In an earlier post Economics in the Rear-view Mirror gathered links to monographs on the history of education in individual states of the U.S. under the general editorship of Johns Hopkins history professor Herbert B. Adams and published by the Bureau of Education. Another monograph was written and published by Adams on the study of history at American colleges and universities. Back in 1887 departments of history were intertwined with public law, diplomacy, political economy, and government so it should come as no surprise that the study of history monograph provides much interesting material on the place and progress of the academic discipline of political economy.
Chunks of Adam’s monograph will be served over the coming weeks, educational institution by institution, economist by economist. Anecdotal evidence is best served like hors d’oeuvres. Readers may BYOB.
Today’s post gives us Adams’ call (put into a footnote in a section about Columbia College in the early 19th century) that the College of William and Mary, thanks to the encouragement of Thomas Jefferson, has a legitimate claim to have at least tied Columbia College in adding political economy to the curriculum.
The department of economics at William and Mary website, relying on more recent research, awards itself priority in a webpage that sketches the history.
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William and Mary College is an historic rival of Columbia with regard to priority of recognition of economics in the curriculum. In a letter from Joseph C. Cabell to Thomas Jefferson, dated August 4, 1816, is this statement: “Dr. [John Augustine] Smith has adopted the review of Montesquieu [by Count Destutt Tracy] as the text-book on the Principles of Government for the students of William and Mary. He will adopt either Say or Tracy on Political Economy, as the one or the other may appear best, when the latter comes out.” Tracy’s Treatise on Political Economy, for the translation and publication of which Jefferson had early arranged, was issued from the press of Joseph Milligan, at Georgetown, D. C., in 1817, with a brief introductory sketch of the history of economic literature from Jefferson’s own pen. Cabell was meditating a translation of Say, but gave up the project [see, C. R. Prinsep’s translation of Say’s A Treatise on Political Economy (1821)]. Volume I ; Volume II] Tracy’s elaborate Review of Montesquieu was published at Jefferson’s instance in Philadelphia, circa 1812. This work, which was adopted at William and Mary College in 1816, contained Tracy’s economic views. Jefferson said, when recommending it through Cabell: “Dr. Smith, you say, asks what is the best elementary book on the principles of government? None in the world equal to the Review of Montesquieu, printed at Philadelphia a few years ago. It has the advantage, too, of being equally sound and corrective of the principles of political economy, and all within the compass of a thin 8vo.” Jefferson was one of the first promoters of political economy in this country. In 1816 he wrote to Cabell that he would render the country a great service by translating Say, “for there is no branch of science of which our countrymen seem so ignorant as political economy.” Jefferson came very near capturing the French economist for his own Central College, afterward the University of Virginia. Jefferson wrote to his friend Cabell January 5, 1815: “I have lately received a letter from Say. He has in contemplation to remove to this country, and to this neighborhood particularly.” Failing in that brilliant scheme, Jefferson secured, in 1817, the professorial services of Dr. Thomas Cooper, the English economist and refugee, who had settled in Pennsylvania some years before, and had there written upon economic subjects. As early as 1810 Jefferson said of Cooper: “The best pieces on political economy which have been written in this country were by Cooper.” This universal scholar, of whom so little is now known, never actually taught political economy in the University of Virginia, which chose him for its first professor, but from which he early resigned on account of sectarian opposition. He became eminent as a teacher of economics in the College of South Carolina, where he early published a text-book of political economy, which should be compared with that of McVickar.
Source: Adams, Herbert B. The Study of History in American Colleges and Universities. Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, No. 2, 1887. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1887), pp. 61-62.
Image Source: John Augustine Smith’s portrait from the Encyclopedia Virginia website. Credit: University Archives Photographs Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary