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.