THE EARLY TEACHING OF ECONOMICS IN THE 
UNITED STATES * 
Edwin R. A. Seligman 
1. The European Situation 
ALTHOUGH the term political economy was first used in modern 
times by Montchrétien in 1615, it was not until almost two 
centuries later that it became common in any of the European 
countries. The subject matter was treated either in separate 
books on trade or commerce or in the general works on politics 
or ethics. It was only after the advent of the Cameralists in 
Germany and the Physiocrats in France that a more compre- 
hensive treatment was undertaken. In the universities, outside 
of the general chairs of politics, history and law, the subject con- 
tinued to be treated, as in Great Britain, by the professors of 
moral philosophy or natural law. 
The earliest chairs dealing specifically with what is now 
included in political economy occurred in Germany where special 
professorships of police science or cameral science, later called 
the science of finance, were founded in the second quarter of 
the eighteenth century. Thus the first professorship of cameralia 
was inaugurated in Halle for Gasser in 1727, followed a few 
months later by a similar chair for Dithmar in Frankfort a O.’ 
[n 1750 a chair of Cameral Science was instituted in the newly- 
founded Ritter Akademie or Theresianum in Vienna for Justi, 
who introduced the name of Staatswirthschaft, the German 
equivalent of Political Economy; and in 1763 a chair of Police 
and Cameral Science was founded for Sonnenfels at the University 
* This topic has been treated by Elbert V. Wills, ‘‘Political Economy in 
the Early American College Curriculum,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, 
xxiv (1925), 131 et seq. Although well written and containing many inter- 
esting facts, the article is inaccurate in not a few particulars and overlooks 
considerable material which has been utilized in this essay. 
ash Geschichte der Nationalokonomik in Deutschland, 1874, pp. 
LA,