Fifty years after the Adam Smith Centennial Dinner, Ashley, the first president of the Economic History Society, warned the economic historians: “The theoretical economists are ready to keep us quiet by giving us a little garden plot of our own; and we humble historians are so thankful for a little undisputed territory that we are inclined to leave the economists to their own devices.” Ashley's comment was the swan song of English historical economics. Ashley himself would be dead within a year. Cunningham had already passed away in 1919. Although several of the historical economists continued to be heard after the First World War, by 1926 Cliffe Leslie's program of the 1870s had been dissolved in the professional study of economic history and applied economics.

Historical economics and the history of economic thought

Most accounts of the history of British economic thought pay but little attention to the contribution of the historical economists, although recent scholarship on the subject holds hope for the future. Modern work in the sociology of science offers many explanations for the relative neglect of historical economics. Ashley, however, had already grasped the central issue. The historical economists protested against a Whig version of the history of economic thought in which pride of place went to those who anticipated developments in modern theory and neglected the work of dissenters. Paradoxically, as Ashley understood, the success of the historical economists in creating a discipline of economic history removed them from being considered economists. Instead of revolutionizing all of economic study, the historical economists subdivided the subject.