ABSTRACT
Henry Dunning Macleod’s reconstruction of the science of political economy is there, virtually complete, in his first book, The Theory and Practice of Banking. Macleod’s main strength is as a writer on money and banking. Macleod nowhere says that eulogies must be limited to the tradition in which he places himself. Macleod’s claim on behalf of economics was that it encompassed a wider range of knowledge than any other subject. His two applications, in 1863 and 1884, for chair of political economy at Cambridge suggest that he chose its ‘necessary’ range of knowledge to coincide with his own. Against the ‘iron law of wages’ Macleod contends that ‘it is not the price of food which regulates wages, but the wages received which indicate the most expensive food the labourer can afford to buy’. John Beattie Crozier came to economics late in life — indeed he only came to it when his publishers, Longmans, suggested he wrote a book about it.
