1 SISMONDI AND HIS FRENCH CONTEMPORARIES

HELMUT O. PAPPE

I

If Marx, himself an outstanding historian of economic doctrines, regarded Sismondi in 1848 as the head of a school of thought established in both France and England and, if Lenin still dreaded the influences of Sismondi's disciples half a century later, it does not appear evidently convincing that his work should have been completely neglected in the France of his day. On the contrary, there is, in the contemporaneous literature, ample attestation of the fact that he was deemed to be a very important figure indeed. Political economy as a scholarly discipline was still in its early stages at the time, primarily concerned with the school of the Physiocrats or 'Economists' from Quesnay and Turgot to Dupont de Nemours, and with the classical political economy of the followers of Adam Smith. There were soon attempts at taking stock of what had been achieved by precursors and recent writers. In England, John McCulloch sketched an historical account in 1824 which was soon translated into French by Sismondi's teacher Pierre Prevost.1 In France, after some early sketches in the 1770s, by Dupont de Nemours in his brilliant periodical Éphémérides du Citoyen, Jean-Baptiste Say gave an historical account in his Cours complet d'economie pretique of 1829.2

However, it was left to an Italian writer, Count Guiseppe Pecchio, to write the most systematic and influential History of Political Economy in Italy3 which was to serve as model to the French writers on the subject in the late 1830s. The publication of such a pioneering work in Italy was not fortuitous. Pecchio was able to make use of the collection in 50 volumes of the works of Italian classical economists by Custodi between 1803 and 1816, containing reprints of their works as well as biographical sketches; J-B. Say's historical precis was based upon Custodi as well; in particular, the study of the Neapolitan Antonio Serra, claimed to be the founder of the science of political economy, may have brought home, or at least confirmed, to Say the significance of the productive power of industry as compared with agriculture and commerce.4 Another Italian author, given special attention by Pecchio was Giammaria Ortes (1713-1790), an author who condemned the 'science of enrichment' as being fraudulent as well as inefficient because of its neglect of an equitable distribution. These were ideas close to Sismondi's thinking. In point of fact, Pecchio was a

1 J.R.McCulloch A Discourse on the rise, Progress, Peculiar Objects and Importance of Political Economy, 1824 2 'Histoire abregee des progres de l'economie politique'. 3 Storia della economia publica in Italia, 1829; French translation: Histoire de l'economie en Italie - Abrege critique des economistes Italiens, Paris 1830 2 devoted follower of Sismondi whose Nouveaux Principes he had closely analysed as early as 1819 in three review articles published in Italy before he had to seek refuge as an exile in Spain, Greece and, finally in 1828, in Brighton, England, where he died in 1835.5

Pecchio gave more than a mere history of doctrines; he took account of their historical context as well. He contrasted the socio-political conditions prevailing in Italy and England respectively; in the latter, the achievement of civil liberty preceded the science of political economy, whereas in the former, political economy was called upon to help bring about modern liberty. Italian economists had the edge on monetary questions, Free Ports and banking, all of which were part of their national heritage.

On the other hand, English authors had immediate experience of the division of labour and of colonies. It was in England that a precise methodology and vocabulary was evolved as well as a hypothetical treatment of purely economic phenomena. On the debit side, however, was the pursuit of mere riches and personal profit as the decisive criteria, contrasted with the wider, if more vague, perspectives of Italian economists who took into account extra-economic considerations such as public welfare, la felicita pubbica, actually a blend of the scholastic Public Good with utilitarian happiness. Italian economists had to adapt their teaching to the less advanced conditions of the Italian economy. They were more concerned with creating a political and structural framework, within which the initiative of entrepreneurs could be released, than with the finer details of laissez- faire as it was practically feasible under the sway of already existing British legal and commercial traditions. There was a distinctively neo-mercantilist element in Pecchio's theory of development which was in keeping with the teaching of his great Italian precursors Pietro Verri and Cesare Beccaria. In his analysis, Pecchio did not do justice to the political economy of the Scottish eighteenth century.6 What he meant to expose was the English doctrine of Ricardo and his followers, especially John McCulloch; he overrated the significance of the Ricardians who represented a minority among British economists. Pecchio's History made a momentous impact on French writing of the 1830s, that is, soon after Sismondi's Nouveaux Principes had seen their second edition in 1827. The pre-eminent French economic historians of the 1830s were the Viscount Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont and Adolphe Blanqui.

4 Breve Trattato delle cause che possono far abondare li regni d'oro e argente... etc, Napoli 1613. McCulloch, on the other hand, deprecated Serra, probably because he knew only the (misleading) title of the book, see Pecchio, op.cit.p.76, also Schumpeter, op.cit. on Serra. 5 More about Pecchio will be said in the chapter dealing with Sismondi's role in the Italian intellectual Risorgimento. 6 Hutcheson and Hume, in the Stoic tradition, regarded beneficence and benevolence as the motives of virtuous action; Adam Smith distinguished between natural and artificial virtues which were motivated by benevolence and justice respectively. 3 Both published Histories of Political Economy in the second half of the decade. However, Villeneuve-Bargemont expressed views on the history of economic thought first in his massive 3- volume work Christian Political Economy, Studies of the nature and causes of Pauperism in France and Europe and of the measures to alleviate and to prevent it.7 In his eyes, Christian Political Economy epitomized 'a new school' which had come into being under the leadership primarily of Malthus and Sismondi, a school which was made distinctive by a general similarity of principles and, in particular, a common hostile reaction to the most important principles of Adam Smith. The members of this school were said to be the first to have brought to light the pernicious consequences of laissez faire for the labouring classes. Villeneuve-Bargemont's political History of Political Economy appeared in 1839; though it was preceded in 1837 by Adolphe Blanqui's History of Political Economy in Europe, a more penetrating and systematic work, it met with sufficient success to justify a second edition in 1841.8

Setting out from Bacon, Locke, the Encyclopedie, and Rousseau, and using Burke for his motto, the author employed his narrative to foster his ideal of a harmonic consensus of the principles of morality, legislation and political economy (agriculture, commerce, and industry). Following Pecchio, he found the English classical school wanting in this respect. He censored it as the product of 'harsh Machiavellianism', an 'inhuman act of calculation', leading to disastrous consequences for the general welfare of the people, unless corrected by legislative intervention. Instead of taking moral and religious considerations into account, Adam Smith was said to have based his thought on the theory of the production of riches and the egoistic self-interest of individuals. He had left out of consideration the question of equal distribution which had come to present the central problem of the new French school of political economy. A reaction recognising the weaknesses inherent in Smith's theory had become inevitable in the light of the economic crises experienced by the emerging industrial society.

While most leading French economists were followers of Jean-Baptiste Say, who had adapted Smith's thought to industrial reality, Villeneuve said that 'it was Sismondi (an author equally acclaimed by France, Italy and Switzerland) who had opened up a vaster horizon than Smith by defining political economy as the study of the means by which the greatest number of people, in a given state, can participate to the highest degree in physical well-being as far as it depends on government... Switzerland can rightly take pride in a political economist whose works have made the most important contribution to the revelation of, and the fight against, the dire consequences of

7 M.le Vic. Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont, Economie Politique Chretienne. Recherches sur la nature et les causes du Pauoerisme en France et en Europe et sur les moyens de soulager et le prevenir. 3 tomes, Paris 1834 8 Histoire de l'economie politique, Bruxelles 1839; 2nd ed. 2 vols. Paris 1841 4 the English political economy, we are speaking of M. Simonde de Sismondi'.9 According to this new conception, Sismondi holds 'that two elements must always be taken together into consideration: the increase of happiness in depth, and its diffusion among all classes. He set his sight on wealth because it profits the population; he examines population because it participates in wealth... it is thus that political economy becomes foremost the theory of beneficence... A new political school has constituted itself... which has detached itself in several important points from the abstract theories of Adam Smith and his disciples.'

Villeneuve-Bargemont's image of Smith was evidently that of Pecchio. It did not do justice to Smith's own conception of benevolence as the motive force, together with justice, of the human virtues.10 However, it bears witness of the towering influence in France of the teaching of Sismondi and J-B. Say who endeavoured to adapt Smith to a modern world transformed by industrialisation and urbanisation. Social economy and industrial economy came to emphasize a new common purpose in the achievement of the general well-being of men and mankind rather than the preoccupation with the mere production of agricultural wealth and financial management. Sismondi and Say saw themselves acclaimed as the founding fathers of the new French school with its sub- divisions of Christian political economy and Saint-Simonism. The contemporary leading theoreticians, according to Villeneuve-Bargemond, were Adolphe Blanqui and Pellegrino Rossi. The former became, in 1832, Say's successor in the chair of industrial economy at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers; the former, after Say's death in 1835, was appointed to Say's former chair of political economy at the College de France.11

Adolphe Blanqui (1798-1854), the elder brother of the revolutionary Louis-Auguste, member of the Institut de France and Director of the Ecole Spéciale de Commerce, was indeed the outstanding figure of French Political Economy when he published the first volume of his History of Political Economy in Europe in 1837.12 Despite certain teething troubles, this work provides a markstone and model in the development of economic history. Blanqui's declared aim was to give more than a mere history of doctrines; he aimed at depicting the growth of political economy as part of history,

9 ibid. pp. 626, 574, 627, 636; italics mine 10 see H.O.Pappe, 'Sismondi et Adam Smith' in Sismondi Europeen, ed. S.Stelling-Michaud, Geneve et Paris 1976; Carl Menger, 'Die Sozial-Theorien der classishen National-Oekonomie und die moderne Wirtschaftspolitik (1891), The Collective Work Vol.III, London (LSE) 1935, pp.219-245; Lionel Robbins, The Theory of Economic Policy in Classical Political Economy, London 1952 11 Sismondi, despite his admiration for his friend and former fellow editor of the outstanding Annales de Legislation, would have preferred the appointment of Charles Comte, the French Wilberforce and Say's son-in law. However, the brilliant and colourful Italian exile Rossi was the favourite of the then powerful Doctrinaires under the leadership of Royer-Collard, as well as the Duke Victor de Broglie, another friend of Sismondi and husband of Madame de StaÁl's daughter, Albertine 12 Histoire de l'Economie Politique en Europe 2 vols. Pages quoted cited here refer to the third edition of 1845 5 thus surpassing, he claimed, the relevant chapters of Quesnay, Say, Sismondi and McCulloch13 Basically, this had also been how Adam Smith and Sismondi had understood their task of applying both the historical and analytical methods in their work. However, Blanqui did so in a systematic way and succeeded in giving a more integrated account of intellectual history set in its European and national contexts. Moreover, he depicted political economy as a social science rather than a specific theory of financial considerations; in this interdisciplinary approach, he again adopted Sismondi's (and Adam Smith's) methodology.

