William Blake (economist)

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William Blake (1774–1852) was an English classical economist who contributed to the early theory of purchasing power parity.[1]

Life

He was born in London on 31 January 1774, the son of William and Alicia Blake. He was educated at Charterhouse School, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1789. He graduated B.A. in 1793 as 7th wrangler, became a Fellow of the college in 1795, and graduated M.A. in 1796.[2] Giving up his fellowship in 1797, he entered Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1799.[3]

Blake was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1807.[4] He served as President of the Geological Society of London in 1815–6, which he had joined in 1812.[5][6] He became a member of the Royal Geographical Society in 1830.[7] He also belonged to the Political Economy Club, from 1831, and the King of Clubs dining club of Whigs.[8][9][10]

File:St John's Lodge Welwyn.jpg
St John's Lodge, original architectural drawing by Robert Adam; the actual design was somewhat modified.

Blake leased St John's Lodge in Welwyn, Hertfordshire, with a park of 130 acres, from 1819. He purchased the property in 1824, changing the name to Danesbury.[11][12] He was High Sheriff of Hertfordshire in 1836.[13]

Under the Slave Compensation Act 1837 Blake received £34,301 17s 9d in compensation for 1,651 enslaved persons in St Vincent and Tobago.[14]

Views

Blake was initially known as a bullionist, one of the monetary writers of the early 19th century.[15] He published Observations on the Principles Which Regulate the Course of Exchange, and on the Present Depreciated Slate of the Currency (1810).[16] For half a century it was considered a leading authority on exchange rates.[17] It made heavy reference to the writing of John Wheatley.[18] Fossati has argued that the debates on money and bank credit for British parliamentary reports of 1804 and 1810 clarified the theory, at the hands of Wheatley and others, including in particular Blake and John Leslie Foster (with Walter Boyd, Lord King, and Henry Thornton).[19] Joseph Lowe, who wrote many reviews of the pamphlet literature of the bullion debate, approved of Blake's content but complained he was verbose.[20]

Blake's 1823 pamphlet on government expenditure, Observations on the Effects Produced by Government Expenditure during the Restriction of Cash Payments, caused a stir, however. It was a pioneer work of its period, and has been considered to have anticipated the transfer theory of Frank William Taussig.[10][21] David Ricardo wrote a reply, and Blake a rejoinder.[22] Ricardo wrote notes on Blake that remained unpublished until 1951.[23] Matters of definition still plagued discussion: Ricardo's idea of depreciation clouded, in Blake's view, the issues.[24] In common with many contemporaries, Blake used balance of trade inconsistently or unclearly as a term.[25]

Mark Blaug's view was that Blake had shown up "blind spots" in Ricardo's theory.[26] Ricardo wrote to his correspondent Hutches Trower that John Ramsay McCulloch hadn't managed to talk Blake out of his "newly published opinions";[27] in fact, as he told McCulloch, Ricardo had seen the paper before publication, and concluded that Blake agreed more with him than he was aware of.[28] John Stuart Mill in reviewing the work denied the ability of governments to stimulate economic activity.[29][30] Mill defended Say's Law, while Blake was more in sympathy with the views of Robert Malthus on the economic depression of the early 1820s (though he added a disclaimer on not arguing in terms of public policy).[31][32][33] Mill in defending Ricardo interpreted the orthodox doctrine on the export of gold in a way that conceded its part in bilateral trade.[34] He in fact used some of Blake's ideas in his later work Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844), without attribution.[35]

McCulloch later reprinted Blake's 1810 pamphlet, praising it in his introduction of 1857.[36]

Family

Blake married Mary Nash 25 July 1797 (bringing an end to his fellowship) and the estates of John Darker were settled on the couple.[11] The death in 1822 of Edward Loveden Loveden of Buscot Park, who had married Mary's sister Anne, brought them an inheritance.[37] They had three sons and five daughters. The sons were:

The daughters were:

