Abstract
Nassau Senior (1790–1864) was elected to the Drummond Professorship of Political Economy at the University of Oxford first, from 1825 to 1830, and again from 1847 to 1852. He also maintained a successful conveyancing practice. This chapter focuses on Senior’s contributions to economic theory, the Corn Laws, the Poor Laws, population, emigration and education. His major roles in the development of the New Poor Law in England and in the discussions concerning pauperism in Ireland are explored, as well as his involvement in controversies over combinations, hand-loom weavers and factory legislation. The chapter also outlines Senior’s contributions on foreign affairs for The Economist magazine, his extensive travels and his impressive legacy of domestic and foreign journals.
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Notes
- 1.
See Bowley (1937: 341–343) for full details of Senior’s lectures offered from 1826 to 1830.
- 2.
- 3.
See Bowley (1937: 343–344) for full details of Senior’s lectures from 1847 to 1852.
- 4.
See Mill (1848 [1965]: 34, 37). However, Mill had argued differently in his notes on Senior’s Outline of the Science of Political Economy: ‘I question if abstinence can be called an agent or an instrument of production. Could not you call it a condition? And might not the word saving be used, not to supersede but occasionally to alternate with the term abstinence? Labour, natural agents, & saving. Besides, in order to employ productively what serves to feed me, I do not abstain from the enjoyment of it, I merely labour while I consume it’ (Mill in Hayek 1945: 135; italics in original).
- 5.
Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population was discussed just after his death at the Political Economy Club in February 1835. At the meeting, Tooke, McCulloch and Torrens spoke along similar lines to Senior (see the entry for 1835 under “Diaries J.L. Mallet” in the Political Economy Club Centenary Volume, 1821–1920 (1921): 265–266).
- 6.
The substance of the article was contained in Senior’s sixth lecture of the second lecture course delivered at Oxford in 1828.
- 7.
See next section.
- 8.
The report was in fact written by Senior and a legal expert.
- 9.
- 10.
The reference is to “workhouse unions”.
- 11.
Senior’s daughter-in-law, Jeanie Senior, became the first female civil servant in Britain when she was appointed as an Assistant Inspector of Workhouses in 1873.
- 12.
Lectures, 1847–1852, Course 1, Lectures 6–7.
References
Main Works by Nassau Senior
Senior, N.W. (1821). ‘Review of the Report of the Select Committee Considering the Depressed State of Agriculture in the United Kingdom’. Quarterly Review, 25(Jul.): 466–504.
Senior, N.W. (1826). ‘Some Ambiguous Terms Used in Political Economy’. Added to the Appendix to Richard Whately’s Elements of Logic in Encyclopedia Metropolitana. London: J. Mawman: 309–322.
Senior, N.W. (1827). An Introductory Lecture on Political Economy. London: J. Mawman.
Senior, N.W. (1828a). Three Lectures on the Transmission of the Precious Metals From Country to Country and the Mercantile Theory of Wealth. London: John Murray.
Senior, N.W. (1828b). ‘On the Corn Laws and the Poor Laws’. The London Review.
Senior, N.W. (1829). Two Lectures on Population. London: Saunders and Otley.
Senior, N.W. (1830a). Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages. London: John Murray.
Senior, N.W. (1830b). Three Lectures on the Cost of Obtaining Money, and on Some Effects of Private and Government Paper Money. London: John Murray.
Senior, N.W. (1831). A Letter to Lord Howick. London: John Murray.
Senior, N.W. (1832). Instructions from the Central Board of Poor Law Commissioners to Assistant Commissioners. London: HMSO.
Senior, N.W. (1832) [1970]. ‘Senior’s Letter of 14 September 1832 to Lord Chancellor Brougham on Poor Law Reform’. Reprinted as Appendix X in S.L. Levy Nassau W. Senior, 1790–1864. Newton Abbot: David & Charles: 247–254.
