Josiah Tucker
Encyclopedia
Josiah Tucker (December 1713 – 4 November 1799), also known as Dean Tucker, was a Welsh
churchman, known as an economist and political writer. He was concerned in his works with free trade
, Jewish emancipation
and American independence. He became Dean of Gloucester.
, and sent his son to Ruthin School
, Denbighshire
. Tucker obtained an exhibition
at St John's College, Oxford
. He graduated B.A. in 1736, M.A. in 1739, and D.D. in 1755.
In 1737 he became curate of St. Stephen's Church in Bristol
, and two years later rector of All Saints' Church in the same city. He was appointed to a minor canonry in the cathedral, and was noticed by Bishop Joseph Butler
, to whom he was for a time domestic chaplain. On the death of Alexander Stopford Catcott in 1749 Tucker was appointed by the chancellor to the rectory of St. Stephen's.
In 1754 Robert Nugent
was elected for Bristol, supported by Tucker; Nugent's influence probably contributed to his preferment. He was appointed to the third prebendal stall at Bristol on 28 October 1756, and on 13 July 1758 as Dean of Gloucester. Tucker, as Dean of Gloucester, saw something of William Warburton
, who became bishop in 1759, having previously been Dean of Bristol. They did not like each other, and, according to Tucker, the bishop said that the dean made a religion of his trade and a trade of his religion. (According to another version, the person said to make a trade of his religion was Samuel Squire
, who succeeded Warburton as Dean of Bristol.)
He became infirm, and in 1790 asked to resign his rectory at Bristol on condition that his curate might succeed to it. The chancellor refused to give the required promise, until, at Tucker's request, his petitioners signed a petition on behalf of the curate. Tucker then resigned, and the curate was appointed. Tucker died on 4 November 1799 and was buried in the south transept of Gloucester Cathedral
, where a monument was erected to his memory.
. Tucker became conspicuous in the controversy which arose in 1771 as to the proposed abolition of clerical subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles
. He defended the Church of England
against Andrew Kippis
, but said that some relaxation of the terms of subscription was desirable.
At Bristol Tucker took an interest in matters of politics and trade. After some early tracts he first became generally known by pamphlets in favour of the measures for naturalising foreign Protestants and Jews
, a view so unpopular that he was burnt in effigy at Bristol along with his pamphlets. In those Tucker was supporting Robert Nugent, who in 1753 introduced a bill in Parliament for the naturalization
of foreigners.
He made his name as an economist with A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages, which Respectively Attend France and Great Britain (1749). It was translated into French and may have influenced the later French physiocrats
(economistes). Tucker had a reputation for his knowledge of trade, and in 1755 was asked by Thomas Hayter
, then bishop of Norwich
and royal preceptor, to draw up a treatise called Elements of Commerce for the instruction of the future king (George III of England). A fragment was privately printed, but it was never completed. He has been suggested as a source of some of Adam Smith
's ideas, even if for a century after his death he was dismissed as a pamphleteer writing controversial ephemera on questions of passing interest.
He opposed warfare on economic grounds. In 1763 Tucker published a tract against ‘going to war for the sake of trade,’ which was translated by Turgot, who had previously translated one of the naturalisation pamphlets, and The Elements of Commerce and Theory of Taxes (privately printed, 1755),translated as Questions sur le commerce in 1753. He wrote in complimentary terms to Tucker some years later, and sent him a copy of the ‘Réflexions sur la Formation des Richesses’. He mentions a visit of Tucker to Paris, but they were not personally acquainted.
His assertion as early as 1749 that the American colonies would seek independence as soon as they no longer needed Britain has brought him to the attention of American historians. He consistently wrote in favour of American independence through the American Revolutionary War. He wrote pamphlets, including A Series of Answers to Certain Popular Objections Against Separating from the Rebellious Colonies (1776). Tucker argued with both Edmund Burke
and John Wilkes
over attitudes to Britain's American colonies and took a distinctive position on the American War of Independence. As early as 1766, he thought a separation inevitable. But he was also hostile to the Americans. He maintained in pamphlets that a separation from the colonies was desirable. He held that the supposed advantage of the colonial trade to the mother country was a delusion. On the other hand, he maintained that the colonies turned adrift would fall out with each other, and be glad to return to political union. The policy pleased nobody in England, and Tucker, though his views were approved in later years by many of the laisser-faire economists, was for a time treated as a Cassandra
, a name under which he published in the newspapers. The most popular of his American tracts was Cui Bono? in the form of letters addressed to Jacques Necker
(1781), arguing that the war was a mistake for all the nations concerned.
