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Scots, Jews, and Subversives Among the Dismal Scientists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

William D. Grampp
William D. Grampp
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Chicago Circle
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Abstract

The most curious of the detractors of classical economics said it was the work of Scots, Jews, and subversives. The charges were meant to turn back the movement toward the free market, but there was some truth in them. Classical economics did begin in Scotland, Ricardo was Jewish, it was the policy of the Parliamentary Radicals, and it did threaten some major institutions. The paper describes how and to what effect these facts were used by men who each for his own reason did not like the market.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , September 1976 , pp. 543 - 571
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1976

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References

1 O'Brien, D. P., J. R. MʼCulloch: A Study in Classical Economics (New York, 1970)Google Scholar.

2 Noctes Ambrosianae (April, 1824) by the late John Wilson, et al., Mackenzie, R. Shelton, ed. (New York, 1857), 1: 418Google Scholar.

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5 Mill until about 1840 was nearly worshipful of Carlyle and wanted to be with him when James Mill died. “It seemed to me the strangest thing what this man could want with me or I with such a man so unheimlich to me,” Carlyle said; Neff, Emery, Carlyle and Mill. An Introduction to Victorian Thought, 2nd ed. (New York, 1926), pp. 29–30Google Scholar. To Ruskin, Carlyle was “master.” To Carlyle, Ruskin was “a most well-meaning, but abstruse, weakish, confused and more or less absurd, bewildered and bewildering man;” to his brother John, Sept. 9, 1875, Letters of Thomas Carlyle, 1871–75, Transcripts, National Library of Scotland, Ms. 620.

6 Cobbett, William, Paper Against Gold (London, 1810)Google Scholar; The Political Register, May 3, 1825; April 9, 1825; December 11, 1824; Rural Rides, Cole, G. D. H. and Cole, Margaret, eds. (London, 1930), 1:81Google Scholar; 1:413. Cobbett's feelings were shared by Charles Lamb who, one would suppose, was as different from him as one man can be from another. In “Imperfect Sympathies,” one of the Essays of Elia, he confesses that try as he might he cannot help but dislike “Scotchmen” and (again like Cobbett) that he has imperfect sympathies for Jews and Quakers, adding to those three groups, Negroes (as Cobbett did not). Lamb calls attention to others before him having disliked the Scots, such as Swift and Smollett.

7 Peacock also made a sally against Malthus, who appears as “Mr. Fax” in Melincourt (1817), but found him an unsuitable subject, possibly because in the effort he discovered Malthus's good sense (which even the caricature reveals).

8 Peacock in fact would have been dismayed if he had known how knowledgeable MʼCulloch was about the classics. His personal library included works in Latin. The Greek works are in translation, but he seems to have known the language because when he entered college he could recite most of the Iliad by memory. In his Edinburgh lectures, he quoted Virgil (and Bacon) in Latin and showed that he knew the history of Rome as well as Peacock did. See MʼCulloch's, Discourse on the Rise, Progress, Peculiar Objects, and Importance of Political Economy: Containing an Outline of a Course of Lectures on the Principles and Doctrines of That Science (Edinburgh, 1824), pp. 98, 108–109Google Scholar; and “Sketches of the History of Commerce to the Sixteenth Century,” Treatises and Essays on Subjects Connected with Economical Policy; etc. (Edinburgh, 1853), pp. 304–305Google Scholar. For a complimentary view of MʼCulloch by a contemporary (a rare thing indeed); see the Autobiographical Notes written by Thomas Murray in 1840 and edited and published later by J. A. Fairley (Dumfries, 1911).

