202 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK 
Our final conclusion as to the eighteenth century is that while 
the Wealth of Nations was probably used as a text in Willlam 
and Mary, as early as 1798, the subjects included under what we 
call political economy were first taught in Columbia College 
surely in 1792, and probably in 1784. And in so far as moral 
philosophy may be supposed to have comprised economic sub- 
jects, it was taught at Columbia (Kings College) from 1763 on. 
3. The Nineteenth Century 
It has long been supposed that the first chair of political 
economy in the United States was instituted at South Carolina 
College in 1824. This understanding is due to a statement of its 
president, Dr. Thomas Cooper, who published, in 1826, a volume 
entitled Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy. In 
the title page of this he describes himself as “President of the 
South Carolina College and Professor of Chemistry and Political 
Economy ;” and in the preface we find the following statement: 
At the commencement held in the South Carolina College in 1824 
[ delivered an address recommending the study of political economy 
and the regular appointment of a professor for the purpose—a pro- 
posal at that time new in the United States. The culpable inattention 
in our country to a science of such extensive application, and the 
manifest ignorance or neglect of its first principles among our states- 
men and legislators, seemed to me imperiously to call for some meas- 
ures which should force to the public notice a branch of knowledge in 
which human happiness so much depended. The Trustees of the 
College were of opinion with me and requested that I should draw up 
and deliver a course of lectures on political economy to the senior class 
of the students of the College. On being freed from the professorship 
of rhetoric, criticism and belles lettres, I delivered in conformity to 
the request of the trustees the following course of lectures, in addition 
to my professorship of Chemistry. I hope with good effect. 
Thomas Cooper was born in London in 1759, and enjoyed the 
anusual good fortune of being both a lawyer and a physician. 
In England he became as a barrister so wedded to radical doc- 
trines that he met with political trouble, especially after paying 
a visit to revolutionary France in company with Watt, the 
inventor of the steam engine, as a representative of the British 
societies. When his friend Priestley emigrated to the United 
States, he followed and soon attained a distinguished position. 
He first came into prominence in 1799 when he fell afoul of