoe Ouchi, Shichiro Matsukawa, from Cannan (1904), 14.8 cm. [NDL] 331.321sO

Second edition of 1940–4. 394. Adam Smith, La ricchezza delle nazioni. Abbozzo, ed. Valentino Parlato (SE, Milan 1959) Trans. Valentino Parlato, from Scott (1937), pp. 77, 20 cm.

A translation of the ‘Early Draft’ of Wealth of Nations published by Scott. Also published by Paolo Boringhieri, Turin. 395. Adam Smith, Gukburon, ed. W. J. Ashley (Jeong-yeon-sa Press, Seoul 1960) Trans. Jong-won Kim, from Ashley (1895), pp. 12, 4, 271, 18.8 cm., 1500 Hwan

Translation of Ashley’s 1895 condensation of the Wealth of Nations. 396. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. E. Cannan (Methuen & Co., London 1961) University Paperback edition [BL] 012212.b.1/14

397. Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: Representative Selections, ed. Bruce Mazlish (Bobbs-Merill, Indianapolis 1961) Based on 1786 edition, pp. xxviii, ix–xxiv, xxxi–xxxiv, 1–307, + index 309–10, 20 cm.

Contents pp. v–viii; Editor’s Introduction pp. ixxxiv; Note on the Text p. xxv; Selected Bibliography pp. xxvii–xxviii; Introduction and Plan of the Work pp. xxxi–xxxiv; Book I pp. 1–108; Book II pp. 111–34; Book III pp. 137–58; Book IV pp. 161–248; Book V pp. 251–307. Omitted sections summarised by editor. 398. Adam Smith, Kokufuron (Kawade-shobo-shinsha, Tokyo 1961) Trans. Hiroshi Mizuta, pp. 1–5, 7–290, 18 cm. 450 yen

Translator’s Afterword pp. 283–90. 399. Adam Smith, Indagacion Acerca de la Naturaleza y Causas de la Riqueza de las Naciones, 2 vols, ed. Amando Lazaro Ros (Editorial Aguilar, Madrid 1961) Trans. Amando Lazaro Ros, 2nd edition, based on Cannan (1904) [BNMadrid] 1/221376

New prologue by German Bernacer Torno.


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400. Keitaro Amano, Bibliography of the Classical Economics, Part I (Science Council of Japan, Tokyo, 1961) pp. 1–132, 20.5 cm.

Part I lists works related to Adam Smith. 401. Adam Smith, Avutia Natiunilor, 2 vols (Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romane, Bucharest 1962) Trans. Alexandru Hallunga, from 1930 edition, 24 cm., 29 lei, Printing 1,900 [BibCenUniv] 330.184

Vol. I (Books I, II, III and IV) : 3–4 Introduction and Plan of the Work, 5–333 content, 335–338 translation notes, 339–340 monetary and measurement units, 341–343 summary; Vol. II (Books IV continued and V): 7–339 content, 340– 342 appendix, 343–393 Index I Subjects, 394–398 Index II Authors, 399–402 translator’s notes, 403–404 monetary and measurement units, 405–471 Essay by N. N. Constantinescu, 472 Smith’s principal books, 473–474 summary. 402. Adam Smit, Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva narodov ed. V. Neznanov, V. S. Afanas’eva (Izdatel’stvo sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi literatury, Moscow 1962) Based on 1931 translation, pp. 2, 3–14, 17–683, 26 cm., 2 Rub 40 kop [RNL] 63–7/ 40

403. Adam Smith, Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms [Chinese] (Commercial Press, Beijing 1962) Trans. Chen Fu-sheng, Chen Zhen-hua, Printing 3,000

Said to be based on Kelley and Milman 1956 edition (→ # 383). 404. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols (R. D. Irwin, Homewood, Ill., 1963) 21 cm.

405. Adam Smith, Eine Untersuchung über Wesen und die Ursachen des Reichtums der Nationen, 3 vols, ed. P. Thal (Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1963–84) Trans. Peter Thal, based on 1786 edition, Vol. I: 20.5 [AW] B II 1/1

Translated from the 1786 edition. Vol. I Title-page (p. III), Contents pp. V–VII, ‘Adam Smith (1723–1790)’ pp. IX–LXV; Book I pp. 1–328 + tables pp. 329–39, Weights and Measures pp. 340–41; Vol. II Title-page (p. III); Contents pp. V– VI; ‘Vorwort des Herausgebers’ p. VII; Book II, Book III, Book IV Chs 1–7 pp. 1–452 + appendix pp. 453–6 Vol. III Title-page (p. 3), Contents pp. 5–6, ‘Vor-



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wort des Herausgebers’ pp. 7–8; Book IV Chs 8, 9; Book V pp. 11–364, index pp. 367–442 (taken from the 1786 edition). 406. Adam Smith, Kokufuron (Kawade-shobo-shinsha, Tokyo 1963) Trans. Hiroshi Mizuta, pp. 1–5, 7–289, 18 cm., 330 yen [NDL] 331.323kMk

407. Adam Smith, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, ed. J. M. Lothian (T. Nelson, London 1963) pp. i–xl, 1–205, 25 cm. [BL] 011881.f.6

Purchased at a sale in 1958 as ‘Notes of Dr. Smith’s Rhetorick Lectures’, they turned out to be a set of student notes from Smith’s lectures in 1763. Although they lack the importance for a general understanding of Smith’s project that the lecture notes discovered by Cannan in 1895 brought, they did add a hitherto entirely neglected aspect to our understanding of Adam Smith’s work. 408. Adam Smith, Thoughts from Adam Smith, ed. Clyde E. Dankert (Hanover 1963) pp. 5–8, 9–22, 23.5 cm. [Bod.] 23211.d.911

Selection of quotations from Adam Smith, chiefly drawing upon WN and TMS, with introduction and appendices. 409. Adam Smith, The Works of Adam Smith, LL.D., 5 vols (Otto Zeller, Aalen 1963) pp. VIII, 1–170 [HDUB] 63 B 2879

Reprint of 1812/11 edition (→ # 110). 410. Adam Smith, Guo Fu Lun, 2 vols (Bank of Taiwan, Taipei 1964–8) Trans. Zhou Xianwen, Zhang Hanyu, from Cannan (1904), pp. 1–868, 20.2 cm.

Zhou translated Vol. I; reprinted 1964, 1965, 1971, 1974; Vol. 2 trans. Zhang, published in 1968 then 1974. 411. Adam Smith, Kokufuron (Kawade-shobo-shinsha, Tokyo 1964) Trans. Hiroshi Mizuta, Shigeshi Wadi, pp. 1–2, 3–17, 23–168, 17.3 cm.

Book V of WN included as part of volume Igirisu no Kindai Keizai Shiso (English modern economic thought). Translator’s notes pp. 393–401. 412. Adam Smith, Kokufuron, 2 vols (Kawade-shobo-shinsha, Tokyo 1965) Trans. Hiroshi Mizuta, from 1776 edition, 19 cm.


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Vol. I: Portrait, pp. 9–413; Translator’s Notes pp. 414–31; Translator’s Afterword pp. 432–3; Analytical essay by Yoshihiko Uchida pp. 435–59; Vol. II Kaye portrait; 7–349; Translator’s Notes pp. 350–99; Historical Essay by Hiroshi Mizuta pp. 401–23; translation of Roy Pascal’s ‘Property and Society’ from Modern Quarterly Vol. I (1938) pp. 423–37; Translation of Smith’s note on the American Revolution from the Rosslyn Manuscripts pp. 437–43. 413. John Rae, Life of Adam Smith (Augustus M. Kelley, New York 1965) pp. 1–145, i–xv, 1–440, + index 441–49

Jacob Viner drafted a lengthy introduction to this reprint of the 1895 Life, summarising and clarifying the details of Smith’s life and indicating what inferences for his work might or might not be made. This represented a substantial contribution to understanding of Smith, although his work has naturally now been superseded by that of later biographers. 414. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Augustus M. Kelley, New York 1966) pp. lxix, 538, 22cm. [LibCon] BJ1005.S6.1966

Reprint of 1853 Bohn’s Standard Library edition. 415. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols (Arlington House, New Rochelle, N.Y., 1966) Introduction John Chamberlain

416. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols (A. M. Kelley, New York 1966) Reprint of 1776 edition (# 9) [LibCon] HB 161.S65 1966

417. David Buchanan, Observations on the Subjects Treated of In Dr. Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (A. M. Kelley, New York 1966) A Reprint of Vol. 4 (of Buchanan’s notes) to the second edition of Buchanan’s edition of Wealth of Nations (→ # 121). 418. Adam Smith, Kyoikuron (Meiji–tosho, Tokyo 1966) Trans. Yotaro Hamada, pp. 83–113, Appendix pp. 114–18, 21 cm. [NDL] 370.4.cM27kH

Trans of Bk. V Ch. 1 Art. 2.3, with Fable of the Bees selection. 419. E. R. Pike, Adam Smith, Father of the Science of Economics (Hawthorn Books, New York 1966)



303

pp. 128, 22 cm. [LibCon] HB 103.S6P5 1966

420. J. Bonar, A Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith (A. M. Kelley, New York 1966) Reprint of 2nd edition (→ # 322).

