A Look Back at Research from 1826

A survey of research from 1826 highlights the advance of liberal ideas in Britain, with economists and reformers challenging protectionist Corn Laws and advocating for free trade, working-class education, and inclusive higher education. Notable works include William Hazlitt's essay on historical figures and Charles Babbage's work on life insurance.

An Utterly Incomplete Look at Research from 1826 This series looks at research from years past. I survey a handful of books and articles in a particular year from math, economics, philosophy, international relations, and other interesting topics. The selections below from 1826 capture the advance of liberal ideas in Britain, as reformers systematically challenged entrenched aristocratic monopolies over trade and education. In economics, a growing consensus pushed back on-the-corn-laws against the protectionist Corn Laws in favor of free trade, demanding policies that served broader social interests rather than just wealthy landowners. This same egalitarian impulse spilled into the public sphere, with Whig reformers supporting educating the working classes diffusion-of-knowledge through accessible literature and Mechanics’ Institutes. At the same time, the newly founded London University the-london-university sought to overcome the exclusionary traditions of Oxford and Cambridge. I most enjoyed William Hazlitt’s essay discussing of-persons-one-would-wish-to-have-seen which historical figures one would most like to have met and chatted with. Hazlitt is an excellent writer whose style is far beyond most of his contemporaries. In 1826, Hazlitt released a collection of essays called The Plain Speaker https://archive.org/details/plainspeakopin00hazluoft/page/n19/mode/2up . I opted not to cover it since I read his Spirit of the Age /research-from-1825/ the-spirit-of-the-age-or-contemporary-portraits last year but recommend from it the essay Reading Old Books https://archive.org/details/plainspeakopin00hazluoft/page/308/mode/2up which I spend a good bit of time doing . One book I didn’t get to is Charles Babbage’s book on life insurance https://archive.org/details/acomparativevie00babbgoog , which was written after his brief tenure as an actuary. If I’ve missed anything interesting from 1826 that you enjoy, shoot an email my way at brettcmullins at gmail.com. Economics On the Corn Laws on-the-corn-laws by J. C. L. de Sismondi A Letter to a Political Economist a-letter-to-a-political-economist by Samuel Bailey Diffusion of Knowledge diffusion-of-knowledge Philosophy Elements of Logic elements-of-logic by Richard Whately Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen of-persons-one-would-wish-to-have-seen by William Hazlitt Formation of Opinions formation-of-opinions by James Mill Mathematics Lardner’s Differential and Integral Calculus lardners-differential-and-integral-calculus On a method of expressing by signs the action of machinery on-a-method-of-expressing-by-signs-the-action-of-machinery by Charles Babbage Miscellaneous On the Supernatural in Poetry on-the-supernatural-in-poetry by Ann Radcliffe The London University the-london-university by Thomas Babington Macaulay Economics On the Corn Laws Author: J. C. L. de Sismondi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean Charles Leonard de Sismondi Publication: The New Monthly Magazine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The New Monthly Magazine Link: HathiTrust https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015038768092&seq=361 The Corn laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn Laws were trade restrictions on importing low-cost grain imposed by the UK in 1815 in an effort to protect domestic agriculture. The resulting high price of grain ate a considerable portion of laborers’ budgets and, unsurprisingly, caused much unrest. On the positive side, this stimulated economic thinking on international trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation and the dynamics of prices /research-from-1823/ tookes-thoughts-on-high-and-low-prices . The overwhelming consensus among economists in the 1820s was in favor of free trade. Following Ricardo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David Ricardo , the typical account argues that land varies widely with respect to the amount of grain it can produce. As grain is increasingly farmed, the productivity of the worst land currently in use diminishes. By trading with countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative advantage with more productive farm land, at least at the margin, the UK could put their capital to better use such as manufacturing. Sismondi offers a more nuanced picture of the debate. The grain producing eastern European states do not face the same market forces as UK landowners, since much of their labor is forced. As a result, grain could be sold profitably at a significantly lower price than is viable in the UK. Opening the market fully risks hollowing out domestic agriculture and incurring a dependency on foreign markets. This is compounded by the UK having large conglomerate farms rather than small family farms, which are more resilient to price fluctuations. This essay is part of the second edition of Sismondi’s Nouveaux principes d’économie politique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi Criticism of economic orthodoxy . A Letter to a Political Economist Author: Samuel Bailey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel Bailey Link: Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=I4E-AAAAIAAJ&dq=editions:UOM39015073767637&pg=PP7 v=onepage&q&f=false Samuel Bailey’s anonymously-published 1825 book A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, Measures, and Causes of Value /research-from-1825/ a-critical-dissertation-on-the-nature-measures-and-causes-of-value is an enjoyable read that offers a convincing argument against the labor theories of value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor theory of value from David Ricardo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David Ricardo and friends. It was attacked in a juvenile article