His tableau was least successful in his account of the diverse national schools of economy, except, of course, for the fact that he was able to produce an authoritative picture of the French scene. Following Pecchio, he described the Italian school as philosophical and reformatory, intent on fighting religious and political despotism as well as understanding political economy as part of the universal social science rather than a peculiar science of riches, that is, the 'chrematistics' of Sismondi. Blanqui gave short shrift to the German school of Cameralism which he described as state-directed and inclined to be theological and metaphysical. His own preconceptions determine his analysis of French and English economic thought and practice. The English school is regarded as a mere science of riches, heedless of the fate of the suffering of the labouring classes and the ill effects of industrialism and the use of machinery. Quasi-mathematical exactitude, linguistic precision and meticulous definitions are achieved at the cost of all social considerations. 'A continuous frenzy in search of perfection permeates England which has become an immense factory and universal accounting office, a grand laboratory whose influence penetrates everywhere. France, on the other hand, has transformed the philosophical approach of the Italians, combined with the fiscal expertise of the Spaniards, into an understanding of the proper physiology of society, its organisation and ways of reform.14

In his contextual tableau, Blanqui proffers a summary of the 'industrial revolution', one of the first to use this expression, certainly well before Engels (1845 and Marx), a period of great economic and social changes, starting with the fiasco of Turgot's and the French Revolution's aspirations, as well as the success of Watts and Arkwright's inventions of manufacturing machinery. The reallocation of overseas and continental markets among England, France, Spain and Holland, changing international relations, and mutations in the class struggle, appear as the markstones of historical evolution. 'We move rapidly toward the achievement of a new social contract, be it among the producers, be it between nations ... The battlefield is no longer in the open spaces, it is in the workshops - a veritable war' by means of powerful machines at the cost of paupers without pity for

13 op.cit. p.XVII 14 ibid.pp.300-312 6 old and young. 'This is not merely an international struggle; it is a serious combat between the diverse classes of producers. France appears to be competing with England, but in reality it is the capitalist who wages war much more thoroughly against the labourer.' Blanqui's critical assessment of the situation and its very vocabulary are clearly taken from the relevant passages inthe second volume of Sismondi's Nouveaux Principes.

The same observation applies also to Blanqui's critique of Adam Smith:

This doctrine which has prevailed in England, and which has acted as a powerful catalyst to industry, begins to bear bitter fruit; it has created immense riches alongside frightening poverty; it has enriched the nation while often treating part of its citizens quite cruelly. Is this really the social aim of the increase in wealth, or is it not rather a deplorable deviation of the social system? Can one truly call wealth that excess of profits taken away, according to M. de Sismondi, from the poor, and, according to us, imposed by capital upon labour? Thus arises the universal competition due to the unlimited liberty of industrialists, and from this competition has arisen worldwide a torrent of riches which has fertilised many provinces, but has left behind pernicious traces of its passage in many a country. Here is the great problem of the nineteenth century which Adam Smith has not foreseen and could not foresee at a time when the steam engine and the spinning jenny, those two colossi of English industry, were only given birth to, like his book... It is not any longer, as in Smith's time, exclusively a matter of accelerating production; in future, one has to control and keep it in reasonable limits. It is no longer a matter of absolute wealth, but of relative wealth; humanism requires that one ceases to sacrifice to the progress of public opulence, the masses of people who will have no part in it... we shall not be prepared to give the name of wealth to any but the sum of the national product equitably distributed among all the producers.15

In this new situation says Blanqui, 'a new school' of political economy has emerged in France, spearheaded by Sismondi's Nouveaux Principes, and linked together by a common guide idea, namely 'The general well-being of mankind without distinction of nationality... The veritable end of the science will, in future, be to summon the greatest number of people to partake in the benefits of civilisation. The terms, division of labour, capital, banks, association, commercial liberty, have no other significance. Such is at least the propensity of the modern school'. All this is pure Sismondi. Blanqui has reservations as to Sismondi's pessimistic outlook, but his tableau of the industrial revolution is taken over from the Nouveaux Principes, 'an admirable book', showing 'a pre- eminence of talent... The best critical work that exists in political economy, but a better one will be that which must refute him.'

15 ibid. vol. I o,XX, XXIII 7 The principal fault of M. de Sismondi's method is to be too ready to generalise, like Ricardo himself, his most eminent antagonist.

This tendency, according to Blanqui, leads to the assumption of exaggerated consequences - such as the history of the future (of Condorcet, Sismondi, Tocqueville) i.e. the inference from English or American experience to financial and industrial development to be expected in all industrial countries; or that full machine automatisation of the industrial process would cause widespread unemployment, both issues which are still in contention.16 However, though Sismondi in his compassion may have exaggerated the sufferings caused by industrialisation, Blanqui affirmed

It will rebound to the eternal honour of his [Sigmondi's] name that he has alerted Europe (to the problem) and has put himself at the head of a crusade on behalf of the disprivileged classes of our social system.

Following Sismondi, the Saint-Simonians and many others such as Villeneuve-Bargemont, Joseph Droz, Dunoyer, Charles Comte, Eugene Buret (who influenced Friedrich Engels), have taken up his call to rehabilitate the condition of the labouring classes and to re-awaken their self-esteem.17 Blanqui's final assessment reads:

(The Nouveaux Principes) is the most eloquent manifesto of the radical school. The publication of this book has produced a great sensation in the learned world... M. de Sismondi's opinions have exerted a great influence in Europe... Thanks to him, the condition of the working man has become an important and sacred issue... requiring (unlike Malthus) the participation of all in the benefits of increasing wealth, the banquet of like, but he does not propose a remedy to the evils (which he indicts)... Nobody could do it better than he himself, but one will not dare to do so soon.18

Blanqui accepted Sismondi's tableau, his analysis of the dark side of capitalism as it found expression in the accumulation of capital, overproduction, crises, and pauperism. But he did not share Sismondi's pessimism concerning the future; he followed Say's expectation that increasing wealth would automatically trickle down to all parts of the population.

To Sismondi's chagrin, the same opinion was eventually embraced by many of his own disciples such as Joseph Dias, Pecqueur and Theodore Fix; they believed in the inherent tendency of the free market to recover equilibrium after a period of crises, while Sismondi affirmed the need for structural change with the aim to establish a social market. All the same, Blanqui, the representative

16 ibid. vol II, pp. 234, 233, 236, 237 17 ibid. pp. 240, 241, 251 18 ibid. pp. 416, 236 8 economist of his day, evinced a congenial grasp of the teachings of both sismondi and Say, the two founding fathers of the new French school of political economy, the one gifted with the innovative and empathetic insight of the great historian, and the other with the analytic mind of a successful organiser and professional academic teacher. Between them, in the French tradition from Condillac and Turgot to the Ephemeride of Baudeau and Dupont de Nemours, and the Scottish tradition of Hume and Adam Smith, they laid the foundation of a new school of social economy, more adapted to industrial and entrepreneurial reality than the economics of their Ricardian rivals.

Before dealing more thoroughly with the crucial relationship between Sismondi and Say, something needs to be said about Sismondi's impact on the most influential offshoots of the new French school of social economy, namely the Saint-Simonian movement and the Positivism of August Comte. There was relatively little affinity between Sismondi and the Count of Saint-Simon, the Messiah and prophet of the crusaders who adopted his name. He dreamt of improving society by means of an exhaustive use of scientific advances directed by a legitimate aristocracy, that is, an aristocracy based on merit and function rather than on traditional principles such as heredity. Saint-Simon's passion de la gloire, his enthusiasm and mysticism were alien to Sismondi who regarded him as a fool. In the last few years of his life, however, Saint-Simon gradually turned to the problems of industrial production and commerce. The trend was in the air in a France whose economic prosperity depended on success in its rivalry with Britain, its more highly industrialised neighbour. In order to cope with the new situation, Saint-Simon enlisted the cooperation of brilliant young secretaries or 'adopted sons', as he called them; with their help as co-authors, his publications became more systematic, more penetrating and down to earth. From 1814 to 1817, he was assisted by Augustin Thierry (1795-1856), and from 1817 to 1824 by Auguste Comte (1798-1857). The focus of Saint-Simonian thought shifted from science to industrial production, from the ambition to be a new Newton or Descartes to the ideal of an industrial entrepreneur.

This new orientation was corroborated by the editors of the Censeur Européen, a periodical edited (from 1817 to 1819) by Charles Comte, J-B. Say's son-in-law, and Charles Dunoyer (1786-1863). Both belonged to the new French school of social economy which implies some marked degree of discipleship to Sismondi and Say; both extolled the progress of industrial production and the new morality and social policy it engendered.19 This latter issue will occupy us in the chapter on J-B.

