312 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK 
Encyclopedia Americana, 1847, including several on economic 
topics, and he published on various occasions addresses on 
Political Economy. At the University of Pennsylvania, after 
the retirement of Vethake from the Provostship, the course on 
Political Economy was given by the Professor of English. In 
1869 Political Economy was replaced in the University by Social 
Science, doubtless under the influence of Carey, and in the follow- 
ing: year the Reverend Robert Ellis Thompson was appointed 
assistant professor of Social Science in 1874, the title of the chair 
being changed in 1875 to Social Science and National Economy. 
We have seen that Dr. Cooper was ignorant of the fact that 
Political Economy was being taught at William and Mary, 
Harvard, Princeton or Dickinson. But his greatest error con- 
sisted in overlooking the fact that not only was Political Economy 
being taught at Columbia College, but that a chair of that 
subject had been founded at Columbia long before he made his 
application to his own trustees. This oversight on the part of 
Dr. Cooper is all the more remarkable because, in the preface 
of the very work in which he characterized his recommendation 
as a “new proposition,” he refers to the use which he had made 
of McVickar’s book, on the title page of which the latter is 
described as “Professor of Moral Philosophy and Political 
Economy at Columbia College, New York.” 
John McVickar graduated from Columbia in 1804. A few 
years thereafter he took orders and when Dr. Bowden, who had 
been since 1801 professor of Moral Philosophy, Rhetoric, Belles 
Lettres and Logic, died, he was elected to fill the chair. 
Although MecVickar was a clergyman, he had from an early 
period interested himself in the study of economics. In 1825 he 
published his Outlines of Political Economy. This was a reprint 
of McCulloch’s article in the Encyclopedia Britannica, but with 
additions described on the title page as “Notes Explanatory and 
Critical and A Summary of the Science.” In 1826 he edited 
McCulloch’s Encyclopedia article as Interest made Equity. His 
chief contribution is found in an anonymous pamphlet of 43 
pages entitled Hints on Banking, in a Letter to a Gentleman in 
Albany by a New Yorker. This was published in 1827 and is 
dated on the last page as being written from Columbia College. 
[n this McVickar develops the idea that banking ought to be a