This paper demonstrates how Adam Smith was influenced in this thinking with respect to very important questions both by Jansenism, through the works of Bemard Mandeville, and by the Germanic version of mercantilism, that is to say cameralism, through Bielfeld’s htitutions Poitiques, with these infiuences being totally forgotten by presentday neoliberalism. Smith himself contributed towards this unknown element by providing an exaggerated simplification of what was considered as the “mercantile sys tem” in The Weafth ofNutions. The key concept of the “invisible hand, which leads markets towards self-regulation has a direct antecedent in Mandeville, when he spoke in terms of the deft manipulation of a skilful politician, a manipulation that is decisive within the institutionai frame work or the policy that is implemented in the decision-making process which takes place in the market. Secondly, we show the direct influence or plagiarism of Bielfeld’s Institufions Pofitiques (1760) in Smith’s Lecrures on Justice, Police, Revenue und Arm (1763). This influence diminished, but did not disappear altogether, in The Weulth ofNut¿ons, as is revealed in the Edwin Cannan edition, which maintains elements of the polizeiwissenscha.

Keywords: Jacob Friedrich Bielfeld, cameralism, Bemard Mandeville, invisible hand, police, Adam Smith.