Profile Major Works Resources

William Thomas Thornton, 1813-1880.

William Thomas Thornton was a British maverick economist and EIC bureaucrat.

Originating from Burnham, Buckinghamshire, William T. Thornton was educated at the Moravian school in Ockbrook.  After spending a few years in Malta and Constantinople, Thornton became an East India Company employee - entering as a clerk in 1836.  After the EIC was nationalized in 1858, Thornton stayed on as secretary of public works in the India Office until his retirement. 

Although classified here as an anti-Classical economist, W.T. Thonrton was nonetheless a member of the Ricardian Political Economy Club and a good friend of John Stuart Mill.  Thornton worked alongside Mill in the India Office almost every day from 1846 to 1858, and was one of the latter's few intimates.

Thornton's 1845 assault on Malthus's population theory, or rather his belief that it could be overcome by small property-ownership among the poor, was well-received.  Albeit his 1848 Plea for land reforms in Ireland fell upon deaf ears.

In a series of articles in the Fortnightly Review (1866-68) culminating in his famous 1869 book, On Labour, William Thornton launched his famous assault on the "supply-and-demand" theory of market price, arguing that the implied "mechanism" was faulty and that price was indeterminate.  Thornton has been hailed in the modern day as the first economist to pay serious attention to stability theory and market microstructure.  His argument led to energetic responses by J.S. Mill, J.E. Cairnes, Thomas E. Cliffe-Leslie and W.S. Jevons.  Fleeming Jenkin's diagrammatic depiction of supply and demand curves was constructed to refute Thornton.  

In that same book, Thornton led an assault on the Ricardian wages fund doctrine.  In his 1869 response, J.S. Mill recanted the doctrine.  

 

  


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Major Works of William T. Thornton

  • Over-population and its Remedy, Or, an inquiry into the extent and causes of the distress prevailing among the labouring classes of the British Islands, and into the means of remedying it. 1845 [bk]
  • A Plea for Peasant Properietors with the Outlines of a Plan for their Establishment in Ireland, 1848 [bk] [1874 ed]
  • [T.] "Art V - Equity Reform - the Probate Courts", 1850, Westminster Review (Apr), p.100
  • "To John Stuart Mill, Esq., In Imitation of an Epistle of Horace to Maecenas", 1854, in Zohrab, p.132
  • Zohràb; or, A Midsummer Day’s Dream and Other Poems, 1854 [bk
  • Modern Manicheism: Labour's Utopia, and Other Poems, 1857
  • "On the Income Tax", 1862, notice in Report of the BAAS, 1863 p.175
  • "Maritime Rights of Belligerents and Neutrals", 1863, Macmillan's Magazine (Jan), p.231
  • "Strikes and Industrial Cooperation", 1864, Westminster Review, v.25 (Apr), p.349 (rev of Fawcett)
  • "A New Theory of Supply and Demand", 1866, Fortnightly Review p.420
  • "What Determines the Price of Labour or Rate of Wages?", 1867, Fortnightly Review, v.7, p.551
  • "Stray Chapters from a forthcoming work on Labour", 1867-68, Fortnightly Review,
    • Pt. 1 - "The Claims of Labour and its Rights (1867 v.8, p.477),
    • Pt. 2 - "The Rights of Capital" (p.592),
    • Pt. 3 - "The Origin of Trades' Unions", (p.688)
    • Pt. 4 - The Ends of Trades' Unions, (1868 v.9, p.77)
    • Pt. 5 - Ways and Means of Trades' Unions, (p.437)
    • Pt. 6 - Ways and Means of Trades' Unions, concluded, (p.520)
  • "Critical Notices - J.S. Mill's England and Ireland", 1868, Fortnightly Review, p.472
  • On Labour: Its Wrongful Claims and Rightful Dues, its actual present and possible future, 1869 [bk, av]  [1870 2nd ed]
  • [Anon] "Indian Railway Reform", 1869, Westminster Review (Jul), p.1
  • "Anti-Utilitarianism", 1870, Fortnightly Review (v.14), p.314
  • "Natural Rights and Abstract Justice", 1871, Fortnightly Review p.359
  • "National Education in India", 1871, Cornhill Magazine (Mar), p.282
  • "Technical Education in England", 1871, Cornhill Magazine (Sep), p.323
  • "Neutrality for Neutrals", 1871, Contemporary Review, p.489
  • "Huxleyism: A fragment", 1872, Contemporary Review, p.666
  • Old Fashioned Ethics and Common Sense Metaphysics, 1873 [bk]
  • The Relative Advantages of the 5 Feet 6 Inches Gauge and of the Metre Gauge for the State Railways of India, and Particularly Those of the Punjâb, 1873 [bk]
  • "Ch. 2 - His Career in the India House", 1873, in John Stuart Mill, His life and works: Twelve Sketches. p.30
  • Indian Public Works and Cognate Indian Topics, 1875. [bk]
  • "The Economic Definition of Wealth", 1875, Fortnightly Review, p.566
  • "Professor Cairnes on Value", 1876, Contemporary Review (Oct), p.813
  • Word for Word from Horace: The odes literally versified, 1878 [bk]
  • " The Wages Fund", 1879, The Nineteenth Century (Aug), p.293
  • "Parliament without Parties", 1880, Macmillan's Magazine, p.259
  • "A New View of the Indian Exchange Difficulty", 1880, Westminster Review

 


HET

 

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Resources on William Thornton

  • "The 'Law' of Demand and Supply", by J.E.C. [John Elliot Cairnes] 1866, The Economist (Oct 20) p.1221
  • "The 'Law' of Demand and Supply", by J.E.C. [John Elliot Cairnes] 1866, The Economist (Nov 3), p.1279
  • "Demand and Supply" by T.E. Cliffe Leslie, 1866, The Economist (Dec 1) p.1395  (errata, Dec 8, p.1427)
  • "Art. 5 - Labour and Capital", by Anon, 1869, Westminster Review (Jul), p.80
  • [Dutch trans.] "Arbeid's Utopia naar W.T. Thornton", by S.V., 1870, De Gids, p.358
  • "Thornton on Labor and its Claims", 1869, Fortnightly Review, (v.11), Pt. 1  (May 1, p.505),  Pt 2 (June 1, p.680) [McM, Bris]] [1875 DD v.4]
  • "Thornton, W.T."  in C. Coquelin and G.U. Guillaumin, editors, 1852, Dictionnaire de l'économie politique [1864 ed.]
  • "Thornton, W.T." in R.H. Inglis Palgrave, editor, 1894-1899, Dictionary of Political Economy [1918 ed.]
  • "Thornton, W.T." in Leslie Stephen & Stephen Lee, editor, 1885-1901 Dictionary of National Biography [1908-09 ed]
  • "Thornton, W.T." in 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • "Thornton, W.T." in J. Conrad et al, (1891-94) Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften [2nd ed, 1898-1901]
  • "William Thomas Thornton's career at East India House: 1836-1880" by Mark Donoghue, 2004, HOPE [pdf]
    "The Early Economic Writings of William Thomas Thornton" by Mark Donoghue, 2007, HOPE [pdf]
  • The Economic Writings  of William Thornton, ed. Philip Mirowski and Steven Tradewell, 1999.
  • Thornton online books page at Penn
  • Wikipedia

 

 
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