421. Adam Smith, The Early Writings of Adam Smith, ed. J. Ralph Lindgren (A. M. Kelley, New York 1967) No copy traced in the UK; Bodleian copy lost

422. H. Mizuta, Adam Smith’s Library (Cambridge University Press, London 1967) pp. xix, 153, 24 cm. [Bod] 25899.d.171

423. Adam Smith, Gukburon, ed. W. J. Ashley (Jeong-yeon-sa Press, Seoul 1968) Trans. Jong-won Kim, from Ashley (1895), pp. 1–21, 1–332, 18.8 cm., 450 Hwan

424. A. V. Anikin, Adam Smit (TsK VLKSM «Molodaia gvardiia», Moscow 1968) pp. 4, 5–6, 7–255, 20.7 cm., 1.5 Roubles [StPAS] 1968/2079 3(446)

Biography of Smith. 425. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. E. G. West (New Rochelle, N.Y. 1969) pp. xxxiii, 543, 22 cm. [LibCon] BJ1005.S6 1969

Reprint of of 1853 Bohn’s Standard Library edition, with introduction by E. G. West. 426. Adam Smith, Dotoku-josu-ron, 2 vols, Mirai–sha, Tokyo 1969 Trans. Tomio Yonebayashi, 22 cm., 3000 yen [NDL] H51.7

Third edition of 1948–49, with 1954 preface and new index of persons. Newly set. 427. Adam Smith, Kokufuron, 3 vols (University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo 1969) Trans. Kenji Takeuchi, Reprint of 5th edition, based on Cannan (1920), 18.3 cm. [NDL] DA22–1

Reprint of the 1959–60 edition, with afterword by Kazuo Okochi.


304


428. Adam Smith, Shokokumin no tomi, 2 vols (Iwanami Publishing Company, Tokyo 1969) Trans. Hyoe Ouchi, Shichiro Matsukawa, from Cannan (1904), 20.9 cm. 1300 yen ea. [NDL] DA22–2

Vol. I = Vol. I Cannan, to end of Ch. 3 Book IV; title-page p. i; General Rules pp. iii–iv; Contents pp. v–xi; Cannan’s Preface and Introduction pp. 1–55; text pp. 61–740; Vol. II From Book IV Ch. 4 to end; Title-page p. i; Original title p. ii; Contents pp. iii–vi; text pp. 741–1372; Analytical essay by Ouchi dated 3 March 1969; Indexes pp. 1–118. 429. Adam Smith, La ricchezza delle nazioni. Abbozzo, ed. Valentino Parlato (Editori riuniti, Rome 1969) Trans. Valentino Parlato, from Scott (1937) pp. XXIV, 1–55, 19.5 cm., 500 lira [BNC] C.8.1397.29

A further printing of the ‘Early Draft’, with new explanatory notes by the editor. 430. E. G. West, Adam Smith (Arlington House, New Rochelle 1969) 221 pp., 22 cm. [LibCon] HB 103.S6.W4

431. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations ed. A. S. Skinner (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1970) pp. 535, 19 cm. [OxonEcon] HB 161 SMI

Andrew Skinner’s edition of Wealth of Nations includes Books I, II and III, together with a substantial introduction which examines Smith’s arguments in Wealth of Nations from the standpoint of modern economics. This edition has gone through a number of reprintings and revisions, and in 1999 Penguin completed the edition with the publication of Books IV and V. 432. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ed. A. S. Skinner (Viking Penguin, New York 1970) pp. 535, 18 cm.

American edition of # 431. 433. Adam Smith, Istrazivanoe Prirode I Uzraoka Bogatstua Naroda, 3 vols, ed. Dusan Maletic (Kultura, Belgrade 1970) Trans. Marijan Hanzekovic, from 5th 1789 edition, pp. 1310, 18 cm. [NatSerb] II Y3 609/ 1, 2, 3

Vol. I: Introduction pp. 9–70; pp. 71–521; Contents pp. 522–23; Vol. II: 531– 971; Vol. III: pp. 979–1307. Based on 1904 Cannan edition.



305

434. Adam Smith, Gukburon, 2 vols (Eul-yoo Publishing Co., Seoul 1970) Trans. Im-hwan Choi, from 6th Cannan (1950) edition, 22.2 cm.

435. Adam Smith, Adam Smith’s Moral and Political Philosophy ed. Herbert W. Schneider (Harper and Row, New York 1970) pp. i–xiv, xv–xxviii, 3–467, no index, 19.5 cm. [Bod.] 26783 e 123

A Beacon paperback reprint of the 1948 edition (→ # 359). 436. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Garland Publishers, New York 1971) pp. 551, 21 cm. [LibCon] BJ1005 .S6 1759a

Facsimile of first edition from Yale University Library. 437. Adam Smith, En undersøgelse af Nationernes velstand, dens natur og årsager (Rhodos Teorihistoriske skrifter, Copenhagen 1971) Trans. Per Lyngsae Olsen, pp. 1–3, 3–231, no index, 30 cm. [UBKop] FA 23129–0

Contains Book I only, continuation terminated by publisher. Its 36-page introduction ‘Politisk økonomi som samfundsvidenskab’ was severely criticized for its Marxist interpretation of Smith. Based on the Everyman’s Library edition. 438. Adam Smith, Gukburon (Chunjosa, Seoul 1971) Trans. Ho-chin Choi and Hai–dong Chyung, from 6th Cannan (1950) edition, pp. 1–8, 9– 13, 14–1391, 18.2 cm., 2000 Won

439. Adam Smith, La Riqueza de las Naciones (Oficia de publicaciones de estudios generales, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico 1971) pp. 1–3, 5–61, 23 cm. [BNMadrid] V/Ca10557–12

Selection of extracts from each of the five books of WN. 440. Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects (Garland Publishers, New York 1971) pp. i–cxxiii, 1–332, 20 cm. [LibCon] AC7 .S58 1795a

Facsimile of 1795 ed from Yale University Library 441. Adam Smith, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, ed. J. M. Lothian (Nelson, London 1971) 2nd edition [BL] X.989/10662

Also published by Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.


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442. E. R. Pike, Adam Smith (Hosei University Press, Tokyo 1971) Trans. Koku Nakamura, Takao Takemura from 1966 → # 424, pp. i–iv, 1–180, Afterword pp. 186–93, 480 yen [NDL] GK489–1

443. Adam Smith, Guo Fu Lun, 2 vols (The Commercial Press, Beijing 1972) Trans. Kuo Tal-li, Wang Ya-nan, from Rogers (1880), pp. 382, 511

Went into 8th printing in 1997. 444. Adam Smith, Gukburon (Daeyang Seojeok, Seoul 1972) Trans. Seok-hwan Kim and Il-gon Kim from 6th Cannan (1950), pp. 8, 24, 405, 24 cm.