19 Sismondi described Charles Comte as 'a French advocate, and perhaps today the best political writer in France', and the Censeur Européen as 'the best of French periodicals' (unpublished letter Pescia of Oct 1, 1823 to Sir James Mackintosh). Comte was the foremost French antagonist of the slave trade, see esp. vol. 4 of his main work, Traite de legislation des lois generaies suivant lesquelles les peuples prosperent, deperissent ou restent staionnaires, 4 vols. Paris 1827 and its continuation, Traite de la propriete, 2 vols, Paris 1834. B.C. Dunoyer, De la liberte du travail, Paris 1825; Nouveau traite D.ECONOMIE SOCIALE 2 vols, Paris 1830. There was a close person and intellectual relationship between Sismondi and Charles Comte; when the latter was forced to flee from the oppression of the Bourbon 9 Say. Here, we are concerned with the question of Sismondi's influence on Saint-Simonism and Auguste Comte's Positivism.

The young Augustin Thierry was the first to broach the new topic of industrialism in one of Saint- Simon's periodicals.20 He defined industry as the basis of liberty (la base de la liberte c'est l'industrie), parliamentary government as equivalent to an industrial regime, and the production of useful goods as the only reasonable end of political society. Thierry was, then as well as later, deeply imbued with Sismondi's ideas. He wrote his essay before the publication of the Nouveaux Principes; his knowledge of Sismondi's analysis was derived from the History of the Italian Republics. There, Sismondi celebrated the rise of liberty in the medieval Italian city states in which political power and thought shifted from the feudal military masters to the rising mercantile class of citizens. Following Sismondi, Thierry focussed attention to the people rather than to dynasties and wars, sympathised with the disprivileged, sketched comprehensive portraits of individual historical periods, and became the great historian of the Two Nations (of the conquerors and the conquered - see Disraeli's Sybil, and of that tiers etat, the rising middle classes.21

There was a historical as well as a socio-economic side to the new concept of industrialism. A new historical phase had come into being with the introduction of mechanical power and mass production. The transmutation from agricultural, commercial, literary-scientific preoccupation to an untried industrial model of society left its marks on all aspects of the social system. The new constellation required rethinking both as regards the causes which set it apart from previous periods, and the remedies and prescriptions needed to ease its birth pangs.

An authoritative statement of what industrialism meant to Saint-Simonians and Positivists was given by Charles Barthelemi Dunoyer in 1827, the year in which the second edition of the Nouveaux Principes was published. Dunoyer (1786-1865), an early friend of Say and Auguste Comte, was representative of both movements, a co-founder of Saunt-Simonism as well as being celebrated by Comte in his saints' calendar by the side of Adam Smith.22 He was an eclectic follower of Say, belonging to the new French school of social economy which, like Sismondi, did restoration in France, Sismondi supported his appointment as Professor of Public Law In Lausanne, and later, in 1823, smoothed his way into exile in England. He was similarly helpful to Augustin Thierry's brother Amedee, the historian of ancient Gaul. See Saint-Simon's Memoire introductif (1812), and Sismondi's letter of 8 Sept. 1831 to William Ellery Channing. Epistolario, vol. III p.127 20 L-Industrie, vol. I, Dec. 1816 21 It has widely, though misleadingly, been maintained that Sismondi's historical work does not reveal his economic expertise. The truth is that, in Sismondi's own words in the Post-Scriptum to the first volume of The History of the Italian Republics, 'My other works on The Agriculture of Tuscany, the Richasse Commerciale, and The Literature of the Sough of Europe, are somehow only corollaries of the History of Italy'. (p.XIII; see also p.514). More about Thierry and Sismondi in a later chapter on the new school of History in France. 22 Charles Barthelemi Dunoyer, L'industie et la morale consideree dans leur rapport avec la liberte, Paris 1825: Nous ne devenons libres qu'en devenant industrieux et moraux'. 10 not separate economics from ethics. In 1825 he published a book on Industry and Morality in their relationship with liberty with the motto: 'only industry and morality will make us free'.23 He celebrated liberty as a gift of civilisation as against the natural (savage) state of mankind eulogised by Rousseau, Raynal and Mably, rejected purely materialist systems aiming solely at physical well- being, and defined liberty as the state of society in which man can make the best use of his faculties without hurting fellow men. In particular, he distinguished between the liberty of the ancients and that of the moderns as epitomizing the military and industrial phases of history, a distinction incidentally which had loomed large in Dunoyer's and Charles Comte's Censeur Européen.

Dunoyer's treatise was taken up by Benjamin Constant in a review article in the following year.24 He pointed out that Dunoyer's observations on liberty, though ingenious, were far from being original: 'Several authors, especially M. de Sismondi and the writer of this article, said ten years ago the same things in nearly the same words25 Constant acknowledged Sismondi's claim to priority in making the distinction between ancient or positive liberty which consisted in participation in sovereignty or political power, on the one hand, and modern or negative liberty a l'anglaise, which constituted the individual's right to protection of life, property, activity not hurtful to others, opinions and sentiments, such protection to be lent both against fellow men and the state. This distinction had been widely alluded to in the eighteenth century by Hume, Ferguson and Delolme, as well as by Helvetius, Holbach and Paine.26 But it was Sismondi who developed the contrast systematically time and again over forty years of his historical and political writing. His analysis of the merits and demerits respectively of the two forms of liberty culminated in his comprehensive theory of participation in the jouissances, the gifts of civilisation, life, health, honour, family, not less than the participation in political power. For the purposes of our argument, anything said about Constant in this respect may be taken as a valid assessment of Sismondi's significance.27

23 Revue encyclopedique, 1826, pp. 416-435 24 ibid p.431. Constant's reference is to his De l'esprit de conquete et de l'usurpation dans leurs rapports avec la civilisation europeenne, London 1813, Paris 1814. Dealing with the distinction between the two liberties, he referred the reader toCondorcet and to Sismondi's History of the Italian Republics: 'I am glad to quote his latter work, the creation of a character as noble as the talent of the author is disinguished,' 2nd part, chap. VI 25 B.C.Dunoyer, De la Liberte du travail, Paris 1828, various editions, last 1845; Nouveau traite de l'economie sociale, 2 vols. Paris 1830 26 Ferguson's formulation in his Essay on the History of Civil Society, 1767 puts it most succinctly: 'To the ancient Greek, or the Roman, the individual was nothing and the public everything. To the modern, in too many nations of Europe, the individual is everything, and the public nothing.' (1966 edition by Duncan Forbes, section VIII, p.56) 27 Regarding the relationship between Constant and Sismondi see esp. Etienne Hofmann, Les Principes de Politique de Benjamin Constant; La Genese d'une oeuvre et l'evolution de la pensee de l'auteur (1789-1806, 2 vols. Geneve 1980. While both authors have much in common, it may generally be said that Sismondi was the more creative, and Constant the more elegant writer. He was more doctrinaire than Sismondi, wedded without reservation to the free market, and absolutely opposed to any state intervention. His gut preference was the modern liberty of the individual, whereas Sismondi aimed at specific liberties in the interest of both the individual and the community, regarding liberty as a means to establish happiness and well-being for all - like Delelme and John Austin, much in the same sense as Isaiah Berlin and Rawls when they speak of the 'conditions of liberty' and 'the worth of liberty' respectively. 11 In fact, Dunoyer regarded the distinction between the two liberties, the martial and the commercial- industrial aspects of historical development as epoch-making. He accepted constant's strictures and gave him, and through him, Sismondi, credit for what he rashly had put before the public as his own achievement. In 1827, he published an authoritative account of the meaning of 'industrialism'. Benjamin Constant, he now stated, had been the first to recognise its true significance. While admitting marginal elucidations on the subject by Say and MontCosier28, he said of Constant:

I must state to the glory of M. Benjamin Constant that he was the first writer, at least to my knowledge, who has pinpointed the end of all activity of the peoples in our time, and who has thus supplied the basis understanding of the veritable end of politics... The first time that someone elucidated clearly the difference prevailing between the ancient and the modern peoples; it was the first time that one demonstrated to the modern nations that they were aiming their activity towards industry. This observation which today may sound trivial, was then (1814) extremely novel.29

According to Dunoyer, Saint-Simon had made no substantial contribution to the question of societal structural change and its impact on values and opinions. It was Constant alone who had thrown light on the problem, both in its historical and sociological aspects, even though in his later writings he had not returned to the subject.30 As Constant ceded priority to Sismondi, Dunoyer's appraisal quoted above, expresses, by implication, his views regarding Sismondi's crucial impact upon his thought.

Dunoyer was one of the formative figures in the unfolding of both Saint-Simonism and Positivism. So was Gustave d'Eichthal, Auguste's Comte's first and favourite disciple as well as, with Olinde Rodrigues, the brothers Pevaire, Leon Helevy, Prosper Enfantin, one of the founders of the Saint- Simonian movement. Thought the prickly Comte came to disavow him personally because of his new company, d'Eichthal remained one of the leading apostles of both creeds in England which he frequently visited from May 1828 onwards. He became an intimate friend of John Stuart Mill31 as well as of Eyton Tooke. It was on d'Eichthal's recommendation that Mill read Comte as well as a Saint-Simonian manifesto, the 'shallowness and crudity' of which repelled him. He was, however, profoundly stirred by Auguste Comte's Systeme de politique positive; his lifelong critical dialogue

28 Francoise-Dominuque, comte de MontCosier (1755-1838), Histoire de la monarchie francaise vols. 181. He was a member of the Etats Generaux, published many books, a leader of the Moderate Right, the Monarchicals. He was a long-standing friend of Benjamin Constant, but they fell out over Constant's support for Napoleon during the Cent-Jours and fought a duel, Constant being victorious. He followed up by some polemical articles against MontCosier's reactionary views. See Constant's Journaux Intimes 1805-1815; also Jacques Godechot, The Counter-Revolution, (1961) London 1974, pp. 24-27 29 B.C. Dunoyer, 'Esquisse historique des doctrines auxquelles on a donne le nom d'Industrialisme, c'est -a-dire, des doctrines qui fondent la societe sur l'industrie. Revue encyclopedique. 1827, pp. 368, 371. Henri Gouhier, in vol. III of his La Jeunesse d'Auguste Comte, over emphasizes Dunoyer's claims regarding Say and MontCosier 30 Actually, Constant dealt with related questions once more in ????? missing de Filangieri, 2 parties, Paris 1822 12 with Comte took its rise in Mill's letter of October 8th 1829 to d'eichthal, a letter foreshadowing some of Mill's mature views on methodology and politico-economic thought. In particular, he expressed his reservations regarding the espousal of 'production' as an 'idol... (which) had been set up and worshipped (in England), with incessant devotion for a century back.' As against Comte (and the Saint-Simonians), Mill held that 'a philosophy which made production expressly the one end of the social union, would make irremediable the only great social evil, of which there was much danger in the present state of civilisation.'32 Mill's distrust of commercialism and unlimited production was, in fact, the same as that of Sismondi.

