Abstract
Free trade was probably the least contentious of all the major theoretical issues of economic policy in early nineteenth-century Britain. Of reputable economists only Malthus defended the Corn Laws, and with scant success. The virtual unanimity of the classical economists on this question has led historians almost to ignore the theoretical (as opposed to the political) case for protection.1 One undeserved victim of this neglect has been E. S. Cayley, one of the most distinguished of that small minority who used serious economic arguments to defend import controls, not merely in the interests of the landed classes but also because of their contribution to the general welfare. Cayley was the author of one full-sized book, On Commercial Economy (1830), and of several pamphlets. He sat in Parliament for thirty years, frequently contributing to debates on economic and financial matters. His case for protection combined an analysis of capital accumulation and the impact of machinery with unorthodox monetary views and a thoroughgoing opposition to Say’s Law.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See, for example, the extremely cursory discussion in D. P. O’Brien, The Classical Economists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 276.
See also F. W. Fetter, The Economist in Parliament: 1780–1868 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1980), pp. 34–44, and
W. D. Grampp, The Manchester School of Economics (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1960), especially pp. 16–38.
Cayley’s arguments are briefly and sympathetically summarised in B. J. Gordon, Non-Ricardian Political Economy: Five Neglected Contributions (Boston, Mass.: Baker Library, 1967), pp. 13–19, which remains the only substantial appraisal of his work.
‘Memoirs of Edward Stillingfleet Cayley, Esq’, The Farmer’s Magazine, second ser., vol. X, no. 2, August 1844, pp. 81–4 (which includes a portrait); obituary in ibid., vol. XXI, 1862, pp. 354–6; Boase, Modern English Biography, vol. I, p. 577; Mrs. Chomley, Yorkshire Heritage (Malton: The Author, 1981), pp. 35–7;
J. Lawrence Pritchard, Sir George Cayley: the Inventor of the Aeroplane (London: Max Parrish, 1961).
E. Halevy, A History of the English People in 1815 (3) (London: Penguin, 1938), p. 212.
P. Richards, ‘The State and Early Industrial Capitalism: the Case of the Handloom Weavers’, Past and Present 83, 1979, pp. 101–25;
F. W. Fetter, The Development of British Monetary Orthodoxy 1797–1875 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 164, 214, 228; Times, 27 February 1862 (obituary).
Here Cayley is rendering precise a concept attacked in Parliament by Ricardo as impossibly vague: W. Smart, Economic Annals of the Nineteenth Century1801–1820 (London: Macmillan, 1910, p. 733).
On Ricardo, see L. L. Pasinetti, Lectures on the Theory of Production (London: Macmillan, 1977); on Malthus,
W. A. Eltis, ‘Malthus’s Theory of Effective Demand and Growth’, Oxford Economic Papers, vol. 32, 1980, pp. 19–56. In On Commercial Economy Cayley endorses ‘strict attention to the administration of the poor laws, (thus, by a gradual prevention of support to able bodied labourers, curtailing the growth of population)’ (p. 162). This brief reference is incidental to the main thrust of his argument. See also ibid., p. 259.
‘Foreign trade and exchanges are the mere creatures of the national convenience’: Thomas Attwood, A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool … (1819), p. 28, reprinted in F. W. Fetter (ed.), Selected Economic Writings of Thomas Attwood (London: L. S. E. Reprints of Scarce Works on Political Economy, 1964).
Gordon (op. cit., p. 19) speculates that this was due to Cayley’s frustration at his inability to influence economic policy. I suspect that his chronic illness after 1840 was equally important, along (perhaps) with a recognition that in analytical terms he had little more to say.
E. S. Cayley, Reasons for the Formation of the Agricultural Protection Society, Addressed to the Industrious Classes of the United Kingdom (London: John Ollivier, 1844), p. 14.
E. S. Cayley, Letters to the Right Honourable Lord John Russell, M.P., on the Corn Laws (London: John Ollivier, 1846), p. 18; cf.
ibid., pp. 8, 19, 29.
Ibid., pp. 22–4, 26–8.