445. Adam Smith, Shujigaka-Bungaku Kogi (Mirai-sha, Tokyo, 1972) Trans. Naosuke Uyama from the Lothian ed., pp. i–vii, 5–375, Afterword pp. 379–83, 21 cm., 2800 yen [NDL] KS55–2

A Japanese edition of the Lectures on Rhetoric. 446. John Rae, Adamu Simusu den (Iwanami-shoten, Tokyo 1972) Trans. Hyoc Ouchi, Setsduko Ouchi, from 1895 edition, pp. i–xiv, i–vi, 1–547, 1–20, 17.2 cm. [NDL] GK489–3

Translation of Rae’s 1895 biography of Smith. 447. Adam Smith, Dotoku-kanjo-ron (Chikuma-shobo, Tokyo 1973) Trans. Hiroshi Muzuta, from 1759 edition, pp. 1–4, 531–42, 530, 547–58, 21.6 cm., 3000 yen [NDL] H51.40

Variorum edition of Moral Sentiments based on the first edition. 448. Adam Smith, Indagine sulla natura e le cause della ricchezza delle nazioni, ed. Sergio Caruso (Istituto Editoriale Internazionale, Milan 1973) Trans. Franco Bartoli, Cristiano Camporesi, Sergio Caruso, from Cannan (1904), pp. I–XII, XIII–LXVIII, 1–948, + index 949–1030, 23.5 cm. [PisaFacEcon] Sc. Economiche – SP – 297

Includes an introduction by Maurice Dobb, ‘Adam Smith e la scuola classica’ pp. XIII–LXVIII. Reprinted 1976, 1977, 1995. 449. Adam Smith, Adam Smithe la nascita della scienza economica, ed. Piero Barucci (Sansoni, Florence 1973) Trans. revised Alberto Campolongo, from 1950 ed., pp. IV, 1–13, 20–138, 18.3 cm.

A selection from Wealth of Nations based on A. Campolongo’s 1950 translation.



307

450. Adam Smith, Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms [Chinese] (Bank of Taiwan, Taipei, 1973) Trans. Zhou Xianwen, based on Cannan (1896)

451. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ed. A. S. Skinner (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1974) 2nd edition, pp. 535, 19 cm.

Revisions to reading list, and last ten pages of Introduction; reprinted 1976, 1976, 1977, 1978 452. Adam Smith, Der Wohlstand der Nationen. Eine Untersuchung seiner Natur und seiner Ursachen, ed. H. C. Recktenwald (Verlag C. H. Beck, Munich 1974) Trans. H. C. Recktenwald from 1789 edition, pp. I–VIII, XV–LXXIX, 1–819, + pp. 14 index, 22.8 cm. [HDUB] B 1361

Title-page (p. III), Vorwort pp. V–VIII, Contents pp. IX–XII, Quotes on Smith pp. XIII–XIV, ‘Würdigung des Werkes’ pp. XV–LXXIX, p. 1 Advertisements to Third and Fourth editions, Introduction and Plan pp. 3–5, TEXT pp. 7–819, Appendices: Currencies, Weights and Measures pp. 823–24; Statistical Data pp. 825–9, Bibliography pp. 831–40, Index pp. 841–55, Note on Illustrations pp. 857–10. 453. Adam Smith, Kokufuron, 2 vols (Kawade-shobo-shinsha, Tokyo 1974) Trans. Hiroshi Mizuta, from 1776 edition, 19 cm. [NDL] HC1–16

Translation revised from 1965, other details remain the same. 454. Adam Smith, Morale dei sentimenti e ricchezza delle nazioni. Antologia del pensiero smithiano, ed. Vittorio Dini (Guida, Naples 1974) Trans. Ida Cappiello, pp. I–LXX, 1–387, 21 cm. [FlorEcon]

A selection from Smith’s writings. 455. Clyde E. Dankert, Adam Smith. Man of Letters and Economist (Exposition Press, Hicksville, NY 1974) pp. i–ix, 1–297, 22cm. [LibCon] HB 103.S6.D35

456. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. William Letwin (E. P. Dutton and Co., New York 1975) Vol. I pp. xxiii–xxvi, v–xxii, 1–441; Vol. II pp. 1–430, + index pp. 435–55, 0, 19 cm. [Kress]


308


This is the same text setting as the 1910 Seligman edition, with a new introduction and the frontmatter pagination altered in line. Reissued in 1977 in one volume format. 457. Adam Smith, La ricchezza delle nazioni, ed. Anna and Tullio Bagiotti (Unione Tipografico-editrice Torinese, Turin 1975) Trans. Anna and Tullio Bagiotti, from Cannan (1904), pp. 6, 7–70, 70–1146, 1147–259, 23.5 cm. [PisaFacEcon] 330.153 SMI

458. Adam Smith, ‘The Edinburgh Review and the Scottish Economic Climate’, ed. Hiroshi Mizuta, Economic Research No. 55 (Nagoya 1975) pp. VIII, 1–170, 19 cm.

Reprint of First and Second numbers, together with Preface to 1816 reprint; published by Economic Research Center, Nagoya University. 459. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael, A. L. Macfie (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1976) Based on 1790 edition, pp. x, 1–52, 1–342, 403–12, Hardback, 24 x 16, £15, 0, [BL] X.0520/ 508

The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith began publication in 1976, at last making available reliable editions of all Smith’s writings. This edition of the Moral Sentiments includes as Appendix I Minor Variants pp. 343–81; Appendix II The Passage on Atonement, and a Manuscript Fragment on Justice. 460. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, ed. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, W. B. Todd (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1976) Vol. I pp. Vol. II pp. 24 cm. £25 [BL] YA 1997.b.3036

Vol. I – Title half page (p. i); Title-page (p. iii); Preface p. v; Contents p. vi; Key to Abbreviations and References pp. vii–viii; General Introduction pp. 1–60; The Text and Apparatus pp. 61–66; Contents pp. 3–7; Advertisement p. 8; Advertisement to the Fourth Edition p. 9; Introduction and Plan of the Work pp. 10–12; Book I pp. 13–275 (prices pp. 267–75); Book II 276- 375; Book III pp. 376–427; Book IV Chs I–V.b pp. 428–43. Vol. II – Title half page (p. i); Title-page (p. iii); Contents p. v; Key to Abbreviations and References pp. vi–vii; Book IV Ch. VI–IX pp. 545–688; Book V pp. 689–947; Appendix pp. 948–50; Textual Schedules pp. 951–79; Table of Corresponding Passages pp. 980–1005; Index of Statutes pp. 1006–8; Index of Authorities pp. 1009–18; Index of Subjects pp. 1019–80.



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461. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan (University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1976) Reprint of Cannan (1904), pp. x, xi–xiv, xix–liv, 1–524, 3–489, + index 491–568, Paperback, 20.5 cm. [Bod] 23211.e.2761

One volume paperback edition, with a preface by George Stigler pp. xi–xiv; reprint of 1904 with 1904 pagination, restarting in the middle of the book. 462. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesses des nations, ed. Gérard Mairet (Gallimard, Paris 1976) Trans. Germain Garnier, based on 1843 edition, pp. 11–32, 33–433, 18 cm.

Bibliography 443–445; History of Astronomy Section 3 from EPS included pp. 437–42. 463. Adam Smith, La ricchezza delle nazioni. Contributi critici di Lucio Colletti, Claudio Napoleoni, Paolo Sylos Labini, 3 vols, ed. Sergio Caruso (Newton Compton, Rome 1976) Trans. Ada Bonfirarro, based on Cannan (1904) edition. Vol. I, pp. I–V, VII–XX, 1–37, 39– 314; Vol. II, pp. 1–6, 9–416; Vol. III, pp. 1–6, 9–261, 19cm.

Includes translation of Cannan’s ‘Preface’ and ‘Introduction’. 464. Adam Smith, Kokufuron, 3 vols, ed. Kazuo Okochi (Chuokoronsha, Tokyo 1976) Trans. Okochi, Kyoji Tazoe, Yoshiro Tamanoe, from 5th edition, 12.8 cm. [NDL] DA22–9

465. Adam Smith, Gukburon, 2 vols (Dongshu Publishing Company, Seoul 1976) Trans. In-ho Yoo, from 5th Cannan Modern Languages edition, 17.5 cm.

466. Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Adam Smith, ed. John Haggerty (Liberty Press, Indianapolis 1976) pp. 233, 22 cm. [Kress]

467. Adam Smith, Adam Sumisu, ed. Chuhei Sugiyama (Heibon-sha, Tokyo 1976) Trans. Chuhei Sugiyama, pp. iv–vii, i–iii, 2–228, + index 238–40, 18.3 cm.

A synthetic overview of Smith’s writings, together with a Bibliographical Guide pp. 229–36.