9 See Grampp, William D., Economic Liberalism (New York, 1965), 1:152–53Google Scholar.

10 Peacock, Westminster Review, 13:26 (Oct., 1830), 166, 187.

11 Peacock, Gryll Grange (1860).

12 The crisis, by one report, was more the result of British banks making imprudent loans than of their issuing paper currency to excess. Nevertheless, the Liverpool government brought in a bill to prohibit them from issuing notes in denominations of less than £5. The proposal went much against the grain in Scotland, where the banks had been issuing one pound notes since 1704, and renewed the ancient feelings against England. Sir Walter Scott wrote a series of letters to the Edinburgh Weekly under the pseudonym (meant to ridicule MʼCulloch, classical economics, and the English) of “Malachi Malagrowther.” The bill in its course through Parliament was amended so as to apply only to English banks, and those in Scotland and Ireland continued to issue small notes. See Kerr, Andrew W., History of Banking in Scotland, 4th ed. (London, 1926), pp. 175, 177–78Google Scholar. A Royal Commission of 1826 heard testimony that during the crisis people in the north of England found Scottish currency more “reliable” than English. See Graham, William, The Bank Note Circulation of Scotland, 4th ed. (Edinburgh, 1907), pp. 3, 6Google Scholar. The crisis began in December 1825, and while it was not protracted it was still felt when MʼCulloch began his lectures in London in March, 1826. They were reported in The Circulator of Useful Knowledge, Literature, Amusement, and General Information, a London weekly, beginning with the issue of March 26, 1826. That convertibility of paper into gold was favored by the great majority of economists, and not only by Ricardo and MʼCulloch, is made clear by Fetter, Frank W., “Economic Controversy in the British Reviews, 1802–1850,” Economica, N. S. 32 (Nov. 1965), 424–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Paper Money Lyrics, and Other Poems, The Works of Thomas Love Peacock, Brett-Smith, H. F. B. and Jones, C. E., eds. (New York, 1967), 7Google Scholar, and “The Epicier,” ibid., 9.

14 Noctes Ambrosianae, 3:444.

15 Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 97:417 (March 10, 1848).

16 Engels, Friedrich, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, trans. Wishnewetzky, Florence Kelley (London, 1892), pp. 276–77Google Scholar. He presented his compliments to “the liberal, Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie” and said, “Political Economy, the Science of Wealth, is the favorite study of these bartering Jews.”

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19 The Weekly Dispatch (London), June 4, 1820Google Scholar.

20 Cobbett, Political Register, May 20, 1820; May 18, 1822; September 4, 1819; Oct. 29, 1827.

21 Quoted by Sraffa, in The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Sraffa, P., ed. (Cambridge, 1952), 9:267nGoogle Scholar.

22 Ricardo's notes on the pamphlet and passages from it are in Appendix II of Works, 5:526–28.

23 Clissold was paraphrasing The Wealth of Nations, Bk. 3, ch. iv: “A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.”

24 The English Chronicle and Whitehall Evening Post (London), April 25/27, 1820Google Scholar.

25 The Sun (London), June 2, and July 19, 1820.

26 Cobbett, Political Register, March 15, 1823; Jan. 13, 1827.

27 Atkinson, Solomon, A Second Letter to the Right Hon. W. Huskisson on the Effects of Free Trade on our Shipping, Colonies and Commerce (London, 1827)Google Scholar.

28 The remarkable extent to which Shelley drew on Cobbett is described in an unpublished paper by W. C. Jackman, “Shelley's Views on Electoral Reform.” Peacock revered the gold-coin standard that Cobbett advocated and detested paper money. (See Paper Money Lyrics, especially “Love and the Flimsies.”) Peacock supplied Shelley with the Political Register when the latter was abroad, and the two of them made, frequent mention of Cobbett in their letters; Hogg, Thomas Jefferson, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London, 1933), 2: 389, 420, 426, 443, 452Google Scholar.

29 deLanautte Hauterive, Alexandre M. B., Elemens d'économie politique, etc. (Paris, 1817), p. 368Google Scholar.

30 The members are named in Political Economy Club, Etc. (London, 1860), 1Google Scholar. Information about them was obtained from the standard biographical dictionaries and The Annual Register.

31 One is informed that whiskey is an exception as it was not an invention of the Scots but their “insprr-ation.”

32 Ricardo, Works, 10:37–39.

33 Ibid., 10:22, and Jewish Historical Society of England, Miscellanies (London, 1937), 3:85Google Scholar.

34 Wilson, Noctes Ambrosianae, 2:267.

35 “The Paper System” meant an economy in which wealth, as things like land, stocks of goods, tools, and people, was supplanted by the paper representations of wealth, like currency, securities, and other evidences of debt and ownership. It was the object of the ire of Cobbett and the literati who took instruction in monetary economics from him. It was most fully described and deplored, however, by the American, John Taylor. See Grampp, William D., “John Taylor: Economist of Southern Agrarianism,” Southern Economic Journal, 11 (Jan. 1945), 263–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 “Trower to Ricardo,” (May 28, 1819), Works, 8:31.

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38 Emden, Paul H., “The Brothers Goldsmid and the Financing of the Napoleonic Wars,” in Jewish Historical Society of England, Transactions, 14 (London, 1940), 225–46Google Scholar. Cobbett, Political Register, July 17, 1824.

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42 Ibid., 10:16.

43 “Bentham,” Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto, 1969), 10:79Google Scholar. I am indebted to Rondo Cameron for calling my attention to this statement.