What, then, was d'Eichthal's assessment of Sismondi? Did he regard him as a downright opponent? When he began his correspondence with Mill in 1829, he wrote to Sismondi as well, submitting to him a pamphlet on the public debt, a copy of which he had also sent to Mill.33 Writing to Sismondi on June 29th , 1829, d'Eichthal confessed himself to be a disciple of Sismondi, acknowledging:

My gratitude; for that is a sentiment which your writings call forth in all those who are privileged to read and ponder them.

It was in your elements that, at the beginning of my study of political economy, I conceived my first ideas concerning the public debt. I was inspired by the lucid manner in which you refuted the opinion of Pinto and Alex. Hamilton...34

I have strongly desired, I admit, that my endeavour might merit the approbation of Monsieur de Sismondi. That would be for me the most powerful encouragement; it would also be my best justification in the eyes of a good number of doubters...

One great idea pervades your economic writings. It is the approach of a social revolution, necessarily called forth by the present situation of the labouring class. You have shown how the manufacturing system... and the increased use of machines have made that unfortunate population the victims of the consequences of a chaotic competition. The harm done is grave, the remedy hard to find. If one observes the proletarians in England on the one hand, and the capitalists on the other

31 Mill, usually rather reserved, address d'Eichthal in his letters as 'my dear friend' and 'my dear Gustave'. 32 Collective Works of John Stuart Mill, Vol. VIII: The Earlier Letters, Toronto U.P., 1963, Letter 27, pp. 34-38 33 Mill acknowledged the receipt of the pamphlet in his letter of October 8th 1828 to d'Eichthal, mentioning 'with how much pleasure I have read your pamphlet, which has almost made an entire convert of me...' ibid. p. 38 34 d'Eichthal's reference is to the Nouveaux Principes, Bk. VI chap. VIII: Les empr??? Alexander Hamilton (not to be confused with Robert Hamilton who wrote on the same subject) is quoted by Sismondi: Isaac de Pinto refers to his Traite de la circulation et du credit, 1771. Sismondi had treated the matter already in Richesse Commerciale, Bk 1 chapter VI 13 hand, drawn up in different hostile camps... one can fear that a bloody revolution is needed to decide the issue between the antagonists.35

D'Eichthal's letter supplies eloquent evidence of Sismondi's influence at the time. D'Eichthal accepted Sismondi's analysis of the social state of affairs, his tableau of the historical situation. But there was a different emphasis on the conclusions to be drawn and the remedies to be applied. D'Eichthal appears to be regarding the threatening revolution as an ineluctable and basically welcome event. Sismondi, on the other hand, looked forward to the social explosion as something to be feared and to be forestalled by suitable, peaceful reforms, in short, the social market and the welfare state. D'Eichthal's interpretation was far from being unique though, Saint-Simonian reactions used to waver between a more efficient capitalism and Fourierist socialism.

Both Dunoyer and D'Eichthal were largely inspired by Sismondi's thought, though unwittingly in the case of the former. What about Auguste Comte himself? At first blush, he could hardly be expected to be favourable inclined towards the historian Sismondi who, in his eyes, must have appeared to be steeped in the error of Protestantism with its 'tendentious' interpretation of the Middle Ages, its attack on the Catholic Church, and its individualist philosophy. Yet there is a good deal of affinity between these two founding fathers of the social sciences.

Sismondi's account of the transition from feudalism and militarism to commercial liberalism and industrialism, from theocracy and prejudice to the appeal to rationality and empiricism, provided graphic illustrations to Comte's system of historical stages. Sismondi's combination of historical and economic scholarship suggested the Comtean distinction and correlation between statics and dynamics. Both thinkers were intent on developing a general social science rather than isolated sub- divisions even though Sismondi was more sceptical as regards the timing of what Comte called the 'age of generality'.

Comte's scornful assessment of economics is well known; what he objected to was the prevailing teaching of the subject which he condemned as speialist, metaphysical and selfish. He, therefore, came to set his sights on an 'economie nouvelle' subject to positive morality. Say's and Ricardo's isolation of economics from other social science appeared to Comte as a relapse into an outmoded 'age of speciality'. Although he shared Saint-Simon's cult of production in his early writings, he eventually rejected it as metaphysical, being the arbitrary assumption of an absolute force conceived of as inherent in the development of economic life, a 'personified abstraction' deemed to be pre-

35 Raccolta Sismondi Pescia. I have published part of the letter in the AHI del Colloquio Internationale sul Sismondi, accademia Nazionala dei Lincei, 1973, p.168. See also Patrick de Lambier, 'Sismondi theoricien de la politique sociale', Revue francaise des Affaires sociales, 1978 (pp. 49-84) p.53 14 scientific. Economics, he held, had to heed positive morality which called for the constant protection of the most numerous classes which were exposed to exploitation. Economists paid no adequate attention to the fundamental relationship between entrepreneur and worker, failed to condemn excesses of wealth and to defend the proletarians from being practically excluded from the social system. A 'new social economy' was called for to make up for the deficiencies of traditional (classical) political economy.36

All this echoes Sismondi's teaching. Like Sismondi, Comte was an admirer of the 'Scottish School' and may have followed other influences. According to the habit of the time, he was economical in his literary acknowledgments and did not quote Sismondi. On the other hand, as a passionate partisan of Napoleon after the return from Elba, he must have known of Sismondi's role as constitution-maker from as early as his schooldays.

According to Mauduit,

Auguste Comte had, in his youth, heard of the ideas of Sismondi to whom he sent a copy of his first opusculum in 1824.37 But in his works he does not mention Sismondi. Nevertheless, we think that Comte must have known at least Sismondi's theory of crises and the reports devoted to the dangers of machinism. Comte has in effect taken up Sismondi's arguments, and even, it appears, adopted in detail certain ideas which are found in the Nouveaux Principes... it would not be impossible... that some of his arguments directed against classical political economy, consciously or not, have been appropriated from the oeuvre of Sismondi, whose principal work appeared in 1819.38

36 This delineation of Comte's definitive stance is taken from La Philosophie Positive par Auguste Comte, resume par Jules Rig, vol. II, 1881, pp. 508-515. 37 This opuscule was Comte's Système de Politique Positive, first published in Saint-Simon's Catechisme des Industriels, third cahier and repeatedly re-edited. It is the same piece of writing that d'Eichthal sent to J.S. Mill in 1829. 38 Roger Mauduit, Auguste Comte et la Science Economique, Paris 1828 pp. 53-64. Henri Gouhier does not mention Sismondi except for stating that 'he belongs to the prehistory of the industrial idea'. La Jeunesse d'augsute Comte et la Formation du Positivisme, vol. III, Paris, p.117. Both Dunoyer and Say belonged to Comte's early friends.

15 II

Following up his important contribution to agricultural economics in 1801, The Agriculture Toscane, Sismondi published his complementary work on Richesse Commerciale in 1803.39 A few months later, Jean-Baptiste Say followed suit with his Traite d'Economie Politique which was destined to become the most influential treatise on the subject in France. In Ricardo's words, this 'excellent work of M. Say... has succeeded in placing the science in a more logical and more instructive order; and has enriched it by severe discussions, original, accurate, and profound'.40 Sismondi and Say have widely been treated as antagonists because they clashed at times on the subjects of commercial crises, the nature and effects of production and competition, the extent of the free market economy as well as the theoretical status of political economy as a science. However, in their works of 1803, they appeared to see eye to eye as followers of Adam Smith, intent on clarifying and further developing the Free Trade prescriptions of Smith's Wealth of Nations. Both books embodied passionate appeals to the Consular and Napoleonic regimes to embark on a liberal trade policy. On the other hand, it is not the case, though this has been generally asserted, that they wished to introduce Smith's teaching into French economic thought. French economists had long ceased to be dominated by physiocracy and had had ample opportunity to make themselves familiar with Smith's ideas. As Sismondi expressed it, 'his (Smith's) book which, it is true, is weak in method, is hardly understood by anyone, one quotes him without discernment, perhaps without even reading him'.41 Say agreed that 'Smith lacks clarity in many places as well as being weak on method nearly everywhere... I revere Adam Smith, he is my master', but 'I have learnt to march on my own'.42 Both Sismondi and Say were able to take their own place in the development of political economy. Apart from Smith, both were influenced by Condillac and Turgot as well as the great Italian economists and jurists, Galiani, Pietro Verri, Beccaria, and Filangieri; both claimed from the outset to have made essential novel additions to the science created by Smith.