310


468. E. G. West, Adam Smith. The Man and his Works (Liberty Press, Indianapolis 1976) pp. 254, 22 cm. [LibCon] HB 103.S6W42

469. H. C. Recktenwald, Adam Smith. Sein Leben und Sein Werk, C. H. Becksche (Verlagsbuchhandlung Munich, 1976) pp. VII–XII, 1–301, + index 303–312, 24.5 cm. [AW] B IX 567

470. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. E. G. West (Liberty Press, Indianapolis 1977) Reprint of Bohn 1853 edition, pp. 546, incl. index. 24 cm., 5763 Hardback and Paperback copies printed [LibCon] BJ1005 .S6 1976b

Second Printing 1980, 4063 copies. 471. Adam Smith, Theorie der ethischen Gefühle, ed. Walther Eckstein (Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1977) Trans. W. Eckstein, reprint of 1926, pp. I–VIII, IX–LXXXI, 570 + notes, index 597–618, 18.5 cm. [HDUB] M 38 1 162

A one-volume reprint of the landmark 1926 edition (→ # 303), which is still in print. With a new bibliography by G. Gawlick. Reprinted in 1985 with expanded bibliography; and again 1994 with a revised bibliography. 472. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. William Letwin (E. P. Dutton and Co., New York 1977) pp. xxiii–xxvi, v–xxii, 1–441, 1–430, + index 435–55, 19 cm. [OxonEcon] HB 161.SMI

Two volumes bound as one, separately paginated. Everyman ed. of 1910 (→ # 279); reissue of 1975 two-volume edition (→ # 456). 473. Adam Smith, Indagine sulla natura e le cause della ricchezza delle nazioni, 2 vols, ed. Sergio Caruso (Arnoldo Mondadori, Milan, 1977) Trans. Franco Bartoli, Cristiano Camporesi, Sergio Caruso, Based on Cannan (1904), pp. I– XI, 1–948 + index pp. 949–1019, 20 cm. [BNC] C.6.2275.55

474. Adam Smith, Yuan Fu, 3 vols (Taiwan Commercial Press, Taipei 1977) Trans. Yen Fu, from Rogers (1880), 18.9 cm.

Ren Ren Wen Ku series (Everyman’s Library). 475. Adam Smith, Correspondence of Adam Smith, ed. E. C. Mossner, I. S. Ross (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1977)



311

xxx, 0, 1–412, 413–41, 24 cm. [BL] X0520/508/6

Although Smith found writing difficult, and was a relatively poor correspondent, his letters are an important source since we otherwise know so little of his life. The correspondence was first systematically employed to this end by John Rae (→ # 243), but until this edition there was no collected edition of Smith’s letters. 476. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Franklin Library, Franklin Center, Pa. 1978) Reprint of 1952 edition pp. 683, 26 cm. [LibCon] HB 161.S65 1978

477. Adam Smith, Servat-e Melal (Payam, Tehran 1978) Trans. Sirous Ebrahim Zadeh, pp. 1–3, 7–350, + index 351–62, 23.5 cm.

The civil disorders preceding the departure of the Shah from Iran in January 1979 began in the autumn of 1978, so this edition just predates those events. This text translates Books I to III of Wealth of Nations, omitting the ‘Introduction and Plan of the Work’. 478. Adam Smith, Der Wohlstand der Nationen. Eine Untersuchung seiner Nature und seiner Ursachen ed. H. C. Recktenwald (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München 1978) Reprint of 1975, translated from 5th 1789 edition, pp. I–VIII, IX–LXXIX, 1–819, + index 941–55, 18.8 cm. [AW] B II 1/1 (1978)

479. Adam Smith, Kokufuron, 3 vols, ed. Kazuo Okochi (Chuokoronsha, Tokyo 1978) Trans. Akio Okochi, Kyoji Tazoe, Yoshiro Tamanoe, 2nd edition, Based on 5th edition, 15.6 cm. [NDL] DA22–39

Reprint of 1976 in Chuko Library 480. Adam Smith, Gukburon (Daeyang Seojeok, Seoul 1978) Trans. Seok-hwan Kim and Il-gon Kim, 2nd edition, from 6th Cannan (1950) edition, pp. 8, 24, 405, no index, 24 cm.

Reprint of 1972. 481. Adam Smith, A Economia Clássica. Textos, ed. Fernando Lopes de Almeida, Francisco Chaves Fernandes (Forense Universitária, Rio de Janeiro 1978) Trans. Fernando Lopes de Almeida, Francisco Chaves Fernandes, based on Cannan (1904) edition, pp. 2, 2, 46, + index pp. 2, 21 cm. [UnivSãoPauloLib] 330.S.642e


312


Wealth of Nations, Book I Chs 1, 2, 3; Book II Ch. 3. 482. Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, ed. R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael, P. G. Stein (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1978) pp. viii, 1–43, 1–558, 597–610, 24 cm., £20 [Bod.]

When Lothian discovered the notes on Rhetoric in 1958 he also turned up another set of lecture notes similar to those published by Cannan in 1896, but more extensive. The editors have put these together (as LJ (A) and LJ (B) respectively) with the ‘Early Draft of the Wealth of Nations’ previously published by Scott in 1937 (→ # 336) (pp. 562–81); the First Fragment on Division of Labour pp. 582–4; a Second Fragment pp. 5845; and an Index of Sources and Authorities 587–96. 483. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ed. A. S. Skinner (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1979) 3rd edition, pp. 535, 19 cm. [BL] X.529/46964

References in this new edition are converted to the pagination of the Glasgow edition; the reading list is also revised; reprinted in 1980, 1981. 484. Adam Smith, Adam Smith Va Servat-e Melal (Jibi, Tehran 1979) Trans. Mohamad Ali Katouzian, based on Cannan (1961), pp. 9–12, 13–102, 103–94, 20 cm.

The first section of this work discusses Smith and his context, organising the selections in a series of chapters: Ch. 1 Division of Labour p.103; Chapter 2 Money, Value and Price p.112; Chapter 3 Income Distribution (wages, profit and rent) p.129; Chapter 4 Capital Accumulation and Economic Development p.148; Chapter 5 On the Rise of Feudalism and its transformation into Capitalism p.163; Chapter 6 On the Thoughts and Systems of Political Economy p.170; Chapter 7 On the Role of the State p.184. 485. Adam Smith, Kokufuron, ed. Kazuo Okochi (Chuokoronsha, Tokyo 1980) Trans. Akio Okochi, Kyoji Tazoe, Yoshiro Tamanoe, pp. 1–5, 7–58, 67–569, + index pp. 578– 82, 17.5 cm., 980 yen

486. Adam Smith, A Riqueza das Nações (Global Editora, São Paulo 1980) Trans. Marcio Pugliesi, pp. 4, 1–60, 21 [UnivSãoPauloLib] 330.1.S642r

A translation of Wealth of Nations Book I Chs 1–6. 487. Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. W. P. D. Wightman, J. C. Bryce (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1980)



313

Based on 1795 edition, pp. ix, 1–21, 1–351, 353–8, Hardback, 24 cm. [BL] X.950/10965

This adds to the 1795 edition some other small items of Smith’s writings, and introduces detailed editorial annotations to the individual essays. 488. Adam Smith, Théorie des sentiments moraux ou essai analytique sur les principes des jugements que portent naturellement les hommes d’abord sur les actions des autres, et ensuite sur leurs propres actions (Edition d’aujourd’hui, Plan de la tour (Var) 1981) 4th edition, trans. Sophie de Grouchy, pp. v–xvi, 1–405 20.5 cm. [BNF] Z–17080 (246)

489. Adam Smith, Kokufuron, 3 vols, ed. Chikura Shobo (Tokyo 1981) Trans. Kenji Takeuchi, Reprint of 1969 (→ # 427), based on Cannan (1920), 18.7 cm. [NDL] DA22–43

Afterword replaced with one by Nobutaka Onishi pp. I–V. 490. Adam Smith, Inquérito sobra a Natureza e as Causas da Riqueza das Nações, 2 vols (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon 1981) Trans. Luís Cristóvão de Aguiar, Teodora Cardoso, Based on Cannan (1904) edition, 22 cm. Printing 5,000 [BibNac] S.C. 8737/6 V.

