The Nineteenth Century

Parvini, Neema

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-39452-3_5

Neema Parvini²

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the defenders of liberty in the 1800s. The bulk of this chapter will consider a key episode in British economic history, the Repeal of the Corn Laws. The genuine champions of repeal were Nassau William Senior and Richard Cobden who campaigned for over a decade as the leader of the Anti-Corn Law League. However, by way of contrast, it chiefly focuses on the arguments made by David Ricardo, who was not the unrestrained champion of international free trade that one might imagine, and in the process outlines some of the errors of the classical economists. It then turns, in two briefer sections, to the inheritor of Cobden’s Anti-Corn Law League, Herbert Spencer, and to the inheritor of Richard Cantillon and A.R.J. Turgot in the French Liberal School, Jean-Baptiste Say and his frequently misunderstood Law of Markets. It argues that liberals should seek to rehabilitate both Spencer, who has in many ways been unfairly smeared, and Say’s Law, which was famously misrepresented by John Maynard Keynes.

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Notes

1.
B.R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (1988; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 9, 53–8, 124, 432, 451–3, 722–3, 149–50.
2.
William D. Grampp, The Manchester School of Economics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 95.
3.
Norman McCord, The Anti-Corn Law League: 1838–1846 (1958; New York and London: Routledge, 2006), p. 15.
4.
Roger Scruton, Where We Are: The State of Britain Now (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2017), pp. 199–200; Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, 7th edn. (1953; Washington, DC: Gateway Editions, 2016), p. 390.
5.
John Bright’s motives for leading the league were more political in nature; see Grampp, The Manchester School of Economics, pp. 98–9.
6.
Asa Briggs, The Age of Improvement: 1783–1867 (1959; New York and London: Routledge, 2014), p. 271.
7.
Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, ed. Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter (1954; New York and London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 374–5.
8.
Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, pp. 756–7, 769–70, 165, 452–3, 9. Note that the prices for bread are average for London.
9.
Irving Fisher, ‘The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depression’, Econometrica, 1:4 (October 1933), pp. 337–57.
10.
Lionel Robbins, A History of Economic Thought: The LSE Lectures, ed. Steven G. Medema and Warren J. Samuels (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 176.
11.
Simon Morgan, ‘Richard Cobden and British Imperialism’, Journal of Liberal History, 45 (Winter 2004), pp. 16–21.
12.
Michael Edelstein, ‘Foreign Investment and Empire, 1860–1914’, in R. C. Floud and D. N. McCloskey (eds.), The Economic History of Britain since 1700, 3 vols, 2nd edn (1981: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), vol 2, p. 185.
13.
Patrick O’Brien, ‘The Costs and Benefits of British Imperialism, 1846–1914’, Past and Present, 140 (August 1988), p. 187.
14.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan (1776; New York: Modern Library, 2000), 5.3, p. 1028.
15.
Grampp, The Manchester School of Economics, p. 16.
16.
Smith, The Wealth of Nations, pp. 493–4, 644–6.
17.
Ibid., p. 499.
18.
Kirk, The Conservative Mind, p. 132.
19.
David Ricardo, ‘On Protection to Agriculture’, in The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. Piero Sraffa, 11 vols (1951; Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2004), vol 4, pp. 210–70.
20.
Scraffa , ‘Note on “Protection to Agriculture”’, in Ibid., p. 201.
21.
Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey, From the Corn Laws to Free Trade: Interests, Ideas and Institutions in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006), p. 10.
22.
Grampp, The Manchester School of Economics, p. 98.
23.
Ricardo, ‘On Protection to Agriculture’, p. 218.
24.
Grampp, The Manchester School of Economics, p. 18.
25.
Nassau William Senior, ‘Report—On the State of Agriculture’, Quarterly Review, 25:2 (July 1821), pp. 467–504.
26.
Robbins, A History of Economic Thought, p. 180.
27.
Scraffa, ‘Note on “Protection to Agriculture”’, p. 201.
28.
Ricardo, ‘On Protection to Agriculture’, p. 264.
29.
Stephen John Pam, Essex Agriculture: Landowners’ and Farmers’ Responses to Economic Change, 1850–1914, PhD diss (London: London School of Economics, 2004), p. 89.
30.
Robbins, A History of Economic Thought, p. 181.
31.
See David R. Stead, ‘The Mobility of English Tenant Farmers, c. 1700–1850’, The Agricultural History Review, 51:3 (2003), pp. 173–89.
32.
