For Christians, Christmas is a celebration of God’s incarnation. And if God himself became man, how great must be the value of the human person! Free and virtuous societies are those that recognize this value and dignity. Since I began writing these Christmas columns, I have focused on individuals and symbols who, while related to Christianity, teach us lessons about politics. This time I would like to highlight the late Archbishop of Dublin Richard Whately (1787-1863).
Engraved portrait of English economist Richard Whately, Archbishop of the Church of Ireland of Dublin, … [+]
Getty Images
It is noteworthy for those of us who study and work in economic policy that Whately was elected Professor of Political Economy at Oxford University in 1829. He was the tutor of Nassau William Senior (1790-1864), who held the chair before him. Whately achieved a high reputation as a teacher, student and propagator of economics, but when he was appointed Archbishop he was forced to retire from his career as an economist. However, he continued to pursue his passion for business as an intellectual entrepreneur. Out of his own pocket he donated a chair in political economy at Trinity College, which was founded in Dublin in 1592.
Whately’s episcopal duties prevented him from writing more on economics. Nonetheless, his book Introductory Letters of Political Economy (1831) anticipated many insights that a century later would help economists like FA Hayek become darlings of free-economy advocates.
The long entry about Whately in the Encyclopædia Britannica states that he “kept aloof from all political parties”. He also looked beyond religious boundaries. Whately was Anglican. Although close to the Catholic convert John Henry Newman (now St. John Henry Newman) and his Oxford movement, he opposed the theological proposals in Newman’s Tract 90. For a few years, 1825-26, Newman was Whately’s vice-principal at St .Alban’s Hall, one of the oldest halls in Oxford. Whately worked with Catholics, urging nonsectarian religious education, which worked well until a new Catholic archbishop withdrew his support in 1852.
Whately’s peers saw his approach to Christianity as overly matter-of-fact and rationalistic. But that was more due to his emphasis on logic than weak faith. He always strove to “convince the faculty of logic, and his Christianity inevitably appears as a matter of the intellect rather than of the heart.”
He saw the study of economics as distinct from moral philosophy: “It is necessary to study the nature of wealth, its production, the causes which favor or hinder its increase, and the laws which regulate its distribution.” Good or evil of wealth and its effects on morality, however, are “only indirectly and incidentally connected with political economy; whose strict aim is to study only the nature, production and distribution of wealth, not its connection with virtue or happiness.”
Whately was mentioned in two widely respected histories of economic thought. The History of Economic Analysis (1961), the monumental work prepared from the manuscript by Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883-1950), contains a section on Whately’s contributions to economics. Schumpeter treats Whately with the same superficiality as Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850). Although brilliant, Bastiat and Whately both passed the Schumpeter test for knowledge of “the analytical apparatus of economics”.
Book cover of “Introductory Lectures of Political Economy” by Richard Whately and dedication page. … [+]
Alejandro Chafuen
Schumpeter writes that Archbishop Whately “leaded quietly without being so, by the weight of his personality and by the weight of his advice, which was never more valuable than when it was obvious.” For in church politics, as in business, the obvious is sometimes what people are most reluctant to see. His most important contribution to economics, however, was the founding of Senior….”
In another widely used textbook, The Growth of Economic Thought (1971), Henry William Spiegel also mentions Whately. He cites his critique of the labor theory of value: “It is not that pearls fetch a high price because people have dived for them; but, on the contrary, people dive for them because they fetch a high price.” Whately’s teachings on subjective value theory and marginal analysis, the foundation of economics, were continued by Mountifort Longfield (1802-1884), who was the first holder of the Whately -Chair of Political Economy. As Der Spiegel writes, Longfield “anticipates the later findings of Menger and Jevons”.
Whately found that subjectivity applies not only to the value of material goods, but also to work. The same act can be seen as work for some and consumption for others. Take a game of tennis. A tennis professor and a student pursue similar activities but with different perspectives – one prefers the income he gets from teaching and the other prefers the training he receives. Whately gave the example of someone growing ornamental trees for sale at a nursery and another person planting them to enjoy a more beautiful garden.
In his book Della Economica Pubblica e Delle Sue Attinenze Colla Morale e Col Diritto, on political economy and its connections to morality and law, the late Italian prime minister and economist Marco Minghetti (1818-1886) credited Whately with being the first to used the term catallactic, or “the science of exchange,” to describe the essence of economics. Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) also attributed Whately and was the most famous economist to propagate the term catallactic.
For the similarity of Whately’s views to what FA Hayek wrote a century later, consider this example: “Many of the most important ends are achieved through the joint action of persons who never think or have the idea of acting together: and with a certainty, completeness, and regularity which probably the most industrious goodwill, guided by the greatest human wisdom, could never have achieved.”
This Irish bishop saw a divine plan in creation: “In every part of the universe we see signs of wise and benevolent plan.” Nothing, however, seemed so grand to Whately as the economic process. “I don’t know if it doesn’t further arouse our admiration for the beneficent wisdom of Providence to consider rational free agents working together in systems no less obviously indicative of a design, but not a design of theirs.” He comes to concludes: “Man, viewed not only as an organized being but as a rational agent and member of society, is perhaps the most wonderful and most interesting specimen of divine wisdom that we know of.”
Like most good economists, Whately saw international trade in a good light. “There are many useful exchanges between different nations that we call trade. Not all countries will produce the same things; but through exchange each country can enjoy all the other’s products.” He saw trade as a way to minimize wars. “What folly and sin it is for different nations to be jealous of one another and go to war instead of peacefully dealing with one another; making both parties richer and better off. But the best gifts of God are given in vain to those who are perverted.”
The economic order he advocated required a strong respect for private property. In “every country where property is secure and people are industrious, the wealth of that country will increase; and those who are most industrious and frugal will gain more than those who are lazy and wasteful.”
But when private property is poorly secured, even “countries that used to be very productive and populous” have become almost deserts under tyrannical governments. Whately saw this system of private property as fully consistent with Christianity: “The apostles had no intention of destroying the security of property among Christians which leads to the distinction between rich and poor. For their exhortations to the rich to be kind and charitable to the poor would have been absurd had they not allowed any of their people to be rich. And there could be no such thing as charity in giving anything to the poor unless it were left to everyone’s free choice to give or spend what is his.” He goes on to say: “Scripture forbids us ‘the goods to covet our neighbor’, not because he uses them well, but because they are his.” Whately was a generous donor to the poor in troubled economic times. He concludes: “The very nature of charity implies that it must be voluntary; for no one can rightly say he gives that which he cannot withhold.” Whately opposed government plans to give funds to the poor, except those aimed at helping those with severe physical or mental disabilities, because such Plans, in his words, tended to “aggravate this evil”. He believed that the best thing civil society could do was to encourage industriousness, frugality and foresight, “by whatever means this can be achieved”.
It is not common today to find prominent religious figures well educated in economics. This is unfortunate, since many moralists, albeit with good intentions, hold views which, instead of creating wealth and empowering the poor, end up perpetuating misery. Whately wanted to combat the prejudices of those who believe that political economy is incompatible with religion. He thought that political economists had always ruled the world, that political economy and theology were not at odds with one another, and that there was still much to be learned.
Magdalena Richards did the research for this article
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