https://books.google.com/books?id=CwEbAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA157 v=onepage&q&f=false in the Westminster Review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The Westminster Review , likely penned by James Mill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James Mill . This review accuses Bailey of all sorts of misdeeds from boisterousness and economic ignorance to “arguing with shadows” but comes across as hurt feelings on part of the reviewer. Bailey systematically dismantles the substantive points of the critique with his usual style and clarity. The bulk of the discussion centers on whether or not Ricardo consciously used value in two different senses: exchange value and labor-based value. Bailey makes the case that it is more likely that Ricardo mistakenly slipped from one notion of value into another. However, this point seems tangential to Bailey’s book and does not add much other than rebutting the review. Diffusion of Knowledge Publication: Edinburgh Review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh Review Link: Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=S3IMAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA189 v=onepage&q&f=false The views of the liberal reformers and their radical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radicals UK bedfellows were gaining ground by the mid-1820s, no longer seen solely as subverters of British society. Popular education was championed by Whig MPs such as Henry Brougham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux as a catalyst for social improvement and saw results with the investment in Mechanics’ Institutes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanics%27 institutes in many industrial cities as well as the founding of a new English university the-london-university outside of Oxford and Cambridge. This progress was surveyed and defended in an 1825 pamphlet /research-from-1825/ practical-observations-upon-the-education-of-the-people-addressed-to-the-working-classes-and-their-employers by Brougham. A responding pamphlet soon appeared signed as “a Country Gentleman” arguing that popular education will invariably cause social subversion. The present review finds this response both narrow-minded and distasteful. Our country gentleman views society as a rigid pyramid, where each station has its role to play. If the laboring classes become educated, why would they not desire the fruits of higher stations, he asks. At the same time, he finds the prospect of popular education wholly absurd and comparable to educating farm animals. Leaving our country gentleman behind, the reviewer possibly Brougham offers thoughts on advancing popular education. While Mechanics’ Institutes are important, they do not scale to the breadth of the countryside. Only books can reach the wider population. For many topics, however, such introductory books do not presently exist. To this end, The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was founded to produce accessible surveys of the natural sciences and their practice. The series was called the Library of Useful Knowledge and inspired other series such as the Very Short Introductions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very Short Introductions or the MIT Press Essential Knowledge https://mitpress.mit.edu/series/mit-press-essential-knowledge-series/ books today. Philosophy Elements of Logic Author: Richard Whately https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard Whately Link: Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=1cFlu2SDQMEC&pg=PR1 v=onepage&q&f=false In early nineteenth-century Britain, prevailing thought favored the empiricism of Francis Bacon https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon/ and John Locke https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/ , leaving the old syllogistic logic in the scholastic dustbin. This book seeks to revive the Aristotelian logic https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-logic/ and rejuvenate deductivism by arguing that all valid reasoning is ultimately deductive. The book is structured into three parts: Aristotelian deductive logic, informal logic, and empirical reasoning. The first provides a standard treatment of the Aristotelian logic, including the square of opposition https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/square/ and common syllogistic forms, e.g., Barbara. The second part shifts to informal logic https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-informal/ , detailing common fallacies and the rhetorical sleights of hand that routinely yield invalid syllogisms. Whately tackles this section with palpable reluctance; his tone suggests he views the messy realities of rhetorical deception as somewhat beneath the formal elegance of the syllogism. In the footnotes, Whately points to the inadequacies of the standard logic text used at Oxford: Henry Aldrich’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry Aldrich 1691 Artis Logicæ Compendium. The third section contains Whately’s most interesting arguments, where he attempts to reclaim empirical reasoning for the Aristotelian camp. He argues that all valid reasoning is ultimately deductive, effectively stripping Bacon’s new logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novum Organum of its claim to have supplanted ancient methods. To Whately, induction is not a genuinely new method of reasoning from specific instances to general rules, but rather a sneaky application of the deductive syllogism. Every inductive leap https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/ relies on a hidden major premise: the assumption that the specific observed cases are uniformly representative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniformitarianism of the general whole. By exposing this hidden premise, Whately neatly folds scientific empiricism right back into the traditional syllogistic framework. The Elements of Logic quickly became the standard logic text in Britain for the next two decades until it was overshadowed by J. S. Mill’s A System of Logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A System of Logic 1843 . Whately’s book grew out of an entry written for the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopaedia Metropolitana and published in 1824. Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen Author: William Hazlitt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William Hazlitt Publication: The New Monthly Magazine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The New Monthly Magazine Link: Click here http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/PersonsWishSeen.htm Hazlitt asks an interesting question: if you could call forth from the dead and chat with any historical figure, who would you choose and what would you ask? The luminaries of the prior century? In Hazlitt’s case, this is Locke https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/ and Newton https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton/ . These are dismissed, since their best thought is contained in their texts this is a questionable take . What about towering figures from the past such as Shakespeare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William Shakespeare ? How could he possibly live up to his mythology? What about a learned person in Shakespeare’s circle? Would they be honest in resolving historical disputes? There are logistical considerations to be had: one needs to be able to effectively communicate with their interlocutor. Hazlitt breaks off the discussion before it descends into the absurd. This entertaining article is a dialogue set while Hazlitt was in the circle of the poet Charles Lamb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles Lamb around the turn of the century. Formation of Opinions Author: James Mill https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james-mill/ Publication: Westminster Review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The Westminster Review Link: HathiTrust https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101064466657&seq=13 Samuel Bailey’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel Bailey anonymously published Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions https://archive.org/details/bub gb PfjrMnW0iEUC/page/n7/mode/2up 1821 explores how beliefs are formed in the mind and how it interacts with social forces. This review focuses on Bailey’s most interesting claim: that belief is strictly involuntary https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doxastic-voluntarism/ . Rather than being a conscious product of the will, belief is an unavoidable function of the evidence presented to the mind and considered. This presents a challenge for utilitarianism /research-from-1874/ the-methods-of-ethics . Since beliefs drive actions whether deterministically or not yet are involuntary functions of evidence, the focus of moral evaluation must shift entirely to a person’s epistemic practices: how rigorously, fairly, and faithfully they seek out and consider evidence. Oddly, however, Mill also seems to argue that having justified beliefs https://iep.utm.edu/epi-just/ , i.e., holding beliefs for the right reasons, is more important than having accurate beliefs, which does not seem to square with naive utilitarianism. Mill concludes with an amusing critique of religious institutions. He proposes that the clergy are the least faithful segment of society, since they systematically counsel the public against rigorous, reliable practices of obtaining and evaluating evidence. Mathematics Lardner’s Differential and Integral Calculus Publication: The Westminster Review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The Westminster Review Link: HathiTrust https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101064466665&seq=144 At the turn of the nineteenth century, mathematical analysis in Britain was Newtonian. Being bound up with geometry and applications in the natural sciences based on the notion of fluxion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxion , British mathematics fell behind the analytical methods developed on the continent, e.g., those by Lagrange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph-Louis Lagrange Differential calculus and calculus of variations . One issue with the Newtonian approach is its clunky notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notation for differentiation Newton's notation for derivatives and integrals. For instance, if $y$ is a function of $x$, then the derivative of $y$ with respect to $x$ is denoted by $\dot y$. Higher order derivatives get additional dots, integrals get boxes, and functions with multiple arguments can become a proper mess The tide quickly began to shift due to efforts by young mathematicians at Cambridge. Robert Woodhouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert Woodhouse produced a text in 1803 advocating for the Leibniz notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz%27s notation but otherwise criticizing continental methodology. With the Leibniz notation, we can write the derivative more clearly as $\frac{dy}{dx}$. A group of Cambridge students including Charles Babbage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles Babbage and John Herschel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John Herschel formed the Analytical Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical Society in 1812 to push back about the conservatism of English mathematicians, e.g., by translating French mathematical texts into English. By 1817, through these efforts, continental methods replaced the Newtonian approach on the Tripos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripos , the undergraduate capstone exam at Cambridge. Dionysius Lardner’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius Lardner book An Elementary treatise on the Differential and Integral Calculus https://books.google.com/books?id=zgBfAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs ge summary r&cad=0 v=onepage&q&f=false 1825 continued this wave as one of the earliest texts covering introductory analysis to employ continental notation. This review finds that the book has strong coverage of differential calculus but shows a weak understanding of integration, differential equations, and finite differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite difference . The reviewer takes the opportunity to get in a dig at the Irish by noting that the balance of the text is reflective of the quality of students at Trinity College Dublin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity College Dublin , where Lardner lectured at the time. Much of the review is spent complaining about the current state of mathematics at Cambridge. Our reviewer thinks the continental methods suspect in how divorced they are from applications in the natural sciences and disdains the smugness of current students who feel they are advancing the field through the use of more powerful tools. Yet, in an evergreen sort of complaint /research-from-1923/ the-rise-of-universities , students today tend to be spoon-fed mathematics in an “reading-made-easy style” while students of the prior generation plowed through Newton’s Principia https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-principia/ and other terse tomes. On a method of expressing by signs the action of machinery Author: Charles Babbage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles Babbage Publication: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Link: JSTOR https://www.jstor.org/stable/107813 The difference engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference engine was a mechanical calculator proposed by Charles Babbage in 1822 to tabulate functions via approximation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite difference using polynomials. Such a machine could reduce human error in the calculation of mathematical tables, which were essential in the early nineteenth century for navigation, engineering, and scientific research. Babbage’s designs were ambitious, requiring precision engineering and manufacturing that was not available at the time. This, in turn, led to the development of new engineering techniques. This short paper introduces a mechanical notation https://babbage.csle.cs.rhul.ac.uk/notions-notation-babbages-language-thought/ for describing the exact, successive motions of components within a complex machine. Using a grid with one dimension denoting time and the other the machine’s components, Babbage’s notation allows for a systematic representation of the machine’s periodic operation. He provides detailed examples of a clock and a water pump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic ram . Miscellaneous On the Supernatural in Poetry Author: Ann Radcliffe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann Radcliffe Publication: The New Monthly Magazine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The New Monthly Magazine Link: Click here http://rictornorton.co.uk/gothic/radclif3.htm Ann Radcliffe was a late-eighteenth century novelist and a pioneer of Gothic literature, best known for The Mysteries of Udolpho https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The Mysteries of Udolpho 1794 . This article is a dialogue excerpted from the introduction of her posthumous Gaston de Blondeville https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaston de Blondeville 1826 , written in 1802. Our two interlocutors discuss the relationship between the sublime and the supernatural in English thought and literature. Radcliffe’s novels employed the supernatural as a major plot device, yet often resolved into a material explanation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann Radcliffe The %22explained supernatural%22 at the conclusion. The most interesting part of the dialogue concerns the distinction between horror and terror. The former is a visceral reaction that makes one recoil from the world in defense. The latter is a more intellectual reaction that stimulates the imagination. Radcliffe sought to evoke terror and thereby the sublime in the reader through the imagery and motifs of the supernatural. The London University Author: Thomas Babington Macaulay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas Babington Macaulay Publication: The Edinburgh Review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh Review Link: HathiTrust https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101076378619&seq=323 In early 1826, London University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History of University College London was founded as the first English alternative to Oxford and Cambridge, though not yet legally granting degrees. Building on an Edinburgh Review article /research-from-1825/ new-university-in-london from the prior year, Macaulay advocates for the university in London by attacking the state of higher education in England, which holds back national progress by clinging to medieval traditions. The London University has two advantages over its esteemed peers: access and curricular relevance. Since students were required to live at either Oxford or Cambridge, the exorbitant costs of residency priced out much of the commercial and professional classes. By establishing a non-residential university in the capital, young men could live at home and attain study more economically. Moreover, Oxford and Cambridge required students to assent to the Anglican faith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-nine Articles . Macaulay defends the new university’s secular model, asserting that religion should be a private matter left to families, not a prerequisite for higher learning. A curriculum focused on Greek, Latin, and mathematics is both stagnant and antiquated /research-from-1873/ liberal-education-in-the-nineteenth-century , given the recent progress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th century in science in the natural sciences. The London University would teach courses that the ancient universities ignored: political economy /research-from-1824/ a-discourse-on-the-rise-progress-peculiar-objects-and-importance-of-political-economy , modern languages, physical sciences, chemistry, and medicine. The notion of an outdated curriculum is another evergreen complaint /research-from-1923/ the-rise-of-universities in academia. Review /categories/ Review Buy me a coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/brettcmullins