Pam, Essex Agriculture, p. 133.
33.
Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, pp. 756–7, 195.
34.
See Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy and State with Power and Market (1962; Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2009), p. 928. A near-identical analysis can be found using neoclassical language in Greg Mankiw and Mark P. Taylor, Economics, 3rd edn (Andover: Cengage Learning, 2014), p. 193.
35.
Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, ed. Geoffrey Gilbert (1798; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 12.
36.
Ricardo, ‘On Protection to Agriculture’, p. 263.
37.
Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, p. 756.
38.
Ibid., p. 195.
39.
Ibid., pp. 103, 111.
40.
For a fascinating account of this see Pam, Essex Agriculture.
41.
Cormac Ó Gráda, ‘British Agriculture, 1860–1914’, in Floud and D. N. McCloskey, vol 2, p. 153.
42.
Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, p. 202.
43.
Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, Capital and Interest, trans. George D. Hunke and Hans F. Sennholz, 3 vols (1884; South Holland, IL: Libertarian Press, 1959), vol 2: The Positive Theory of Capital, p. 336.
44.
Grampp, The Manchester School of Economics, p. 25.
45.
See David Ricardo, ‘On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation’ (1817), in The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. Piero Sraffa, 11 vols (1951; Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2004), vol 1, especially pp. 95–109.
46.
Edwin Cannan, A History of the Theories of Production and Distribution (1893; New York: August M. Kelley, 1967), p. 142. See Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, p. 553; Robbins, A History of Economic Thought, p. 182.
47.
Pam, Essex Agriculture, p. 132.
48.
Walter Begehot, quoted in Murray N. Rothbard, An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, 2 vols (1995; Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006), vol 2: Classical Economics, p. 98n.
49.
B.R. Mitchell, Economic Development of the British Coal Industry, 1800–1904 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 192.
50.
Ibid., pp. 197–9.
51.
Christopher Hanes ‘The Rise and Fall of the Sliding Scale, or Why Wages are No Longer Indexed to Product Prices’, Explorations in Economic History, 47:1 (January 2010), pp. 49–67.
52.
Grampp, The Manchester School of Economics, p. 32.
53.
Senior, ‘Report—On the State of Agriculture’, pp. 475–6.
54.
Carl Menger, The Principles of Economics, trans James Dingwell and Bert F. Hoselitz (1871; Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007), pp. 149–74.
55.
Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, trans. J. Kahane (1922; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1951), pp. 114–22.
56.
Rothbard, Classical Economics, p. 86.
57.
Pam, Essex Agriculture, p. 43.
58.
George Stigler, Production and Distribution Theories: The Formative Period (New York: Macmillan, 1941), p. 285.
59.
‘Food Statistics in Your Pocket 2017—Global and UK Supply’, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (9 October 2018), available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/food-statistics-pocketbook-2017/food-statistics-in-your-pocket-2017-global-and-uk-supply.
60.
Senior, ‘Report—On the State of Agriculture’, p. 496.
61.
Rothbard, Classical Economics, p. 150.
62.
F.A. Hayek, ‘Prices and Production’ (1931), in Business Cycles, Part 1, ed. Hanjoerg Klausinger (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2012), pp. 193–284.
63.
Senior, ‘Report—On the State of Agriculture’, p. 496.
64.
Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, p. 607.
65.
Alberto Mingardi, Herbert Spencer (New York and London: Continuum, 2011), p. 25.
66.
John Offer, Herbert Spencer and Social Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 227.
67.
Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, ed. Stanislav Andreski (1896; London: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 781, 767–8.
68.
Oswald Spengler, Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson and Michael Putnam (1931; London: Arktos, 2015), p. 33.
69.
Quoted in Mingardi, Herbert Spencer, ibid., p. 49.
70.
Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, or The Conditions essential to Happiness specified, and the First of them Developed (1851; London: Robert Shackleford Publishers, 1995), pp. 132, 123, 145, 138, 192, 185, 189.
71.
Ibid., pp. 185–366.
72.
Herbert Spencer, The Man versus The State (1884; Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1982), p. 123.
73.
Ibid., p. 80.
74.
George H. Smith, The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 189.
75.
Spencer, The Man versus The State, p. 83.
76.
Herbert Spencer, ‘Over-Legislation’ (1853), in Ibid., pp. 286–7.
77.
Spencer, Social Statics, pp. 339, 338.
