Profile Major Works Resources

Comte Germain Garnier, 1754-1821.

French aristocrat and politician, late Physiocrat, monetary economist. Germain Garnier is probably best remembered as the main French translator of Adam Smith, and one of the progenitors of the French Liberal School.

Born in Auxerre to a notable family and trained in law, Germain Garnier had some entry into the court of Louis XVI.  He was a delegate for Paris to the Estates-General of 1789.   A constitutional monarchist, Garnier defended property qualifications for electoral suffrage in his anonymous 1792 tract.

With the rise of the terror in 1793, Garnier fled to Switzerland, returning only with the installation of  Directory in 1795  (to which Garnier was a candidate in 1797, but failed to obtain a position).  It was at this time that Garnier published his first economics work, his 1796 Abrégé, which demonstrated Physiocratic influence and seemed build upon Cantillon (although the latter is not cited).  His "income pyramid" relating income and prices to quantity demanded can be conceived as a primitive demand function, and was later taken up by J.B. Say.

After the Bonapartist coup, Garnier was appointed prefect of the department of Seine-et-Oise in 1800.  In 1802, Garnier produced a French translation of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.  This was the third French translation (after Abbé Blavet's and the poet Roucher's), but probably the best and most popular one.  The preface included a long disquisition comparing Smith to the Physiocrats, arguing that while Smith was superior and doubtlessly more useful, the Physiocrats were not themselves wrong either.  The fifth volume contained Garnier's extensive notes on the treatise.  Garnier's preface and notes were arguably the first significant review of Adam Smith's economics in any language, a quarter century after its first appearance.  Garnier's preface was subsequently translated and frequently appended to English editions of Smith's treatise. Garnier expanded the preface for the 1822 edition. Comte Garnier's translation was revised by Adolphe Blanqui in 1843 and then again by Joseph Garnier in 1859.

Garnier was appointed senator by Napoleon in 1804, elevated to count (comte) in 1808 and made president of the senate in 1809.  With the Bourbon restoration in 1814, Garnier was elevated to a peerage and appointed to the Chamber of Peers by the Bourbon king Louis XVIII, where he made a name for himself as an expert on money and finance, although his main scholarly interest was in ancient money.  Garnier was subsequently made a member of the council of state and privy council, and, in 1817, elevated to marquis.

(Not to be confused with Joseph Garnier)

 

  


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Major Works of Comte Germain Garnier

  • ['Anon] De la Propriété, considérée dans ses rapports avec le droit politique, 1792 [bk]
  • Abrégé élémentaire des principes de l'économie politique, 1796 [bk]
  • "Preface du Traducteur" (v.1, p.i) and "Notes du Traducteur" (v.5, p.1), 1802, - from Comte Garnier's translation of Smith [Eng. 1806 trans: "A Short View of the Doctrine of Smith, compared with that of the French economists", p.xxxiii]
  • Description geographique, physique, et politique du departement de Seine-et-Oise, 1802
  • Histoire des banques d'escompte, 1806
  • Rapport de M. le Comte Germain-Garnier, au nom de la Commission Spéciale de sept members chargés, par la Chambre des Pairs, dans la séance du 20 avril 1816, de l'Examen du Projet du Loi sur les Finances, 1816. [bk]
  • Mémoire sur la valeur des monnaies de compte chez les peuples de l'antiquité, 1817 [bk] [repr. 1819]
  • Second Mémoire sur la valeur des monnaies de compte chez les peuples de l'antiquité, 1817 [bk] [repr. in 1819]
  • Observations en réponse aux considérations générales de M. Letronne sur l'évaluation des monnaies grecque et sur la valeur de l'or et l'argent avant la découverte de l'Amérique, 1818 [repr. in 1819]
  • [Anon] Appel à tous le propriétaires de l'Europe, ou manifeste de la société contre les partis qui la tourmentent, par un ami de l'ordre et de la liberté 1818/20 [bk]
  • Histoire de la Monnaie, depuis les temps de la plus haute antiquité jusqu'au regne de Charlemagne, 1819, v.1, v.2.
  • "Preface du Traducteur" (Enlarged), in 1822 edition of Garnier's translation of Smith, p.xix

HET

 

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Resources on Comte Germain Garnier

 

 
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