In political theory he was an opponent of the social contract
theory which held all the mainstream writers of his day. In 1781 he published A Treatise Concerning Civil Government, attacking John Locke
's principles as tending to democracy, and supporting the British constitution. In 1785 he again applied his theories to the disputes about Irish trade with Great Britain.
Tucker was an advocate for increase in British population, to the extent that he advocated a tax on bachelors; he welcomed immigrants and regretted the emigration to America. He embraced the free market
, writing against monopoly
in all its forms including the exclusive rights of overseas trading companies like the East India Company, decrying restrictive guild rules of apprenticeship, the Navigation Acts
and other impediments to the rule of the unfettered marketplace.
, who subsequently became dean of Clogher and bishop of Cloyne. In 1781 Tucker married his housekeeper, Mrs. Crowe.
Attribution
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
churchman, known as an economist and political writer. He was concerned in his works with free trade
Free trade
Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...
, Jewish emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
and American independence. He became Dean of Gloucester.
Life
He was born at Laugharne, Carmarthenshire; his father inherited a small estate near AberystwythAberystwyth
Aberystwyth is a historic market town, administrative centre and holiday resort within Ceredigion, Wales. Often colloquially known as Aber, it is located at the confluence of the rivers Ystwyth and Rheidol....
, and sent his son to Ruthin School
Ruthin School
Ruthin School is one of the oldest public schools in the United Kingdom. Located on the outskirts of Ruthin, the county town of Denbighshire in North Wales, the school is over seven hundred years old and has been co-educational since 1990.- Beginnings :...
, Denbighshire
Denbighshire
Denbighshire is a county in north-east Wales. It is named after the historic county of Denbighshire, but has substantially different borders. Denbighshire has the distinction of being the oldest inhabited part of Wales. Pontnewydd Palaeolithic site has remains of Neanderthals from 225,000 years...
. Tucker obtained an exhibition
Exhibition (scholarship)
-United Kingdom and Ireland:At the universities of Dublin, Oxford and Cambridge, and at Westminster School, Eton College and Winchester College, and various other UK educational establishments, an exhibition is a financial award or grant to an individual student, normally on grounds of merit. The...
at St John's College, Oxford
St John's College, Oxford
__FORCETOC__St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford, one of the larger Oxford colleges with approximately 390 undergraduates, 200 postgraduates and over 100 academic staff. It was founded by Sir Thomas White, a merchant, in 1555, whose heart is buried in the chapel of...
. He graduated B.A. in 1736, M.A. in 1739, and D.D. in 1755.
In 1737 he became curate of St. Stephen's Church in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, and two years later rector of All Saints' Church in the same city. He was appointed to a minor canonry in the cathedral, and was noticed by Bishop Joseph Butler
Joseph Butler
Joseph Butler was an English bishop, theologian, apologist, and philosopher. He was born in Wantage in the English county of Berkshire . He is known, among other things, for his critique of Thomas Hobbes's egoism and John Locke's theory of personal identity...
, to whom he was for a time domestic chaplain. On the death of Alexander Stopford Catcott in 1749 Tucker was appointed by the chancellor to the rectory of St. Stephen's.
In 1754 Robert Nugent
Robert Nugent, 1st Earl Nugent
Robert Craggs-Nugent, 1st Earl Nugent PC was an Irish politician and poet.-Background:The son of Michael Nugent and Mary, daughter of Robert Barnewall, 9th Baron Trimlestown, he was born at Carlanstown, County Westmeath...
was elected for Bristol, supported by Tucker; Nugent's influence probably contributed to his preferment. He was appointed to the third prebendal stall at Bristol on 28 October 1756, and on 13 July 1758 as Dean of Gloucester. Tucker, as Dean of Gloucester, saw something of William Warburton
William Warburton
William Warburton was an English critic and churchman, Bishop of Gloucester from 1759.-Life:He was born at Newark, where his father, who belonged to an old Cheshire family, was town clerk. William was educated at Oakham and Newark grammar schools, and in 1714 he was articled to Mr Kirke, an...
