Abstract
Self-confessedly ‘one of the idle classes’, Thompson, the son of a merchant, was a substantial landowner with an estate in County Cork. He evinced an early interest in ‘advanced’ opinions which led to contacts with the St. Simonians in France and in 1822 his intellectual interests took him to London where he resided for a time with Bentham in Queen Square Place. Here he met some of the leading philosophical radicals and classical political economists of the day, such as Robert Torrens and James Mill. His sympathies were, however, enlisted by the expanding cooperative movement and by 1825 he was, in the words of J.S. Mill, ‘the chief champion on the co-operative side’ in a series of debates held in the metropolis on the subject of co-operation.
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Thompson, N.W. (2018). Thompson, William (1785–1833). In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1710
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1710
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