Introduction

The debate around the 1844 Bank Act, with its strong camp of victorious supporters and its very visible opposition, hides the fact that there were scholars who were not associated with either the Currency School or the Banking School. In fact, a perusal of the literature of the 1830s and 1840s reveals that there were probably more people who did not identify themselves with one of the two quarreling positions than who did. However, as is the case with such formative and public debates, the pressure to take sides was high; because the debate continued in some form into the 1850s and even 1860s, those who rejected both positions faced difficult times and were in many cases neglected. Two currents of thought outside of both the Banking School and the Currency School deserve our attention. The first is represented by Thomas Joplin and the second by a group that received the label “Free Banking School.” I will address the latter mainly through Henry Parnell.

Thomas Joplin (1790–1847)

Joplin’s importance in the history of monetary theory has been enhanced in recent years by the scholarly efforts of Denis P. O’Brien, who in 1993 published an important monograph entitled Thomas Joplin and Classical Macroeconomics. O’Brien has since continued to promote Joplin as a more significant scholar than those of the two Trios, and argues that Joplin deserves more credit than he received from his contemporaries or has received in the secondary literature. In this survey of Joplin, we will follow both Joplin’s unique views and the changes in the thinking of his major interpreter, O’Brien.