Nassau William Senior English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 economist

Economist

An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...

, was born at Compton, Berkshire

Berkshire

Berkshire is a historic county in the South of England. It is also often referred to as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of the royal residence of Windsor Castle in the county; this usage, which dates to the 19th century at least, was recognised by the Queen in 1957, and...

, the eldest son of the Rev. JR Senior, vicar of Durnford, Wiltshire

Wiltshire

Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...

.

Biography

Senior was educated at Eton

Eton College

Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....

 and Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...

; at the university he was a private pupil of Richard Whately

Richard Whately

Richard Whately was an English rhetorician, logician, economist, and theologian who also served as the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin.-Life and times:...

, afterwards archbishop of Dublin

Archbishop of Dublin (Church of Ireland)

The Archbishop of Dublin is the title of the senior cleric who presides over the United Dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough in the Church of Ireland...

, with whom he remained connected by ties of lifelong friendship. He took the degree of B.A. in 1811, was called to the bar

Call to the bar

The Call to the Bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party, and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received a "call to the bar"...

 in 1819, and in 1836, during the chancellorship of Lord Cottenham

Charles Pepys, 1st Earl of Cottenham

Charles Christopher Pepys, 1st Earl of Cottenham PC KC was a British lawyer, judge and politician. He was twice Lord Chancellor of Great Britain.-Background and education:...

, was appointed a master in chancery

Court of Chancery

The Court of Chancery was a court of equity in England and Wales that followed a set of loose rules to avoid the slow pace of change and possible harshness of the common law. The Chancery had jurisdiction over all matters of equity, including trusts, land law, the administration of the estates of...

. On the foundation of the professorship of political economy

Political economy

Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...

 at Oxford in 1825 Senior was elected to fill the chair, which he occupied till 1830, and again from 1847 to 1852. In 1830 he was requested by Lord Melbourne to inquire into the state of combinations and strikes, to report on the state of the law and to suggest improvements in it.

Senior was a member of the Poor Law

Poor Law

The English Poor Laws were a system of poor relief which existed in England and Wales that developed out of late-medieval and Tudor-era laws before being codified in 1587–98...

 Inquiry Commission of 1832, and of the handloom weavers Commission of 1837. The report of the latter, published in 1841, was drawn up by him, and he embodied in it the substance of the report he had prepared some years before on combinations and strikes. He became a good friend of Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...

 (1805–1859), whom he met in 1833 for the first time before the publishing of Democracy in America

Democracy in America

De la démocratie en Amérique is a classic French text by Alexis de Tocqueville. A "literal" translation of its title is Of Democracy in America, but the usual translation of the title is simply Democracy in America...

. Senior was in the spring of 1849 legal advisor and marriage counsellor to Jenny Lind

Jenny Lind

Johanna Maria Lind , better known as Jenny Lind, was a Swedish opera singer, often known as the "Swedish Nightingale". One of the most highly regarded singers of the 19th century, she is known for her performances in soprano roles in opera in Sweden and across Europe, and for an extraordinarily...

 (1820–1887), the Swedish Nightingale, who then performed in London. He accompanied her and Mrs George Grote

George Grote

George Grote was an English classical historian, best known in the field for a major work, the voluminous History of Greece, still read.-Early life:He was born at Clay Hill near Beckenham in Kent...

 to Paris (amid civil strife and a cholera

Cholera

Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...

 epidemic), where the marriage failed to take place. Senior was "indirectly responsible for the contract which Jenny Lind condescended to sign in 1850 with the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 promoter P.T. Barnum".

Senior was one of the commissioners appointed in 1864 to inquire into popular education in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. In the later years of his life, during his visits to foreign countries, he studied with much care the political and social phenomena they exhibited. Several volumes of his journals have been published, which contain much interesting matter on these topics, though the author probably rated too highly the value of this sort of social study. Senior was for many years a frequent contributor to the Edinburgh Quarterly, London and North British Reviews, dealing in their pages with literary as well as with economic and political subjects. He died at Kensington

Kensington

Kensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...

 on 4 June 1864.

Writings

His writings on economic theory consisted of an article in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana

Encyclopaedia Metropolitana

The Encyclopædia Metropolitana was an encyclopedic work published in London, from 1817 to 1845, by part publication. In all it came to quarto, 30 vols., having been issued in 59 parts .-Origins:...

, afterwards separately published as An Outline of the Science of Political Economy (1836), and his lectures delivered at Oxford. Of the latter the following were printed:

• An Introductory Lecture (1827)
• Two Lectures on Population, with a correspondence between the author and Malthus
  Thomas Malthus
  The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus FRS was an English scholar, influential in political economy and demography. Malthus popularized the economic theory of rent....
  
