THE "WEALTH OF NATIONS" ABROAD AND AT HOME
While these communications with leading statesmen were showing the
impression the _Wealth of Nations_ had made in this country, Smith was
receiving equally satisfactory proofs of its recognition abroad. The
book had been translated into Danish by F. Dräbye, and the translation
published in two volumes in 1779-80. Apparently the translator was
contemplating the publication of a second edition, for he communicated
with Smith through a Danish friend, desiring to know what alterations
Smith proposed to make in his second edition, of whose appearance the
translator had manifestly not heard. Smith thereupon wrote Strahan the
following letter, asking him to send a copy of the second edition to
Dräbye:--
DEAR SIR--I think it is predestined that I shall never write
to you except to ask some favour of you or to put you to
some trouble. This letter is not to depart from the style of
all the rest. I am a subscriber for Watt's Copying Machine.
The price is six guineas for the machine and five shillings
for the packing-box; I should be glad too he would send me a
ream of the copying paper, together with all the other
specimens of ink, etc., which commonly accompany the
machine. For payment of this to Mr. Woodmason, the seller,
whose printed letter I have enclosed, you will herewith
receive a bill of eight Guineas payable at sight. If, after
paying for all these, there should be any remnant, there is
a tailour in Craven Street, one Heddington, an acquaintance
of James M'Pherson, to whom I owe some shillings, I believe
under ten, certainly under twenty; pay him what I owe. He is
a very honest man, and will ask no more than is due. Before
I left London I had sent several times for his account, but
he always put it off.
I had almost forgot I was the author of the inquiry
concerning the Wealth of Nations, but some time ago I
received a letter from a friend in Denmark telling me that
it had been translated into Danish by one Mr. Dreby,
secretary to a new erected board of trade and Economy in
that Kingdom. My correspondent, Mr. Holt, who is an assessor
of that Board, desires me, in the name of Mr. Dreby, to know
what alterations I propose to make in a second Edition. The
shortest answer to this is to send them the second edition.
I propose, therefore, by this Post to desire Mr. Cadell to
send three copies of the second Edition, handsomely bound
and gilt, to Mr. Anker, Consul-General of Denmark, who is an
old acquaintance--one for himself and the other two to be by
him transmitted to Mr. Holt and Mr. Dreby. At our final
settlement I shall debit myself with these three Books. I
suspect I am now almost your only customer for my own book.
Let me know, however, how matters go on in this respect.
After begging your pardon a thousand times for having so
long neglected to write you, I shall conclude with assuring
you that notwithstanding this neglect I have the highest
respect and esteem for you and for your whole family, and
that I am, most sincerely and affectionately, ever yours,
ADAM SMITH.
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 Abbé 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 Abbé (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 Abbé 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 Abbé 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 any marks of
the reception of the book, and found that Smith's name was very seldom
mentioned, and then without any idea of his importance. One spot ought
to be excepted--the little kingdom of Hanover, which, from its
connection with the English Crown, participated in the contemporary
French complaint of Anglomania. Göttingen had its influential school
of admirers of English institutions and literature; the _Wealth of
Nations_ was reviewed in the _Gelehrte Anzeigen_ of Göttingen early in
1777, and one of the professors of the University there announced a
course of lectures upon it in the winter session of 1777-78.[309] But
before Smith died his work was beginning to be clearly understood
among German thinkers. Gentz, the well-known politician, writes a
friend in December 1790 that he had been reading the book for the
third time, and thought it "far the most important work which is
written in any language on this subject";[310] and Professor C.J.
Kraus writes Voigt in 1796 that the world had never seen a more
important work, and that no book since the New Testament has produced
more beneficial effects than this book would produce when it got
better known. A few years later it was avowedly shaping the policy of
Stein.
It was translated into Italian in 1780, and in Spain it had the
curious fortune of being suppressed by the Inquisition on account of
"the lowness of its style and the looseness of its morals." Sir John
Macpherson--Warren Hastings' successor as Governor-General of
India--writes Gibbon as if he saw the sentence of the Inquisition
posted on the church doors in a Spanish tour he made in 1792;[311] but
a change must have speedily come over the censorial mind, for a
Spanish translation by J.A. Ortez was published in four volumes in
1794, with additions relating to Spain.
Smith continued, as he says, to be a good customer for his own book.
There is another letter which, though undated and unaddressed, was
evidently written about this time to Cadell, directing presentation
copies of both his books to be sent to Mrs. Ross of Crighton, the wife
of his own "very near relation," Colonel Patrick Ross.