J-B. Say has gone down in history as the author of Say's Law, the loi des debouches, according to which supply creates its own demand, i.e. the sum of all commodities produced is said always to be

39 The first few years of the nineteenth century also witnessed i.a. the publication of Saint-Simon's Lettre d'un habitant de Geneve, the beginning of Custodi's collection of the Scrittori classici in Italy and Fichte's Der Geschlossene Handelstaat in Germany. 40 David Ricardo, The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817, original preface. Ricardo used the same epithet, 'excellent work' in referring to Sismondi's Richesse Commerciale in chap. XXIX of his Principles. 41 Richesse Commerciale, vol. I, p. 12 42 Traite d'Economie Politique, 5th ed. Vol.I, p. LXXII; Lettres a Malthus, 1820, p.42. Another leading French economist of the period, Charles Ganilh, stated that 'the glory of this author (Smith) appears to be losing lustre... if one judged according to the number of his critics, it would not last long'; most English and French writers since the turn of 16 equivalent to the sum of all goods bought. Actually, Sismondi formulated this 'law of markets' before Say at the end of volume II of the Richesse Commerciale43, but later on he came to see grave demerits in the argument. In place of the equilibrium between offer and demand as foreseen by Say, he held that unbridled competition and steadily increasing production due to the use of machines would generate commercial crises and result in disequilibrium, accumulation of capital in few hands, bankruptcies and unemployment. Say's optimism and Sismondi's pessimism in this respect came to be the main issue separating their respective views since the middle of the second decade of the eighteenth century. There was another matter of equal long-standing contention between them concerning the status of political economy as a science. For Say, it was an enquiry into the objective laws of the formation and distribution of wealth within a given Newtonian mechanistic universe, irrespective of general moral considerations. For Sismondi, political economy was a branch of the science of politics which aimed, not at maximal production of commodities, but at the happiness and perfectability of the individuals comprising state and society. Thus, teleology, in Sismondi's view, was an intrinsic part of the science, much as health is part of the connotation of medicine. Yet though the two men were at variance on these and related questions, they were never personal opponents; they were united by their common search for truths. At the height of their theoretical differences, Say wrote to Sismondi:

We shall be able to understand each other, you and me, we arrive at the same end by diverging routes... if I have argued particularly against you, it is because I regard you as the most worthy interpreter of the opinions I don't share. I am as vain as those ancient valiant knights who wanted to fight solely against their peers. What do the opinions of Messrs. Such and Such matter to you and me?44

Sismondi, on his part, called Say 'the profoundest economist in our language', and Say spoke of Sismondi as 'that enlightened author, ingenious, eloquent and selfless.45 Their mutual esteem has stood up to the test of time, as typically expressed by Schumpeter who, for the period of 1790 to 1870, called them the 'only two first-rank men to mention (besides Cournot of course)'.46 The tone

the century were in the habit of praising and then criticizing Smith so that essentially there was perhaps 'not a single one of his propositions left intact and without contradiction'. La Theorie de l'Economie Politique, 1815, vol. I, p.23 43 Sismondi's independent formulation of Say's Law has been pointed out by Thomas Sowell, Say's Law, An Historical Analysis, Princeton U.P. 1972, pp. 47, 48 44 Unpublished letter of August 16th 1820, sent to Sismondi together with a presentation copy of Say's Lettres a Malthus, a polemic against both Malthus and Sismondi; partly published by Pasquale Jannacone, 'Sismondi fra gli economisti del suo e del nostro tempo' in Studi su G.C.L. Sismondi, 1946, pp. 195-242. Sismondi's reply to Say's tract was given in his 'balances des consommations avec les productions' in the Revue Encyclopedique, July 1824 45 Sismondi, De la philosophie de l'Histoire, London 1814, p.44; Say, Cours Complet d'Economie Politique Pratique, 1828, 1re partie, chap. XVIII 46 History of Economic Analysis, 1954, p.491 17 characterizing their relationship was set by Say's first letter which he sent to Sismondi, together with a copy of his Traite on June 25th 1803 (25 Messidor an. 11):

Sir and very dear Compatriot47

Here is a copy of my Traite d'Economie Politique; please accept it as a token of the regard I have for your character and your talents. It will be delightful for me to win the discerning approval of the author of the Richesse Commerciale. My book was already in the press when I received yours; otherwise I should have drawn from it several examples which would have confirmed the principles which we both profess. I shall make up for it in a second edition if the present one is successful.48 You will notice I have followed Smith in all principal points. However, if I am not wrong, I have clarified other important points which he had neglected. He fully shed light on the great phenomenon of Production and Consumption. Has he demonstrated in which way commerce is genuinely productive? Has he really elucidated the ideas concerning true high prices and relative high prices? You who understand this author so well, do tell me if you believe that I have helped the science to advance some steps... Let us not tire of pronouncing truths, seeing that people don't grow weary of committing follies.49

Sismondi's letters to Say are not preserved, but Say's letters make it clear that what the two men had in common increasingly outweighed their differences. Both were Protestants, shared early experiences in England, had personally known foreign and inner exile, had fought Napoleon, but finally, after the return from Elba, had preferred him to the Bourbon reaction. Both were close to industrial reality, Say founding and conducting a cotton works at Aulchy (comparable to Richard OWEN'S Lanark), and Sismondi as farmer in Pescia and Secretary of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce. Say admired Sismondi's historical oeuvre, asserting his ascendency over Johannes von Müller (Jean de Muller) and the romantic history of Prosper Barante. Gradually, under the influence of repeated commercial and agricultural crises, Say moved away from his agreement with Ricardo, and closer to Sismondi's tenets. Unlike Ricardo50, he never shared Sismondi's gloomy fears of pauperisation resulting from the injudicious use of machine power. But he came to approve of Sismondi's interpretation of crises and his concern for the underprivileged classes. When Sismondi, shortly before the publication of the second edition of the Nouveaux Principes, stopped over in Paris on his return from a visit to England, he noted in his diary (Journal) on September 26th 1826:

47 Compatriot of (concitoyen) in Say's usage means 'citizen of the world', of humanity - not citizen of France. 48 As is well known, Say was prevented by the Napoleonic regime to bring out a second edition until as late as 1814. 49 Unpublished letter Pescia, Raccolta Sismondi 50 Ricardo, and the third edition of his Principles, acknowledged the potential harm done by machinofacture as pointed out by Sismondi and John Baston, chap. XXXI 'On Machinery' 18 I had this morning a visit from Say who said to me that his friendship for M. Ricardo and his school has very often cramped him, but that in truth he finds they have injured the science by the abstractions into which they have thrown it, and that he shall be obliged , in the new edition he is preparing, absolutely to oppose them.51

Though Sismondi must be said to have prevailed in what dispute there had been between him and Say, there was a crucial aspect in which he was greatly indebted to Say, namely the observation of facts, the facts, that is, underlying the social and economic changes Europe, and in particular, Britain was experiencing at the time. For Say, these changes were a matter of temporary conjuncture rather than of structure: political and economic events such as revolution, war, taxation, fast increasing production due to the introduction of steam engine power, were upsetting the equilibrium which used to guide the market as by an invisible hand; after a period of disequilibrium, harmony would restore itself. Sismondi, on the other hand, was disposed to draw more drastic and gloomy conclusions in his interpretations of the historical situation. His experiences of agricultural distress in the England of the early 1790s, the vicissitude of the silk and paper manufacturers in Tuscany, the struggles of Geneva's watch and textile industries and its international trade - these experiences, as well as his philanthropic beliefs, inclined him to see the socio-economic development in a more sombre light. Yet before he was able to finalise his own conclusions, he needed a total vista of the representative economy of the period, a tableau which would permit his impressions to coalesce into a cohesive, total diagnosis. His interpretation of the transformation of the economy and its social consequences as a transmutation from a decaying traditional order to a new and untried structural system, found inspiration and corroboration in Say's picture of the English economy.

The events of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars left the European economies in an aftermath of decline and depression. Britain suffered from the exclusion of its manufactures from the Continent and its rupture with American in 1812. Agriculture, industry and trade endured unprecedented distress, bankruptcies and unemployment. The catastrophic condition of England dominated as well as puzzled parliament where Lord Brougham, and others, repeatedly raised the question in 1816 and 1817.52 The most pungent scrutiny was offered by Lord John Russell in June 1816. He stated that 'at no former period of the history of this country was so great and so general a distress ever known to prevail as that which has lately visited us... Upon the causes of the evil, men

51 Original in English. Say stated that Ricardo's disciples had lost touch with reality and experience, and had lost themselves in a metaphysics, a science of mere words and arguments; under the pretext of widening out the science, they had pushed it into a vacuum. Traite, 5th edition, 1826, vol. I, p. LXXXIII. Say added a chapter 'On the limits of production' as a concession to Sismondi's views, see his letter of August 29th 1828. 52 'Distress of the Country', Edinburgh Review, June 1816, pp. 255 et seq. 19 may dispute, of its terrible extent, no one can entertain a doubt... all classes of men more or less feel some hidden rottenness in our system, the causes of which no one seems able to discover, much less to remove'. 'Some hidden rottenness in our system' - this was precisely the case Sismondi was going to make. The basic material facts underlying his analysis were supplied by Say's description of English economy and society of the period just before the onset of the post-war depression.

Like Sismondi, Say had experienced formative impressions during a visit to Britain as a young man. He was 19 when, in 1786/1787, he saw the great steam engine which, together with other mechanical inventions, was to revolutionize Britain's economy and social stratification. From 1793, Britain and France had been largely cut off from each other by the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars with their ensuing trade sanctions which barred trade between the continent and Britain. During this period, French industry was evidently the loser; its important cotton industry was ruined despite, or, in the eyes of Smithian free-traders like Say, because of governmental protective measures, with American manufacture replacing that of France where some hundreds of thousands workers had lost their jobs. British industry and trade, on the other hand, were stimulated into new growth by war requirements as well as Britain's command of the seas. 'From being the greatest, we became the only commercial nation in the world'.53 With the transition to peace after the fall of Napoleon, this trend came to a half; supplies from other countries became available once more, refugee traders returned from England to their native countries such as Holland, Belgium, Italy, France; high prices, prohibitive trade policies, concentration on unprofitable colonial trade, the transition from the manufacture of arms to that of peacetime products - all these combined ?? the paralysis of the British economy commented upon by Lord John Russell.