Vol. I Preface pp. VI; pp.1–823; Vol. II Preface pp. VI; 1–814; Index pp. 687– 799; Bibliography pp. 801–9. Reprinted 1987, 1993, 1999. 491. Adam Smith, Yuan Fu, 2 vols (The Commercial Press, Beijing 1981) Trans. Yen Fu, 6th edition, based on Rogers (1880) Printing 7,700

492. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, W. B. Todd (Liberty Press, Indianapolis 1982) Glasgow edition, Printing 6,045 (→ # 460)

Exact reprint of 1976 Glasgow edition in paperback. Reprinted 1984 (6151 copies printed); 1986 (6154 copies printed); 1989 (8707 copies printed); 1990 (6379 copies printed); 1992 (10309 copies printed); 1994 (10269 copies printed); 1996 (10166 copies printed); 1997 (10537 copies printed) 493. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations ed. A. S. Skinner (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1982) 4th edition, pp. 11–97, 104–520, + index pp. 523–37, 19 cm. [OxonEcon] HB 161 SMI

Reissued in Penguin English Library; reading list revised; reprinted 1982, 1983


314


494. Adam Smith, Gukburon (Beom Han Publishing Company, Seoul 1982) Trans. In-ho Yoo, 2nd edition, from 5th Cannan Modern Library edition, 020.5 cm., 4000 Won ea.

495. Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. W. P. D. Wightman, J. C. Bryce (Liberty Press, Indianapolis 1982) pp. ix, 1–21, 1–351, 353–8, 24 cm. Printing 2,926

Reprinted 1989 (1,868 copies printed); 1995 (2,046 copies printed); 2000 (1,934 copies printed) 496. Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence ed. R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael, P. G. Stein (Liberty Press, Indianapolis 1982) pp. viii, 1–43, 1–558, 597–610, 24 cm. Printing 2,990

Reprinted 1986 (2,987 copies printed); 1994 (2,457 copies printed); 1998 (2,826 copies printed) 497. Adam Smith, Gukburon, 2 vols (Eul-yoo Publishing Co., Seoul 1983) Trans. Im-hwan Choi, 2nd edition, based on 6th Cannan (1950) edition, 22.2 cm.

Reprint of 1970. 498. Adam Smith, Gukburon, 2 vols (Hak Won Publishing Company, Seoul 1983) Trans. In-ho Yoo, 3rd edition, based on 5th Cannan Modern Library edition, 20.5 cm., 4000 Won ea.

499. Adam Smith, A Riqueza das Nações. Investigação sobre sua Natureza e suas Causas, 2 vols, ed. Winston Fritsch (Abril Cultural, São Paulo 1983) Trans. Luíz João Baraúna, based on Cannan (1904) edition, 24 cm. [UnivSãoPauloLib] 330.08.S642r

500. Adam Smith, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, ed. J. C. Bryce (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1983) Based on Lothian edition, pp. ix, 1–37, 1–200, 239–43, 24 cm. [Bod]

First Formation pp. 201–26; The Bee 11 May 1791 pp. 227–31; corresponding passages pp. 233–8



315

501. John Rae, Life of Adam Smith ([Chinese] Commercial Press, Beijing 1983) Trans. Hu Qu-lin, Chen Ying-nian, based on 1895 edition, Printing 10,500

502. Dugald Stewart, Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith ([Chinese] Commercial Press, Beijing 1983) Trans. Jiang Zi–qiang, Qin Bei–yu, Zhu Zhong-di, Based on 1880 George Bell edition (→ # 204), Printing 9,000

503. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael, A. L. Macfie (Liberty Press, Indianapolis 1984) Reprint of Glasgow edition, pp. x, 1–52, 1–342, 403–12, 24 cm. Printing 3,252

Reprinted 1985 (3044 copies printed); 1988 (4908 copies printed); 1990 (2964 copies printed); 1993 (3990 copies printed); 1995 (4007 copies printed); 1996 (10607 copies printed); 2000 (4973 copies printed). 504. Adam Smith, Saggi filosofici, ed. Paolo Berlanda (Franco Angeli, Milan 1984) Trans. Paolo Berlanda, based on Glasgow edition, pp. 1–6, 7–49, 50–244, 21.9 cm., 18,000 lira [PisaFacEcon] Sc. Economiche – G – 8 K c 127

505. Martha Bolar Lightwood, A Selected Bibliography of Significant Works about Adam Smith (Macmillan, Basingstoke 1984) pp. i–x, xi–xvi, 1–60, + index 61–82, 23.5 cm. [BL]

506. Dugald Stewart, Adamu Sumisu no shogai to chosaku (Ochanomizushobo, Tokyo 1984) Trans. Tadahiro Fukugama, pp. i–vii, 1–225, Afterword pp. 227–363, 21 cm. [NDL] DA22– 59

Three essays by translator follow the main text. 507. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, Adamu Simusu den (Toyokeizai– shinposha, Tokyo 1984) Yoshikazu Kubo, 1, 1, 1982, i–viii, 1–285, 1–7, 21 cm. [NDL] GK489–16

508. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Richard F. Teichgraeber III (Random House, New York 1985) Based on Cannan 5th edition, xiv, ix–xiv, 1–523, + index pp. 525–72, [LibCon] HB 161.S65 1985


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509. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Representative Selections, ed. Bruce Mazlish (Macmillan, New York, 1985) 21 cm.

Library of the Liberal Arts No. 125. 510. Adam Smith, H ekseliksi tis oikonomikis skepseos apo toys archaioys ellines stoys klasikoys, ed. Riginos Theoxaris (Papazisis, Athens 1985) Trans. Riginos Theoxaris, from Cannan (1904) edition, pp. 11, 219–83, 24 cm.

Selections from Wealth of Nations form part of a reader of Classical economics. 511. Adam Smith, Uluslarin Zenginlig ˇ i, (Alan Publishers, Ankara 1985) Trans. Ayşe Yunus, Mehmet Bakirci, from 1926/1948 editions,pp. 13–15, 17–342, + index pp. 345–56, 24 cm., 7500 TL [NLAnk] 1985. AD 1428

Books I, II, III only. Based on Everyman’s edition, 1926, and 1948 translation. Index for subjects and bibliography pp. 343–4 taken from Skinner’s 1981 Penguin edition of Wealth of Nations. Reprinted 1997. 512. Adam Smith, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, ed. J. C. Bryce (Liberty Press, Indianapolis 1985) ,Glasgow edition, pp. ix, 1–37, 1–200, + index pp. 239–43, 24 cm., Printing 3,029

Reprinted 1995 (2065 copies printed); 2000 (1500 copies printed) 513. Adam Smith, Lezioni di retorica e belle lettere, ed. Roberto Salvucci (Quattroventi, Urbino 1985) Trans. Roberto Salvucci, from Glasgow edition, pp. 4, 5–45 + 487–507, 49–485, + index 509–11, 24 cm. [PisaFacEcon] Sc. Economiche G.8 KA356

514. D. D. Raphael, Adam Smith (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1985) pp. 128, 23 cm. [BL] V.529/69189

Biography of Smith in the ‘Pastmasters’ series. 515. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen, Düsseldorf 1986) Facsimile of 1759 edition, pp. 12, 1–551, no index, 21 cm., Printing 1,000 [AW] M II 58/1–1

516. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols (Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen, Düsseldorf, 1986) Facsimile of 1776 edition, 30 cm., Printing 1,000 [HDUB] 92 D 1004



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517. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ed. A. S. Skinner (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1986) 5th edition, pp. 11–97, 104–520, + index 523–37

Reissued as Penguin Classic. 518. Adam Smith, The Essential Adam Smith, ed. Robert L. Heilbroner (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1986) pp. i–vii, 1–11, 13–332, + index 333–341, 21.5 cm. [BL]