   (1831)
• Three Lectures on the Transmission of the Precious Metals from Country to Country, and the Mercantile Theory of Wealth (1828)
• Three Lectures on the Cost of obtaining Money and on some Effects of Private and Government Paper Money (1830)
• Three Lectures on Wages and on the Effects of Absenteeism, Machinery and War, with a Preface on the Causes and Remedies of the Present Disturbances (1830, 2nd ed. 1831)
• A Lecture on the Production of Wealth (1847)
• Four Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (1852).

Several of his lectures were translated into French by M. Arrivabne under the title of Principes Fondamentaux d'Economie Politique (1835).

Senior also wrote on administrative and social questions:

• Report on the Depressed State of the Agriculture of the United Kingdom. In: The Quarterly Review (1821), p. 466 - 504
• A Letter to Lord Howick on a Legal Provision for the Irish Poor, Commutation of Tithes and a Provision for the Irish Roman Catholic Clergy (1831, 3rd ed., 1832, with a preface containing suggestions as to the measures to be adopted in the present emergency)
• Statement of the Provision for the Poor and of the Condition of the Laboring Classes in a considerable portion of America and Europe, being the Preface to the Foreign Communications in the Appendix to the Poor Law Report (1835)
• On National Property, and on the Prospects of the Present Administration and of their Successors (anon.; 1835)
• Letters on the Factory Act, as it affects the Cotton Manufacture (1837)
• Suggestions on Popular Education (1861)
• American Slavery (in part a reprint from the Edinburgh Review, 1862)
• An Address on Education delivered to the Social Science Association (1863)

His contributions to the reviews were collected in volumes entitled Essays on Fiction (1864); Biographical Sketches (1865, chiefly of noted lawyers); and Historical and Philosophical Essays (1865).

In 1859 appeared his Journal kept in Turkey and Greece in the Autumn of 1857 and the Beginning of 1858; and the following were edited after his death by his daughter:

• Journals, Conversations and Essays relating to Ireland (1868)
• Journals kept in France and Italy from 1848 to 1852, with a Sketch of the Revolution of 1848 (1871)
• Conversations with Thiers, Guizot and other Distinguished Persons during the Second Empire
  Second French Empire
  The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...
  
   (1878)
• Conversations with Distinguished Persons during the Second Empire, from 1860 to 1863 (1880)
• Conversations and Journals in Egypt and Malta (1882)
• also in 1872 Correspondence and Conversations with Alexis de Tocqueville from 1834 to 1859.

Senior's tracts on practical politics, though the theses they supported were sometimes questionable, were ably written and are still worth reading, but cannot be said to be of much permanent interest. But his name continues to hold an honorable, though secondary, place in the history of political economy.

Senior's view on political economy

Senior regards political economy as a purely deductive science, all the truths of which are inferences from four elementary propositions. It is, in his opinion, wrongly supposed by JS Mill

John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...

 and others to on a hypothetic science founded, that is to say, on postulates not corresponding with social realities. The premises from which it sets out are, according to him, not assumptions but facts. It concerns itself, however, with wealth

Wealth

Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions. The word wealth is derived from the old English wela, which is from an Indo-European word stem...

 only, and can therefore give no practical counsel as to political action: it can only suggest considerations which the politician should keep in view as elements in the study of the questions with which he has to deal. According to neo-classical economics, the conception of economics as altogether deductive is certainly erroneous. But deduction has a real, though limited, sphere within it. Hence, though the chief difficulties of the subject are not of a logical kind, yet accurate nomenclature, strict definition and rigorous reasoning are of great importance. To these Senior gave special attention, and, notwithstanding occasional pedantries, with very useful results.

In several instances he improved the forms in which accepted doctrines were habitually stated. He also did excellent service by pointing out the arbitrary novelties—and frequent inconsistencies of terminology which deface Ricardo

David Ricardo

David Ricardo was an English political economist, often credited with systematising economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. He was also a member of Parliament, businessman, financier and speculator,...

's principal works, for example, his use of value in the sense of cost of production, and of high and low wages in the sense of a certain proportion of the product as distinguished from an absolute amount, and his peculiar employment of the epithets fixed and circulating as applied to capital

Capital (economics)

In economics, capital, capital goods, or real capital refers to already-produced durable goods used in production of goods or services. The capital goods are not significantly consumed, though they may depreciate in the production process...

. He shows, too, that in numerous instances the premises assumed by Ricardo

Ricardo

Ricardo is the Portuguese and Spanish cognate of the name Richard. Therefore the name means "Brave Ruler".-People with the first name Ricardo:*Ricardo Arona, Brazilian mixed martial artist*Ricardo de Araújo Pereira, Portuguese comedian...

 are false. Thus he cites the assertions that rent depends on the difference of fertility of the different portions of land in cultivation; that the laborer always receives precisely the necessaries, or what custom leads him to consider the necessaries, of life; that, as wealth and population advance, agricultural labor becomes less and less proportionately productive; and that therefore the share of the produce taken by the landlord and the laborer must constantly increase, whilst that taken by the capitalist must constantly diminish; and he denies the truth of all these propositions.

