Dear Alain and colleagues,
prosperity: from the Latin Pro-spes (towards hope), that is something closer to happiness than wealth. In particolar, there is a strict link between prosperity and pubblica felicità (public happiness), the motto of Italian political/civil economy of XVIII century, a tradition coming from the Felicitas publica of Roman republic. Felicitas in fact from fe-, the same prefix of femina, ferax, fetus, concepts  very close to generativity, future ... prosperity.
Luigino

Il giorno Lunedi, Marzo 30, 2020 21:14 CEST, Alain Alcouffe <[log in to unmask]> ha scritto: 
 
> Dear colleagues
> 
> Let me emphasize that I never pretended that prosperity could not be 
> used at the end of the 18th century or nowadays as a synonym of wealth. 
> I did not deny that Smith has used prosperity in the WN as a synonym of 
> wealth. What I searched was to understand the enigmatic conclusion of 
> Adam Smith's obituary - see
> 
> https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Times/1790/Obituary/Adam_Smith
> 
> The anonymous author of this obituary (I doubt it was written by Smith) 
> made an opposition between wealth and prosperity.
> 
> If this unknown author is not just nonsensical, we can understand this 
> opposition if we take prosperity as a synonym of fortune or wellbeing or 
> happiness.
> 
> And it is just the opposition to be found in the contemporary debate GDP 
> versus GNH.
> 
> I maintain that this interpretation can be sustained by the French 
> history of the word "prospérité" and by the Oxford English dictionary.
> 
> That's all.
> 
> Now let me add two comments :
> 
> a) Smith read French of course but he wrote in French himself to Abbé 
> Blavet who had translated the WN into French (see, Correspondence, 
> #Letter 218, Glasgow edition)
> 
> b) for G. Sabbagh, please remember that Smith also wrote the TMS and you 
> will find there many times prosperity opposed to adversity just as I 
> told in my reply to James.
> But that was not my point as I was trying to understand the conclusion 
> of Smith's obituary and eventually to find the author of a paper in the 
> Tate's magazine that emphasized the opposition between wealth and happiness.
> Best
> AA
> Le 30/03/2020 à 20:42, Gabriel Sabbagh a écrit :
> > Dear colleagues,
> >
> > Please allow me a simple remark.
> > The best way of finding the meaning of the word prosperity in your 
> > context is to go through Smith’s /Wealth of Nations and examine its 
> > occurrences there./
> > It is quite easy to do this. I did it for the first 1776 edition. In 
> > my opinion it confirms that /prosperity/had in 1776
> > and presumably at the end of the eighteenths century a meaning very 
> > similar to the one of /wealth./
> > With best wishes,
> >
> > Gabriel Sabbagh