‘The Man and his Times’ pp. 1–11. Section I Early Writings: Introduction pp. 13–20, ‘The History of Astronomy’ pp. 21–36, Lectures on Jurisprudence Part I, Part II pp. 37–56. Section II The Theory of Moral Sentiments (6th edition): Introduction pp. 57–63, Part I Section I ChsI–V; Section III Chs II & III pp. 65–88, Part II Section I Ch. IV; Section II Chs I–III; Section III Ch. III pp. 88– 100, Part III Chs I–V pp. 100–118, Part IV Ch. I pp. 118–23, Part V Chs I & II pp. 123–32, Part VI Sections I & II; Section III Chs I–III pp. 133–47. Section III The Wealth of Nations (no edition given): Introduction pp. 149–58. Employs Cannan’s marginal notes, Introduction and Plan of the Work pp. 159–61, Book I Chs I– XI pp. 161–227, Book II Chs I, II, III, V pp. 227–47, Book III Chs I–IV pp. 248–58, Book IV Chs I, II, VII, IX pp. 258–90, Book V Chs I–III pp. 290– 320, Aphorisms and Famous Passages from the Wealth of Nations pp. 321–4. Section IV Envoi: Selection of letters pp. 325–32. 519. Adam Smith, Correspondence of Adam Smith, 2nd edition, ed. E. C. Mossner, I. S. Ross (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1987) pp. xxxi, 1–336, 450–64, 24 cm. [Bod] Nuneham M88.E00062

Revised edition, with additional letters. 520. Adam Smith, Correspondence of Adam Smith, 2nd edition, ed. E. C. Mossner, I. S. Ross (Liberty Press, Indianapolis 1987) pp. xxxi, 1–336, 450–64, 24 cm. Printing 2,748

Paperback, reprinted 1997 (2170 copies printed). 521. D. D. Raphael, Adam Smith (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1987) 2nd edition

Corrected reprint of 1985. 522. Adam Smith, Investigacion sobre la Naturaleza y Causas de la Riqueza de las Naciones, 2 vols, ed. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, W. B. Todd (oikos-tau, s.a, Barcelona 1988)


318


Trans. Collado Curiel, Juan Carlos, Antonio Mira-Perceval Pastor, based on Glasgow edition, 23.5 cm. [BNMadrid] 3/152689–90

Paperback edition. Straight translation of the Glagow edition in its entirety, without any comment by translators. Split at Ch. IV.v, pp. 9–68 Editors’ Introduction, pp. 73–977 text, indexes pp. 179–1043. 523. Adam Smith, Teoria uczuc moralnych (Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1989) Trans. Danuta Petsch, based on 1976 Glasgow edition, pp. III, IX–XXXI, 1–516, + index pp. 538–46, 19 cm., 1200 zloty, Printing 5,280 [NL] KW 17.282

Translation of Moral Sentiments. 524. Adam Smith, Lezioni di Glasgow, ed. Enzo Pesciarelli (Giuffrè, Milan 1989) Trans. Vittoria Zompanti Oriani, based in Glasgow 1978 edition, pp. IV, V–cxxviii, 1–733, + index pp. 737–58, 22.4 cm., 70,000 lira [Pisa Phil] FIL – BVII 61.4

A translation of the 1978 Glasgow edition of the Lectures. 525. Adam Smith, Gurasugo daigaku kogi, ed. E. Cannan (Nihon hyoronsha, Tokyo 1989) Trans. Zenya Takashima, Hiroshi Mizuta, 2nd edition, based on Cannan (1896), pp. 6, 1–32, 87–488, 12000 yen [NDL] 331.321c63gT

Afterword H. Mizuta. 526. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago 1990) pp. i–vii, v–vi, 1–471, + index 475–515, 24 cm. [Bod.] M92 E 8167

527. Adam Smith, La ricchezza delle nazioni. Abbozzo, ed. Valentino Parlato (SE Milan 1990) Trans. V alentino Parlato, based on Scott (1937) edition, pp. 1–7, 9–62, Afterword, pp. 63–78, 19cm, 15,000 lira [SBUB] BC1 330.1 SMI RIC

Reprint of the 1959 edition. 528. D. D. Raphael, Adam Smith ([Chinese] Chinese Social Science Press, Beijing 1990) Trans. Li Yan-qing, Wang Xi–ning, from 1985 edition, Printing 3,100

529. Adam Smith, Teoria dei sentimenti morali, ed. Adelino Zanini (Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1991)



319

Trans. Cesare Cozzo, based on 1976 Glasgow edition, pp. XII, XIII–LXXXIX, 1–470, + index 471–86, 21 cm. [PisaFacEcon] ECO 170 SMI

530. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (Everyman’s Library, London 1991) pp. iii–v, ix–xxvii, 1–441, 1–181, no index, 21 cm. [Bod.] M91 F 12059,

The main text is a straight reprint of the 1910 Everyman’s Library edition, which was in two volumes. This is in one volume, omits Book V entirely (Introduction p. xxvii) and so runs to p. 441 and the end of Book IV Ch. 3. Volume Two interleaved and resumes with Book IV Ch. IV to end of Book IV pp. 1–81. Introduction (D. D. Raphael) pp. ix–xxvii; Select Bibliography pp. vvviii–xxix; Chronology pp. xxx–xxxiii. 531. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols (Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY 1991) Reprint of 1776 edition, pp. 590, 22 cm. [Kress] HB 161. S65 1991b

Great Minds series; also in hardback. 532. Adam Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 2 vols, ed. Daniel Diatkine (Flammarion, Paris 1991) Trans. Germain Garnier, based on 1881 edition, 17.6 cm., 21.5 Euro [BSE] E II 26 1991

Deletes much of the apparatus of the Blanqui–Garnier editions. 533. Adam Smith, Erevna gia ti fysi kai ta aitia toy ploutou ton ethnon, ed. Petros Gemtos (Euroekdotiki, Athens 1991) Trans. Dimitrios Kalitsounakis, based on Cannan (1904) edition, 20 cm.

New version of the 1948 edition with a new introduction. 534. Adam Smith, Indagación sobre la naturalesa i les causes de la riqueza de les nacions, 2 vols, ed. Angels Martinez i Castells (Edicions 62, Barcelona 1991) Trans. Angels Martinez i Castells, based on Glasgow 1976 edition, 19.5 cm. [BNMadrid] 9/ 191814–15

Vol. I: Introduction pp. 7–11; text pp. 17–374; index pp. 375–77; bibliography pp. 15–16. Vol. II: pp. 5–470; index pp. 481–3; Index of Names and Subject matter pp. 471–479. 535. Adam Smith, La ricchezza delle nazioni. Abbozzo, ed. Valentino Parlato (Editori riuniti, Rome, 1991)


320


Trans. Valentino Parlato, based on Scott (1937) edition, pp. I–VIII, IX–XVII, 1–51, no index, 16.8cm., 12,000 lira, [PisaFacEcon] Sc. Economiche – G – 8KA 347

536. Adam Smith, Adam Smithe la nascita dell’economia politica, ed. Piero Barucci (Arnoldo Mondadori, Milan 1991) Trans. Francesco Ferrara, from 1950 edition, pp. 250, 21 cm.

Reprint of # 449. 537. Adam Smit, Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva naroda. Otdel’nye glavy, ed. I. A. Stoliarov with Z. A. Basyrovoi («Ekonov», Moscow 1991) Based on 1962 edition, pp. 2, 3–4, 81–396, 14.5cm. [RNL] Н3 У02 /А–724

«Antologiia ekonomicheskoi klassiki» v dvukh tomakh. 538. D. D. Raphael, Adam Smith (Campus Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1991) Trans. Udo Rennert, based on 1985 edition, pp. 1–8, 9–138, no index, 18 cm. [AW] B IX 807

539. John Rae, Life of Adam Smith (Thoemmes Press, Bristol 1991) Reprint of 1895 edition.

540. Adam Smith, Nemzetek gazdagsága (Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó, Budapest 1992) Trans. Rudolf Bilek, pp. 5–7, 9–372, no index, 20 cm., 400 forint

Version of the 1959 edition, Books I and II of Wealth of Nations only, omitting the introduction of A. Mátyás. 541. Adam Smith, Gukburon, 2 vols (Bumwoosa, Seoul 1992) Trans. Ho-chin Choi and Hai–dong Chyung, based on 1976 Chicago edition, 21.2 cm., 9000 won ea.

542. Adam Smith, Gukburon, 2 vols (Dong-a Chulpansa, Seoul 1992) Trans. Soo-haeng Kim, from 1976 Glasgow edition, 23 cm., 9500 ea.

