ABSTRACT
The greater part of Hewins' life was committed to reform, and as an educator, public commissioner and politician he sought to improve society.(!) The son of a middle-class Midlands metal merchant, Hewins considered himself one of England's foremost "radical and historical economists".(2) His first interest in economics was derived from the adverse impact of the 1870s downturn in trade and industry on his family's metal business. From an early stage in his reading of theoretical economics, Hewins rejected the accepted traditions and methodology of classical political economy:
My practical interest in economic questions began with the depression of trade in the late seventies and the early eighties. This involved great hardships and I wanted to know the reason. From that time until I went to Oxford I read many economic books, but they did not help me. I disliked their theoretical outlook, their materialism leavened with sentiment and their remoteness from real events as I saw them in South Staffordshire. The 'economic man' made no appeal to me. There was little correspondence between the industrial system of the economic text-books and the industry that was being carried on around me and the men and women actually engaged in it.(3)
As a student at Lincoln College, Oxford, Hewins found the inspiration he wanted in the writings of Kingsley, Ruskin and Carlyle. Although he took mathematics in his finals, Hewins was most active in social science circles and he started the Social Science Club, the object of which was to find a solution to social difficulties by practical investigation. Upon graduating as a mathematician he decided upon economics as a career, and sought the advice of J E T Rogers who attempted to discourage him, so he decided to study history under Sir Charles Firth. In order to earn a living, he - like Ashley, Cunningham, and Hobson - taught as a University Extension Lecturer and wrote biographies for the Dictionary of National Biography.(4) In his autobiography, Apologia
of an Imperialist, Hewins claimed that such research had "destroyed for ever in my mind the illusion that Adam smith and his successors represented the only English economic tradition".(5) Associating himself with economic historians, he cited Ricardo as the villain of English economic thought.(6) His biographical and economic study of English mercantilists 1V1alynes, Misselden, Mun, Newarck suggested that their inductive and pragmatic approach was a superior model for British economics to follow than the abstractions of the classical school.(7)
During his early career as an extension lecturer, Hewins became more critical of economic orthodoxy:
I did not think that political economy as then taught was particularly useful except as some sort of guide in the theoretical relations between the different branches of activity which formed the subject matter of economic investigation. Hasty generalisations had been made from presumed facts, not accurately observed or recorded and relating to one particular phase of social development. These pseudo-laws were extended in their application to nearly all social phenomena, and the 'economic man', a pure abstraction, was substituted for man as he actually is with all his social relations •.• We had to consider all the influences which bear on man in the economic, social, ethical, religious spheres. No sphere of human activity could be excluded, and we must widen the range of observation, and the first step in placing political economy in its right position was to describe accurately the structure and organisation of the society in which we lived, its great industries, its commercial enterprise and its international relations, and explain in order the steps by which we had reached that condition.(S) '
Hewins attempted to invoke this approach in his first major published work, English Trade and Finance, (1892), which contained a reasoned defence of mercantilism as a policy appropriate to its stage of production.(9) To him mercantilism was a useful economic science and he asserted that Germany's industrial success was achieved by imitating Britain's earlier mercantilist policies. Like Ashley and Cunningham, he argued that under mercantilism, private interests were subordinated to public needs.(IO) Mercantilism was wise national policy; it guaranteed the State's defence, provided plentiful food supplies and secured employment.(!!) Towards the close of his life, Hewins advocated that the United Kingdom should return to mercantilism's central purpose, namely "the creation of an industrial and commercial state in which by encouragement and restraint imposed by the sovereign authority, private and sectional interests should be made to promote national strength and efficiency".(l2)
Along with his extensive lecturing commitments for the
Extension Service and membership of Oxford's Economic Society, English Trade and Finance increased Hewins' academic standing amongst fellow dissenters.(l3) He was briefly associated with Booth's survey of London's poor and he attempted to establish Toynbee Hall as a centre for historical economics, but failed.
