306 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK 
one of the subjects assigned for the August “Exhibition” in 1815 
was “A Conference on difference of natural Talents, the unequal 
division of property, and the habits acquired by the practise of 
different Arts as grounds of subordination in society.” * At the 
commencement exercises on August 30 of the same year, the 
seventeenth item on the program was: “Forensic Disputation. 
Whether a paper currency be conducive to the public interest.” * 
One of the parts assigned at the commencement exercises for 1817 
was: “A Conference on the influence of the peace upon the con- 
dition of the agriculturalist, the manufacturer, the merchant, and 
the professional man.” ? 
In 1818 we find that one of the commencement parts was “A 
Forensick Disputation: Whether the exclusion of foreign articles 
to encourage domestic manufacture be conducive to public 
wealth.” * One of the parts assigned for the April Exhibition, in 
1819 was: “A Colloquy. On the effects of paper currency.” ® 
On June 16, 1819, at a meeting of the Faculty, it was voted to 
suspend a member of the senior class, one Parker, who had been 
guilty of disobedience and disrespect to a college officer, and to 
require him to pursue his studies during the whole time of his 
suspension in Conversations on Chemistry, and Conversations on 
Political Economy,’ both of them by Mrs. Marcet. The final 
piece of evidence to support the belief, expressed above, is the 
assignment of two parts for the commencement exercises of 
1819. One of these is clearly an economic subject and the 
other probably so. Number 10 on the program was: “Disserta- 
tion. On the utility of the Study of Political Economy, 
considered in relation to our country.” Number 13 was: “Con- 
ference. On the characteristics of man and government as 
found in the savage, pastoral, agricultural, and commercial 
state.” 
The upshot of these scattered facts is that the students prob- 
ably had their attention called to economic topics between 1815 
* Records of the College Faculty, ix (1814-22), p. 23. 
PE Ibid., p. 32. 
* Ibid., meeting of July 12, 1817, p. 102. “The peace” probably refers to 
the end of the Napoleonic Wars. 
* Ibid. p. 142. 
° Ibid., meeting of March 12, 1819, p. 183. 
P Ibid., p. 195. 
"Ibid. p. 199.