Translations

One notable feature of the second half of our period is the start of a growing flow of translations from foreign languages. It accompanied the development of economic ideas and publications from the 1750s onwards and was often provoked by the very people who participated in the French debates, thus being part and parcel of this development.

Around Vincent de Gournay and “commercepolitique”

This flow of translations started in the 1750s when economic literature was blos­soming. Some works, of course, had been translated before. This was the case, for example, of Thomas Mun’s England s Treasure by Forraign Trade, published in French in 1674 (Traite du commerce. Dans lequel tous les marchands trouveront les moyens dont ils se peuvent legitimement servir pour s'enrichir) probably in the wake of Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s economic policy. A new revised edition came out in 1700 (Tresor du commerce dans lequel on trouvera les moyens dont on se peut legitimement servir pour s'enrichir). Two decades later, John Law’s Money and Trade considered was translated during the final step in Law’s controversial mon­etary policy (Considerations sur le commerce et sur l'argent, 1720): a new transla­tion, by Etienne-Franςois de Senovert (1753-1831), was also published later, during another crucial monetary episode, that of the assignats during the French Revolution (Considerations sur le numeraire et le commerce, in (Euvres de Law, 1790).

The 1750s, however, witnessed a decisive change. The flow of translations became significant and characterised the heyday of “commerce politique”. It was the doing of J. C. M. Vincent de Gournay and his group and took place during the growing rivalry between France and Great Britain, just before the outbreak in 1756 of the Seven Years’ War. If the atypical case of Richard Cantillon’s Essai sur la nature du commerce en general, posthumously published in 1755, is set aside,^[186] many titles were published between 1753 and 1757. Gournay translated Josiah Child’s A New Discourse of Trade (Traites sur le commerce, 1754), Franςois Veron de Forbonnais Charles King’s The British Merchant, Or Commerce Preserv'd (Le negociant anglois, 1755), Georges-Marie Butel-Dumont John Cary’s An Essay on the state of England, in relation to its trade, its poor and its taxes (Essai sur l^,etat du commerce d'Angleterre, 1755), and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot translated the sec­ond part of Josiah Tucker’s Reflections on the Expediency of a Law for the Naturali­sation of Foreign Protestants (Questions importantes sur le commerce, a l'occasion des oppositions au dernier Bill de Naturalisation, 1755). Finally, Sir Matthew Decker ^,s Essay on the causes of the decline offoreign trade was translated by Jean- Paul de Gua de Malves (Essai sur les causes du declin du commerce etranger de la Grande-Bretagne, 1757). Spanish literature was not forgotten, with translations from Jeronimo de Ustariz (Theorie etpratique du commerce et de la marine, 1753, by Forbonnais) or Bernardo de Ulloa (Retablissement des manufactures et du com­merce dEspagne, 1753, by Forbonnais’s cousin, Plumard de Dangeul). A remark­able feature is that, during this short but intense period, the translators also published many books of their own. “Such a considerable number of useful books, which were published almost all at the same time, is, for those who write the history of the mind, an undeniable epoch of progress” (Le Blanc 1754, I, xxviii).

Apart from these discussions, some works, referring to other themes, were also translated - on population, for example, a much debated issue analysed in Chap­ter 8, with the translation by Elias de Joncourt of Robert Wallace’s 1753 A dis­sertation on the numbers of mankind in Ancient and Modern Times (Essai sur la difference du nombre des hommes dans les tems anciens et modernes, dans lequel on etablit qu'il etoitplus considerable dans l'antiquite, 1754).

David Hume

Associated with the active trend of “commerce politique” was Le Blanc’s trans­lation of David Hume’s Political Discourses (Discours politiques de Monsieur Hume, 1754, a revised edition following in 1755),^[187] with a long preface and notes by the translator and two appendices on the related economic literature of the time, focusing on English authors but also praising Jean-Franςois Melon (an alleged source of Hume’s Discours), Forbonnais and Dangeul. Le Blanc also appended to the first volume of the Discours his translation of Bolingbroke’s Testament poli­tique sur l'etatpresent de l'Angleterre, principalement a l'egard de ses Taxes & de ses Dettes nationales, & sur leurs Causes & leurs Consequences (another transla­tion was published independently the same year: Testament politique de milord Bolingbroke, translator unknown). English economic literature, and Hume’s Dis­cours in particular, Le Blanc wrote, “are starting to be a school of politics for the other European countries” (Le Blanc 1754, I, viii). “It is only from the English authors that we can henceforth learn to improve the knowledge of commerce; even if their advantage over us is simply that they have preceded us in this science, it would be enough to lead us to choose them as our masters” (I, xxiv).