Senior, N.W. (1833) [1970]. ‘Senior’s Letter of 7 January 1833 to Lord Chancellor Brougham on Poor Law Reform’. Reprinted as Appendix XI in S.L. Levy Nassau W. Senior, 1790–1864. Newton Abbot: David & Charles: 255–262.
Senior, N.W. (1834). Poor Law Commissioners’ Report of 1834. London: HMSO.
Senior, N.W. (1836). An Outline of the Science of Political Economy. London: W. Clowes and Sons.
Senior, N.W. (1837). Letters on the Factory Act. London: B. Fellowes.
Senior, N.W. (1840). The Value of Money. London: B. Fellowes.
Senior, N.W. (1841a). ‘English Poor Laws’. Edinburgh Review, October. Reprinted as Chapter 6 in N.W. Senior (1865) Historical and Philosophical Essays. Volume Two. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green: 45–115.
Senior, N.W. (1841b). Remarks on the Opposition to the Poor Law Amendment Bill. London: John Murray.
Senior, N.W. (1841c). Report of the Commissioners for Inquiring into the Condition of the Unemployed Hand-Loom Weavers in the United Kingdom. London: HMSO.
Senior, N.W. (1846a). ‘Letter to Lord John Russell on Reorganisation of the English Poor Law Commission’. December. Reprinted in S.L. Levy (1970). Nassau W. Senior, 1790–1864: Critical Essayist, Classical Economist and Adviser of Governments. Newton Abbot: David and Charles: 274–279.
Senior, N.W. (1846b). ‘Proposals for Extending the Irish Poor Law’. Edinburgh Review, 84(October): 267–314.
Senior, N.W. (1848a). ‘Review of J.S. Mill, “Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy; and Principles of Political Economy, with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy”’. Edinburgh Review, 88(October): 293–339.
Senior, N.W. (1848b). ‘The French Republicans’. Edinburgh Review, 87(April): 565–600.
Senior, N.W. (1849). ‘Relief of Irish Distress in 1847 and 1848’. Edinburgh Review, 89(January): 221–268. Reprinted in N.W. Senior (1868) Journals, Conversations and Essays Relating to Ireland. Volume 1. London: Longman, Greene and Co.: 208–282.
Senior, N.W. (1852). Four Introductory Lectures on Political Economy. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.
Senior, N.W. (1859). A Journal Kept in Turkey and Greece in the Autumn of 1857 and the Beginning of 1858. London: London, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts.
Senior, N.W. (1860). ‘Opening Address of Nassau W. Senior, Esq., as President of Section F (Economic Science and Statistics), at the Meeting of the British Association, at Oxford, 28 June, 1860’. Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 23(3): 357–361.
Senior, N.W. (1861). Suggestions on Popular Education. London: John Murray.
Senior, N.W. (1863). ‘Address by Mr Nassau Senior: President of the Department of Education’. In The National Association for the Promotion of Social Science: Report of Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Congress. Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo: 44–66.
Senior, N.W., J. Stephen and R. Wilmot-Horton (1831). Remarks on Emigration, With a Draft of a Bill. London: R. Clay.
Works by Nassau Senior Published Posthumously
Senior, N.W. (1864). Essays on Fiction. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green.
Senior, N.W. (1865). Historical and Philosophical Essays. Two volumes. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green.
Senior, N.W. (1868). Journals, Conversations and Essays Relating to Ireland. Two volumes. London: Longman, Green, and Co
Simpson, M.C.M. (ed.) (1871). Journals Kept in France and Italy From 1848 to 1852 with a Sketch of the Revolution of 1848 by the Late Nassau William Senior. Two volumes. London: Henry S. King and Co.
Simpson, M.C.M. (ed.) (1872). Correspondence & Conversations of Count Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior From 1834 to 1859. Two volumes. London: Henry S. King and Co.
Simpson, M.C.M. (ed.) (1878). Conversations with M. Thiers, M. Guizot, and Other Distinguished Persons During the Second Empire by the Late Nassau William Senior. Two volumes. London: Hurst and Blackett.