Say went to Britain well before the crisis reached its climax, soon after Napoleon's abdication in April 1814. Compared with France's decline, Britain appeared to be a shining example of success in adapting to the requirements of new agricultural, and especially industrial, production methods. The new Bourbon government commissioned Say as an eminent economist and experienced industrialist to proceed to Britain with a view to supplying a survey of the country's economic scene. The survey was not published, but Say reported about the results of his examination in his booklet Of England and the English People.54 Sismondi wrote on April 10th 1815 to his mother:

53 'Commercial Embarrassments - Trade with France', Edinburgh Review, XXXII, July-October 1819, p.50. 54 De L'Angleterre et des Anglais, 56 pp, Paris and London, 1815. There were further editions of this work in 1816 and 1824. English translation, England and the English People, London 1816; German translation, Ueber England und die Engländer, appendix to Friedrich Nebenius, Bemerkungen über den Zustand Grossbritanniens in staatswirtschaftlicher Hinsicht, Karlsruhe und Baden 1818. See also Simon Gray, All Classes Productive or National Wealth with Four Letters to the celebrated French economist, M. Say, on his 'De l'Angleterre et des Anglais' London 1840; the letters are dated March 17 and 24, April 7 and 14, 1817. 20 I have just read a pamphlet which M. Say has published on his return from England which is altogether in agreement with what I have believed concerning their finances and the disastrous predicament due to their customs barriers.55

In his conversation with Napoleon on May 3rd 1815, Sismondi mentioned Say's opuscule as evidence for the adverse economic condition of England.56 In the long run, Say's brilliant commentary was to prove of crucial importance in the genesis of Sismondi's views, as he was to express them in the Nouveaux Principes.57

Say's panorama of England and the English people can be put into historical perspective as variations on a theme of Rousseau:

I'll grant that the English nation is richer than the other peoples; but it does not follow that a citizen of London is more comfortably off than a citizen of Paris.58

Say was full of admiration for the immense advances of England's industrialisation, and its machinofacture. At the time of his first visit, nearly thirty years earlier, there had been two or three steam engines in the country; now there were thousands employed in most branches of industry. New large-scale enterprises were efficiently organised, making use of scientific and topographic investigations.59

But while the war gave rise to the forced development of English industry, the English people benefited little from it.60

However, the gains made in technology and production were outweighed by the detrimental aspects of the process. The period of industrialisation had started with cheap export prices following the devaluation of the British currency. But soon high custom duties, taxes, public loans (to finance the war expenses) and governmental waste, caused prices to rise so high that, in Say's opinion, both the whole economy and social life were thoroughly disorganised. Merchants could survive only if able to operate with their own capital and content with minimal profits. Renters saw themselves

55 Quoted in H.O. Pappe, Sismondi's Weggenossen, Geneva 1963, p.30 56 Jean-R. de Salis, Sismondi - La vie et l'oeuvre d'un cosmopolite philosophe, Paris 1932, vol. I, p.294 57 H.O. Pappe, Sismondi's Weggenossen, Geneva 1963, pp. 14 et seq. Say went to England as an admirer of the British economy; he returned as a sceptic. In 1800, he had judged as follows: 'If the English stand up better to the burden of a destructive war than we do, this is because they are more advanced in political economy; at several occasions, before and since the revolution, France has lost immense resources because its governments were ignorant even of the elements of this science'. Jean-Baptiste Say (Membre du Tribunat), OLBIE un Essai sur les moyens de reformer les Moeurs d'une nation, Paris, An VIII de la Republique. This prize essay of the Institut National was largely influenced by the ideas of Benjamin Franklin. It hardly needs mentioning that Say, like most Continentals, uses England as a synonym for Britain. 58 J.J.Rousseau, Considerations sur le Gouvernement de Pologne (1772), Classiques Garnier, p.388 59 De L'Angleterre... pp. 30/31 21 compelled to live in cheaper countries abroad. The workers suffered most, one third of them having to rely on public charity. By contrast, the small number of great landowners and great capitalists were accumulating increasing wealth in their hands.

Industrialisation and unbridled competition, according to Say, have resulted in changes in the national character of Britain. Leisure has become unknown, the cafes and promenades are deserted; 'those who fall at all behind in their efforts, fall soon victim to ruin'.61 The intellectual life of the country, with the exception of Oxford, Glasgow and Edinburgh, has fallen off; books have become too expensive, and the population must make do with reading the bible and newspapers. 'The greatest disgrace in France is lack of courage; in England, it is to be impecunious.62 Low profits bring on a harsh 'war of the producers' in pursuit of a swindling market. The need to sell more cheaply, calls for the introduction of cheaper production methods and, in practice, lower quality goods. English textile goods have sunk to a very low level of quality. Free competition, instead of leading to better quality and better taste, has culminated in orgies of dishonest advertising publicity with a view to persuading the public to buy what is offered. Though paying tribute to the progress of English production methods as well as to primary education under the Lancaster system, Say ended his account with the following reflection:

If one finds a nation, so active, so noble, so ingenious, forced by a bad economic system to take upon itself such exertions and yet to suffer such deprivations, one asks oneself with bitterness: Of what avail are to them civil and religious liberty, the liberty of the press, the security of property and the domination of the high seas?63

Lord John Russell, at the height of the depression, spoke of 'some hidden rottenness in our system'; Say, when Britain appeared to be at the zenith of its new industrial power, mentioned 'a bad economic system'. He did not expect the crisis to be without remedy. On the contrary, given a more liberal and less spendthrift government policy, he foresaw the promise of restored equilibrium in the economy. But not only the vocabulary of the bad system was there - all the symptoms became apparent in Say's scenario, and it was these symptoms which were to cause Sismondi to diagnose them as immanent to the system rather than merely incidental. The accumulation of capital, the dire effects of competition, chaotic prices, low wages and unemployment, an internecine war among producers, as well as between capitalists and proletarians, the chase of profits and the 'admass' society, 'the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each others heels'64, all these symptoms

60 De L'Angleterre p.9 61 ibid. p.20 62 ibid. p.25 63 op.cit. p.25 64 John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Book IV 22 which indicated to Sismondi a deeper-lying malaise, were firmly designated by Say; they were echoed in the Nouveaux Principes in the text as well as in the preface (avertissement) to the second edition. This diagnosis of the syndrome was common to both Say and Sismondi. Where they differed was in their assessment of the etiology of the disease. Say's English translator rightly felt that Say had under-estimated the intellectual resilience of the English public. The German translator suspected some 'national jealousy and prejudice', but it was largely British self-criticism which Say took up in his brilliant summary of the state of the English nation. His criticism of French 'enrichissez-vous', and newspaper abuses was no less outspoken than his strictures on the English scene. The voice of British friends such as the Philosophical Radicals, Bentham, James Mill, and Etienne Dumont, the Whigs of Holland House, Mackintosh and Romilly as well as Ricardo and Malthus were, to a large extent, his sources of information.65 The facts, which he described, were for Say the outcome of conjectural fluctuations which did not detract from the static laws of economics. For Sismondi, on the other hand, the same facts were symptomatic of structural change in the socio-economic system; they signified a dynamic process, the definitive transition from feudalism and militarism to industrial capitalism. While this dynamic process betokened a great increase of production and wealth, it revealed at the same time threatening aspects which required a new mentality as well as drastic reforms and protective remedies for sufferings engendered by it. In Sismondi's eyes, industrialism was the subject of a dynamic science of observation, experiment and historical experience. He scrutinized industrial capitalism in a pragmatic way, just as J.S. Mill and Durkheim were later to proceed in their inquiries into the merits and flaws of socialism.

Sismondi's absence from Paris, the centre of French political and intellectual activity, was bound to act as a barrier to his making a significant impact. Nevertheless, with Say conceding the validity of his novel principles, both in private communications and publicly in the fifth edition of the Traite, as well as the Cours complet of 1828/29, Sismondi's reputation must have been considerably enhanced. Moreover, his criticisms and reform proposals fell on more willing ears due to the effects of the July Revolution of 1830, which put an end to the unholy alliance of the reigning Bourbons with the forces of reaction. The new ruling party, the Doctrinaires, were moderate liberals under the leadership of Sismondi's fellow-historian Guizot, and liberal aristocrats, such as the duc Victor de Broglie, the son-in-law of Madam de Stael, as well as other old friends of Sismondi, originally including Benjamin Constant and Prosper Barante.66 Guizot himself was a Protestant, education in

65 Say arrived in England with a letter of introduction from Godwin. Place introduced him to James Mill and Ricardo in December 1814 after Say's return from a visit to Dugald Stewart in Edinburgh. Say visited Ricardo at Gatcomb and went with Ricardo on a day's visit to Bentham at Ford Abbey. Elie Halevy The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, London 1928, p.272 66 It was Guizot's and Broglie's aim to give France a liberal constitution with The Glorious Revolution of 1688 as their model. Guizot published his Histoire de la Revolution d'Angleterre in 1825 as a guide for the French bourgeoisie to follow. Sismondi disapproved as utopian, the plan to transplant to another people, the institutions of England which had 23 Geneva where his mother had lived in exile after his father had fallen victim to the guillotine. He would have liked to have Sismondi as a member of their team. After Say's death in November 1832, Guizot invited Sismondi to lecture at the Sorbonne, as well as the College de France, but met with his habitual refusal to accept academic commitments.67