543. Adam Smith, Avutia Natiunilor, 2 vols (Universitas, Chişşinaˇu 1992) Trans. Alexandru Hallunga, based on 1934–5 translation, 34 cm. 35 lei, Printing 5,000 [BibCenUniv] 330.8

The pagination is the same as the 1962–5 Romanian Edition, except for the deletion of the essay of N. N. Constantinescu (Vol. II) and the addition of a foreword by the Moldovan publisher.



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544. Adam Smith, Correspondence of Adam Smith ([Chinese] Commercial Press, Beijing 1992) Trans. Lin Guo-fu, based on Glasgow 1977 edition, Printing 2,000

545. Adam Smith, Keimena politikis oikonomias kai theorias tis politikis, ed. Manolis Aggelidis, Kosmas Psyxopaidis (Eksantas, Athens 1992) Trans. Diogenis Pylarinos; Roh Maliori, Dionysis Grabaris, based on 1976 edition, pp. 11–18, 19–400, + index pp. 401–5, 21 cm., 4160 Drchs

Selections from Wealth of Nations. 546. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Laurence Dickey (Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis 1993) Based on Cannan (1904) edition, pp. i–vi, vii–xviii, 1–210, no index, 21.5 cm., $5.45 [Bod] M94.F07717

Title-page (iii); Contents pp. v–vi; Editorial Preface pp. vii–xviii; Text 1–210 – Book I pp. 1–49; Book II pp. 49–83; Book III pp. 83–116; Book IV pp. 116–66; Book V pp. 166–210; Appendices 213–63. 547. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. A Selected Edition, ed. Kathryn Sutherland (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1993) Based on the 1976 Glasgow edition, pp. i–viii, ix–xlv, 1–464, + index pp. 603–18, 18.5 cm. £6.99 [BL] YK.1994.a.10956

Title-page (p. iii); Acknowledgements (p. v); Contents (p. vii); Introduction pp. ix–xlv; Note on the Text pp. xlvi–xlvii; Select Bibliography pp. xlviii–li; Chronology pp. lii–lxiv; text 1–464’ Explanatory Notes and Commentary pp. 465–602; index pp. 603–18. 548. Adam Smith, Fukokuron, 3 vols (Yushodo, Tokyo 1993) Trans. Eisaku Ishikawa, Shosaku Saga, 3rd edition, 20.7 cm., 8000 yen

Afterword Akio Okochi pp. 1–15. 549. Adam Smit, Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva naroda. Otdel’nye glavy, ed. I. A. Stoliarov with Z. A. Basyrovoi («Ekonov»«Kliuch», Moscow 1993) Based on 1962 edition, pp. 2, 3–4, 81–396, no index, 20.3 cm. [RNL] 93–5/2630

Reprint of # 537 «Antologiia ekonomicheskoi klassiki» v dvukh tomakh.


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550. Adam Smit, issledovanie o prirode i prichine bogatstva narodov, ed. L. I. Abalkin (Izdatel’stvo «Nauka», Moscow 1993) Trans. E. M. Maiburd, from 1979 edition, pp. 11, 11–106, 114–570, no index, 20.6 cm. [RNL] 93–3/501–1–13

Wealth of Nations Books I–III only. 551. Adam Smit, Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva naroda (otdel’nye glavy) (Petrocom, Petrozavodsk 1993) Based on 1962 edition, pp. 2, 0, 3–319, no index, 20 cm. [RNL] 92–3/8814

Book I Chapters I–XI; Book II, Chapters I–V. 552. Adam Smith, Adamu Sumisu tetsugaku ronbunshu, ed. Hiroshi Mizuta (Nagoya University Press, Nagoya 1993) Trans. H. Mizuta et.al., from 1795 edition, pp. vi, 3–286, Afterword pp. 345–62, 18.8 cm., 4000 yen [NDL] HD35E6

Translation of the 1795 Essays. 553. Adam Smith, Lezioni di retorica e belle lettere, ed. Roberto Salvucci (Quattroventi, Urbino 1993) Trans. Roberto Salvucci, 2nd edition, from Glasgow edition, pp. 4, 5–45 + 487–507, 49–485, 509–11, 24 cm., 50,000 lira [BNBMilan] T.85.C.0233

554. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols, Thomas G. Barnes et. al. (Classics of Liberty Library, New York 1994) Facsimile of 1776 edition, 24 cm.

555. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Robert Reich (Modern Library, New York 1994) Reprint of Cannan (1904) edition, pp. i–lxii, 1–1131, 21 cm. [LibCon] HB 161.S65 1994

Reprinted 2000. 556. Adam Smith, La Riqueza de las Naciones, ed. Carlos Rodriguez Braun (Alianza Editorial, Madrid 1994) Trans. Carlos Rodriguez Braun, from Glasgow 1976 edition, pp. 7–21, 25–804, + index pp. 805–8, 18 cm., 1800 pesetas, Printing 5,000, [BNMadrid] 12/77068

Reprinted 1996 (with a name and subject index added), 1997, 1999, 2001. Based on the 1976 Glasgow edition without notes or any apparatus. Books I, II, and III complete, with selections from Books IV and V.



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557. Adam Smith, Den osynliga handen (Ratio, Gothenburg 1994) Trans. Dagmar Lagerberg, from 1981 edition, pp. 5, 3, 294, no index, 28 cm.

Selected extracts from Books I to V. Based on the Liberty Press edition of 1981. 558. Adam Smith, Tetsugaku, gijutsu, sozoryoku – tetsugaku ronbunshu (Keiso-shobo, Tokyo 1994) Trans. Takeshi Sasaki, pp. 3–253, 0, 14.7cm., 3600 yen [NDL] HD35E12

Based on the 1980 Glasgow edition of the Essays, omits the ch. ‘Of the Affinity…’; adds an appendix ‘The Scepticism of David Hume’ pp. 254–84; translator’s afterword pp. 285–303. 559. Adam Smith, Teoria dei sentimenti morali, ed. Eugenio Lecaldano (Rizzoli, Milan 1995) Trans. Stefania Di Pietro from 1976 Glasgow edition, pp. 1–4, 5–66, 75–640, + index 641– 652, 17.9 cm. 19,000 lira, [PisaFacEcon] G – 8 KA 355

Reprinted 2001. 560. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 3 vols, ed. William Playfair (Pickering & Chatto, London 1995) Facsimile of 1805 edition, pp. 1–7, 9–14, + original pagination 24 cm. £250, Printing 600 [Bod.] M96.E8457/8/9

Introduction by William Rees-Mogg. 561. Adam Smith, Adam Smith. From the Wealth of Nations (Akros Publications, Edinburgh 1995) pp. 1–2, 3–12, no index. 21 cm., Printing 130 [Bod.] M97 F.1433; [BL] YK.1996.a.11499

Part of Book I Ch. X, and Book I Ch. XI. 562. Adam Smith, Enqûete sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 4 vols (Presses universitaires de France, Paris 1995) Trans. Paulette Taieb from 1776 edition, pp. 1–40, 41–1084, + index 1095–1421. 21.5 cm. 75.5 Euros [MSE] B1 SMI

563. Adam Smith, La ricchezza delle nazioni, ed. Sergio Caruso (Newton Compton, Rome 1995) Trans. Franco Bartoli, Cristiano Camporesi, Sergio Caruso, based on Cannan (1904) edition, pp. IV, 1–60, 61–773, + index 775–834. 23.3 cm. [PisaFacEcon] Sc. Economiche – G – 8H a 321


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564. Adam Smith, Lecciones sobre Jurisprudencia (Curso 1762–3), ed. Manuel Escamilla Castillo, José Joaquin Jiminez Sanchez (Editorial Comares, Granada 1995) Trans. Manuel Escamilla Castillo, José Joaquin Jiminez Sanchez, from Glasgow (1978) edition, pp. 6, 7–29, 37–446, + index 447–51. 22 cm. [BNMadrid] 9/143937

A translation of Lectures on Jurisprudence (A), ie. the set of lectures discovered by Lothian in 1958. 565. Ian S. Ross, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1995) [BL] xc 1997; b. 1525; pp. xxviii, 495. 25 cm.

