Whatever may have been his partial usefulness in vindicating the policy of free trade,it is at least plain that for the needs ofour social future he has nothing to offer.Nassau William Senior (1790-1864),who was professor of political economy in theuniversity of Oxford,published,besides a number of separate lectures,a treatise on the science,which first appeared as anarticle in the Enclyopaedia Metropolitana .He is a writer of a high order of merit.He made considerable contributions to the elucidationof economic principles,specially studying exactness in nomenclature and strict accuracy in deduction.His explanations oncost of production and the way in which it affects price,on rent,on the difference between rate of wages and price oflabour,on the relation between profit and wages (with special reference to Ricardo's theorem on this subject,which hecorrects by the substitution of proportional for absolute amount),and on the distribution of the precious metals betweendifferent countries,are particularly valuable.His new term "abstinence,"invented to express the conduct for which interest isthe remuneration,was useful,though not quite appropriate,because negative in meaning.It is on the theory of wages thatSenior is least satisfactory.He makes the average rate in a country (which,we must maintain,is not a real quantity,thoughthe rate in a given employment and neighbourhood is)to be expressed by the fraction of which the numerator is the amountof the wages fund (an unascertainable and indeed,except as actual total of wages paid,imaginary sum)and the denominatorthe number of the working population;and from this he proceeds to draw the most important and far-reachingconsequences,though the equation on which he founds his inferences conveys at most only an arithmetical fact,whichwould be true of every case of a division amongst individuals,and contains no economic element whatever.The phrase"wages fund"originated in some expressions of Adam Smith (49)used only for the purpose of illustration,and never intendedto be rigorously interpreted;and we shall see that the doctrine has been repudiated by several members of what is regardedas the orthodox school of political economy.As regards method,Senior makes the science a purely deductive one,in whichthere is no room for any other "facts "than the four fundamental propositions from which he undertakes to deduce alleconomic truth.And he does not regard himself as arriving at hypothetic conclusions;his postulates and his inferences arealike conceived as corresponding to actual phenomena.(50)Colonel Robert Torrens (1780-1864)was a prolific writer,partlyon economic theory,but principally on its applications to financial and commercial policy.Almost the whole of theprogramme which was carried out in legislation by Sir Robert Peel had been laid down in principle in the writings ofTorrens.He gave substantially the same theory of foreign trade which was afterwards stated by J.S.Mill in one of his Essays on Unsettled Questions .(51)He was an early and earnest advocate of the repeal of the corn laws,but was not infavour of a general system of absolute free trade,maintaining that it is expedient to impose retaliatory duties to countervailsimilar duties imposed by foreign countries,and that a lowering of import duties on the productions of countries retainingtheir hostile tariffs would occasion an abstraction of the precious metals,and a decline in prices,profits,and wages.
His principal writings of a general character were-The Economist [i.e.,Physiocrat]Refuted ,1808;Essay on the Productionof Wealth ,1821;Essay on the External Corn Trade (eulogised by Ricardo),3d ed.,1826;The Budget,a series of Letters onFinancial,Commercial,and Colonial Policy ,1841-3.Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)popularised the doctrines of Malthusand Ricardo in her Illustrations of Political Economy (1832-34),a series of tales,in which there is much excellentdescription,but the effect of the narrative is often marred by the somewhat ponderous disquisitions here and there thrown in,usually in the form of dialogue.