DEAR SIR--Mrs. Ross of Crighton, now living in Welbeck
Street, is my particular friend, and the wife of
Lieutenant-Collonel (_sic_) Patrick Ross, in the service of
the East India Company, my very near relation. When she left
this she seemed to intimate that she wished to have a copy
of my last book from the author. May I therefore beg the
favour of you to send her a copy of both my books, viz. of
the Theory of Moral Sentiments and of the Enquiry concerning
the "Wealth of Nations," handsomely bound and gilt, placing
the same to my account, and writing upon the blank-leaf of
each, _From the Authour_. Be so good as to remember me to
Mrs. Cadell, Mr. Strahan and family, and all other friends,
and believe me, ever yours,
ADAM SMITH.[312]
Smith's new duties did not pre-engage his pen from higher work
altogether, for before the close of 1782 he had written some
considerable additions to the _Wealth of Nations_, which he proposed
to insert in the third edition, among them a history of the trading
companies of Great Britain, including, no doubt, his history of the
East India Company, which Mr. Thorold Rogers supposed him to have
written ten years before and kept in his desk. He writes Cadell on the
7th December 1782:--
I have many apologies to make to you for my idleness since I
came to Scotland. The truth is, I bought at London a good
many partly new books or editions that were new to me, and
the amusement I found in reading and diverting myself with
them debauched me from my proper business, the preparing a
new edition of the _Wealth of Nations_. I am now, however,
heartily engaged at my proper work, and I hope in two or
three months to send you up the second edition corrected in
many places, with three or four very considerable additions,
chiefly to the second volume. Among the rest is a short but,
I flatter myself, a complete history of all the trading
companies in Great Britain. These additions I mean not only
to be inserted at their proper places into the new edition,
but to be printed separately and to be sold for a shilling
or half-a-crown to the purchasers of the old edition. The
price must depend on the bulk of the additions when they are
all written out. It would give me great satisfaction if you
would let me know by the return of the Post if this delay
will not be inconvenient. Remember me to Strahan. He will be
so good as excuse my not writing to him, as I have nothing
to say but what I have now said to you, and he knows my
aversion to writing.[313]
The additions of which he speaks in this letter were published
separately in 1783 in quarto, so as to suit the two previous editions
of the work, and the new edition containing them was published in the
end of 1784 in three volumes octavo, at the price of a guinea. The
delay was due to booksellers' reasons. Dr. Swediaur, the eminent Paris
physician, who was resident in Edinburgh at the time studying with
Cullen, wrote Bentham in November 1784 that Smith, whom he used to see
at least once a week, had shown him the new edition printed and
finished, but had told him that Cadell would not publish it till all
the people of fashion had arrived in London, and would then at once
push a large sale. Swediaur adds that he found this was a
bookseller's trick very generally practised, and of Smith himself he
says he found him "a very unprejudiced and good man."[314]
The principal additions are the result of investigations to which he
seems to have been prompted by current agitations of the stream of
political opinion. He gives now, for example, a fuller account of the
working of the bounty system in the Scotch fisheries, which was then
the subject of a special parliamentary inquiry, and on which his
experience as a Commissioner of Customs furnished him with many
opportunities of gaining accurate information; and he enters on a
careful examination of the chartered and regulated corporations, and
especially of the East India Company, whose government of the great
oriental dependency was at the moment a question of such urgency that
Fox introduced his India Bill which killed the Coalition Ministry in
1783, and Pitt established the Board of Control in 1784.
The new matter contains two recommendations which have attracted
comment as ostensible contraventions of free trade doctrine. One of
them is the recommendation of a tax on the export of wool; but then
the tax was to take the place of the absolute prohibition of the
export which then existed, and it was not to be imposed for
protectionist reasons, but for the simple financial purpose of raising
a revenue. Smith thought few taxes would yield so considerable a
revenue with so little inconvenience to anybody. The other supposed
contravention of free trade doctrine is the sanction he lends to
temporary commercial monopolies; but then this is avowedly a device
for an exceptional situation in which a project promises great
eventual benefit to the public, but the projectors might without the
monopoly be debarred from undertaking it by the magnitude of the risk
it involved. He places this temporary monopoly in the same category
with authors' copyrights and inventors' patents; it was the easiest
and most natural way of recompensing a projector for hazarding a
dangerous and expensive experiment of which the public was afterwards
to reap the benefit.[315] It was only to be granted for a fixed term,
and upon proof of the ultimate advantage of the enterprise to the
public.
FOOTNOTES:
[307] _New York Evening Post_, 30th April 1887. Original in possession
of Mr. Worthington C. Ford, Washington, U.S.A.
[308] Morellet, _Mémoires_, i. 244.
[309] Roscher, _Geschichte_, p. 599.
[310] Gentz, _Briefe an Christian Garve_, p. 63.
[311] Gibbon's _Miscellaneous Works_, ii. 479.
[312] _New York Evening Post_, 30th April 1887. Original in possession
of Mr. Worthington C. Ford, Washington, U.S.A.
[313] Printed in a catalogue of a sale of autographs at Messrs.
Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge's on 26th and 27th November 1891.
[314] Add. MSS., 33,540.
[315] _Wealth of Nations_, Book V. chap. i.