Abstract
This chapter describes the reforms needed by Cambridge University in the late nineteenth century to transform it from a collection of independent, medieval, monastic seminaries into a more modern institution with first-class teaching and research in the natural and social sciences. Without these reforms, the University would have been unlikely to found a degree course in economics in 1903 or have hosted the quality of students and teachers who have given Cambridge economics its worldwide reputation. Integral to this, working both as a faculty member and in university administration, John Neville Keynes helped to lay the foundations for the study of economics by the men and women highlighted in this Companion.
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- 1.
Another speaker at the presentation referred to the great work that Dr Keynes had done for the University and said that he had changed a regime of autocracy at the Registrary to a kindly welcome which some of them in the early days had hardly hoped to see.
- 2.
The Council was the elected ‘Cabinet’ of the Senate, the University’s governing body. Keynes was immediately put on eight sub-Syndicates and in 1893 became Secretary to the Council, a task that was later amalgamated with that of Registrary.
- 3.
Most students at this time did not attempt a Tripos but satisfied themselves with a general studies course that led to the Ordinary Degree, also known as the Pass or Poll Degree: 48% of male students took the Ordinary Degree in 1887, this figure dropping to 43% in 1912. After the Second World War it became a practice that all students would read for Honours degrees. See McWilliams Tullberg (1998: Appendix B) for a fuller discussion of the Ordinary Degree.
- 4.
In Kelly’s Directory for Salisbury 1875, Keynes & Knight, brush makers & turners can be found on Winchester Street and Keynes John, nurseryman & florist on Castle Street. John Keynes served his town as Mayor 1876–1877.
- 5.
The Test Acts, requiring graduates to pledge allegiance to the 39 Articles of Faith of the Church of England, were lifted in the case of Cambridge in 1856, but other disabilities, such as proceeding to the M.A. or the holding of Fellowships and University offices, remained until 1871.
- 6.
University Hall was founded in 1849 by Nonconformists to extend the principle of religious freedom to the sphere of education and to encourage dissenting families to allow their young men to spend time in London gaining a university education. It was non-confessional, and although daily prayers and lectures in theology were offered, they were not obligatory.
- 7.
This was a paid post without specific teaching duties which allowed its holders to write, research, teach, coach, shoulder college office—or do nothing, as they wished. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a small college like Pembroke was only likely to vote into the fellowship men who were of outstanding academic merit and willing to teach, research, and hold a college office.
- 8.
Neville Keynes’s Diaries, which he kept from 1864 to 1917, are archived at Cambridge University Library, Reference GB 12 MSS.Add.7827-7869.
- 9.
Phyllis Deane describes this, no doubt correctly, as a ‘brave decision’ (Deane 2001: 46).
- 10.
Bond is described by Binfield (1968: 251) as ‘the leading chapel personality, a forceful enlightened man to whom (Emmanuel) church owed much’.
- 11.
Another school and University College friend, Alfred West, had read moral sciences and had graduated as Senior (i.e. top) Moralist in 1869.
- 12.
Ward too married a Congregationalist student from Newnham who passed informally the Moral Sciences Tripos with a First in 1879.
- 13.
The tertiary education of women at Cambridge was highly controversial and opposition to their presence in Cambridge grew as women began to demonstrate their academic prowess. The two women’s colleges, Newnham (first residential students 1871) and Girton (founded 1869 and moved to Cambridge 1873), approached the issue differently and opinions varied on the ‘correct’ route to academic excellence amongst the women and their male supporters. For the story of this controversy, see McWilliams Tullberg (1995, 1998).
- 14.
These Boards or Special Boards organised the syllabus and teaching in Tripos subjects. The more familiar term today would be Faculty.
- 15.
An essay prize of £20 and a silver medal was offered every third year by the Cobden Club to recent graduates of Cambridge. The Club had been founded in the year after the death of Richard Cobden to promote his ideas of free trade, peace, and international co-operation.
- 16.