, who became bishop in 1759, having previously been Dean of Bristol. They did not like each other, and, according to Tucker, the bishop said that the dean made a religion of his trade and a trade of his religion. (According to another version, the person said to make a trade of his religion was Samuel Squire
Samuel Squire
Samuel Squire was a Bishop of the Church of England and a historian.-Early life:Squire was born the son of a druggist in Warminster, Wiltshire, and was first educated at Lord Weymouth's School. He matriculated at St John's College, Cambridge, in 1730 and graduated BA in 1734, winning the Craven...
, who succeeded Warburton as Dean of Bristol.)
He became infirm, and in 1790 asked to resign his rectory at Bristol on condition that his curate might succeed to it. The chancellor refused to give the required promise, until, at Tucker's request, his petitioners signed a petition on behalf of the curate. Tucker then resigned, and the curate was appointed. Tucker died on 4 November 1799 and was buried in the south transept of Gloucester Cathedral
Gloucester Cathedral
Gloucester Cathedral, or the Cathedral Church of St Peter and the Holy and Indivisible Trinity, in Gloucester, England, stands in the north of the city near the river. It originated in 678 or 679 with the foundation of an abbey dedicated to Saint Peter .-Foundations:The foundations of the present...
, where a monument was erected to his memory.
Works and views
His first published work was an attack on MethodismMethodism
Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...
. Tucker became conspicuous in the controversy which arose in 1771 as to the proposed abolition of clerical subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles
Thirty-Nine Articles
The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion are the historically defining statements of doctrines of the Anglican church with respect to the controversies of the English Reformation. First established in 1563, the articles served to define the doctrine of the nascent Church of England as it related to...
. He defended the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
against Andrew Kippis
Andrew Kippis
Andrew Kippis was an English nonconformist clergyman and biographer.The son of Robert Kippis, a silk-hosier, he was born at Nottingham. Having gone to school at Sleaford in Lincolnshire he passed at the age of sixteen to the Dissenting academy at Northampton, of which Dr Philip Doddridge was then...
, but said that some relaxation of the terms of subscription was desirable.
At Bristol Tucker took an interest in matters of politics and trade. After some early tracts he first became generally known by pamphlets in favour of the measures for naturalising foreign Protestants and Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
, a view so unpopular that he was burnt in effigy at Bristol along with his pamphlets. In those Tucker was supporting Robert Nugent, who in 1753 introduced a bill in Parliament for the naturalization
Naturalization
Naturalization is the acquisition of citizenship and nationality by somebody who was not a citizen of that country at the time of birth....
of foreigners.
He made his name as an economist with A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages, which Respectively Attend France and Great Britain (1749). It was translated into French and may have influenced the later French physiocrats
Physiocrats
Physiocracy is an economic theory developed by the Physiocrats, a group of economists who believed that the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of "land agriculture" or "land development." Their theories originated in France and were most popular during the second half of the 18th...
(economistes). Tucker had a reputation for his knowledge of trade, and in 1755 was asked by Thomas Hayter
Thomas Hayter
Thomas Hayter was an English divine, who served as a Church of England bishop for 13 years.He was born in Chagdord, Devon , officially the son of George Hayter. It has often been claimed that Lancelot Blackburne was his father, but there is no conclusive evidence either way...
, then bishop of Norwich
Bishop of Norwich
The Bishop of Norwich is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Norwich in the Province of Canterbury.The diocese covers most of the County of Norfolk and part of Suffolk. The see is in the City of Norwich where the seat is located at the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided...
and royal preceptor, to draw up a treatise called Elements of Commerce for the instruction of the future king (George III of England). A fragment was privately printed, but it was never completed. He has been suggested as a source of some of Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
's ideas, even if for a century after his death he was dismissed as a pamphleteer writing controversial ephemera on questions of passing interest.