Besides adopting some terms, such as that of natural agents, from Say

Jean-Baptiste Say

Jean-Baptiste Say was a French economist and businessman. He had classically liberal views and argued in favor of competition, free trade, and lifting restraints on business...

, Senior introduced the word abstinence which, though obviously not free from objection, is for some purposes useful to express the conduct of the capitalist which is remunerated by interest; but in defining cost of production as the sum of labor and abstinence necessary to production he does not seem to see that an amount of labor and an amount of abstinence are disparate, and do not admit of reduction to a common quantitative standard. He added some important considerations to what had been said by 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...

 on the division of labor. He distinguishes usefully between the rate of wages and the price of labor. But in seeking to determine the law of wages he falls into the error of assuming a determinate wage-fund, and states as an economic truth what is only an identical proposition in arithmetic.

Whilst entertaining such an exaggerated estimate of the services of Malthus that he extravagantly pronounces him as a benefactor of mankind on a level with 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...

, he yet shows that he modified his opinions on population considerably in the course of his career, regards his statements of the doctrine with which his name is associated as vague and ambiguous, and asserts that, in the absence of disturbing causes, subsistence may be expected to increase in a greater ratio than population. It is urged by HXC Penn, and must, we think, be admitted, that by his isolation of economics from morals, and his assumption of the desire of wealth as the sole motive-force in the economic domain, Senior, in common with most of the other followers of Smith, tended to set up egoism as the legitimate ruler and guide of practical life. It is no sufficient answer to this charge that he makes formal reserve in favor of higher ends. From the scientific side Cliffe Leslie

Thomas Edward Cliffe Leslie

Thomas Edward Cliffe Leslie , Irish economist. He was professor of jurisprudence and political economy in Queen's College, Belfast, noted for debunking the Wages-Fund doctrine and for addressing contemporary agrarian policy questions. A critic of Ricardian orthodoxy, he said that it had...

 has abundantly proved the unsubstantial nature of the abstraction implied in the phrase desire of wealth, and the inadequacy of such a principle for the explanation of economic phenomena.

Controversy: Irish Famine

Nassau, wrote that the Great Irish Famine of 1845

"would not kill more than one million people, and that would scarcely be enough to do any good."

This is one of the points frequently quoted by theorists who propose that the inaction of the British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 government and their laissez-faire

Laissez-faire

In economics, laissez-faire describes an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies....

 attitude in supplying aid & relief during the Great Irish Famine is tantamount to deliberate genocide

Genocide

Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...

.

More specifically, believers in the genocide

Genocide

Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...

 theories claim that the mindset of the highly educated and well regarded such as Nassau, is demonstrated through this quote, and supports motives or personifies the contempt which existed among the English

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 élite for the Irish

Irish people

The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...

 subjects of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....

.

Costigan argues however, that this quote is taken out of context and reflects Nassau's opinion purely from the viewpoint of the theory of political economy. He argues that Nassau made attempts over many years to improve the lot of the Irish people, even at considerable personal cost (in 1832 he was removed, after one year in office, from his position as Professor of Political Economy at King's College, London, for supporting the Catholic Church in Ireland). In his letter of 8 January 1836 to Lord Howick Nassau writes,

With respect to the ejected tenantry, the stories that are told make one's blood boil. I must own that I differ from most persons as to the meaning of the words 'legitimate influence of property'. I think that the only legitimate influence is example and advice, and that a landlord who requires a tenant to vote in opposition to the tenant's feeling of duty is the suborner of a criminal act.'

Also, his notes of his visits to Birr

Birr

Birr is a town in County Offaly, Ireland. Once called Parsonstown, after the Parsons family who were local landowners and hereditary Earls of Rosse. It is also a parish in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Killaloe....

in the 1850s mention his surprise and concern that the everyday lifestyle of the Irish poor had changed so little, despite the famine disaster. His theme is anti-poverty and not anti-Irish.

Though the aspect of Ireland is somewhat changed since 1852, and much since 1844, I doubt whether any great real alteration in the habits to feelings of the people has taken place. They still depend mainly on the potato. They still depend rather on the occupation of land, than on the wages of labour. They still erect for themselves the hovels in which they dwell. They are still eager to subdivide and to sublet. They are still the tools of their priests, and the priests are still ignorant of the economical laws on which the welfare of the labouring classes depends.

Literature

• S. Leon Levy (1943) - Nassau W. Senior, The Prophet of Modern Capitalism, Boston 1943
• S. Leon Levy (1970) - Nassau W. Senior 1790-1864, Devon 1970