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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