The definitive biography of Adam Smith. 566. Adam Smith, Dodeokgamjeongnon (Bibong Publishing Co, Seoul 1996) Trans. Se-Il Park and Kyoung-kuk Min, from Glasgow (1976) edition, pp. 1–21, 2–587 + index. 23 cm. 20,000 units

Translation of Moral Sentiments. 567. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations Books I–III ([Hebrew] Bialik Institute, Jerusalem 1996) Trans. Yariv Eitam, Shimshon Inbal, pp. 9–85, 91–384, 24 cm. [NLI] 1754563

Jointly published with the Open University, Tel Aviv. Haim Barkai, ‘Adam Smith in the Context of our Times’ pp. 9–85. Is a translation of Books I–III. 568. Adam Smith, Investigacion de la Naturaleza y Causas de la Riqueza de las Naciones, 4 vols (Junta de Castilla y Leon, 1996) Trans. Jose Alonso Ortiz, from 1784 edition, 20.2 cm.

569. Adam Smith, La Riqueza de las Naciones, ed. Carlos Rodriguez Braun (Ediciones Piranide, Madrid 1996) Trans. Carlos Rodriguez Braun, from Glasgow (1976) edition, pp. 2, 5–14, 16–67, + index 3 pp. 21 cm. free (distributed with newspaper) [BNMadrid] 10/16322

Free gift with the Spanish financial daily, Cinco Dias No. 1 in a collection of Economics Classics. Introduction ‘Adam Smith 1723–1790’. Introduction and Plan together with texts selected from Books I and IV. 570. Adam Smith, Vorlesungen über Rechts- und Staatswissenschaften (Academia Verlag, Sankt Augustin 1996)



325

Trans. Daniel Brühlmeier from Glasgow (1978) edition (→ # 482), pp. 290 [SBMün] 97.5234

571. Adam Smith, Lecciones de Jurisprudencia, ed. Alfonso Ruiz Miguel (Boletin Oficial de Estado Centro de Estudios Constitucionales, Madrid 1996) Trans. Alfonso Ruiz Miguel, from Glasgow (1978) edition, pp. 6, IX–LXIV, 3–224, + index pp. VII–VIII. 21 cm. [BNMadrid] 10/28805

A translation of Lectures on Jurisprudence (B), ie. the lectures published by Cannan in 1896. 572. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Regnery Publishing Inc., Washington D. C. 1997) 2 vols in one, reprint of 6th edition as published by Wells and Lilly, Boston 1817, 24 cm. [LibCon] BJ1005 .S6 1997

573. Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, ([Chinese] Commercial Press, Beijing, 1997) Trans. Jiang Zi–qiang, from 1833 edition.,Printing 6,000

574. Adam Smith, Teoriia nravstvennykh chuvstv, ed. A. F. Griaznov, Intro. B. V. Meerovskii (Izdatel’stvo «Respublika», Moscow 1997) Trans. P. A. Bibikov revised by A. F. Griaznova, from 1868/1976 editions, pp. 4, 5–28, 30–330, 339–346, 14.8 cm., 30,000 Roubles [RNL] 97–5/702

Translation of Moral Sentiments. 575. Adam Smith, La Teoria de los Sentimientos Morales, ed. Carlos Rodriguez Braun (Alianza Editorial, Madrid 1997) Trans. Carlos Rodriguez Braun, from 1790 edition, pp. 6, 7–37, 39–595, + index pp. 607–12, 18 cm. 1800 pesetas, Printing 4,000 [BNMadrid] 10/70149

576. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ed. A. S. Skinner (Penguin Books, London 1997) Revised version of 1986 (→ # 517) with changes to the introduction and other corrections. 577. Adam Smith, Rannsókn á eðli og orsökum auðlegðar þjóðanna (Bókafélagið, Reykjavík 1997) Trans. Thorbergur Thorsson, pp. 7–40, 1–338, 24 cm. [Kress]

Translation of Books 1, II, III of Wealth of Nations. Includes introductory essay by Hannes Gissurarson pp. 7–36.


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578. Adam Smith, La ricchezza delle nazioni. Abbozzo, ed. Valentino Parlato (Editori riuniti, Rome 1997) Trans. Valentino Parlato, from Scott (1937), pp. I–VIII, IX–XVII, 1–51, no index. 19.5 cm., 12,000 lira [PaviaPhil] STOR. FIL. Mod. 320.3

Another edition of the ‘Early Draft’. 579. Adam Smit, Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva narodov (Os’ – 89, Moscow 1997) Based on 1962 translation, pp. 4, 5–253, no index. 20.2 cm.

580. Adam Smith, Essais esthètiques. L’imitation dans les arts et autres textes, ed. Patrick Thierry (Vrin, Paris 1997) Trans. P.-L. Autin, I. Ellis, M. Garandeau, P. Thierry, from 1795 edition, pp. 40, 40, index 3 pp. 21.5 cm., 120 Fr. [BULille] W 28899

Includes ‘Nature of that Imitation’, ‘Affinity between Music and Dancing’, ‘English and Italian Verse’, ‘Letter to Edinburgh Review’. 581. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Regnery Publishers, Washington, D. C. 1998) Reprint of George Bell 1896 ed. [LibCon] HB 161.S65 1998

582. Adam Smith, Adam Smith, ed. Anthony Kelbrook (Parma Books, London 1998) pp. (i–iii), 1–6, 7–84, no index. 19.5 cm. [Bod.] M99 G.2609

Selections from Wealth of Nations in the series ‘Plain Texts from Key Thinkers’. 583. Adam Smith, Istrazivanoe Prirode I Uzraoka Bogatstua Naroda, ed. Dusan Miljevic (Globalbook, Novi Sad 1998) Trans. Marijan Hanzekovic, from 5th 1789 edition, pp. 1–8, 5–26, 27–757, no index. 26.5 cm., Printing 500, [NatSerb] III y21523

Reprint of Wealth of Nations. 584. Adam Smith, Ensayos Filosoficos, ed. John Reeder, Carlos Rodriguez Braun (Ediciones Piramide, Madrid 1998) Trans. Carlos Rodriguez Braun, based on 1795 edition, pp. 6, 9–35, 41–314, + index pp. 315– 9, 22 cm. 2,500 pesetas [BNMadrid] 10/109557

Introduction is ‘Estudio Preliminar’ by John Reeder. 585. V. I. Iakovenko, Adam Smit. Ego zhizn’ i nauchnaia deiatel’nost’. Biograficheskii ocherk, ed. N. F. Boldyrev (Ural Ltd., Cheliabinsk 1998)



327

Based on 1894 edition, pp. 4, 11–99, no index. 20.5cm. 25 roubles [StPAS] 1995K/6819

Biography. 586. Adam Smith, Ihmisen niistä luonteenpiirteistä jotka voivat vaikuttaa muiden onneen ja menestykseen (Kautelaari Kustannus, Helsinki 1999) Trans. Matti Norri, pp. 4, 2, 1–84, 21 x 14.7 cm.[Helsinki] Ea 027901

Moral Sentiments Book VI Chs II and III. ‘Of the Character of Individuals, so far as it can affect the happiness of other people’. 587. Adam Smith, Théorie des sentiments moraux (Presses universitaires de France, Paris 1999) Trans. Michael Biziou, Claude Gauthier, J.-F. Pradeau, from 6th 1790 edition, pp. 1–17, 20– 454, + index pp. 459–63. 23.7 cm., 198 Fr. [BSE] BASMI

588. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ed. A. S. Skinner (Penguin Books, London 1999) Revised version of 1997 (→ # 575), with a new chronology and index. 589. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations Books IV–V, ed. A. S. Skinner (Penguin Books, London 1999) Based on 5th 1789 edition, pp. i–iv, v–lxii, 1–556, + index pp. 559–602, 19.5 cm., £7.99 [Bod.] M00.G02331

590. Adam Smith, Untersuchung über Wesen und Ursachen des Reichtums der Völker, 2 vols, ed. E. W. Streissler (Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen, Düsseldorf 1999) Trans. M. Streissler, from the Glasgow (1976) edition, 25 pp. index, 24.2 cm., DM 168, Printing 3,000 [HDUB] LSA Wi AN 074

300 also separately published in leatherbound special edition, priced at DM 500. Vol. I –Title page, Inhalt of both volumes, Erich Streissler, ‘Einführung’ pp. 1–31, Erich Streissler, ‘Adam Smith – >der Adam< oder >nur Wachstum

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