Some Classical Economists, Laissez Faire, and the Factory Acts

¹ Brebner, J. Bartlet lists several such studies undertaken at the suggestion of the Committee on Research in Economic History.— “Laissez Faire and State Intervention in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” The Tasks of Economic History (Supplemental issue of The Journal of Economic History), VIII (1948), 59. Several of these studies have now been expanded into books.

² Unfortunately Walker's, K. O. study of this hardly went beyond 1833; consequently most of the pertinent data is still unrevealed.—“The Classical Economists and the Factory Acts,” The Journal of Economic History, I (November 1941), 168–77. The study of Linnenberg, C. C. Jr., is traditional and inconclusive in its treatment of the economists' attitude toward the factory acts.—“The Laissez-Faire State in Relation to the National Economy,” The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, XXIV (December 1943), 235–36.

³ Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century in England (new ed.; London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1908), p. 113. Neither the writer nor K. O. Walker (“The Classical Economists etc.,” 173) has been able to find any confirmation for this undocumented statement in Toynbee.

⁴ The Modern Factory System (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Tr¨bner & Co., Ltd., 1891), pp. 128–70.

⁵ The Growth of English Industry and Commerce (6th ed.; Cambridge: The University Press, 1929), II, pt. II, 789.

⁶ A History of Factory Legislation (2d ed.; London: P. S. King & Son, 1911), pp. 49–50.

⁷ The Letters of John Stuart Mill, ed. Elliot, Hugh S. R. (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1910), I, 46.

⁸ “The Function and Problems of Economic Theory,” The Journal of Political Economy, XXVI (January 1918), 74.

⁹ J. S. Mill, Letters, I, 45.

¹⁰ The best discussion of Torrens' work is found in Seligman, E.R.A., “On Some Neglected British Economists,” The Economic Journal, XIII (September 1903), 341–47. Seligman insists that Torrens was a creative thinker, that he discovered the law of rent independently of Malthus and Ricardo, that he advanced a theory of wages adopted by Ricardo, that he discovered the principle of comparative costs though Ricardo usually gets the credit, and that his theory of profits was much more satisfactory than Ricardo's.

¹¹ Writing in 1821 Torrens expressed the opinion that devotion to economics as science and to the scientific method in economics would resolve all outstanding differences among economists within twenty years.—An Essay on the Production of Wealth (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821), Preface, p. xiii.

¹² Although he could not accept Ricardo's labor theory of value, his respect for the founders of “the science of Political Economy” was so great that he seems almost to have suspected his own judgment in this.—A Reprint of Economic Tracts: John Stuart Mill on the Measure of Value, edited by Hollander, J. H. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1936), p. 10.

¹³ Levy, S. Leon, Nassau W. Senior, The Prophet of Modern Capitalism (Boston: Bruce Humphries, Inc., 1943), P. 2440. Apparently Mill had been “bitten” by Carlyle, too.

¹⁴ Torrens, , On Wages and Combinations (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman, 1834), p. 87.

¹⁵ Ricardo, David, Works, ed. McCulloch, J. R. (London: J. Murray, 1852), p. 52n.

¹⁶ Torrens, On Wages, pp. 11–13.

¹⁷ Ibid., pp. 7–8, 20.

¹⁸ Ibid., pp. 20–22.

¹⁹ Ibid., pp. 1–2.

²⁰ Ibid., p. 26.

²¹ Ibid., p. 87.

²² Ibid., p. 79. Torrens thought that the corn laws offset the advantage of superior efficiency and urged their repeal.

²³ Hansard, , Parliamentary Debates (London: T. C. Hansard, 1833), 3d series, XIX, 902. The reference to the freedom of adults to form such contracts as they desired obviously did not preclude joint action by adults for this purpose nor action by the state when individual action proved ineffective.

²⁴ The Dictionary of National Biography, XII, 464.

²⁵ Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work, of the Seventh Earl of Shajteshury, K. G. (London: Cassell & Company, Ltd., 1887), I, 157–58.

²⁶ Ratzlaff, C. J., The Theory of Free Competition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936), p. 84, quoting J. K. Ingram in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed., XV, 134–35.

²⁷ The Principles of Political Economy (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1849), p. vi.

²⁸ Ibid., pp. 262–63.

²⁹ Ricardo, Works, p. 50; McCulloch, , A Discourse on the Rise, Progress, Peculiar Objects, and Importance of Political Economy (A. Constable & Co., 1824), p. 68.

³⁰ Discourse on … Political Economy, pp. 60–61.

³¹ A Treatise on the Circumstances which Determine the Rate of Wages and the Condition of the Labouring Classes (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1851), pp. 93–95, 97.

³² Principles, pp. 184–85.

³³ Treatise on Wages, p. 96.

³⁴ Principles, p. 185.

³⁵ Treatise on Wages, p. 97.

³⁶ Letters on the Factory Act (London: B. Fellows, 1837), pp. 10–13.

³⁷ Bowley, Marian, Nassau Senior and Classical Economics (London: G. Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1937). p. 357n.

³⁸ Industrial Efficiency and Social Economy, edited by Levy, S. Leon (New York, Henry Holt & Co., ca. 1928), II, 307.

³⁹ Ibid., II, 302.

⁴⁰ Principles, 309.

⁴¹ Social Economy, II, 302.

⁴² Letters on the Factory Act, p. 9.

⁴³ Bowley, Nassau Senior, p. 257n.

⁴⁴ Social Economy, p. 308.

⁴⁵ Principles of Political Economy (London: John W. Parker & Son, 4th ed., 1855), II, 557–59.

⁴⁶ Social Economy, II, 302.