Notes

  1. ↑ Frederick H. Bunting, The Purchasing Power Parity Theory Reexamined, Southern Economic Journal Vol. 5, No. 3 (Jan. 1939), pp. 282–301, note page 282. Published by: Southern Economic Association. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3693890
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Legacies of British Slave-ownership, William Blake 1774 – 1852.
  4. ↑ Royal Society Fellow details Blake; William (c 1774 – 1852).
  5. ↑ www.geolsoc.org.uk/, Past Presidents.
  6. ↑ The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. Piero Sraffa with the Collaboration of M.H. Dobb (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005). Vol. 10 Biographical Miscellany.
  7. ↑ Clements Robert Markham, The Fifty Years' Work of the Royal Geographical Society (1881), p. 26;archive.org.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Will E. Mason, The Stereotypes of Classical Transfer Theory, Journal of Political Economy Vol. 64, No. 6 (Dec. 1956), pp. 492–506, at p. 502. Published by: The University of Chicago Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1826107
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 The National Archives, Estate and family papers of the Blake family of Danesbury, Welwyn, 1776–1924.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Frank Whitson Fetter, The Life and Writings of John Wheatley, Journal of Political Economy Vol. 50, No. 3 (Jun. 1942), pp. 357–376, at p. 364 note 25. Published by: The University of Chicago Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1829331
  19. ↑ Review by: C. W. Guillebaud, Ricerche sui Contributi Inglesi alla Teoría Della Moneta by Eraldo Fossati, The Economic Journal Vol. 60, No. 240 (Dec. 1950), pp. 805–806. Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Royal Economic Society. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2226727
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ B. A. Corry, The Theory of the Economic Effects of Government Expenditure in English Classical Political Economy, Economica New Series, Vol. 25, No. 97 (Feb. 1958), pp. 34–48, at p. 41. Published by: Wiley on behalf of The London School of Economics and Political Science and The Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2550692
  22. ↑ George J. Stigler, Sraffa's Ricardo, The American Economic Review Vol. 43, No. 4, Part 1 (Sep. 1953), pp. 586–599, at p. 598. Published by: American Economic Association. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1812400
  23. ↑ ON BLAKE’S ‘OBSERVATIONS ON THE EFFECTS PRODUCED BY THE EXPENDITURE OF GOVERNMENT’ 1823 – David Ricardo, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 4 Pamphlets and Papers 1815–1823 (1815).
  24. ↑ R. S. Sayers, Ricardo's Views on Monetary Questions, The Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 67, No. 1 (Feb. 1953), pp. 30–49, at p. 31 note 3. Published by: Oxford University Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1884147
  25. ↑ Frank Whitson Fetter, The Term "Favorable Balance of Trade", The Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 49, No. 4 (Aug. 1935), pp. 621–645, at p. 633. Published by: Oxford University Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1885402
  26. ↑ Cited in: Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. ↑ Letters of David Ricardo to Hutches Trower and Others, 1811–1823 (1899), pp. 205–6; archive.org.
  28. ↑ David Ricardo, Letters of David Ricardo to John Ramsay McCulloch, Publications of the American Economic Association Vol. 10, No. 5/6 (Sep. – Nov. 1895), pp. 1–182, at p. 145. Published by: American Economic Association. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2485869
  29. ↑ Frank W. Fetter, Economic Articles in the Westminister Review and Their Authors, 1824–51, Journal of Political Economy Vol. 70, No. 6 (Dec. 1962), pp. 570–596. Published by: The University of Chicago Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1828780
  30. ↑ War Expenditure 1824 – John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume IV – Essays on Economics and Society Part I (1824)
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ II. The Economic Effect of Changing Price Levels – Jacob Viner, Studies in the Theory of International Trade (1937)
  33. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  34. ↑ Will E. Mason, Ricardo's Transfer-Mechanism Theory, The Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 71, No. 1 (Feb. 1957), pp. 107–115, at p. 111 note 6. Published by: Oxford University Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1882298
  35. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  36. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  37. ↑ historyofparliamentonline.org, Loveden, Edward Loveden (?1751–1822), of Buscot Park, Berks.
  38. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  39. ↑ welwyn.org.uk, List of burials in Welwyn churchyard, memorials within the church and names found only on the 1906 record of memorials. Surnames starting A-C.

External links

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