The Discours politiques were successful in France and Europe and played an important role in the French context.^[188] Echoes are to be found in periodicals: for example, a new journal, the Journal etranger, which set out to inform the French public of works published in other languages - chose the Political Discourses as the first British book to review, and published extensive commented excerpts of the essays on commerce and luxury in its first two issues (April and May 1754).

Pietro Verri and James Steuart

One of these authors was Pietro Verri, who situated himself in the wake of Locke and Cantillon. His philosophical essay Meditazioni sulla felicitd, developing sensa- tionist ideas, was translated by Gabriel Mingard (Pensee sur le bonheur, Yverdon, 1766), and his Meditazioni sulla economia politica, again translated by Mingard, was published in Lausanne in 1773 (Reflexions sur l’economie politique) and republished in The Hague in 1779. Verri’s Reflexions was probably received as an antidote to the physiocrats who were often accused of being “fanatics” and “enthu­siasts”: in his prefatory text, speaking of the Milanese authors, Mingard stressed that “fanaticism does not blind these estimable authors; a wise and cautious spirit lightens them...

The revolutionary period also saw the publication, on the initiative of Alexandre Theophile Vandermonde (1735-1796, on whom more below), of James Steuart’s An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy by “an Irishman who knew no French”, the translation being “reviewed by a man of high intellect” (Vandermonde [1795a] 1800-1801, II, 448), Senovert (Recherche des principes de l’economie politique, ou Essai sur la science de la police interieure des nations libres, Paris, 1789-90). Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Vandermonde admitted, is an excellent book. But “there is another one, less known, that I would particularly recommend.” “I do not know of any exhaustive treatise on political economy”, he adds, “but the most comprehensive... which, I think, is the most worthy to be studied, is the book titled Essais sur les principes de l’economie politique [sic], by James Steuart” (Vandermonde [1795b] 1800-1801, t. II, 447-8).^[192] This work was praised by both Vandermonde and Senovert (who, as mentioned before, translated Law’s Money and Trade at the same time) especially because it could have presented an alterna­tive to strict laissez-faire and a plea for pragmatism, a rehabilitation of John Law and, for Vandermonde, a implicit plea in favour of the assignats.

Adam Smith

At the end of our period, however, the real success story was that of the multiple translations of Adam Smith’s works. Smith was already well known in France (where he travelled extensively in the 1760s) as a philosopher, after the publica­tion in 1759 of the first edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments - a lauda­tory review of it was published as soon as 1760 in the Journal encyclopedique.

Finally, during the Revolution, a new and relatively more faithful translation was published in 1798 by Sophie de Grouchy (1764-1822), Condorcet’s widow: Theorie des sentimens moraux - with the subtitle Essai analytique sur les Princi- pes des Jugements que portent naturellement les Hommes, d'abord sur les Actions des autres, et ensuite sur leurs propres Actions. To her translation, she appended her own Lettres a C*** sur la Theorie des sentimens moraux, later known as Let- tres sur la sympathie, the letter C*** most probably referring to Cabanis (on whom more below). Grouchy’s choice of how to translate some of Smith’s terms, her preface and the appended Lettres show how Smith’s work was received in France: “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” (Grouchy 1798, viii). Although Smith’s book was appreciated, it was generally critically received because it was read in the context of a rational foundation of morals and sensationist philosophy: “beware of this dangerous tendency to suppose the existence of an intimate sense, a faculty, a prin­ciple, every time we encounter a fact whose explanation escapes us” (1798, 465). In a nutshell, the Lettres state that morals cannot be based on sentiments. “[T]he first causes of sympathy derive from the nature of the sensations that pleasure and pain make us feel” (1798, 368) and sympathy cannot lead to moral judgements unless helped by reason. A sentiment is necessarily modified by reflection, and these modifications alone “lead us to the idea of moral good or evil” (1798, 440), and then to the notion of just or unjust. Moreover, the tendency of most men to adopt moral and just behaviour depends on the system of laws and values proper to a given social organisation. The interpretation was significant in the context of the political debates of the time^[194] and the much-discussed possibility of creating virtu­ous citizens through appropriate institutions.

The Wealth of Nations, however, broke all publication records (Carpenter 2002; Faccarello and Steiner 2002). Of the book, which came out in 1776,^[195] two reviews were rapidly published in 1776 and 1777, in Journal encyclopedique ou universel and Journal des sςavans, respectively. After almost two decades of controversies over economic subjects and at a time when the physiocratic doctrine started to be discredited in public opinion, Smith’s work seemed to some to be a welcome alter­native to the writings of the “sect” - or else an interesting development of Turgot’s ideas, as M.-J.-A.-N. Caritat de Condorcet stressed.^[196] It was also taken as a criti­cism of “commerce politique”, the strict followers of which grew scarcer as time went by.^[197] The beginning and the end of the Wealth of Nations generally attracted the attention of the readers: Book I for its developments on the division of labour,^[198] Book IV on systems of political economy and the critique of the physiocrats and Book V for the discussions about taxation and public debt. Smith’s views on value and prices, on the other hand, were neglected, or interpreted according to the sub­jective sensationist approach. As noted in Chapter 6, in the anonymous review published in Journal encyclopedique (1 and 15 October 1776), Smith’s distinction between use value and exchange value “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” (1 October 1776, 8-9).

