Abstract
Marshall arrived at Cambridge at a time of some crisis in the discipline. The Times, on 30 May 1885, was doing no more than stating the obvious when it commented as follows on his Inaugural Lecture, ‘The Present Position of Economics’: ‘Political Economy is on its trial. It is not merely its relation to other branches of science which is under dispute. Its worth, its substance, its vitality are all denied.’1 Less than a decade had passed since Francis Galton (founder of eugenics and for five years General Secretary of the British Association) had, in 1877, laid before the Council of the BA a paper proposing the abolition of Section F on the grounds that the discipline was simply not capable of prosecuting its inquiries in a scientific spirit: ‘The general verdict of scientific men would be that few of the subjects treated fall within the meaning of the word “scientific”.’2 The status of economics was hardly improved by John Kells Ingram’s impassioned reply, in his Presidential Address to the Dublin Meeting of the following year, that economics was in fact the science that ‘has the most momentous influence of all on human welfare’,3 but admittedly not the narrow and abstract economics of Senior and Ricardo such as had caused sceptical public opinion quite rightly to regard the study of wealth and exchange with ‘uneasy distrust’4 and had brought upon the Section the justified contempt of Galton and other pure scientists whom the proper methodology of Comtean sociology would easily have been able to satisfy: ‘If the proper study of mankind is man, the work of the Association, after the extrusion of our Section, would be like the play with the part of the protagonist left out.
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Notes and References
J. K. Ingham, ‘The Present Position and Prospects of Political Economy’ (1878), in S. H. Patterson (ed.), Readings in the History of Economic Thought (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1932), p. 483.
W. Bagehot, ‘The Postulates of English Political Economy’ (1876), in his Economic Studies (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1880), p. 1.
W. Cunningham, ‘Political Economy as a Moral Science’, Mind, Vol. III, 1878, p. 369.
B. Price, Chapters on Practical Political Economy (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1878), p. 16.
J. E. Cairnes, Some Leading Principles of Political Economy Newly Expounded (London: Macmillan, 1874), p. 13.
W. S. Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy, 2nd. ed. (1879), ed. by R. D. C. Black (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), p. 187.
W. S. Jevons, ‘The Future of Political Economy’, Fortnightly Review, Vol. XX, 1876, p. 619.
H. S. Foxwell, Introduction to A. Menger, The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour (1886) (London: Macmillan, 1899), p. lxxviii.
J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848), in J. M. Robson (ed.), The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), Vol. II, p. 338.
A. W. Coats, ‘The Historicist Reaction in English Political Economy, 1870–90’, Economica, Vol. 21, 1954, p. 144.
H. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. I (Williams & Norgate, 1876), pp. 505–6.
C. Darwin, The Origin of Species (London: John Murray, 1859), p. 5.
H. Spencer, The Man Versus the State (London: Williams & Norgate 1884), p. 78.
Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. III (London: Williams & Norgate, 1896), p. 598.
C. Darwin, The Descent of Man (London: John Murray, 1871), Vol. I p. 81.
T. Carlyle, Past and Present (London: Chapman and Hall, 1843), p. 24
J. Ruskin, ‘Unto This Last’: Four Essays on the First Principles of Political Economy (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1862), p. 4.
Political Economy Club, Revised Report of the Proceedings at the Dinner of 31st May, 1876 (London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, 1876), p. 8.
A fuller account of this evolutionary process is provided in D. A. Reisman, Alfred Marshall: Progress and Politics (London: Macmillan, 1987), esp. Chapter 2.
A. Marshall, Paper to the Industrial Remuneration Conference (1885), in Industrial Remuneration Conference: The Report of the Proceedings and Papers (London: Cassell, 1885), p. 173.
Cited in E. T. Grether, ‘Alfred Marshall’s Role in Price Maintenance in Great Britain’ (1934), in Wood, op.cit., Vol. II, p. 58.
Letter from A. Marshall to Messrs Macmillan & Co. dated 12 April 1887. Cited in C. W. Guillebaud, ‘The Marshall-Macmillan Correspondence over the Net Book System’ (1965), in ibid, p. 253.
J. A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954), p. 833.
A. Marshall, ‘A Reply’, Economic Journal, Vol. II, 1892, p. 518.
Letter from A. Marshall, The Times, 23 November 1903, p. 10.
Letter from A. Marshall to A. C. Pigou dated 17 June 1902, in Memorials, p. 432.
Letter from A. Marshall to F. Y. Edgeworth dated 27 April 1909, in Memorials, p. 442.
Letter from A. Marshall to J. B. Clark dated 24 March 1908, in Memorials, p. 418.
Letter from A. Marshall, The Times, 25 January 1889, p. 13.
Letter from A. Marshall, The Times, 19 August 1910, p. 4.
Letter from A. Marshall, The Times, 22 August 1914, p. 7.
Letter from T. E. Page, The Times, 25 August 1914, p. 7.
Letter from A. Marshall, The Times, 26 August 1914, p. 9.
Letter from A. Marshall, The Times, 29 December 1915, p. 9.
See the letter from A. Marshall to E. Cannan dated 7 January 1898, in Memorials, pp. 404–6.
Letter from A. Marshall to H. H. Cunynghame dated 28 June 1904, in Memorials, p. 451.
Letter from A. Marshall to A. W. Flux dated 19 March 1904, in Memorials, p. 408.
Letter from A. Marshall to J. Bonar dated 4 February 1891, in Memorials, p. 374.
Letter from A. Marshall to E. C. K. Gonner dated 9 May 1894, in Memorials, p. 382.
H. S. Jevons, review of Marshall’s Industry and Trade (1920), in Wood, op.cit., Vol. IV, p. 21.
A. Marshall, ‘Mr. Mill’s Theory of Value’ (1876), in Memorials, p. 121.
D. H. Robertson, Economic Commentaries (London: Staples Press, 1956), p. 17.
W. A. Weisskopf, The Psychology of Economics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1955), p. 163n.
Letter from A. Marshall to Lord Reay dated 12 November 1909, in Memorials, p. 461.
T. W. Hutchison, A Review of Economic Doctrines 1870–1929 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), p. 62.
L. Robbins, Autobiography of an Economist (London: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 105–6.
G. J. Stigler, Production and Distribution Theories (1941) (New York: Agathon Press, 1968), p. 63.
Letter from L. Walras to V. Pareto dated 12 March 1892, in Jaffé, Correspondence of Léon Walras, Vol. II, pp. 486–7.
A. W. Coats, ‘The Rule of Authority in the Development of British Economics’, Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 7, 1964, p. 96.
Letter from A. Marshall to J. B. Clark dated 24 March 1908, in Memorials, p. 416.
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© 1990 David Reisman
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Reisman, D. (1990). Economics and Principles. In: Alfred Marshall’s Mission. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11542-6_5
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