An Introductory Lecture On Political Economy

An Introductory Lecture on Political Economy is by Nassau William Senior (1790-1864), the English economist who was the first holder of the Drummond Chair of Political Economy at Oxford from 1825 to 1830 and again from 1847 to 1852. Senior was one of the leading classical English political economists of the early and mid nineteenth century alongside Malthus, Ricardo, and J. S. Mill.

The lecture is one of Senior’s introductory pieces from his Oxford teaching, setting out the basic principles and methods of political economy as he understood them. Senior made substantial methodological contributions to the developing discipline including the distinction between positive and normative economics and the substantial theoretical work on the nature of value, rent, and wages that contributed to the broader classical economic synthesis.

Senior was substantially involved in the 1832 Royal Commission on the Poor Laws that produced the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, one of the most controversial pieces of nineteenth century English social legislation.