A very partial translation was published in 1778: Elie Salomon Franςois Reverdil published a translation, with modifications, of Book IV, Ch. VII “Of Colo­nies” (Fragment sur les colonies en general, et sur celles des anglais enparticulier, Lausanne). A complete (anonymous) translation came out almost at the same time in The Hague (Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, 1778­79, reprinted 1789). It was followed, with the same title, by Blavet’s translation, first published in 1779-80, in 23 instalments, in Journal d’agriculture, du commerce, des arts et des finances and then in 1781 as a book in Paris (three volumes) and Yverdon (six volumes, presumably a pirate edition). The translation was reprinted in 1786 and 1788 and, revised on Smith’s third edition, in 1800-1801. In his preface, Blavet briefly alludes to a possible link between the 1759 and 1776 works.

The object [of the Wealth of Nations] was so important that it deserved to be dealt with by the author of the theory of moral sentiments. When he gave this excellent treatise to the public, Mr. Smith... seemed to announce (see the 4th Section of the 6th Part) the profound and enlightening inquiry on the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Perhaps it should be seen as the continuation thereof. At least, it is not unlikely that the first work gave birth to the second, and that the philosopher inspired the politician [le politique].

(1781, v-vi)

Less than two decades later, however, the relevance of The Theory of Moral Senti­ments was questioned in La decade philosophique and Mercure de France and the book was judged well inferior to the Wealth of Nations (Carpenter 2002, 138, 165-6). The quality of the anonymous and Blavet’s translations of the latter work was also rapidly questioned. Two other translations were made at that time but remained unpublished.^[199]

At the end of the 1780s, the French economic, social and political situation was critical, and fiscal and economic problems were more than ever topical. This is probably the reason why the 1789 reissue of the anonymous 1778-79 edition was titled Recherches tres-utiles sur les affaires presentes, et les causes de la richesse des nations. During the Revolution, however, two new translations were published. The first, based on the fourth edition of the Wealth of Nations, was made by Jean- Antoine Roucher (1745-1794) - a poet who used to be close to Turgot and was still close to Condorcet. It appeared in Paris in 1790-91 (two pirate editions were published in 1791 and 1792, in Avignon and Neuchatel, respectively). A revised edition was soon published in 1794 and reprinted in 1806.^[200] The 1790-91 publica­tion was supposed to include a volume of comments by Condorcet, which never came out and probably never existed (Faccarello 1989b). A series of excerpts from Roucher’s and Blavet’s translations were also published in 1790 in Bibliotheque de l'hommepublic, a journal co-edited by Condorcet, Isaac Le Chapelier and Charles- Claude de Peyssonel. In his “Avertissement du traducteur”, Roucher stressed both the fact that Smith’s reflection was more developed and comprehensive than the French publications made during the previous decades, and the topicality of the book at a time when any citizen could be elected to parliament and participate in public affairs.

Anyone yearning for the happiness to live under a government respecting the sacred rights of liberty and property, will find in these Recherches the immutable principles which must guide the heads 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 Ecrivains Economistes [the physiocrats].... But England has over us the advantage of having given to the world a com­plete system of social economy. This part of the whole human knowledge, the most beautiful and useful, is to be found in Smith’s book... developed with a prodigious sagacity.

(Roucher 1790, vii-ix)

However, Roucher’s translation was also contested, despite some favourable reviews in the press. Moreover, Blavet accused Roucher of plagiarism. This led to the second new translation during the Revolutionary period, by Germain Garnier (1754-1821). Started in 1794 during his exile in Switzerland, it was published in 1802. Unlike the previous translators - who were not economists, with the excep­tion of Morellet whose translation remained unpublished - and while being an admirer of Smith, Garnier was above all a disciple of Cantillon and Quesnay and endeavoured to show all that Smith owed to the latter. With some other commenta­tors, he was also critical of the plan of the Wealth of Nations. Smith’s arguments, he stressed, were sometimes difficult to follow, with too many digressions, and some theoretical ideas were not clearly stated. Although Smith’s work was “the most perfect and complete” in political economy, Garnier claimed, in his 1796 Abrege elementaire desprincipes de l'economiepolitique, that it “lacks order and method” (Garnier 1796, v) - a criticism that was repeated for decades in France. “Most of the interesting elements of his work are thrown up as if by chance and placed under titles that seem alien to them” (1796, vii). In this perspective, the remarkable fea­ture of Garnier’s translation is a 112-page “Preface du traducteur” which critically explains how to read and understand the Wealth of Nations, and a 588-page fifth volume entirely devoted to notes and comments by the translator. The translation was reprinted in 1822, with a 142-page “Preface”, the notes and comments having been extended to form the fifth and sixth volumes of this edition. Garnier’s opin­ions had evolved in the meantime in favour of Smith - only a few of the 1802 notes are to be found again in the 1822 edition - without totally breaking with Quesnay’s legacy, however (Allix 1912a; Breton 1990).

