Economic essays

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

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Title:: The early teaching of economics in the United States / Edwin R.A. Seligman

Collection:: Economics Books

THE EARLY TEACHING OF ECONOMICS IN THE UNITED STATES 317 enthusiastic praise to its “cogency of logic, rigorous enchainment of ideas, fearless pursuit of truth and a diction so correct that not a word can be changed but for the worse.” The chair of ideology was to be filled by Dr. Cooper. Jeffer- son wrote of him at the time—in 1818—“The best pieces on political economy which have been written in this country were by Cooper.” * His chair was, however, entitled that of Chemistry, Mineralogy, Natural Philosophy and Law. But before he could commence his instruction, a storm of opposition to his liberal religious views developed and he handed in his resignation. Nothing further seems to have been done until 1824, when the Board of Visitors of the University, in adopting a new scheme of studies, suggested not only moral philosophy but also “law, including the principles of government and political science.” These suggestions were adopted with some minor changes, and in the same year Mr. George Tucker was made professor of moral philosophy, including ethics and metaphysics; and the subject of political economy was expressly assigned to him. In 1837 Tucker published his well known treatise on The Laws of Wages, Profits and Rent Investigated. On the title page he Jescribes himself as Professor of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy in the University of Virginia, and in the preface he tells us that the doctrines maintained in the book “constitute part of a series of lectures which the author delivered in the University of Virginia for the last ten years.” Tucker was succeeded in 1845 by Dr. W. H. McGuffey, whose course is described in the uni- versity catalogue of 1849-50 as comprising political economy, statistics and the philosophy of social relations or “ethics of society.” In the two succeeding years, political economy was introduced in no less than four institutions. In 1827 Union College per- mitted the juniors to choose that subject as an alternative to conic sections, and in the following year, political economy was made a required subject. After 1831 it was taught by Alonzo Potter, who was Professor of Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy from 1831 to 1847, and who published his Political Economy in 1840. In his previous chair of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, 1819-1822, as we are informed by the kind- ness of the secretary of the Graduate Council, he seems not to LP. A. Bruce, History of the University of Virginia, vol. 1 (1920), p. 196.

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