58 ECONOMIC THEORY 







give, even before a select audience, any detailed account of the Wealth 

 of Nations. And Mr. .John Rae cites Lord Cockburn's testimony to 

 the fact that, when Stewart first began to give a course of lectures in 

 the University of Edinburgh on " political economy " in the winter of 

 1801-02, the mere term "political economy" made people start. 

 " They thought," he says, " it included questions touching the con- 

 stitution of governments, and not a few hoped to catch Stewart in 

 dangerous propositions." 



But the determining force in the transition of political economy 

 from a body of precepts to a body of principles was the circumstance 

 that, with the dawn of the nineteenth century, the analysis of wealth 

 phenomena ceased to be exclusively the concern of pamphleteers and 

 special pleaders, and became the subject of deliberate and systematic 

 study by a widening circle of keen and influential minds. The Wealth 

 of Nations required too much thought and reflection to be popular, 

 lamented David Hume within a month after its appearance, and the 

 readers of the day, fresh from the pages of the Decline and Fall, might 

 well have found the Scotch philosopher turgid and prolix. But by 

 1800 the work had reached a tenth edition; its influence upon polit- 

 ical thought was evident; its impress upon political action was in 

 part realized, in part foreshadowed; Dugald Stewart's lectures at 

 Edinburgh were crowded, and young men like Francis Homer, 

 Samuel Romilly, Sydney Smith, George Grote, James Mill, David 

 Ricardo, and Thomas Robert Malthus were turning from natural 

 science, from legal studies, and from literary activity to earnest pur- 

 suit of the subject whose prosecution not only involved keen intel- 

 lectual pleasure, but whose results stood in intimate relation with 

 urgent practical affairs. 



It is doubtful whether economic study has ever been pursued with 

 the same intentness and enthusiasm as in England during the 

 period, roughly speaking, of the Continental War. The reflec- 

 tion is seen in Mrs. Marcet, in Maria Edgeworth, and in Harriet 

 Martineau. " It has now become high fashion with blue ladies to 

 talk of political economy, and make a great jabbering on the sub- 

 ject," wrote Maria Edgeworth in 1822. And again: "Fine ladies 

 require that their daughters' governesses should teach political 

 economy." " Do you teach political economy? " " No, but I can 

 learn it." " Oh dear, no; if you don't teach it, you won't do for me." 



Indeed, contemporary evidence abounds. For example, Francis 

 Horner - - that brilliant young scholar-publicist whose too early 

 death surely meant grave loss to the progress of economic truth - 

 had read the Wealth of Nations before he was seventeen, had followed 

 Dugald Stewart's lectures in Edinburgh thereafter, and was devotedly 

 engaged in economic study while practicing at the bar in the Scotch 

 capital. 