With Grouchy’s translation of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Garnier’s trans­lation of the Wealth of Nations formed for almost two centuries the vehicle of dif­fusion of Smith’s ideas in the French language. But the latter work largely eclipsed the former, and Garnier’s attachment to Quesnay almost immediately looked old- fashioned. “When one reads this work [the Wealth of Nations]”, Jean-Baptiste Say wrote in the “Discours preliminaire” of his 1803 Traite d'economiepolitique, “one realises that there was no political economy before Smith.... Between the doc­trine of the Economistes [the physiocrats] and his own, there is the same distance as that which separates Tycho Brahe's system and Newton's physics” (Say 1803, I, xx). The Wealth of Nations became an unavoidable point of reference, giving rise to what was called French neo-Smithian political economy (Beraud et al. 2004).

The Swiss connection

Finally, it is worth noting that some other works by Smith were also translated, all during the Revolutionary period. Grouchy’s 1798 publication of Theorie des sentiments moraux included Smith’s essay on the first formation of languages (Considerations sur l'origine et la formation des langues), an essay also trans­lated by Antoine-Marie-Henri Boulard two years earlier.^[201] Lastly, Smith’s Essays on Philosophical Subjects, posthumously published in 1795 - which includes (with minor changes) Dugald Stewart’s 1794 “Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith” - were immediately translated by Pierre Prevost (1751-1839) as Essais philosophiques, 1797. To his translation, Prevost added Smith’s 1755 letter to the authors of the first Edinburgh Review, ten “Notes du traducteur” on some specific points dealt with in Smith’s essays (Prevost 1797b) and a more extended essay, “Reflexions sur les organisations - especially from Greco- Roman antiquity - to justify their point of view and made constant appeals to the virtuous and civic behaviour of the citizens, which alone was supposed to achieve the general interest and lead to happiness. This discourse was particularly appreci­ated during the Terror. By contrast, their opponents - who, during the Terror, ran the risk of being sentenced to death - stressed the fact that modern societies had nothing to do with these antique models and were organised on a radically dif­ferent basis. Jacques-Antoine Creuze-Latouche (1749-1800), for example, a mem­ber of the Convention nationale (the Parliament) who was in favour of free trade, denounced in his “Discours sur la necessite d’ajouter a l’Ecole normale un profes- seur d’economie politique” those who “solemnly refer to the laws and policy of the Romans as regards food supplies, without thinking that Romans never had any notion of commerce and industry; that they had their land cultivated by slaves” (Creuze-Latouche 1795, 6). “Citizens, in the present state of nations, the advantage of strength and independence will always be, all things being equal, where there is the better government of industry and arts” (1795, 8). Politics must study the present state of things - a market-based society - its reference must not be virtue or honour, Sparta or Rome, but political economy, the real expression and symbol of modernity, based on interest. As Vandermonde told his students a few weeks later, “it is a misfortune to make wrong analogies. I would like to persuade you all that the present state must be studied without any reference to the past one; it is too difficult and dangerous to compare them” (Vandermonde [1795a] 1800-1801, II, 449).

But what kind of political economy was referred to? At the start of the Revolu­tion, prominent figures like Dupont de Nemours and Condorcet were still alive and very active,^[210] and they had their own preferences - Dupont for Quesnay and Turgot, and Condorcet (as well as the younger Pierre-Louis Rrederer) for Turgot and Smith. A characteristic feature of the period, however, is the impression that, especially after the publication of Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations and its first translations in France, political economy was more developed in Great Britain than in France. This country, it was stressed, contrary to France, had been able to produce comprehensive treatises such as Smith’s book or, less often mentioned because it was far less well known, James Steuart’s Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy. The main reasons for this situation were ascribed to the former regime of absolute monarchy and to the physiocrats them­selves, because of their “sectarian bias” and “mystical jargon”.^[211]

The dogmatic tone and the mistakes of some economistes [the physiocrats] were considered with legitimate disfavour and seemed to dampen the French people’s interest for this science, which did not appear to them to present any urgent relevance. As a matter of fact, under a regime where the most useful arts were blackened, where the laws were only the will of a blind despot, and administration was the inheritance of a few privileged people, what kind of taste could the public have for abstract speculations for which there was no probability of a happy implementation?

