THE EARLY TEACHING OF ECONOMICS IN THE UNITED STATES 311 
lished at the request of the Senior class, bearing the imprint 
“Princeton.” This led us to wonder whether he had not treated 
the subject during his first incumbency at Princeton. Through 
the kindness of Professor Collins, the secretary of Princeton Uni- 
versity, we have been able to ascertain that the title of Vethake’s 
chair at Princeton, between 1817 and 1821, was Mathematics 
and Natural Philosophy, but that he began to teach Political 
Economy to the Seniors in 1819. When he resigned, Political 
Economy was continued as a senior subject in the first term; and 
inasmuch as the senior class was taught by the President, Ashbel 
Green, the latter without any question taught the subject in 
1822. In that year, however, Mr. Green resigned the presidency, 
and Political Economy is not again included in the curriculum 
until Vethake returned. 
It appears, therefore, that four years prior to the introduction 
of Political Economy at South Carolina, the subject was taught 
at Dickinson; and that three years prior to its introduction 
at Dickinson College, and one year before its certain introduc- 
tion at Harvard, it was taught at Princeton. It is probable, how- 
ever, that the instruction at Princeton was exceedingly ele- 
mentary, and that the more developed lectures of Vethake were 
not begun, as he himself tells us, until he took up the topic in 
1822 at Dickinson. 
What happened to Vethake’s courses after he reached the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania is uncertain. According to the cata- 
logues of that University, it seems that Political Economy was 
not taught until the year 1855, when the subject was assigned 
to Dr. Vethake, as professor of Intellectual and Moral Phil- 
osophy. In addition to his lectures on Political Economy, Vet- 
hake at that time gave instruction in “Intellectual Philosophy, 
Ethics, the Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, Logie, 
the Elements of Natural, International, and Constitutional Law, 
and History, in connection with Chronology and Political 
Geography.” In other words, it might be said that Vethake 
occupied not a chair, but a settee. It is difficult to believe, how- 
ever, that a scholar who was so much interested in Political 
Economy and who continued to write profusely on the subject, 
should not have turned the attention of his students to that 
topic. A new edition of his Political Economy was published in 
1844; he wrote most of the articles in volume XIV of the