Other writers who ought to be named in any history of the science are Charles Babbage,On the Economy of Machinery andManufactures (1832),chiefly descriptive,but also in part theoretic;William Thomas Thornton,Overpopulation and itsRemedy (1846),A Plea for Peasant Proprietors (1848),On Labour (1869;2d ed.,1870);Herman Merivale,Lectures onColonisation and Colonies (1841-2;new ed.,1861);T.C.Banfield,The Organisation of Industry Explained (1844;2d ed.,1848);and Edward Gibbon Wakefield,A View of the Art of Colonisation (1849).Thomas Chalmers,well known in otherfields of thought,was author of The Christian and civic Economy of Large Towns (1821-36),and On Political Economy inConnection with the Moral State and Moral Propsects of Society (1832);he strongly opposed any system of legal charity,and whilst justly insisting on the primary importance of morality,industry,and thrift as conditions of popular well-being,carried the Malthusian doctrines to excess.Nor was Ireland without a share in the economic movement of the period.(52)Whately,having been second Drummond professor of political economy at Oxford (in succession to Senior),and deliveredin that capacity his Introductory Lectures (1831),founded in 1832,when he went to Ireland as archbishop of Dublin,asimilar professorship in Trinity College,Dublin.It was first held by Mountifort Longfield,afterwards Judge of the LandedEstates Court,Ireland (d.1884).He published lectures on the science generally (1834),on Poor Laws (1834),and on Commerce and Absenteeism (1835),which were marked by independence of thought and sagacious observation.He waslaudably free from many of the exaggerations of his contemporaries;he said,in 1835,"in political economy we must notabstract too much,"and protested against the assumption commonly made that "men are guided in all their conduct by aprudent regard to their own interest."James A.Lawson (afterwards Mr.Justice Lawson,d.1887)also published somelectures (1844),delivered from the same chair,which may still be read with interest and profit;his discussion of the questionof population is especially good;he also asserted against Senior that the science is avide de faits ,and that it must reasonabout the world and mankind as they really are.
The most systematic and thoroughgoing of the earlier critics of the Ricardian system was Richard Jones (1790-1855),professor at Haileybury.Jones has received scant justice at the hands of his successors.J.S.Mill,whilst using his work,gave his merits but faint recognition.Even Roscher says that he did not thoroughly understand Ricardo,without giving anyproof of that assertion,whilst he is silent as to the fact that much of what has been preached by the German historical schoolis found distinctly indicated in Jones's writings.He has been sometimes represented as having rejected the Andersoniandoctrine of rent;but such a statement is incorrect.Attributing the doctrine to Malthus,he says that that economist "showedsatisfactorily that when land is cultivated by capitalists living on the profits of their stock,and able to move it at pleasure toother employments,the expense of tilling the worst quality of land cultivated determines the average price of raw produce,while the difference of quality of the superior lands measures the rents yielded by them."What he really denied was theapplication of the doctrine to all cases where rent is paid;he pointed out in his Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and onthe Sources of Taxation ,1831,that besides "farmers'rents,"which,under the supposed conditions,conform to the abovelaw,there are "peasant rents,"paid everywhere through the most extended periods of history,and still paid over by far thelargest part of the earth's surface,which are not so regulated.Peasant rents he divided under the heads of (1)serf,(2)mitayer,(3)ryot,and (4)cottier rents,a classification afterwards adopted in substance by J.S.Mill;and he showed that thecontracts fixing their amount were,at least in the first three classes,determined rather by custom than by competition.
Passing to the superstructure of theory erected by Ricardo on the doctrine of rent which he had so unduly extended,Jonesdenied most of the conclusions he had deduced,especially the following:--that the increase of farmers'rents is alwayscontemporary with a decrease in the productive powers of agriculture,and comes with loss and distress in its train;that theinterests of landlords are always and necessarily opposed to the interests of the state and of every other class of society,.thatthe diminution of the rate of profits is -exclusively dependent on the returns to the capital last employed on the land;andthat wages can rise only at the expense of profits.