(Creuze-Latouche 1795, 2)

In addition, contrary to some foreign places (Naples, Milan and Edinburgh), there had been no (institutionalised) teaching of political economy in France - a disci­pline which had allegedly been judged dangerous by the monarchy. Yet such teach­ing was more than ever necessary. Contrary to some assertions, the implementation of free trade did not make it superfluous in a nation where most people were unedu­cated and could at any moment demand damaging economic policies. As to those who claimed that such teaching was unnecessary because the existing books were sufficient to instruct people, Rrederer’s Journal d'economiepublique, de morale et de politique (11 October 1796, 214) answered in a clear-cut manner:

The objection would be admissible if there were only one book and it was good. But there are many of them and, in that number, how many bad ones both in form and content? Will you run the risk that the citizens, called by the constitution to the direction of public affairs, may come to the legislature with discordant principles, and that those who are imbued with a false doc­trine may compose the majority, that they may make laws which... diminish instead of increasing the national wealth? No, we need a sound and uni­form teaching.... [A] false doctrine, worse than absolute ignorance, leads to destruction.

Institutional arrangements: teaching political economy

It was thus urgent to instruct the people and to lead them to understand the major propositions of political economy. The new discipline should be a “sentinel” placed in public opinion (Creuze-Latouche 1795, 10). In this perspective, just after the Terror, the Thermidorean Convention tried to tackle the question of public instruc­tion head-on. The task was not easy:^[212] as an Ancient Regime institution, the Acade­mies had been suppressed on 8 August 1793 (the Academie des sciences included) and many teaching institutions had disappeared because they were in the hands of the clergy. New scientific institutions had therefore to be created, and the entire educational system newly organised - part of a vast plan for the regeneration of the country and the formation of free and responsible citizens.

Starting with education, a first step had been, on 25 February 1795, to establish the “Ecoles centrales”, the new network of intermediate schools. But the professors who were supposed to teach in these institutions had to be appointed and trained: this is the reason why a network of “Ecoles normales” was also decided, in which the main disciplines should be taught to the future teachers. The latter were chosen among educated men over 21 years old with “provable patriotism” and “morals beyond reproach”. In fact, only one Ecole normale, in Paris, was created, on 30 October 1794. The lectures, which were subsequently printed and distributed to the students, and then published as books, started on 20 January 1795 - but the school, faced with difficulties, had to close its doors on 19 May of the same year. At the Ecole normale, the courses covered a vast range of disciplines, from mathemat­ics and physics to geography and morals. Almost all professors were prestigious, renowned authors in their respective specialities,^[213] and some of them were emi­nent members of the former Academie royale des sciences. However, no course of political economy had originally been planned: it was eventually established later, after the above-mentioned intervention of Creuze-Latouche in Parliament on 31 January 1795 in favour of the creation of such a chair. Vandermonde was appointed as the professor and started his lectures on 21 February. He was a mathematician, had worked with Jacques Vaucanson and Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and was still working with other scientists such as Claude-Louis Berthollet. He had been a mem­ber of the Academie royale des sciences and had been very active as a specialist in the assessment of mechanical inventions and technical innovations - an activity that he continued during the Revolution. He also had strong political connections (he was close to some members of the Comite de salut public, that is, the govern­ment, and was commissioned for certain missions) and he had also shown some interest in political economy - but he was not a specialist in the field. Contrary to his colleagues, he was not prepared for the task: his lectures are rather confused, and his students complained.^[214] He was in favour of cautious free trade but also of the assignats - for him the best money that had ever been issued and the solution for the future - and he appreciated Smith, Ferdinando Galiani, Jean-Joseph-Louis Graslin and above all Steuart (as noted before, the translation of Steuart’s Inquiry in 1789 was made at his suggestion).

The establishment of this short-lived chair at the Ecole normale had neverthe­less been important: it was the first public chair of political economy in France; some of Vandermonde’s ideas (below) proved to be seminal for the French classi­cal tradition; and the lectures had some immediate influence because his lessons and the discussions with his students were printed and some of these students later taught in various Ecoles centrales - where, it is true, there was no course of politi­cal economy proper, but the field was nevertheless included in the course on “leg­islation”. A few years later, however, on 2 August 1799, professors were officially encouraged to open additional courses, especially one on political economy. We have the testimony of Jacques Berriat Saint-Prix, professor at the Ecole centrale of Grenoble, who immediately opened such a course: his opening discourse, in which we find many themes advanced by Creuze-Latouche and Vandermonde, was pub­lished by Rrederer in his Memoires d’economie publique, de morale et de politique (Berriat Saint-Prix 1799). Political economy was also welcome in Limoges, and the professor could declare:

If the economic truths had been more generally spread among us, hideous vandalism would not have made its ravages on the French territory; paper money would have never exceeded the sum of one billion. We would also never have heard of the “law of maximum”, a disastrous law, a masterwork of inanity, more worthy of a drunk savage than of the representatives of the French people!

