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The Ideological Alliance of Political Economy and Christian Theology, 1798–1833

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

A. M. C. Waterman
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Abstract

It has been maintained by E. R. Norman that:

…the social attitudes of the Church have derived from the surrounding intellectual and political culture, and not, as Christians themselves always seem to assume, from theological learning. The theologians have always managed to reinterpret their sources in ways which have somehow made their version of Christianity correspond almost exactly to the values of their class and generation. Thus theological scholarship justified the structural social obligations of the eighteenth century world; thus it provided a Christian basis for Political Economy… [my italics]

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , April 1983 , pp. 231 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

* The author wishes to acknowledge his obligation to the Christendom Trust for financial support under a Maurice Reckitt Fellowship at the University of Sussex, 1979–80. He is grateful for helpful comments on earlier drafts to many colleagues at the universities of Sussex, Glasgow and Manitoba, and specially to Professor Donald Winch. Neither they nor the Christendom Trust are to be held responsible for the views expressed in this article.

1 Norman, E. R., Church and Society in England, 1770–1970, Oxford 1976, 10–11Google Scholar. This judgement seems to be based upon the work of Soloway, R. A., Prelates and People: ecclesiastical social thought in England, 1783–1852, London 1969Google Scholar. My paper supplements, offers a somewhat different interpretation of, the matter of Soloway's chapter III.

2 Paley, whose Natural Theology first appeared in 1802, remained on reading lists at Cambridge for many decades. (Moral Philosophy was required for the ordinary BA until 1857; Evidences for Little-go until 1920.) Malthus was deeply influenced by Paley and also by Tucker's, AbrahamThe Light of Nature Pursued, London 1768Google Scholar. The survival of natural theology outside Cambridge is attested by the eight Bridgewater Treatises commissioned in 1829.

3 I follow Schumpeter's revised version of the Marxist usage of ‘ideology’ as a system of ideas that is ‘likely to glorify the interests and actions of the classes that are in a position to assert themselves and therefore … may be seriously at variance with the truth’. Schumpeter, J. A., History of Economic Analysis, London 1954, 35–7Google Scholar.

4 [T. R. Malthus ] An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers (hereafter cited as First Essay), London 1798, Hi. 16–17Google Scholar.

5 Ibid., 78.

6 Ibid., 83.

7 Godwin, William, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, London 1793Google Scholar.

8 Malthus, op. cit., 181–2, 196.

9 Ibid., 100.

10 Ibid., 203.

11 Ibid., 205.

12 Ibid., 207.

13 Paley, William, The Works of William Paley, D.D., Archdeacon of Carlisle, With a Life of the Author (5 vols), London 1825Google Scholar, Moral and Political Philosophy, ii.

14 Paley, Works, I. Chapter XI of Book VI of the Principles contains much economic material, and it has been held that Paley anticipated Bentham's utilitarianism. But Paley attempted no system of political economy and it was not until the last years of his life, under the stimulus of Malthus's First Essay, that he was led to address the specifically theological implications of economic theorems.

15 Paley, Natural Theology, 270, 272, 273.

16 Sraffa, Piero (ed.), The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Cambridge 1952, vii. 247–8Google Scholar; Ricardo to Trower, 26 January 1818: ‘I am sorry to hear that Mr. Sumner does not intend writing any more on Political Economy – his whole attention in future is to be devoted to Theology. Whether in this latter pursuit he will have an equal chance of benefiting mankind, as in the former, I have great doubts, or rather I have no doubt at all; and I very much regret that the science will no longer be assisted by his distinguished talents.’

17 Sumner, J. B., A Treatise on the Records of Creation with Particular Reference to the Jewish History, and the Consistency of the Principle of Population with the Wisdom and Goodness of the Deity, London 1816Google Scholar, ii.

18 Ibid., 118–22.

19 Sumner cites Hume to the effect that: ‘When a people have emerged ever so little from a savage state, and their numbers have increased beyond the original multitude, there must immediately arise an inequality ofproperty...’, Essay iv. I have not been able to identify the passage; Millar, John, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, London 1781 (3rd edn), iii. 186Google Scholar. The wording differs slightly from that cited by Sumner; Sumner, op. cit., 118–22.

20 Ibid., 124–8.

21 Ibid., 131.

22 [Copleston, E.], A Second Letter to the Right Hon. Robert Peel, M.P.for the University of Oxford, on the Causes of the Increase in Pauperism and the Poor Laws, Oxford 1819, 15Google Scholar, 23.

23 Ibid., 21–2.

24 Whately, Richard, Introductory Lectures in Political Economy, London 1831, 148–52Google Scholar.

25 So-called by Marx. See Marx, K., Capital (transl. S. Moore and E. Aveling), London 1970, i. 617Google Scholar nl.

26 Thomas Chalmers, On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as Manifested in the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man (hereafter cited as Bridgewater Treatise), Bridgewater Treatise, I (1833), London 1853 (3rd edn), 249Google Scholar.

