ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: Richard Whately as populariser of classical political economy: an optimist for the ‘dismal’ science.
Author: Douglas Elena
Richard Whately (1787-1863) stands as one of the most successful popularisers of political economy in the early nineteenth century. This paper provides a brief summary of Whately’s achievement as a populariser and promoter of political economy in comparison to three of the other most successful popularisers of political economy his day Harriet Martineau (1802-76), Jane Marcet (1769-1858), and Henry Brougham (1778-1768). Whately was a major protagonist in the culture wars surrounding the introduction of political economy to British intellectual life. As Drummond Professor, Oxford (1829-31), his Introductory Lectures in Political Economy (1831) sought to pave the way for the emergence of political economy’s at Oxford as a distinct science from its natural theology and moral philosophy origins and were issued in multiple editions. This paper looks at Whately’s commitment to the new secularised sciences being diffused beyond the ruling élite. He believed that educating the poor in the tenets of political economy in particular was a means of ensuring their betterment and therefore the viability of the social order, and not—as his more conservative contemporaries feared—a subversion of it. Whately argued for that public worship and the teaching from the clergy were insufficient to the needs of the poor, yet that there were dangers in leaving their education to non-Christians. From his position as Fellow at Oriel College Oxford, and later as the Earl Grey appointed Archbishop of Dublin (1831-63) he wrote and compiled Easy Lessons on Money Matters for the Use of Young People (1833), his most famous work and the first attempt to present classical political economy in the form of a primary schoot text book (Black, 1987). This was a simplified version of his lectures on political economy circulated by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and translated into many foreign languages (including Maori and Japanese) and went through sixteen editions. A comparative assessment of Whately’s reach and the particular character of his contribution will be made in light of the other major popularisers and their editions of the rising discipline for the masses.
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