(quoted by Coirault 1940, 32)

However, the situation differed greatly according to the tastes and inclinations of the teachers: in Saintes, for example, the professor of legislation only wanted to teach political economy (Coirault 1940, 331-2), while the discipline was probably neglected elsewhere.^[215] Finally, it must be noted that the professors of legislation in Ecoles centrales could also have been recognised people well-trained in political economy. In April 1795, for example, the Magasin encyclopedique announced the appointment of Andre Morellet, Dupont de Nemours and Rα'derer to the chairs of “political economy and legislation” in various Ecoles centrales in Paris.^[216]

However, to instruct people in general and to use in schools in particular, the need for elementary books was felt, books which could clearly present the different aspects of the new economic science - the former attempts by Victor Riqueti de Mirabeau (for example, his 1769 Les economiques and 1770 Leςons economiques) were obviously no longer topical because of their physiocratic approach. This need was felt before Thermidor, in the wake of the projects for the reorganisation of pub­lic education. The Convention, for example, on 28 January 1794, organised a con­test for the production of such elementary texts in certain fundamental disciplines. Authors had to deposit their manuscripts before 19 May, a date which was postponed because of the poor quality of the manuscripts received. Vandermonde was one of the members of the committee in charge of the selection: but political economy was not on the list of the chosen fields of knowledge. Afterwards, it was also hoped that the lectures at the Ecole normale could have been the occasion to produce such textbooks, but this was not the case, at least for political economy. Attempts were, however, made independently. Together with Smith’s and Steuart’s treatises, some professors recommended reading Jean-Daniel Herrenschwand’s De l'economie politique moderne. Discours fondamental sur la population. The book had been published in 1786 (London: T. Hookhan) but reprinted in 1795 (Paris: Maradan),^[217] and excerpts were also published in the issues of 31 October and 10 November of Rmderer’s Journal d'economie publique, de morale et de politique (by order of the Minister of the Interior, moreover, copies of the book were bought by the Comite d’instruction publique, to be circulated for instruction). In 1796, Germain Garnier published his Abrege elementaire desprincipes de l'economiepolitique (also ana­lysed in Rmderer’s Journal on 1 and 11 October), a textbook which was also sup­plemented in 1799 by a new translation of Pietro Verri’s Meditazioni sulla economia politica (see above). Later on, as seen in Chapter 8, Nicolas-Franςois Canard’s 1802 Principes d'economiepolitique and Charles-Franςois de Bicquilley’s 1804 Theorie elementaire du commerce were published, but they were not textbooks, despite their titles. Finally, in 1803, Jean-Baptiste Say’s Traite d'economiepolitique, ou simple exposition de la maniere dont se forment, se distribuent, et se consomment les rich­esses was published in Paris, and Jean-Charles-Leonard Simonde de Sismondi’s De la richesse commerciale, ou principes d'economie politique appliques a la legislation du commerce in Geneva - two comprehensive treatises, but not really elementary texts.

Finally, public institutions were not the only place where political economy started to be taught. As during the last decade of the Ancien Regime, private insti­tutions proposed lectures on various subjects (Dejob 1889; Guenot 1986; Lynn 2006). One such was the Musee de Monsieur, which took the name of Lycee after the death of its founder, Jean-Franςois Pilatre de Rozier (1754-1785), and, on 2 December 1793, Lycee republicain. There Condorcet taught mathematics and prob­ability theory prior to the Revolution, and Rrederer taught “organisation sociale” in 1793 and “economie publique” in 1800-1801. Rrederer’s lectures were interrupted quite abruptly in 1793, when he had to hide during the Terror, and in 1801 because he was too busy with his official functions in Bonaparte’s regime of Consulat. Some fragments of the 1793 lectures were published a few years later in his Jour­nal d’economie publique, de morale et de politique³ and the 1800-1801 lectures were published posthumously, in 1840, with the title Memoires sur quelques points d’economiepublique. In 1802, the Ecoles centrales were suppressed and most of them replaced by “lycees”, with an administrative and teaching reorganisation more in line with the authoritarian regime of Bonaparte: the Lycee republicain decided to change name in 1803 and, dropping the word “republicain”, became Athenee (then Athenee royal under the Restoration) - an institution where Jean­Baptiste Say and Benjamin Constant were later to teach.