Simpson, M.C.M. (ed.) (1880). Conversations with Distinguished Persons during the Second Empire From 1860 to 1863 by the Late Nassau William Senior. Two volumes. London: Hurst and Blackett.
Simpson, M.C.M. (ed.) (1882). Conversations and Journals in Egypt and Malta by the Late Nassau William Senior. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington.
Simpson, M.C.M. (1898). Many Memories of Many People. London: Edward Arnold.
Other Works Referred To
Barton, J. (1820). An Inquiry into the Causes of the Progressive Depreciation of Agricultural Labour in Modern Times: With Suggestions for its Remedy. London: Arch and Co.
Black, R.D.C. (1960). Economic Thought and the Irish Question, 1817–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Blaug, M. (ed.) (1991). Ramsay McCulloch (1789–1864), Nassau Senior (1790–1864) and Robert Torrens (1780–1864). Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
Bowley, M. (1937). Nassau Senior and Classical Economics. London: Allen & Unwin.
Cousins, M.E.L. (2013). ‘The Irish Parliament and Relief of the Poor: The 1772 Legislation Establishing Houses of Industry’. Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 28: 95–115.
Curthoys, M. (2004). Governments, Labour, and the Law in Mid-Victorian Britain: The Trade Union Legislation of the 1870s. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Dimand, R.W. (2004). ‘Classical Political Economy and Orientalism: Nassau Senior’s Easter Tours’. Chapter 3 in S. Charusheela and E. Zein-Elabdin (eds) Postcolonialism Meets Economics. Abingdon: Routledge: 73–90.
Hayek, F.A. (1945). ‘“Notes on N.W. Senior’s Political Economy”, by John Stuart Mill’. Economica, New Series, 12(47): 134–139.
Hutton, G. (1943). ‘The Economist and Foreign Affairs’. Chapter 6 in The Economist, 1843–1943: A Centenary Volume. London: Oxford University Press: 73–100.
Levy, S.L. (1943). Nassau W. Senior: The Prophet of Modern Capitalism. Boston: Bruce Humphries, Inc.
Levy, S.L. (1970). Nassau W. Senior, 1790–1864: Critical Essayist, Classical Economist and Adviser of Governments. Newton Abbot: David and Charles.
Marx, K. (1909). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy—Volume 1: The Process of Capitalist Production. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company.
Mill, J.S. (1848) [1965]. Principles of Political Economy. Volume II of The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill. Edited by J.M. Rogers. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
O’Brien, D.P. (2004). The Classical Economists Revisited. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Political Economy Club Centenary Volume, 1821–1920 (1921). London: Macmillan.
Routh, G. (1989). The Origin of Economic Ideas. Second edition. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Schumpeter, J.A. (1954). History of Economic Analysis. London: Allen & Unwin.
Scrope, G.P. (1846). Letters to the Right Hon. Lord John Russell on the Expediency of Enlarging the Irish Poor-Law to the Full Extent of the Poor-Law of England. London: James Ridgway.
Stephen, L. (1897). ‘Senior, Nassau William (1790–1864)’. Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900: Volume 51. London: Smith, Elder & Co.: 245–248.
Stigler, G.J. (1949). ‘The Classical Economists: An Alternative View’. Lecture 3 in Five Lectures on Economic Problems. London: Longmans, Green and Co.: 25–36.
The Economist, 1843–1943: A Centenary Volume (1943). London: Oxford University Press.
The Economist (1864). ‘Obituary: Nassau Senior’. 18 June. London: Economist Newspaper Ltd: 770–771.
Thackeray, A.I. (1864). ‘The End of a Long Day’s Work’. The Cornhill Magazine, 10(August): 253–256.
Tocqueville, A. de (1835) [1997]. Memoir on Pauperism. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.
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Webb, S. and B. Webb (1898). The History of Trade Unionism. London: Chiswick Press.
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Vint, J. (2021). Nassau Senior (1790–1864). In: Cord, R.A. (eds) The Palgrave Companion to Oxford Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58471-9_7
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