Papers and Correspondence of William Stanley Jevons : Volume VI Lectures on Political Economy 1875–1876

## Edited by Edwin Cannan (Oxford, 1896) . W. R. Scott ascribed these lectures to I762-3, but the recent discovery of another set of manuscript notes for the session I 762-3 has Jed Professor Meek and Mr Skinner to suggest that the 'Cannan notes' actually relate to lectures delivered in I 763-4• See R. L. Meek and A. S. Skinner, 'The Development of Adam Smith's ideas on the Division of Labour', Economic Journal, 83 ( I973) Iog4-I I6. 2 Wesley C. Mitchell, Types if Economic Theory, edited with an Introduction by Joseph Dorfman (I967). An earlier mimeographed version of the lectures, which were delivered in I934-5, was published in I949• 3 See Letter 52 I, Vol. IV, p. 24I. Preface ix is curious to note that he did not take his students through the analysis of international values at all. The two lectures devoted to a largely historical account of commercial fluctuations show both the extent of his empirical researches and the development of his interest in the explanation of the decennial cycle, but the students of 1875-6 seem to have been given no hint of the sun-spot hypothesis whichjevons had first put forward before the British Association in August 1875. 4 According to Keynes the effect on Jevons's mind of the 'sad reverse' which he suffered in the Political Economy examinations at University College London in 186o, as a result of putting forward his own theories, was 'curious': The students whom he had to teach when he became Professor at Owens College were accustomed to sit for the London examinations. As he thought it would be unfair to expose his own pupils to the rebuff he himself had suffered, his conscience did not allow him to teach them his own characteristic doctrine. His courses at Manchester were mainly confined to an exposition of Mill. I had long ago heard this from my father, and how his repression of his own theories had brought his feeling against Mill to boiling point. A book of careful lecture notes taken down by a member of his class, which I lately came across, confirms that this was so. 5 Since Keynes was given access to thejevons Papers by Miss H. W.Jevons and since no other notes by students are known to exist, it seems almost certain that Keynes must have been referring to Rylett's notes, even though these were copied out on separate sheets, not in a book. If so, it would seem that Keynes's examination of them must have been cursory, and made with his preconceptions in mind. For a careful reading of the notes will show that J evons was describing his teaching with complete accuracy when he wrote toW. H. Brewer in 1873: 'I have generally followed somewhat the order of subjects in Mill's Pol. Econ. in perfect independence, however, of his views and methods when desirable.' 6 This 'perfect independence' extended to a full discussion of the theories of utility, disutility and exchange along the lines of the Theory of Political Economy, together with a sharp and telling attack on Mill's famous proposition that 'demand for commodities is not demand for labour'. It is hard to reconcile this with Keynes's picture of a frustrated teacher repressing his own theories. Keynes did indeed allow that • Cf. 'The Solar Period and the Price of Corn', Investigations, p. 194• 6 Front Matter....Pages i-xi Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Definitions of Political Economy....Pages 3-8 Wealth....Pages 9-13 Theory of Utility; Production....Pages 13-18 Production....Pages 19-26 Division of Labour....Pages 26-31 Division of Labour (continued)....Pages 31-36 Capital....Pages 36-41 Fixed and Circulating Capital....Pages 42-48 On Mill’s Fourth Proposition....Pages 48-54 Population....Pages 54-60 The Doctrine of Distribution....Pages 60-68 Trade Unions and the Relations of Capital and Labour....Pages 68-73 Capital and Labour as a Whole....Pages 74-79 Value....Pages 79-84 How Value May be Shown to be Really Founded on Utility....Pages 84-89 Supply, Cost and Disutility....Pages 90-94 Money....Pages 94-103 Credit....Pages 103-107 Foreign Exchanges....Pages 108-115 Illustrations from Commercial Fluctuations....Pages 115-120 Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Commercial Fluctuations Since 1836....Pages 120-126 Bank of England and Money Market Generally....Pages 127-132 Taxation....Pages 132-140