Institutional arrangements: the Institut national des sciences et des arts

The Thermidorean Convention voted the new Constitution on 22 August 1795, a few weeks before being replaced by the new regime of the Directoire. In its tenth section, devoted to public instruction, Article 298 created the Institut national “in charge of collecting discoveries and of improving sciences and arts”. The new institution was meant to replace the former Academies, but with a view to consoli­dating the republican regime. On 25 October 1795 - on its last day - the Conven­tion adopted an organisation of the “Institut national des sciences et des arts” in three classes: Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Moral and Political Sciences, and Literature and Fine Arts. Compared to the prior Academies, the Second Class, Moral and Political Sciences, was novel.^{[218] [219] It included six sections: 1. Analysis of sensations and ideas, 2. Morals, 3. Social science and legislation, 4. Political econ­omy, 5. History and 6. Geography. The Class was thus devoted to social sciences, and this time political economy was not forgotten - it was in fact already planned in a first project of a “Societe nationale des sciences et des arts”, devised by Condorcet in 1792, of which the new scheme was a less ambitious adaptation. Initially, the seven members of the Political Economy Section were Creuze-Latouche, Dupont de Nemours, Jean-Gerard Lacuee de Cessac, Charles-Franςois Lebrun, Rrederer, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes and Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord. They did not form a homogeneous group and some were certainly included for political reasons. Moreover, only four of these members could be considered, lato sensu, as economists: Sieyes (who wrote against the physiocrats), Creuze-Latouche, Dupont and Rα'derer - Lacuee was a general, Talleyrand and Lebrun politicians. The sec­tion also had six Associates, including Forbonnais, Garnier, Emmanuel-Etienne Duvillard de Durand and Antoine Diannyere. Vandermonde also became a member of the Institut, but of the First Class (mathematics and physics), although he died shortly after his appointment. Prevost became an associate of the first section of the second class (analysis of sensations and ideas).}

The second class was short-lived. Because it was sometimes critical of Bonaparte’s policies, it was suppressed on 23 January 1803 and its members rede­ployed in the other classes of the new structure of the Institut. Echoes of its activity are to be found in the five volumes of Memoires de l’Institut national des sciences et arts. Sciences morales etpolitiques, published between 1798 and 1804, and in the press. The section of political economy, however, had not been a place for theoreti­cal innovations because of its composition, and also because it had no time to do so. Its main achievement was to launch three prize competitions linked to the discus­sions ofthe time. The questions asked were (Staum 1996, Appendix 6) (1) “For what objects and under what conditions is it suitable for a republic to open public loans? To give credit to citizens in savings banks? To give public assistance? Consider the question in all respects - political, economic, and ethical”; (2) “Is it true that in an agricultural country any kind of tax falls in the last analysis on the landowners, and, if so, do indirect taxes fall on these same proprietors with a surcharge?” - this was the contest won by Canard (see Chapter 8, this volume); (3) “How has the progres­sive abolition of slavery in Europe influenced the development of enlightenment and the wealth of nations?” The first subject was proposed four times (1796, 1797, 1798 and 1800), the second once (1799), and the third twice (1802 and 1803), the first and third subjects being redefined when proposed again. Nevertheless, the crea­tion in 1795 of the second class and, within it, the section of political economy was an important innovation: the class was re-established in 1832 by the July Monarchy with the name of Academie des sciences morales et politiques and played a signifi­cant role in the debates of the time, for example, about poverty and pauperism.

Despite its short existence, the second class of the Institut also played a substan­tial role in French intellectual life because it was linked to the group of the Ideo­logues. To put it briefly,^[220] critically assuming the philosophical legacy of authors like Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Charles Bonnet, Claude-Adrien Helvetius and Condorcet (a source of inspiration reinforced by the posthumous publication in 1795 of his Esquisse d’un tableau historique desprogres de l'esprit humain), this group wanted to establish a science of ideas (hence the name of the first section of the class and that given to the group) and of man based on the analysis of sensations. Against the old metaphysics and politics, this method of “analysis” was supposed to give morals a firm scientific foundation and, through a vast reorganisation of public instruction, to give citizens a new rationality which could override passions and thus stabilise the French Revolution in a moderate Republican regime.^[221] Most members of the group used to meet at the salons of Anne-Catherine de Ligniville (Helvetius’s widow) or Sophie de Grouchy. In April 1794, they started publishing a journal, La decadephilosophique, litteraire etpolitique and, in 1795, a few of them taught at the Ecole normale. Moreover, almost all of them had political responsi­bilities at some point. The main figures of the group were members of the second class, especially the section of analysis of sensations and ideas.^[222] In the section of political economy, only Sieyes could be said to be a member of the group, Rrnderer being only briefly associated with it. For our purpose, three members are of par­ticular interest: Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis (1757-1808), Antoine-Louis-Claude Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836) and Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832).

Cabanis, a physician, philosopher and member of the first section, was Con­dorcet’s and Grouchy’s brother-in-law.^[223] In his opinion, expressed in some memoirs read at the Institut, then expanded and published in 1802 as Rapports du physique et du moral de l’homme, the science of man should be based on physiology. For Cabanis, in a development of the sensationist approach, physical sensitivity (“sen- sibilite organique”) directs the activity of our organs and explains psychological phenomena, sympathy included - thus contesting any dualism between body and soul. Grouchy’s Lettres sur la sympathie are supposedly addressed to him, and he approved of her interpretation.