Marshall remarked on Keynes’s essay that it had been weakened by the changes that he (Marshall) had advised him to make so as not to offend the external examiner Prof. T.E. Cliffe Leslie (Marshall to Foxwell, 3 July 1878, quoted in Whitaker 1996: volume 1, 101–102 and fn. 8).
- 17.
Generally speaking, only professors, heads of colleges, and holders of certain college and University offices could marry and many promising academics were lost to the University when they married and left Cambridge.
- 18.
Mary Paley had to resign her post as Lecturer in Economics at Newnham. She too lectured in economics at Bristol. See McWilliams Tullberg (1995).
- 19.
With his solid independent income, Neville Keynes was however in a much stronger position economically than was Marshall.
- 20.
Keynes briefly considered applying for the Chair in Economics at University College, London, that Jevons resigned in 1880. Keynes was aware that Foxwell was the more merited candidate and withdrew from the race.
- 21.
The word ‘Local’ in the title meant just that. The University took its learning ‘extra-mural’—outside its walls to people and places wanting higher education where they lived, were examined, and attested on what they had learnt.
- 22.
In the matter of setting standards for schoolchildren, the University and colleges were for once in agreement. Similar reform movements were afoot in Oxford at this time.
- 23.
There was a certain conflict. The University was interested in assessing the ability of individual students by determining the syllabus and standards for subjects studied at secondary-school level. Many schools, however, preferred to have the quality of teaching to all students assessed, emphasising the role of a school in moulding the whole pupil and not just academic achievements.
- 24.
On the significance of the Syndicate’s financial reserves for use by the wider University, see Raban (2008: 25–26).
- 25.
The book went through four editions and many reprints, the last being in 1906.
- 26.
The Royal Economic Society was founded as the British Economic Association in 1890 and volume 1 of the Economic Journal appeared in 1891.
- 27.
Details of this episode are given in Deane (2001: 123 passim).
- 28.
This brought on Keynes’s chest pains.
- 29.
G.F. Browne did not pull his weight at the Syndicate. He retired in 1892 after being appointed Canon of St. Paul’s and Keynes to his delight became ‘master of the Syndicate Building’ (Deane 2001: 196).
- 30.
He was also under stress in the early months of 1885 because Florence had given birth prematurely to their second child, Margaret. Keynes asked himself what might have happened had he been in Oxford at the time.
- 31.
Although his lectures had been popular and he had enjoyed the exchanges with some of the better students, Keynes felt that the Balliol Fellowship had not really made him welcome.
- 32.
J.S. Nicholson was second Moralist in 1876 and won the triennial Cobden Essay Prize in 1877 and again in 1880. He was Professor of Political Economy and Mercantile Law at Edinburgh University from 1880 to 1925. Nicholson read Keynes’s chapters at the proof stage and gave constructive comments.
- 33.
Until the mid-century reforms, students could not proceed to the Classical Tripos without first having succeeded in the Mathematical Tripos.
- 34.
The Times, 13 January 1885: 4. The other delegates from Cambridge were Foxwell and Nicholson but not Neville Keynes.
- 35.
The Drummond Chair in fact went to Thorold Rogers.
- 36.
Keynes confided in his Diary (21 April 1888) his embarrassing lack of fluency in German. Fortunately his wife was able to help him with translations.
- 37.
- 38.
While giving his course in Oxford in 1885, Keynes had dined with Phelps in Oriel College. Keynes wrote in his Diary that ‘Phelps is an old Charterhouse boy. He has the teaching of the Junior Indian Civil Service men; but does not profess to know a great deal of Political Economy. He is immensely interested in the Charity Organisation Society. He is very frank and friendly’ (Diary: 11 May 1885). Phelps, who was later known as an authority on social administration, was at the time of his review a member of the Board of the Oxford Economic Review, a journal that was in competition with the Economic Journal and reflected the views of the Historical School of Political Economy.
- 39.
For example, while it could be expected that the educated reader was familiar with the pitfalls of a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, they may have found ignoratio elenchi fallacies more difficult to follow.
