ITALY
The first Italian translation of the Wealth of Nations appeared in 1780.The most distinguished Italian economist of theperiod here dealt with was,however,no disciple of Smith.This was Melehiorre Gioja,author,besides statistical and otherwritings,of a voluminous work entitled Nuovo Prospetto delle Scienze Economiche (6vols.,181517;the work was nevercompleted),intended to be an encyclopaedia of all that had been taught by theorists,enacted by Governments,or effected bypopulations in the field of public and private economy It is a learned and able treatise,but so overladen with quotations andtables as to repel rather than attract readers.Gioja admired the practical economic system of England,and enlarges on theadvantages of territorial properties,manufactures,and mercantile enterprises on the large as opposed to the small scale.Hedefends a restrictive policy,and insists on the necessity of the action of the state as a guiding,supervising,and regulatingpower in the industria]world.But he is in full sympathy with the sentiment of his age against ecclesiastical domination andother mediaeval survivals.We can but very briefly notice Romagnosi (d.1835),who,by his contributions to periodicalliterature,and by his personal teaching,greatly influenced the course of economic thought in Italy;Antonio Scialoja(Principii d'Economia Sociale ,1840;and Carestia e Governo ,1853),an able advocate of free trade (d.1877)LuigiCibrario,well known as the author of Economia Politica del medic evo (1839;5th ed.,1861:French trans.by Barneaud,1859),which is in fact a view of the whole social system of that period;Girolamo Boccardo (b.1829;TrattatoTeorico-pratico di Economia Politica ,1853);the brilliant controversialist Francesco Ferrara,professor at Turin from 1849to 1858(in whose school most of the present Italian teachers of the science were,directly or indirectly,educated),a partisanof the laisser faire doctrine in its most extreme form,and an advocate of the peculiar opinions of Carey and Bastiat on thesubject of rent;and,lastly,the Neapolitan minister Ludovico Bianchini (Principii della Scienza del Ben Vivere Sociale ,1845and 1855),who is remarkable as having followed in some degree an historical direction,and asserted the principle ofrelativity,and who also dwelt on the relations of economics with morals,by a due attention to which the Italian economistshave,indeed,in general been honourably distinguished.
SPAIN
The Wealth of Nations was translated into Spanish by J.A.Ortiz in 1794.It may perhaps have influenced Gaspar deJovellanos,who in 1795presented to the council of Castile and printed in the same year his celebrated Informe de LaSociedad Economica de Madrid en expediente de Ley Agraria ,which was a powerful plea for reform,especially in taxationand the laws affecting agriculture,including those relating to the systems of entail and mortmain.An English version of thismemoir is given in the translation (1809)of Laborde's Spain ,vol.iv.GERMANYRoscher observes that Smith did not at first produce much impression in Germany.(73)He does not appear to have beenknown to Frederick the Great;he certainly exercised no influence on him.Nor did Joseph II take notice of his work.And ofthe minor German princes,Karl Friedrich of Baden,as a physiocrat,would not be accessible to his doctrines.It wasotherwise in the generation whose principal activity belongs to the first decade of the 19th century.The Prussian statesmenwho were grouped round Stein had been formed as economists by Smith,as had also Gentz,intellectually the mostimportant man of the Metternich regime in Austria.
The first German expositors of Smith who did more than merely reproduce his opinions were Christian Jacob Kraus(17531807),Georg Sartorius (17661828),and August Ferdinand Lüder (17601819).They contributed independentviews from different standpoints,the first from that of the effect of Smith's doctrine on practical government,the secondfrom that of its bearing on history,the third from that of its relation to statistics.Somewhat later came Gottlieb Hufeland(17601817),Johann Friedrich Eusebius Lotz (17711838),and Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob (17591827),who,whilstessentially of the school of Smith,apply themselves to a revision of the fundamental conceptions of the science.Theseauthors did not exert anything like the wide influence of Say,partly on account of the less attractive form of their writings,but chiefly because Germany had not then,like France,a European audience.Julius von Soden (17541831)is largelyfounded on Smith,whom,however,he criticises with undue severity,especially in regard to his form and arrangement;the Wealth of Nations he describes as a series of precious fragments,and censures Smith for the absence of a comprehensiveview ofthis whole subject,and also as one-sidedly English in his tendencies.
The highest form of the Smithian doctrine in Germany is represented by four distinguished names :Karl Heinrich Rau(17921870),Friedrich Nebenius (17841857),Friedrich Benedict Wilhelm Hermann (17951868),and Johann Hemrich vonThünen (17831850).
Rau's characteristic is "erudite thoroughness."His Lehrbuch (182632)is an encyclopaedia of all that up to his time hadappeared in Germany under the several heads of Volkswirthschaftslehre ,Volkswirthschaftspolitik ,and Finanzwissenschaft .