The inclinations due to sympathy could have easily deceived the most care­ful and exact observers. The great difficulty in relating their effects to their true cause could have led one to think that unknown faculties were necessary to explain such phenomena. These inclinations are then what we call moral sympathy: a famous principle in the writings of the Scottish philosophers... which Smith analysed with great but notwithstanding incomplete sagacity because he was unable to relate it to physical laws; and that Madame Con­dorcet, through simple rational considerations, was able to rescue to a large extent from the vagueness where the Theory of Moral Sentiments had left it.

(Cabanis 1802, II, 497-8)

Destutt de Tracy, a philosopher and politician, was associated with the first sec­tion and developed the ambitious project of a science of ideas. The sequel of some memoirs he presented at the Institut was published in 1801 as Projet d’elements d’ideologie designed for the Ecoles centrales, which, with some additions, became in 1804 the first part - Ideologieproprement dite - of his Elemens d’ideologie. The second part, Grammaire, was published in 1803 and the third, Logique, in 1805. But what is most interesting here is the publication, in 1815, of the fourth and fifth parts, titled Traite de la volonte et de ses effets, the fourth (and by far the longest) part of the book being devoted to political economy. The delayed publication of this last volume was due to imperial censorship. The part dealing with political economy was republished in 1823 with the title Traite d’economiepolitique: this modification followed the publication of an English version of the text in the United States of America (Georgetown, 1817) as A Treatise on Political Economy - the translation having been supervised by Thomas Jefferson (who first thought that the book was by Dupont). Destutt de Tracy was to become, with Say (whose ideas he shared for the main part), one of the founding fathers of the French classical school of political economy. In line with Turgot’s and Condillac’s developments, he devel­oped a subjective theory of value, one major difference with Say being that he accepted only one factor of production: the physical and moral faculties of men.^[224]

As for young Say,^[225] he made his debut in Decadephilosophique, of which he was the editor for a time: he published extensively there, but little on political economy. He participated in a prize competition launched by the third section of the second class, that of morals, on the question: “What are the most suitable institutions to give man in society habits capable of making him happy? Discuss the nature of habit.” In 1799, he won an honourable mention with his utopia, published in 1800: Olbie, ou Essai sur les moyens de reformer les mtχιιrs d’une nation. In this essay, the best of all books on morals is nothing other than a good treatise of political economy which can spread the principles of this science in all classes of society - a good system of political economy allowing a growing number of people to live honestly from their activity and reducing the two extremes, enemies of morals, namely great opulence and destitution. Destutt de Tracy also published on the same theme (Quels sont les moyens de fonder la morale chez unpeuple? 1798) but from a different point of view.

Finally, two last points are worth mentioning. The first regards research and the spread of economic knowledge. The second half of the eighteenth century saw the publication of specialised journals on economic matters (Steiner 1996), the most well known being the physiocratic Ephemerides du citoyen. During the Revolution, Rα'derer (whose journalistic activity was extensive) published a journal, where economic and political discourses were naturally intertwined: the above-mentioned Journal d’economie publique, de morale et de politique, of which 42 issues were published between August 1796 and October 1797 and which was followed by a second series with almost the same title: Memoires d’economie publique, de morale et de politique (11 issues between December 1799 and 1801). The sec­ond point concerns the variations in the vocabulary used in relation to political economy. As already mentioned, political economy was included in the broader set of the “moral and political sciences”. This appellation essentially dates from the physiocrats, and more specifically from the moment when, in 1767, the subtitle of the Ephemerides du citoyen, “Chronique de l’esprit national” was replaced by “Bibliotheque raisonnee des sciences morales et politiques”. The idea was that political economy or economic science was an essential field which, together with other developments dealing with morals and politics, was supposed to uncover the natural order “obviously” the most advantageous to humankind. But there was an ambiguity from the start, because “moral and political sciences” was sometimes used by the physiocrats in the singular (“moral and political science”) and moreo­ver seemingly confused with economic science - this was the case, for example, in the “Avertissement de l’auteur” to the first 1767 issue of the Ephemerides which explained why the subtitle of the journal had been changed. The phrase was none­theless adopted outside physiocratic circles and gave its name to the second class of the Institut. However, the idea of the existence of a unitary science, which would include political economy, made its way from the start of the Revolution, and was called “science sociale”, although its content differed according to authors and was most of the time programmatic and sometimes confused. Both “sciences morales et politiques” and “science sociale”, however, played an important role in the philo­sophical and political strategy of the Ideologues.^[226]

3.