- 40.
The following luminaries appear in the text and some in footnotes of the Introductory chapter: Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, Mill, Senior, Bagehot, Cairnes, Sidgwick, Jones, Cliffe Leslie, Walker, Roscher, Hildebrand, Menger, von Thünen, Knies, Sax, Wagner, Schonberg, Schmoller, Ingram, von Scheel, Cohn, Seligman, and Dunbar.
- 41.
Diary: 5 January and 13 February 1895.
- 42.
- 43.
Pembroke Gazette (1942: no. 16).
- 44.
Maynard Keynes had been made a peer, Baron Keynes of Tilton, in June 1942 and gave his maiden speech in May the following year. This reference is from an undated and untitled newspaper deposited in Pembroke College.
References
Main Works by John Neville Keynes
Keynes, J.N. (1884). Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic. First edition. London: Macmillan. There were three further editions: 1887, 1894, 1906.
Keynes, J.N. (1891). The Scope and Method of Political Economy. First edition. London: Macmillan. There were three further editions: 1897, 1904 and 1917.
Keynes, J.N. (1894–1899). ‘Analytical Method’; ‘Deductive Method’; ‘A Posteriori Reasoning’; ‘A Priori Reasoning’; ‘Applied Economics’; and 12 others in R.H. Inglis Palgrave (ed.) Dictionary of Political Economy. Volume 1. London: Macmillan. Three volumes.
Keynes, J.N. (1902). ‘Lepidoptera in the Swiss Alps’. The Entomologist’s Record and Journal of Variation, 14: 124–126.
Keynes, J.N. (1914). Compiled and annotated Statutes of the University of Cambridge: With the Interpretations of the Chancellor and Some Acts of Parliament Relating to the University. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reprinted by Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Keynes, J.N. (1994). Economists’ Papers. Microfilm Series: The Diaries of John Neville Keynes, 1864–1917. Deposited in Cambridge University Library. Oxford: Adam Matthew.
Keynes, J.N. and G.L. Keynes (1905–1909). ‘Butterflies’. Six articles reprinted from The Entomologist Record.
Other Works Referred To
Binfield, J.C.G. (1968). ‘Chapels in Crisis: Men and Issues in Victorian Eastern England’. Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society, 20(8): 237–254.
Broad, C.D. and A.C. Pigou (1950). ‘John Neville Keynes’. Economic Journal, 60(238): 403–408.
Deane, P. (2001). The Life and Times of J. Neville Keynes: A Beacon in the Tempest. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Kadish, A. (1982). The Oxford Economists in the Late Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Keynes, F.A. (1950). Gathering Up the Threads: A Study in Family Biography. Cambridge: Heffers.
McWilliams Tullberg, R. (1990). ‘Alfred Marshall and the “Woman Question” at Cambridge’. Economie Appliquée, 43(1): 209–230.
McWilliams Tullberg, R. (1995). ‘Mary Paley Marshall, 1850–1944’. Chapter 9 in M.A. Dimand, R.W. Dimand and E.L. Forget (eds) Women of Value: Feminist Essays on the History of Women in Economics. Aldershot: Edward Elgar: 150–193.
McWilliams Tullberg, R. (1998). Women at Cambridge – a Men’s University, though of a Mixed Type. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Phelps, L.R. (1891). ‘Review of The Scope and Method of Political Economy, by J.N. Keynes’. Economic Review, 1(4): 569–573.
Pigou, A.C. (ed.) (1925). Memorials of Alfred Marshall. London: Macmillan.
Raban, S. (ed.) (2008). Examining the World: A History of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Skidelsky, R. 1983. John Maynard Keynes. Volume 1: Hopes Betrayed, 1883–1920. London: Macmillan.
Whitaker, J.K. (ed.) (1996). The Correspondence of Alfred Marshall, Economist. Three volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Tullberg, R.M. (2017). John Neville Keynes (1852–1949). In: Cord, R. (eds) The Palgrave Companion to Cambridge Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-41233-1_18
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