44 Joseph Hume had a part in the making of a large number of economic policies and is probably best known for securing the repeal of the Combination Laws in 1824. Francis Burdett in 1799 spoke against such laws “on grounds of having all things of this kind, as well as articles of any marketable nature, to find their own level;” Woodfall, William et al. , Debates … in the Two Houses of Parliament, etc. (London, 1799), 3:235Google Scholar. Ricardo was on friendly terms with Hobhouse about economic policy but did not agree with all of Hobhouse's ideas of political reform, notably a universal suffrage; “Ricardo to Mill,” (Dec. 12, 1818) Works, 7:360. Place was an enthusiastic supporter of what he understood to be Ricardo's ideas and was a missionary to the working class. He made extensive notes on Ricardo's Principles, and Ricardo went over with care the manuscript of a pamphlet on population by Place; Works, (Sept. 9, 1821) 9:49–57. On Mill and Place, see Wallas, Graham, The Life of Francis Place (London, 1951), p. 72Google Scholar. Leigh Hunt in his prison journal (March 18, 1813) wrote “of a very pleasant visit from Mr. Mill (a Benthamite) …”; The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, Hunt, Thornton, ed. (London, 1862), 1:83Google Scholar. He and his brother expressed support for the merchants in the May 14, 1820, issue of The Examiner (London).

45 An example is Ricardo's letter to Malthus (Nov. 9, 1819), Works, 8:129.

48 Letter of Oct. 5, 1832, Napier Papers, Vol. V, ff. 425–26. British Museum, Add. M. 34,613.

47 For a brief summary of the political ideas of Malthus see my “Malthus and His Contemporaries,” History of Political Economy, 3:3 (Fall 1974), 295–96, 297Google Scholar.

48 Gross national income is in Mitchell, Brian R., Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1962), p. 392Google Scholar, as are prices (p. 471) and taxes (p. 392). Additional price information and per capita real and money income are in Phyllis Deane, “Contemporary Estimates of National Income in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 8 (April 1956), 345 (Table 4), and id., “Contemporary Estimates of National Income in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” ibid., 9 (April 1957), 459 (Table 4).

49 Cockburn, Lord, Life of Lord Jeffrey (Philadelphia, 1857), 1:203Google Scholar.

50 The Morning Chronicle (London), May 18, 1820Google Scholar.

51 Idem.

52 The Address was reprinted in Cobbett's Political Register, April 15, 1820.

53 The London merchants acknowledged in their petition that imports would injure competing domestic firms but insisted that free trade would bring about a “more beneficial employment of our own Capital and Labour.” The petition is printed in full in Tooke, Thomas, A History of Prices and the State of the Circulation From 1792 to 1856 (London, 1857) 6:332–35Google Scholar. Liverpool said there was nothing in the petition with which he did not “most cordially concur …. But in this country, … so many vested interests have grown up, … the case [for free trade] is very different”; ibid., 6:340. In presenting the petition to the Commons, Baring, said, “that to which the petitioners principally referred, was as great a freedom of trade as was compatible with other and important considerations,” one of them being legitimate vested interests; Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 1:169 (May 8, 1820)Google Scholar. Ricardo acknowledged that certain vested interests were legitimate on several occasions, one of them in the House when the petition was submitted; Works, 5:43–44, and Hansard, , Parliamentary Debates, 1:191 (May 8, 1820)Google Scholar.

54 Brougham, in the 1820 debate over the Corn Laws, conceded that free trade would reduce the price of bread and benefit the consumer. But, he continued, “the destruction of one portion of the community could not be considered a benefit, because another portion gained by it. This was a proposition, which no philosopher or political economist, had ever attempted to deny or dispute”; Annual Register, 1820 (London, 1822), 1:70Google Scholar.

55 The Morning Herald (London), May 26, 1820Google Scholar.

56 Hansard, , Parliamentary Debates, 15:772Google Scholar (Feb. 23, 1826).

57 Morley, John, The Life of Richard Cobden (London, 1906), p. 395Google Scholar.

58 Tooke, History of Prices, 6:337; Grampp, W. D., The Manchester School of Economics (Stanford, 1960) p. 59Google Scholar.

59 The three were Baring, Milton, Lord, and Ellice, Edward. Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 1:195–97, 190, 193–94 (May 8, 1820)Google Scholar.

60 Works, 5:522–28.

61 For the speech of Western, see Hansard, , Parliamentary Debates, 9:833–49Google Scholar (June 11, 1823). Ricardo's reply is in his Works, 5:309–21.

62 (Sept. 21, 1819) Works, 8:74.

63 Edinburgh Review, Jan., 1839, 439.

64 Letter of Feb. 3, 1831, Napier Papers, Vol. 5, f. 490.