Sismondi had originally welcomed the July Revolution68, but was soon repelled by the smugness of the juste milieu with its idolisation of maximal production and its one-sided pursuit of material prosperity. The new rulers gloried in the technical advances made by industry without paying heed to Sismondi's warnings of economic crises and social upheavals to come; his forebodings were soon corroborated by bloody workers' riots in Lyons. He came to feel out of tune with the new government no less than with the opposition, whether reactionary or socialist, whether the industrial tyranny of Saint-Simonism or the theocratic despotism of Lamennais, although these movements had absorbed some of his own ideas. The general cultural climate, however, was that of a time of transition; ideas were in flux, and minds were ready to give a hearing to a new message. Gian Pietro Vieusseux, a well-informed observer of the European scene, told Sismondi in March 1832 that he judged the time ripe for a third edition of the Nouveaux Principes as the advance of Saint-Simonism provided a pointer to a general dissatisfaction with classical economics.69 We have met already with Auguste Comte's and Dunoyer's heterodox views. In fact, the Saint-Simonists were finally splitting up into the cranky faction of Prosper Enfantin's socialist followers, free market entrepreneurs, and seekers of a novel doctrine. Among them were the editors of the Revue Encyclopedique, a Parisian periodical comparable to the Edinburgh Review, and the main outlet for dozens of Sismondi's essays in the 1820s and early 1830s. When a new editorial team took over in 1832, their leader, Hippolyte Carnot70, wrote to Sismondi requesting his continued cooperation and informing him that he and fellow-editors had left the Saint-Simonian Society whose members they had long been. The society's 'moral doctrines and religious ceremonies' had become repulsive to them; they were aiming at working out a new editorial policy which would unite them without forcing them or their contributors into conformity.71 It was certainly a time of re-thinking and revision. And, indeed, Sismondi was not merely listened to, all of a sudden he became a dominant voice in the public debate. Working on his History of the French People, he was immersed in the

grown organically over the centuries; their abuses would be picked up more readily than their usages. 'It is despite, not because of, their constitution that they (the English) are free'. 67 Nouveau Dictionaire d'Economie Politique, eds. Leon Say and J. Chailley, Paris 1892, vol. II, p.806. Leon Say, eminent economist and finance minister, was the grandson of Jean-Baptiste Say. 68 See his magisterial papers 'L'avenir' and 'Les esperances et realites' in the Revue Encyclopedique, vol. 47 (Sept. 1830), pp. 525-549, and vol. 51 (July 1831) pp. 5-29. 69 Unpublished Letter of March 2, 1832, Pescia 70 Hippolyte Carnot (1801-1888), second son of Lazare Carnot, the great mathematician and organiser of victory, by means of military conscription, and father of Sadi Carnot, president of the French Republic, assassinated in 1891. 71 Unpublished letter to Sismondi of May 29, 1832, Pescia 24 fate of Catherine de Medici and Charles X, when he received a letter from Theodore Fix, a Parisian economist of Swiss origin, who had started a new specialist periodical in July 1833, the Revue Mensuelle d'Economie Politique. Fix avowed himself to be a disciple of Sismondi, intent on disseminating his 'novel and just ideas', substituting a new science of humanity for the false science of material wealth72; the Revue was to be at Sismondi's disposal.

The new situation changed Sismondi's life for the following few years, causing him to take up once more, and work out further, his economic and political theories. He immediately published a review note in the Revue Encyclopedique, giving a critical precis of Fix's introductory articles with its Sismondian emphasis, and mentioning by the way that it takes usually the lifetime of a generation for a paradigm to establish itself or to be supplanted.73 He brought out four major articles on economics and politics in the Revue during 1834 and another two in the first half of 1835, setting out the fundamental principles of his system.74 When he had to cease writing for the Revue, he continued with this preoccupation, revising, reformulating and rearranging his system of thought. It is thus that posterity owes a great debt to Theodore Fix for having unwittingly been instrumental in inducing Sismondi to produce the three magisterial volumes of his Etudes sur les Sciences Sociales.75

Founding a periodical specialising in political economy was a courageous enterprise in the early 1830s; putting it solely at the disposal of a heterodox school of thought, namely the school of Sismondi, was well-nigh foolhardy. Fix was hoping to make his mark 'be it as Sismondi's disciple, be it as his publisher', but found himself up against a wall of indifference and bigotry. He tried hard to make the Revue a success, but arrived only at a succes d'estime. He distributed 100 gratis copies each month, he sent copies to English economists such as Malthus, James Mill, McCulloch, Thomas Tooke, and Thompson.76 He advertised the contents of the monthly sheets in the newspapers Le Temps, the Courrier francais and the Journal de Commerce. He talked to local economists as well as to Joseph Hume and 'his friend' Dr. Bowring, Bentham's secretary and editor. All to no avail; he shared the fate of six other new periodicals started within eighteen months before

72 The content of Fix's first letter is reconstructed from Sismondi's reply dated December 19, 1833, Epistolario, vol. III, No. 488, pp. 2l2/213. No other of Sismondi's letters to Fix is preserved, but Fix's letters to Sismondi are kept at Pescia. My account of the Fix episode is based on Fix's letters dated June 15, August 6, December 10, 1834 and April 29, June 2, July 1835. 73 Revue Encylopedique, vol.54 (1833) pp. 209-212 74 Vol. II and III of the Revue appeared in 1834, vol. IV in 1835. One of the articles, 'Du Prince dans les Pay Libres ou du Pouvoir executif' had actually been written and printed in 1823 for the Annales de Legislation et d'Economie Politique in Geneva, but was not published because of the suppression, under pressure on the part of the Holy Alliance, of that brilliant periodical edited i.a. by Sismondi, Pellwgrino Rossi, and Etienne Dumont. 75 Vol. I: Etudes sur les Constitutions des Peuples Libres, Paris 1838; vols. II and III: Etudes sur l'Economie Politique, Paris 1837 and 1838. 76 Probably William Thompson who died in 1833, but possibly Thomas Perrouet Thompson, the editor of the Westminster Review. 25 the Revue, running into financial trouble because of the limited number of potential subscribers. The only exception was the Revue du Progres Social with about 100 subscribers, but with Guizot, the eminent historian and minister of Public Instruction, paying for another thirty to forty copies.77 Instead of acquiring reputation and influence, Fix was faxed with grievous financial loss.

Early in 1835, he turned to the two leading French economists, Blanque and Rossi, both incumbents of chairs previously held by J-B. Say. He met with a favourable response: they were prepared to rescue the Revue by financial support as well as by becoming contributors. It was rescue at a price, the loss of managerial and intellectual independence. 'What to do in the presence of such formidable adversaries - I shall end up by succumbing', and that is what happened. Fix, while condemning Rossi's Ricardian approach to political economy, was fascinated by his personality. He assured Sismondi time and again of his eternal gratitude and his fidelity to Sismondi's principles, but, as he said himself, he saw no way out but to yield to temptation. Up to the end of 1834, the first three volumes of the Revue showed the name of Theodore Fix as the only editor on the title page. Now the names of Blanqui, Rossi, Emile Pereira, the Saint-Simonist, and Beres were added. Sismondi's name, first to be included, was eliminated by his own wish. For a while, Fix continued giving Sismondi detailed reports on new developments in economic literature, such as Nassau Senior, whom he condemned, and Karl Heinrich Raw, one of the leading German economists who had just avowed himself to be a follower of the school of 'the rightly celebrated' Sismondi. The correspondence came to an end in July 1835. Fix had assessed his own character well when he predicted his surrender to his new masters and their doctrines. After Sismond's death in 1842, he published a lengthy obituary. While paying tribute to the historian of the French people and the Richesse Commerciale, he now rejected all of Sismondi's later economic writings out of hand. He embraced the myth of the split personality as allegedly conveyed in Sismondi's economic writings:

In the first, one discovers the thinker and scholar, in the second, it is the gullible man who attacks the laws of production and the conditions of labour and population. He sees only one think in the material world: poverty which, according to him, derives from the exploitation of man by man'.78 Obviously, the defection of Fix was a cruel disappointment for Sismondi. The episode sheds much light on the impact he made at the time. Why was he regarded as a firebrand whose teaching had to

77 The market for economic publications was no better in Britain. 'Up to the year 1818, the science of political economy was scarcely known or talked of beyond a small circle of philosophers', so J.S.Mill and William Ellis in the Westminster Review of July 1825, p. 89. Although there was a tradition of agricultural journals in France and Britain, on the whole, only more generalized magazines could survive. In Geneva, however, Sismondi, with Rossi, Bellot and Dumont had been more successful with the Annales de legislation et d'economie politique in the 1820s, as well as Cherbuliez with his L'Utilitaire. 78 Theodore Fix, 'Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages economiques de M. de Sismondi', Journal des Economistes (the successor to the Revue mensuelle expired in 1836, 1843 (pp. 179-204) p.186 26 be spurned by scholars such as Rossi and Blanqui who were followers of Say with whom he had got on so well?

Judging from Fix's letters to Sismondi, the following points were singled out. Sismondi was said to be retrograde, an enemy of progress, opposed to manufacturing industry and technology, in fact, to all that incarnated the grandeur and power of the country. In particular, his recommendation of profit-sharing was repulsed as being contrary to the laws of economics although, according to Fix, it had successfully been practised at the glass works of Saint-Gobain. Sismondi was regarded as an unpatriotic foreigner and an eccentric bookworm. It is easy to see that the conformist supporters of the fashionable paradigms should see him in this light. 'For was there ever any thing projected, that savoured any way of newness or renewing, but the same endured many a storm of gainsaying and opposition?'79 Blanqui soon made use of space in the Revue to give his reasons why they had insisted on a change of direction away from Sismondi's tenets.80 His paper was a vivid oxymoron of praise and criticism.