27 Chalmers, Thomas, On Political Economy in Connexion with the Moral State and Moral Prospects of Society (hereafter cite d as Political Economy), Glasgow 1832, 420Google Scholar.

28 Malthus, First Essay, 132.

29 Sumner, Treatise, ii. 103–4 n. ‘o

30 Copleston, Second Letter to Peel, 29.

31 Chalmers, Political Economy, 29.

32 Schumpeter, History; Malthus, T. R., An Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent, and the Principles by which it is Regulated, London 1815Google Scholar, and Principles of Political Economy, considered with a view to their Practical Application, London 1820Google Scholar; [Sir Edward West], Essay on the Application of Capital to Land, London 1815Google Scholar.

33 Malthus, , Political Economy (2nd edn, London 1836), 194–206Google Scholar; Copleston, op. cit., 8.

34 Chalmers, op. cit., 211–13.

35 Hume, D., ‘Of the Balance of Trade’, in Essays Moral, Political and Literary, Green, T. H. and Grose, T. H. (eds.), London 1912Google Scholar, i (ii), essay v; Smith, Adam, Wealth of Nations, London 1910 (EverymanGoogle Scholar), Bk I, c.2, passim.

36 Malthus, First Essay, 207, 286.

37 Paley, Natural Theology, 273 ; Sumner, Treatise, ii. 25, 132.

38 Whately, Political Economy, 6–7. o

39 P. A. Samuelson, Economics, New York 1973 (9th edn), 41–2; Whately, op. cit., 103–8.

40 Chalmers, Bridgewater Treatise, 238.

41 Ibid., 240–6.

42 Malthus, First Essay, 354, 363.

43 Ibid., 357–8.

44 Paley, Natural Theology, 270; Sumner, Treatise, ii. 143; Whately, Political Economy, 162, 177–8.

45 Sumner, op. cit., 91–2.

46 Smith, Adam, Theory of Moral Sentiments, Raphael, D. D. and MacPhie, A. L. (eds), Oxford 1976Google Scholar, 183; Paley, Natural Theology, 273.

47 Sumner, op. cit., 101.

48 Malthus, First Essay, 366–8; Sumner, op. cit., 74.

49 Whately, Political Economy, 148–52, 159.

50 Chalmers, Bridgewater Treatise, 175; idem, Political Economy, 366–8, 368–9.

51 Smith, Moral Sentiments, 181, 183, 185.

52 Paley, Natural Theology, 271–2 ; Sumner, Treatise, ii. 263–83.

53 Chalmers, Bridgewater Treatise, 294.

54 Malthus, First Essay, 286.

55 Sumner, Treatise, 42, 46–7; Whately, Political Economy, 144, 148–52.

56 Chalmers, op. cit., 191, 188, 179–93, passim.

57 Copleston, Second Letter to Peel, 32.

58 Sumner, op. cit., 147–8. In effect, Sumner was postulating economies of scale in population; rising average productivity of labour due to increased specialisation was assumed – for no good reason - to outweigh the tendency to falling output per head resulting from diminishing returns to labour with a constant supply of land.

59 Whately, op. cit., 145–8.

60 Sumner, op. cit., 151–2.

61 Whately, op. cit., 153.

62 Chalmers, Bridgewater Treatise, 238.

63 Edward Search (pseud, for Abraham Tucker, not to be confused with Josiah Tucker- cf. Soloway, Prelates and People, 102 n. 3), The Light ofNature Pursued, London 1768.

64 Sraffa, David Ricardo, vii. 212–13.

65 Copleston, Second Letter to Peel, 17, 21–2.

66 Malthus, First Essay, 375; Sumner, Treatise, ii. 83–4.

67 Chalmers, Political Economy, 403–4.

68 Copleston, op. cit., 99.

69 Malthus, , An Essay on the Principle of Population, London 1803 (2nd edn), 531–2Google Scholar; Chalmers, Bridgewater Treatise, 234.

70 Whately, Political Economy, 105, 109–10; see also Rashid, S., ‘Richard Whately and Christian Political Economy at Oxford and Dublin’, Jnl History of Ideas, xxxviii (1977), 147–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Richard Whately and the struggle for rational Christianity in the mid -nineteenth century’, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, xlvii (1978), 293–321Google Scholar.

71 Chalmers, op. cit., 238–9, 240.

72 Copleston, Second Letter to Peel, 102–3.

73 Chalmers, Political Economy, 26, 411, 424–5.

74 Ibid., 32, 437.

75 Chalmers, Bridgewater Treatise, 248–9.

76 Norman, Church and Society, 123 and chap, iv, passim; E. Powell, Wrestling with the Angel, London 1977; M. Thatcher, ‘I Believe … ”: a speech on Christianity and politics’ at St Lawrence Jewry, 30 March 1978 (Conservative Central Office, Press Release 442/78).

77 Sumner, Treatise, ii. 174.

78 Keynes, J. M., Essays in Biography, London 1933; SchumpetcrGoogle Scholar, History.