EDINBURGH, CANONGATE, 26 Oct. 1780.[307]

As this Danish translation has come up, it may be mentioned here that the Wealth of Nations had already been translated into several other languages.  The Abbe Blavet’s French version ran through the pages of the Journal de l’Agriculture, des Commerce, des Finances, et des Arts month by month in the course of the years 1779 and 1780, and was then published in book form in 1781.  This was not a satisfactory translation, though through mere priority of occupation it held the field for a number of years and went through a number of editions.  In 1790 a second translation appeared by Roucher and the Marquise de Condorcet, and in 1802 a third, the best, by Germain Garnier.  Smith’s own friend Morellet, receiving a presentation copy from the author through Lord Shelburne on its publication, carried it with him to Brienne, the seat of his old Sorbonne comrade the Archbishop of Toulouse, and set at work to translate it there.  But he tells us himself that the ex-Benedictine Abbe (Blavet), who had formerly murdered the Theory of Moral Sentiments by a bad translation, anticipated him by his equally bad translation of the Wealth of Nations; and so, adds Morellet, “poor Smith was again betrayed instead of being translated, according to the Italian proverb, Tradottore traditore."[308] Morellet still thought, however, of publishing his own version, offering it to the booksellers first for 100 louis-d’or and then for nothing, and many years afterwards he asked his friend the Archbishop of Toulouse, when he had become Minister of France, for a grant of 100 louis to pay for its production, but was as unsuccessful with the Minister as he was with the booksellers.  All the good Abbe says is that he is sure the money would have been well spent, because the translation was carefully done, and he knew the subject better than any of the other translators.  Everything that was abstract in the theory of Smith was, he says, quite unintelligible in Blavet’s translation, and even in Roucher’s subsequent one, and could be read to more advantage in his own; but after a good translation was published by Garnier in 1802, the Abbe gave up all thought of giving his to the press.

A German translation by J.F.  Schuler appeared, the first volume in 1776 and the second in 1778, but Roscher says it is worse done than Blavet’s translation; and little attention was paid to Smith or his work in Germany until about the close of the century, when a new translation was published by Professor Garve, the metaphysician.  Roscher observes that neither Frederick the Great nor the Emperor Joseph, nor any of the princes who patronised the Physiocrats so much, paid the least heed to the Wealth of Nations; that in the German press it was neither quoted nor confuted, but merely ignored; and that he himself had taken the trouble to look through the economic literature published between 1776 and 1794, to discover