He opposed warfare on economic grounds. In 1763 Tucker published a tract against ‘going to war for the sake of trade,’ which was translated by Turgot, who had previously translated one of the naturalisation pamphlets, and The Elements of Commerce and Theory of Taxes (privately printed, 1755),translated as Questions sur le commerce in 1753. He wrote in complimentary terms to Tucker some years later, and sent him a copy of the ‘Réflexions sur la Formation des Richesses’. He mentions a visit of Tucker to Paris, but they were not personally acquainted.
His assertion as early as 1749 that the American colonies would seek independence as soon as they no longer needed Britain has brought him to the attention of American historians. He consistently wrote in favour of American independence through the American Revolutionary War. He wrote pamphlets, including A Series of Answers to Certain Popular Objections Against Separating from the Rebellious Colonies (1776). Tucker argued with both Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
and John Wilkes
John Wilkes
John Wilkes was an English radical, journalist and politician.He was first elected Member of Parliament in 1757. In the Middlesex election dispute, he fought for the right of voters—rather than the House of Commons—to determine their representatives...
over attitudes to Britain's American colonies and took a distinctive position on the American War of Independence. As early as 1766, he thought a separation inevitable. But he was also hostile to the Americans. He maintained in pamphlets that a separation from the colonies was desirable. He held that the supposed advantage of the colonial trade to the mother country was a delusion. On the other hand, he maintained that the colonies turned adrift would fall out with each other, and be glad to return to political union. The policy pleased nobody in England, and Tucker, though his views were approved in later years by many of the laisser-faire economists, was for a time treated as a Cassandra
Cassandra
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy...
, a name under which he published in the newspapers. The most popular of his American tracts was Cui Bono? in the form of letters addressed to Jacques Necker
Jacques Necker
Jacques Necker was a French statesman of Swiss birth and finance minister of Louis XVI, a post he held in the lead-up to the French Revolution in 1789.-Early life:...
(1781), arguing that the war was a mistake for all the nations concerned.
In political theory he was an opponent of the social contract
Social contract
The social contract is an intellectual device intended to explain the appropriate relationship between individuals and their governments. Social contract arguments assert that individuals unite into political societies by a process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by common rules and accept...
theory which held all the mainstream writers of his day. In 1781 he published A Treatise Concerning Civil Government, attacking John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
's principles as tending to democracy, and supporting the British constitution. In 1785 he again applied his theories to the disputes about Irish trade with Great Britain.
Tucker was an advocate for increase in British population, to the extent that he advocated a tax on bachelors; he welcomed immigrants and regretted the emigration to America. He embraced the free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
, writing against monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
in all its forms including the exclusive rights of overseas trading companies like the East India Company, decrying restrictive guild rules of apprenticeship, the Navigation Acts
Navigation Acts
The English Navigation Acts were a series of laws that restricted the use of foreign shipping for trade between England and its colonies, a process which had started in 1651. Their goal was to force colonial development into lines favorable to England, and stop direct colonial trade with the...
and other impediments to the rule of the unfettered marketplace.
Family
Tucker's first wife was the widow of Francis Woodward of Grimsbury, Gloucestershire, and he educated his stepson, Richard WoodwardRichard Woodward
Richard Woodward was Bishop of Cloyne in the Church of Ireland and the author of a vigorous defence of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland.-Origins and education:...
, who subsequently became dean of Clogher and bishop of Cloyne. In 1781 Tucker married his housekeeper, Mrs. Crowe.
Further reading
- Clark W. E., Josiah Tucker, economist: a study in the history of economics, New York, 1903.
- Johnson E. A., Predecessors of Adam Smith, New York, 1937.
- Koehn Nancy F., The Power of Commerce: Economy and Governance in the First British Empire, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1994. (Especially the chapter entitled "Managing the Great Machine of Trade.")
- Robert Livingston Schuyler, Josiah Tucker: A Selection from his Economic and Political Writings (New York:Columbia University Press) 1931; it reprints seven of Tucker's scarce pamphlets, and a biography is in the Introduction.
- Shelton G., Dean Tucker and 18th-century economics and political thought, New York, 1981.
External links
Attribution