Hansard, vol. 116, 8 May 1851, col. 682; cf. ibid., vol. 123, 25 November. Cayley was not well supported, as is suggested by Lord Stanley’s diary entry for 8 May 1851: ‘Cayley raised his annual debate on the malt tax. My Father [Derby], in a printed letter, had declined to strike five millions off the revenue without equivalent. Disraeli voted for the motion, guarding himself in an ingenious harangue. I stayed away purposely, as did many of the country gentlemen’ (J. R. Vincent (ed.), Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party: Memoirs of Edward Henry, Lord Stanley, 1848–1869, Brighton: Harvester, 1978, pp. 64–5). A year later Cayley endorsed John Stuart Mill’s proposal for a general 10 per cent sales tax as the fairest source of government revenue (Cayley to Disraeli, 16 August 1852: B/XXI/C113).
M. Bleaney, Underconsumption Theories: A History and Critical Analysis (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1976);
B. Gordon, Economic Doctrines and Tory Liberalism 1824–1830 (London: Macmillan, 1979), p. 159;
S. Rashid, ‘David Robinson and the Tory Macroeconomics of “Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine”’, History of Political Economy 10, 1978, pp. 258–70.
J. E. King, ‘“Perish Commerce!” Free Trade and Underconsumption in Early British Radical Economics’, Australian Economic Papers 20, 1981, pp. 235–57;
M. Berg, The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy, 1815–1848 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), ch. 12.
P. James, Population Malthus (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), pp. 261–3.
L. Robbins, The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy (London: Macmillan, 1952), p. 32.
B. A. Corry, Money, Saving and Investment in English Economics1800–1850 (London: Macmillan, 1962), pp. 63–7.
Fetter, British Monetary Orthodoxy, p. 142. Cayley’s 1835 description of open-market operations is cited by Jacob Viner, Studies in the Theory of International Trade (New York: Harper, 1937), p. 259, n. 17. His perceptive interrogation in 1848 of the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England showed ‘a concern about the level of employment and the relation to it of the rate of interest [which] had quite a modern ring’:
B. Thomas, Migration and Economic Growth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 181–2.
On Commercial Economy, pp. 182–4, 190–9; cf. ibid., p. 181: ‘So long as the market can be considered unlimited, it matters little how trade is arranged.’
York Courant, 15 July 1841. Marx does mention Cayley while citing his interrogation of Overstone at the 1857 Select Committee, but appears to have been unaware of his writings: K. Marx, Capital, vol. III (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962), p. 417. Cayley’s name is omitted from the index of this edition.
L. Robbins, Robert Torrens and the Evolution of Classical Economics (London: Macmillan, 1958), p. 253, cited Fetter, British Monetary Orthodoxy, p. 237.
Although he was in the majority on the 1834–5 Select Committee in recommending minimum wage protection for the handloom weavers, Cayley seems to have done nothing more about it. He supported the Ten Hours Bill of 1847, but was more reluctant to endorse restrictions on working hours in the mines (York Courant, 12 August 1847; Hansard, vol. 159, 13 and 22 June 1860, cols 410, 849). On the other hand, he was a consistent supporter of the New Poor Law of 1834 (On Commercial Economy, pp. 259–60; York Herald, 17 January 1835; Yorkshire Gazette, 12 August 1837). David Roberts, Paternalism in Early Victorian England (London: Croom Helm, 1979), p. 228, is quite wrong on this point, and on balance his description of Cayley as a patenalist may be doubted. See, however, a quite uncharacteristic denunciation of ‘the physical check of Malthus, which left redundant human beings to starve down to the fit and proper number’ (Hansard, vol. 86, 11 May 1846, col. 411). Significantly, this was in the crucial debate on the repeal of the Corn Laws.
J. Viner, Studies in the Theory of International Trade (New York: Harper, 1937), p. 118,
cited S. R. Sen, The Economics of Sir James Steuart (London: London School of Economics/Bell, 1957), p. 78.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1988 J. E. King
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
King, J.E. (1988). Edward Stillingfleet Cayley (1802–1862). In: Economic Exiles. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07743-4_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07743-4_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-07745-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-07743-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Economics & Finance CollectionEconomics and Finance (R0)