South Carolina and Columbia College. Political Economy Exams. Francis Lieber, 1855, 1863

What is a curator of Economics in the Rear-view Mirror to do when he stumbles across college exams in political economy from 1855 and 1863? Of course, there is no choice but to stop everything and post the material immediately. I had no reason to either like or dislike Francis Lieber when I started this post, but the more I see of him (not all posted here…yet), the more I get to like him as a scholar.

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Specimens of Francis Lieber’s Examinations

The numbers at the [left] of the questions in Sections A and B represent the point values of the questions.

A. South Carolina College.
Junior Class in Political Philosophy, 1855¹

The Juniors stand on Paley’s Elements of Political Knowledge, to Chap. VII, and five lectures.

1. [35 points] What is absolutism or an absolute Government: What is an absolute Monarchy, and what is absolute Democracy? Why is an absolute Democracy one of the worst governments? Compare the reality of power and the responsibility of the power-holder in the absolute Monarchy with those in the absolute Democracy.
2. [20 points] Define Obedience and state whether obeying is passive submission or an attribute of rational beings and free agents. Show how man is familiarized with the idea of authority before he becomes an active citizen, and show, moreover, how it is that we ought to obey laws which were made generations before us, and, in the making of which, consequently, we have no direct or indirect share.
3. [25 points] What is meant by the theory of the civil compact, implied or positive? Give the most serious objection to this theory.
4. [20 points] Give the first and the last division of the general classification of all governments and politics, written in such a way as to show the subordination of the different parts.

¹Printed copy in Lieber papers, Columbia University Libraries. A handwritten note at the bottom reads: “N. B. These refer to a course which commenced Oct. 1, and ended Nov. 10. F. L.”

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B. South Carolina College.
Senior Class in Political Economy, 1855²

The Seniors stand on the entire annual course of Political Economy, including a course of lectures and the whole of Say’s Political Economy, except the Book on Distribution.

Subjects.

1. [25 points] Louis the Fourteenth was in the habit of saying that royal profusion is the charity of kings, or, that lavish governments are a blessing to the people. Show what is meant by this assertion and its grave error.
2. [10 points] Define the term “Itinerant Merchant” or Pedlar. Does the Itinerant form an essential link in the long chain of commerce?
3. [30 points] Enumerate the characteristics of a sound acceptable tax, according to Mr. Say, and also the characteristics as your teacher has given them — adding to each characteristic an explanatory note or two, in order to show what is meant by it.
4. [15 points] Is machinery objectionable on the ground that it saves labor? If this were so, would the objection apply to machinery alone?
5. [30 points (sic, perhaps only 20?)] A hotel or bridge is built for a capital, say, of $100,000. The undertakings prove failures in spite of the prudent management of the concern either, because the buildings were erected on an extravagant plan, or because the number of people making use of them, falls short of that calculated upon. The hotel, or the bridge, is sold for $25,000 and now the number of boarders in the hotel, or of the passengers over the bridge, is sufficient to pay for the interest of the latter sum, as well as for all other outlays, and yields a fair profit. Hereupon the general remark is made: “Well, the capitalist who first undertook the thing is ruined, it is true, but the people,” or “the community at large have gained by it; for, here, they are living in this fine hotel,” or “here is the bridge still standing.” Similar remarks are made on large, yet unprofitable, under takings, of governments, with this difference that, generally, it is added, “There is no harm in the original outlay, although it proves unprofitable, inasmuch as the capital laid out has returned to the people.” For instance, one hundred millions of dollars laid out by government for a railway to the Pacific, would be no loss, although the railway should yield no profit, nor even pay for the interest of the capital, because the whole amount of the capital, would have returned to the people, by the laying of the road itself.

You meet with this argument every day in the debates in Congress, as well as in common life. Show its utter fallacy, or which amounts to the same thing, answer the question: Can the capitalist who pays for a work, be ruined by it, yet the community, or people at the same time be benefitted? And is there any difference in point of political economy, whether government, or a private individual be the capitalist? And also, whether there be any difference if the iron, in the case of the railway, be American iron, or purchased abroad?

²A printed copy is in the Columbia University Libraries.
Lieber elaborated the answer to the main part of the fifth question in his Some Truths Worth Remembering, Given as a Recapitulation, in a Farewell Lecture to the Class of Political Economy of 1849, Published by the Class.

“No enterprise, failing by its own unprofitable nature, can be, at the same time, ruinous to the adventurers, yet advantageous to the community. If a railway cost $500,000, and shares fall to $25 in the hundred, because travelling and freight pay a fair interest of $100,000 only, in that case the community has for ever lost the value of $400,000, and the passengers and freight are carried at the regular and fair price plus the interest of $400,000 proportionately divided in the course of the year. Nothing is more common than to hear that a hotel or a canal has been ruinous to the adventuring individuals, but that the people have reaped the advantage of it. This cannot be. The case applies to government undertakings. They cannot be advantageous to the whole (as far as productive effects are concerned), although they would be ruinous to individuals.”

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Columbia College.
Senior Class in Political Economy, 1863³

1. Definition of Money.
2. Immigration Into the U. States considered in an economical point of view.
3. Error of Montesquieu concerning Money.
4. Define direct and indirect taxation.
5. How does a Bill of Exchange become a commodity?
6. Communism and Socialism.
7. Enumerate the characteristics of an acceptable tax.
8. The N[ew] York Clearing House.

³In Lieber papers, Columbia University Libraries.

Source:  Appendix to “Francis Lieber: German Scholar in America,” reprinted in the collection of essays by Joseph Dorfman and R.G. Tugwell, Early American Policy: Six Columbia Contributors (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 339-341. The article was originally published without the above appendix in Columbia University Quarterly, Vol. 30 (Sept. and Dec.), 1938, pp. 159-90; 267-93.

Image Source: Thomas Sergeant Perry, editor. The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber (Boston, 1882).