THE EARLY TEACHING OF ECONOMICS IN THE UNITED STATES 313 
free trade and not, as was the case at that time in New York, 
the result of a special charter of incorporation in each instance. 
He suggested further that nine-tenths of the banking capital 
should be invested in government stock, to be held as a pledge 
of the redemption of the outstanding circulation. MecVickar, 
therefore, really deserves credit for the introduction of the free 
banking system of New York, nine years later, which soon 
spread to other states.” Inasmuch as the essence of McVickar’s 
suggestion also formed one of the fundamental principles of the 
national banking system which existed prior to the inception 
of the Federal Reserve system, McVickar may be declared in a 
certain sense to be at least a joint author of the national banking 
system which governed this country for over half a century. 
In 1830 MecVickar published a Lecture Introductory to a 
Course on Political Economy recently delivered at Columbia 
College, republished in London in the same year. This was fol- 
lowed in 1835 by First Lessons in Political Economy for the Use 
of Primary and Common Schools, in which he describes himself 
as Professor of Political Economy in Columbia College. Finally, 
in 1841, McVickar issued A Tract on a National Bank in which 
he upheld the need of a central bank. It is interesting to learn 
that McVickar and Cooper were both opposed to the destruction 
by Jackson of the Bank of the United States. 
Whether Political Economy was taught at Columbia in the 
opening years of the century by the incumbent of the chair of 
Moral Philosophy, cannot now be ascertained, although it is by 
no means improbable. Nor do we know whether MecVickar 
taught the subject during the first year of his incumbency. What 
we do know, however, is that in the next year, 1818, he per- 
suaded the trustees of Columbia to add the subject of Political 
Economy to the title of his chair, which was thereafter known 
as that of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy. It is thus 
the earliest chair of the subject in the country. 
McVickar continued to teach at Columbia until 1857, when 
he was transferred to the chair of the Evidences of Natural and 
Revealed Religion, occupying this until his retirement in 1864. 
We are told that “his learning was extensive and accurate, and 
* When we called the attention of Mr. Horace White to this fact many 
years ago he inserted into a later edition of his Money and Banking, 
pn. 348, a statement giving Professor McVickar credit for this idea.