78.
Ibid., pp. 339–40.
79.
Ibid., p. 340.
80.
Ibid., p. 340.
81.
Joel Adams, ‘How nearly HALF British adults pay NO income tax: HMRC data reveals a record 23 million leave 31m to foot bill for running the country’, Daily Mail (6 August 2019), available at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7326881/How-nearly-HALF-British-adults-pay-NO-income-tax-data-reveals-23-million-adults-exempt-PAYE.html.
82.
‘Statistics on Drug Misuse, England, 2018’, NHS Digital (28 November 2018), available at: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/statistics-on-drug-misuse/november-2018-update.
83.
Gavin Thompson, Oliver Hawkins, Aliyah Dar, and Mark Taylor, Olympic Britain: Social and Economic Change since the 1908 and 1948 Olympic Games (London: House of Commons Library, 2012), p. 154.
84.
Oliver Moody, ‘Dumb and Dumber: Why We’re Getting Less Intelligent’, The Times (12 June 2018), available at: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dumb-and-dumber-why-we-re-getting-less-intelligent-80k3bl83v.
85.
Barbara Oakley, Ariel Knafo, Guruprasad Madhavan, David Sloan Wilson (eds), Pathological Altruism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Paul Bloom, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (New York: Harper Collins, 2016).
86.
Neema Parvini, ‘How the United Kingdom Became a Police State’, Mises Wire (6 July 2018), available at: https://mises.org/wire/how-united-kingdom-became-police-state.
87.
Henry Hazlitt, ‘From Spencer’s 1884 to Orwell’s 1984’ (1969), in The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt, ed. Hans F. Sennholz (New York: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1993), p. 174.
88.
Edward W. Younkins, Champions of a Free Society: Ideas of Capitalism’s Philosophers and Economists (New York: Lexington Books, 2008), p. 138.
89.
Charles S. Telly, ‘The Classical Economic Model and the Nature of Property in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, Tulsa Law Review, 13:2 (1978), p. 451.
90.
Jean-Baptiste Say, A Treatise on Political Economy, trans. C.R. Prinsep, 6th edn (1832; Philadelphia, PA: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, 1880), 1.14, p. 130.
91.
Thomas Sowell, Say’s Law: An Historical Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 115–41.
92.
Ibid., pp. 201–28; W.H. Hutt, A Rehabilitation of Say’s Law (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1974), pp. 24–5.
93.
Rothbard, Classical Economics, p. 34.
94.
Steve Kates, Say’s Law and the Keynesian Revolution How Macroeconomic Theory Lost its Way (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1998).
95.
Ludwig von Mises, ‘Lord Keynes and Say’s Law’ (1950), in Planning for Freedom: Let the System Work, ed. Bettina Bien Greaves (1952; Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2008), p. 97.
96.
William J. Baumol, ‘Say’s (at Least) Eight Laws, or What Say and James Mill May Really Have Meant’, 44:174 (May 1977), pp. 145–61.
97.
Henry Hazlitt, The Failure of the New Economics: An Analysis of Keynesian Fallacies (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1959), p. 32.
98.
Sowell, Say’s Law, p. 22.
99.
Knut Wicksell, Lectures on Political Economy, ed. Lionel Robbins, trans. E. Classen, 2 vols (1906; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), vol 2, pp. 159–60.
100.
Mises, ‘Lord Keynes and Say’s Law’, p. 96.
101.
Hutt, A Rehabilitation of Say’s Law, pp. 5–6.
102.
Say, A Treatise on Political Economy, 1.17, p. 176.
103.
Ibid., pp. 134–5.
104.
Rothbard, Classical Economics, p. 32, emphasis mine.
105.
Hutt, A Rehabilitation of Say’s Law, p. 68.
106.
Walter Block, Defending the Undefendable (1976; Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008), pp. 113–14.
107.
F.A. Hayek, ‘Frédéric Bastiat (1801–50)’, in The Trend of Economic Thinking: Essays on Political Economists and Economic History, ed. W.W. Bartley III and Stephen Kresge (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1991), p. 347.
108.
Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Sophisms and ‘What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen’, trans. Jane Willems and Michel Willems (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2016), pp. 49–52.
109.
Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, 2nd edn. (1946; New York: Three Rivers Press, 1979), p. 17.

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School of Literature and Languages, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
Neema Parvini

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Parvini, N. (2020). The Nineteenth Century. In: The Defenders of Liberty. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39452-3_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39452-3_5
Published: 01 May 2020
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