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Sir Edward West, 1782-1828.

English lawyer, judge in India and briefly economist.

The son of a receiver-general for Hertfordshire, he lost his father early and was raised by his uncle, a navy admiral.  Educated at Harrow and University College, Oxford, Edward West received his bachelor's degree in 1803 and M.A. in 1807, and thereafter resided as a Fellow of University College, Oxford, while studying for the bar.  He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1814 and quickly made a name for himself as a legal reformer.

In 1815, at the recommendation of Henry Brougham, Edward West was roused to print (anonymously) during the debate over the Corn Laws.  In his celebrated Essay (1815), Edward West discovered the law of diminishing returns to land cultivation and the theory of differential rent (independently but simultaneously with Malthus, Ricardo and Torrens).

Edward West married and was knighted in 1822, and subsequently sailed to India, arriving in February 1823, to serve as Recorder of the King's Bench in Bombay.  This was a crown court set up in 1799 with an eye to curb the excesses of the East India Company's government in India.  Edward West had frequent confrontations with the EIC governor Mounstuart Elphinstone. When the Supreme Court in Bombay was established in May 1824, Edward West was appointed its first chief justice. Despite his official duties, West found time in India to wrote a follow-up pamphlet on the Corn Laws, which were published in Britain in 1826, wherein West criticized the nascent "wages fund" doctrine.

Edward West died prematurely on August 18, 1828 from a sudden illness.  His death was immediately followed tragically two weeks later by that of his wife, Lucretia Ffolkes, in childbirth. West's infant daughter, an orphan at birth, was to be raised by relatives.  There are no extant portraits of him.

 

  

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Major Works of Edward West

  • [Anon. "a Fellow of University College, Oxford"] Essay on the Application of Capital to Land, with observations shewing the impolicy of any great restriction on the importation of corn, and that the bounty of 1688 did not lower the price of it, 1815. [bk, av], [McM]
  • Treatise of the Law and Practice of Extents in Chief and in Aid, 1817.
  • Price of Corn, and Wages of Labour, with observations upon Dr Smith's, Mr Ricardo's and Mr Malthus's, doctrines upon these subjects, and an Attempt at an exposition of the fluctuation of the price of corn during the last thirty years, 1826 [bk].
HET

 
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Resources on Edward West

  • [James Mill] "State of the Nation", Oct 1826, Westminster Review
  • "Obituary of West", June, 1829, Gentleman's Magazine
  • "Sir Edward West", 1834, The Georgian Era, p.468
  • "West, Edward" in C. Coquelin and G.U. Guillaumin, editors, 1852, Dictionnaire de l'économie politique [1864 ed.]
  • "West, Edward"  in R.H. Inglis Palgrave, editor, 1894-1899, Dictionary of Political Economy [1918 ed.]
  • "West, Edward"  in Leslie Stephen & Stephen Lee, editor, 1885-1901 Dictionary of National Biography [1908-09 ed]
  •  Bombay in the days of George IV: Memoirs of Edward West, Chief Justice of the King's Bench by Frederic Dawtrey Drewitt, 1907 [bk]
  • "Review of Drewitt's biography of Edward West", 1908, Calcutta Review, p.293
  • West Page at McMaster
  • Edward West online books page at Penn
  • Wikipedia

 

 
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