ABSTRACT
Charles Knight early writings on political economy repay examination, but have been almost entirely overlooked by modern historians. It will be recalled that in his youth Knight was much impressed by the poverty and hardship that he witnessed in Windsor. Knight's determination to think for himself, avowed in his editorship of the Windsor and Eton Express, was nowhere more apparent than in the controversial field of the new 'science' of political economy, labelled by Carlyle the 'dismal science'. Knight slowly realised that the laissez-faire assumption that the system of supply and demand of goods and labour would be self-regulating was over-optimistic. The decade of the 1820s was less important for Knight's thought in a formative sense than the period of the Regency. However, it was important in terms of experience and contacts with a wider range of intellectual thought. It was also a decade wherein the science of political economy assumed a paramount place in the life of the nation.
