Notes

1 Alonso Ortiz wrongly declared that he had used the eighth edition of Smith's work for his translation (probably he used the fifth) and confessed that he had eliminated “certain details, but very few, either because they were absolutely impertinent to our nation, or because they were not in accord with the Holy Religion which we profess.

2 Professor Ernest Lluch highlighted the similarities between Naples's economic situation— whose monarch when the university chair was first created was the future king of Spain, Carlos III—and Aragon, as well as the connection between the contents put forth in the university chair with the main cameralists, who predominated in northern Italy and in the German ter­ritories. This determined that the Zaragoza chair, similar to the Neapolitan one, was oriented more toward the process of teaching the so-called state sciences, whose goal was the training of public officials capable of assuming responsibilities in the government (Lluch, 1995).

3 Professor Pablo Cervera felt that the influence of Genovesi and of the cameralist Bielfeld (Cervera, 1998, 160) was equally perceivable.

4 This episode has been extensively documented (Garcia Perez, 1974; Legarda, 1984; Lopez, 1987). The main criticism centered around the declaration that celibacy encumbered the development of the useful population, the submission of the clergy to the laws of the secular government, a partially tolerant attitude of luxury and the justification of the interest on loans (Sanchez, Malo and Blanco, 2003, 139-40).

5 The Censo, which was subtitled Censo de la riqueza territorial de Espana e industrial de Espana en el ano de 1799, was republished with an introduction, “La economia espanola segun el censo de frutos y manufacturas de 1799,” by Antonio Matilla Tascon (Polo y Catalina, 1960, iii-iv).

6 The explanation for not publishing this report was clarified when it was finally published six years later, in 1810 (without Polo y Catalina's introductory text), under the responsibility of Manuel Antonio Rodriguez, one of Say's translators, who believed that the information could be rectified and expanded. He also felt that “some of his opinions seemed too daring to pub­lish them without risking his reputation and perhaps his life” (Rodriguez, 1810). Rodriguez's fear was justified, for in the report he attributed the agricultural decadence of the region “to the limited number of farm owners existing in the province, in regard to the many settlers or lessors [...] and the arrogance of the gentlemen and the tyranny with which they treated their people” (Alfaya, 1924, 68). This is the real reason why Polo y Catalina's Informe sobre la Industria de Espana was not published.

7 “And despite the fact that Smit [sic] doctrine and the general interest of the nations seems to have made them forget their disputes [.], the new air and novelty which the French wanted to apply to everything, also forced them to reproduce the most unique ideas of their predeces­sors on this matter: and even though the very same ones who reproduced them, did not adopt them in their entirety, they presented them with such force that they could prove prejudicial to a nation which was just beginning to become involved in politics” (Polo y Catalina, 1804, 6). Obviously Polo y Catalina was considering the negative influence of such ideas in Spain, for which, as we will see later on, he defended an industrialist strategy.

8 Authors such asJ.J. Gislain consider Schumpeter's appraisal of Herrennschwand as a “German Physiocrat” or as one of the last rather heterodox physiocrats to be abusive: “Ce dernier quali- ficatif est d'autant plus problematique que les etudes sur les physiocrates ne donnent aucune place a Herrenschwand [...] le qualificatif de ‘physiocrate heterodoxe' est en grande partie abusif [.] a aucun moment dans son oeuvre, il ne cite les physiocrates.

9 Garnier, in his Abrege, had clearly defended this argument: “Celui qui rend ce service, dit-il, en parlant des entrepreneurs se soumet a une privation, puisqu'il fait consommer a d'autres des choses consommables qu'il possedent. Donc, ce sera sur l'etendue de cette privation et des risques que l'indemnite se mesurera” (Allix, 1912, 331).

All controversies aside, his position was explained in a comment published in Vanedades, which is included here despite its extension because we feel it constituted one of the most relevant controversies on economic matters in a predominantly agrarian country like Spain in 1804:

“Love thy neighbour” makes us want everyone to enjoy the same fortune, and we want the surplus of the rich, to be distributed among the most needy, in order to level every­thing out. This is impossible; but on the other hand we would want the land to be more subdivided, so that there could be more owners and fewer day labourers or dependents upon the rich owners. Some claim that in this way, the land would be better cultivated and others, such as Young, say that the current state is the way to rouse a nation. In our newspapers, this dispute arose and for this reason, we would like a defender to emerge to confront Young and respond to his reasons, which we are ready to put forth, drawn directly from his works. (Alvarez Guerra, 1805, 96).

To all of the foregoing, we should add the fact that the “ideologists” did not remain unaffected by the physiocratic influence. Some writers, such as Vandermonde, suffered the simultaneous influence of physiocracy and several postulates of Steuart, while others such as Roederer pre­ferred to rely on Turgot, who saw it as a bridge between the ideas of Gournay and Condorcet and those of Smith, beyond their physiocrat influences (Faccarello and Steiner, 1991, 27).

In August of 1800, the two main newspapers of the capital, the Diana de Madrid and the Mercurio de Espana, gave imprecise news on the translation.

The letter was published on October 29, 1800, and signed by Pedro Martin de Campos.

The letter, published in the Diario de Madrid on November 29, 1800, showed he was highly famil­iar with Herrenschwand’s work and corrected the author of the previous one, who referred to him as Herrens Chuand, and was signed with the initials F. M. E.

An exception considered by Lluch was that of Argentinean Manuel Belgrano, who studied in Spain, and in 1794 he translated and published the Maximas del Gobierno agricultor, which was widely distributed later in Argentina in the years prior to the revolution of 1810. However, as J. C. Chiaramonte explained, Belgrano combined the ideas of the physiocrats with those of the neomercantilist Genovesi in his texts, which served as theoretical support to the model for eco­nomic change that was aimed at supporting the changes needed for Argentina’s independence (Lluch, 1984).

The Spanish version, translated by one of the students of the Economιa Civily Comercio Chair of Zaragoza, Francisco Escolar, eliminated in his translation a large part of the mathematical apparatus of the work, with a supposed didactic purpose, which actually detracted to a great extent from its contents.

According to Professor Salvador Almenar Palau in Las reflexiones sobre las variaciones delprecio del trigo, “There are a combination of statistics and algebra in order to establish precise relation­ships: 1, Between high corn prices and hospital death rates; 2, The relationship between corn prices, workers’ wages and budgets; 3, Prices and shipping costs; and 4, A model showing the constant relative prices between corn and barley when the technical conditions of productions are assumed to be stable” (2004, 275).

However, the line followed by Penalver adapts to the mathematical focus offered by Canard. As Lluch pointed out, Penalver translated the work of the mathematician and a friend of Condorcet, Diannyere, in defense of freedom of trade and included in the Mercurio, a series of statistical studies such as the one entitled “From the mortality of the hospitals, general for men and the Passion for the women of Madrid” (Lopez de Penalver, 1803).

The translator of Say’s work does not miss the opportunity to disqualify Garnier’s work, which continued to be influential in Spain: “On the other hand, this author (Garnier), as Say points out, did not know how to protect himself against the main errors made by the economists” (Say, 1804, xiv).