The works which M. de Sismondi has published on political economy since the beginning of the nineteenth century display the hallmark of originality, thus distinguishing them from all the established schools without, though, initiating a new school despite the immense talent of their author... The second book of M. de Sismondi... Nouveaux Principes... is actually one of the most remarkable books published since Adam Smith, and it contains the greatest number of novel ideas that have been articulated these days concerning the ultimate questions of the science.

Blanqui had read and pondered the Nouveaux Principes six times. He welcomed Sismondi's championing of the interests of the individual at a time when 'social physiology' concentrated on mass phenomena and the production of commodities rather than their distribution. He admired Sismondi's power of observation while deploring his tendency to confuse abuses of the economic system with its normal usages. He found Sismondi excessively preoccupied with his guiding idea, the need to put an end to the exploitation of man by man; he appeared to wish to adapt the facts to his system rather than subordinating his system to the facts.81 According to Blanqui, it was a fact that the working classes were, on average, better off than ever before. There were serious drawbacks in the economic field, but they could just as well be the mere birth pangs of progress.

Sismondi's book, Blanqui said, set readers thinking more than any other work. Whenever he (Blanqui) read some pages from it to his students, 'they have precipitated a quiver of admiration and

79 'The translators to the readers' Authorised Version of the New Testament 80 'Exquisses Bibliographiques sur l'Economic Politique: Oeuvres de M. de Sismondi', Revue Mensuelle d'Economie Politique, 1835, pp. 380-390. 27 compassion hard to define'. This magic power of Sismondi was in danger of being misunderstood by any but mature readers; contrary to Sismondi's intentions, it furnished perilous weapons to the opponents of the system of individual property which Sismondi personnaly wanted to safeguard.82 Blanqui wound up his paper by stating:

I know of no other book which sets you thinking more deeply, and which could be a more effective panacea for the absolutism of abstract theories. This is the best work that has been written on political economy; and yet, the best book to succeed it will be the one which must thoroughly refute it.

Like the Christ in Dostojewski's Grand Inquisitor (in the Brothers Karamasov), Sismondi's message had to be kept away from the masses. But Blanqui conceded that the problems raised by Sismondi would not go away. To help to resolve them would in future be the most important task for economists. This suggestion contained a prediction not far off the mark; it evoked the vista of a Sismondian social market system to come in the distant future.

Even in the years after the July revolution, Sismondi's programme of welfare and profit-sharing might have been a better guide to action than the partisan pursuit of material prosperity preferred by the government; this policy resulted in cruelly suppressed riots, the revolution of 1848, and the tyranny of the Second Empire. As it was, the 'Doctrinaires' with Guizot as minister of public instruction and the Duc de Broglie as foreign minister, had set out as moderate liberals, but ended, according to Sismondi, in implementing 'policies completely opposed to mine... The cabinet, composed nearly altogether of honest and capable men, has surrendered to the fascination of power... the nation sinks into egoism, indulgence and apathy... has forsaken all that is generous and noble'.83 The economic advisers of the government were J-B. Say's successors, Blanqui and Rossi. The former, on his own, was in two minds as regards which course to follow. One may well speculate as to what the outcome would have been if, in Rossi's place, Say's son-in-law, Charles Comte had been elected to Say's Chair at the Collège de France. The election of the new Professor was, however, decided on political rather than scholarly grounds. Of the two electoral bodies, the Collège de France and the Academie des Sciences morales et politiques (whose permanent secretary was Comte), the College elected Rossi while the Academie voted in favour of Comte. In the case of stalemate the appointment was made by the minister of public instruction, Guizot, who chose Rossi with whom he had been associated since 1828 as editor of the Revue francaise and in the parti de

81 Loc.cit. p.383 82 Blanqui expressed his anxiety at a time when a number of Sain-Simonists, first under the leadership of Bazard, and later under Enfantin, had embraced socialism. 83 Letters to Mazzini of Nov. 5 1832, William Channing of Nov. 15 1833, Gran Pietro Vieusseux of Aug. 25 1833. Epistolario, vol. III, pp. 163, 179, 196 28 résistance in opposition to the Bourbon regime. It was Rossi rather than Blanqui whom Theodore Fix mentioned in his letters to Sismondi as the one who had charmed and eventually proselytised him away from his original master. The antagonism between Rossi and sismondi was political and personal no less than scholarly.84

Both men excelled in several branches of the social sciences such as history, jurisprudence, politics and economics. Both were steeped in the great tradition of European civilization. Having lived in Italy, Switzerland and France, both had made important contributions to the intellectual life of these nations. But in Rossi's case, these accomplishments were overshadowed by the man of action, the reformer of peoples, intent on personal mastery and success. Unlike Rossi, Sismondi was a selfless seeker of truths and facts, regardless of the approbation of the powerful.85 While they had things in common, there was much that kept them apart. Sismondi was an indefatigable worker, always conscious of his responsibilities towards others. Rossi was unreliable and sanguine. Sismondi blamed Rossi's indolence for having been responsible for the suppression of the Annales, and he advised the Genevan Council against acceptance of the Lex Rossi, Rossi's reform proposals for a new constitution of Switzerland; altogether, he thought him haughty and presumptuous; yet he acknowledged his talents.86

It is not surprising that Rossi fascinated Theodore Fix and turned the devoted disciple of Sismondi into a hapless double agent. Such, in fact, was the power of Rossi's charisma that he was appointed to France's most exalted Chair of Economics before he had ever published any contributions to the science.87 Honours were showered on him by a government grateful for his unwavering advocacy of its policies.88 Inevitably, his scholarly integrity became suspect; the champion of the

84 Laszlo Ledermann, Pellegrino Rossi, l'homme et l'economiste, Paris 1929, p. 220, N.1 assumes that there must have been correspondence between Rossi and Sismondi which has been lost. Given the tension between them it would appear more likely that no letters were exchanged between them. Charles Comte, then mortally ill, generously voted in 1836 for Rossi's election to the Institut de France. 85 'I do not claim to be a leader, nor can I be a follower', he told Giuseppe Mazzini. Letter of Nov. 5 1832, Epistolario, vol. III, p. 162. 86 Letters to Gian Pietro Vieusseux of July 28 1823 and Nov. 8 1824; to Bianca Milesi-Mojon of Nov. 1 1823; to Michele Ferrucci, Aug. 8 1836, to Filippo Ugoni, Dec. 12 1834, Epistolario, vol. II, pp. 359, 362; vol. III, p. 15; vol. IV, pp. 51 and 465. 87 Rossi's Cours d'Economie Politique, vols. I and II, 1840/44, vols. III and IV (posthumously 1851/54). His Traite du Droit Penal, 3 vols. 1929 was reviewed in the Edinburgh Review, No. 54, Sept. 1831, pp. 183 et seq. Rossi's achievement as a historian of Switzerland is treated by P.E. Schazmann, P. Rossi et la Suisse, Geneva 1939, pp. 107- 168. Laszlo Ledermann, op. cit. pp. 187-267 contains a detailed examination of Rossi's economics. William Rappard, Economistes Genevois du XIX siecle, ed. G. Busino, Geneva 1966 (1st ed. 1941) pp. 355-388, calls Rossi exceptionally intelligent and lucid, but lacking in creative genius. Marx, Histoire des Doctrines Economiques, trsl. J. Molitor, Paris 1947, pp. 179-182, describes Rossi's economics as a blend of Joseph Garnier, Lauderdale, Ganilh and Sismondi, his theory of production being 'the quintessence of foolishness and pretentious waffle'. Palgrave's Dictionary, 1st ed., pp. 323-327, underlines Rossi's great ability as a populariser, but deplores his timidity as a reformer, stating that 'politics drew Rossi away from his true path'. Courtois, Mignet, Cherbuliez as well as The Times published obituaries. Full biography by Comte Fleury d'Ideville, 1887. 88 Rossi was elected to the peerage with the title of a Count and appointed ambassador to the Church State. Finally, his desire to see Italy united drove him back to his native country. Pope Pius IX made him prime minister of the Church 29 establishment was felt by many to be inseparable from the scholar. While Blanque aimed at understanding Sismondi, Rossi intended to crush Sismondi's reputation and influence by means of vulgar insult. In the first number of the Revue after the takeover by the new editors, he poured scorn on Sismondi's deviation from the prevailing paradigm in the political economy of the day:

Amongst the people who occupy themselves with social economy and philanthropy, one meets today with fanatical denouncers of what they call English political economy.

Such people, i.e. Sismondi and his followers, Rossi said, were blaming Adam Smith for each and all of the ills in economic and social life. Whereas Italian, German, Spanish, Russian and Polish economists absorbed and followed Adam Smith's principles, it was left to French authors to promulgate new economic theories 'if this (expression) is not a wild exaggeration'89 No doubt Rossi's polemics and misrepresentation must have had some effect on Sismondi's standing in France. In the short term, he was the victor, though today his achievement as an economist has little to recommend itself.

State with a view to turning it into a constitutional monarchy. However, Rossi, erroneously regarded by the Italian radicals as a French stooge, was assassinated by two of his bodyguards while ascending the steps of the Chamber of Nov. 15 1848. 89 Revue Mensuelle d'Economie Politique, vol. 4, 1835, p.97. In truth, as already pointed out, detailed criticism of Smith's theories was widespread at the time. Francis Horner, when invited in 1803 to edit and introduce a new edition of the Wealth of Nations, declined to do so because 'he was reluctant to expose Smith's errors before his work had operated its full effect', quoted Wesley C. Mitchell, Types of Economic Theory (Lectures 1913-1937) ed. J. Dorfmann, New York, 1967, p. 262.