The Economic Writings of William Thornton

Philip Mirowski is at the University of Notre Dame. He is author of The Birth of the Business Cycle (1985) and editor of Natural Images in Economics: Markets Read in Tooth and Claw (1994) Steven Tradewell is at the University of Notre Dame

Volume 1: Letters to The Economist concerning Thornton: John Eliot Cairnes, 'The "Law" of Demand and Supply'(October 1866);'The "Law" of Demand and Supply' (November 1866); Thomas Cliffe Leslie, 'Demand and Supply' (1866); William Thornton, 'Supply and Demand' (1866) Thornton's Works: On the Income Tax (1862); England and Ireland (1868); Technical Education in England (1871); John Stuart Mill: His Career in the India House (1873); The Economic Definition of Wealth (1875); Professor Cairnes on Value (1876); The Wages Fund (1879); Parliament without Parties (1880); A New View of the Indian Exchange Difficulty (1880); To John Stuart Mill, Esq., In Imitation of an Epistle of Horace to Maecenas (1854); Zohrab; or, A Midsummer Day's Dream and Other Poems (1854) Volume 2 Overpopulation and its Remedy (1846) Volume 3: A Plea for Peasant Proprietors (1848) Thornton's second book, this text elucidates Mill's views of the plight of the Irish peasantry. It can be argued that Ireland is still to recover from the disastrous potato famine of the 1840s even 150 years later. Over more than 250 densely-packed pages, Thornton attempts to offer a practical solution to one of history's biggest calamities; advice that was for the most part sadly unheeded. The writings of William Thornton are of tremendous interest to scholars of John Stuart Mill. As a close friend and associate for many years, the writings of Thornton help illustrate many of Mill's positions on social issues. As well as this, modern economists looking for precursors in historical texts will find much interesting material. One recent example is Takashi Negishi's invocation of Thornton as proto-disequilibrium theorist. Others include experimental economists studying the importance of different market institutions on price determination, scholars worried about the problems of 'path-dependence', as well as some Austrian economists interested in Thornton's ideas about competition. Volume 4 On Labour (1869); Ethics and Common Sense Metaphysics (1873); Indian Public Works (1875)