Election to the Drummond Chair
The later nineteenth century terms of Oxford's Drummond Chair of Political Economy provided for a five-year maximum tenure with re-election possible after the first two. Initially, the electorate was the University Convocation consisting of all doctors and masters, whether resident or not; this was later replaced by a Board of Electors.
Price had first sought election in 1862 but had lost out narrowly to Thorold Rogers,[47] who held the post from 1863 to 1868. When Rogers let it be known in 1867 that he would seek re-election, Price also stood and a vote was scheduled for 6 February 1868. The campaign rapidly became highly politicised (as has been described by de Marchi 1976 and Rashid 1978). A conservative anti-Rogers faction actively solicited votes for Price whilst also distributing press and other accounts of Rogers' more radical political views.Both men were free traders and supporters of religious toleration and of university reform. They were both also sceptical of a scientific rather than a historical or common-sense approach to political economy. So, as Rashid (1978) points out, the differences were largely ones of degree rather than of kind. Undoubtedly though, Rogers was becoming more politically radical, and Price, whilst a Liberal, more innately conservative.
In the early stages of the election, support was fairly evenly divided. However, as Rashid demonstrates, Rogers' public supporters were largely resident college fellows and, apart from six college chaplains, there was a notable absence of clerical support for their fellow clergyman. Price, on the other hand, had some 56 clerics in support and none apparently from the college fellowships. This could be key as the non-resident electorate ofthe Convocation was dominated by country clergy.
Whilst the election could be seen as divided along resident and non-resident lines, this would overlook the considerable resident Oxford faction against Rogers; it was these people who had, after all, latched onto Price's campaign.
A growing role for political economy in the curriculum would be at the expense of classical studies. Rogers had argued against preferment in the Oxford system and his view on landlords would be uncomfortable for the colleges with large endowments. Whether or not it was Rogers' offence to the Oxford High Church Tories through his toleration of dissenters or his growing political radicalism (as was also adduced by The Spectator in Price's obituary of 1888[48]), Price was the ultimate victor with 620 votes to Rogers' 193.[49] He was just the safer option, although Price did not escape some criticism, and even misrepresentation, over his position on banking and monetary issues.[50]The fact that political and religious factions had played a part in his election is clear from Price's Inaugural Lecture. He was at great pains to distinguish between the recommendations of the science of political economy and the moral judgements required of the politicians to make the final decisions. The lecture was an impassioned plea not only for the general everyday importance of political economy but also for the impartiality of the economist and to let others decide the wider issues on moral grounds. The truths of political economy are the result of the ‘investigation of general laws, and its status is professional and subordinate; for these very reasons it admits of dispassionate and scientific study. Its reports should be placed on the same level with the reports of legal and sanitary commissions' (Price 1868: 18).
Political economy is not supreme over man's destinies on earth. It rules over material objects; but man's existence is something infinitely greater than material. To accumulate riches was not the sole nor the chief end of the creation of man; and this truth should never be absent from the mind of every political economist who values the true honour of his science. On the other hand, to upbraid the investigation of the laws which govern the production of wealth as irreligious is a simple absurdity, unless it be irreligious to be anything else than poor. It is a mere truism to say that the material part of civilisation has high importance for man; but if it is a right thing to be industrious...it cannot but be right also to search out the methods by which this inevitable function may be most successfully performed (ibid.: 19).
Price argued, for example, against the exploitation of child labour, and in favour of education, on moral rather than economic grounds:
The moral and social circumstances which accompany any particular form of the mechanical production can never, and ought never to, be kept out of sight. There are means of generating wealth so destructive of human life, or of all that renders it worth possessing, as to deserve immediate reprobation at the hands of the inquirer (ibid.: 20).
Nonetheless, he felt that:
The economist must strive not to render social aspects the governing principles of his investigation; and the politician and the socialist must labour to prevent their special ideas and aims from guiding researches into the working of industrial arrangements. Each is bound to keep his own end primarily in view: the economist to inquire into the production of wealth, checking afterwards his results by so much of an appeal to social considerations as is inevitable (ibid.: 21).
It was to be this independence of thought that was to become Price's hallmark.
Finally, he complained that the subject, unlike any other, seemed to suffer from an inability to learn from its previous development; it seemed fated to have the same debates over and over again. In this sense, it was different from the progress in the natural sciences: ‘Some of the positions reached by Political Economy attain the quality of demonstration: and yet they are denied or ignored as readily as if they were the hypothesis of an empiric. They are not argued against and refuted. They are simply passed over' (ibid.: 22).
It is notable that during Price's lifetime there was no known contender for the Drummond Chair even when the appointment system was changed to a Board of Electors after 1881 (see Kadish 1982: 175). He was to be re-elected three times in 1873, 1878 and 1883. Nonetheless, there remained those who felt that Price could not continue being returned to the position, particularly as he grew older.
Among these was the influential Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol.In 1883, Jowett was urging Alfred Marshall (then at Bristol) to come to Oxford where the death of Arnold Toynbee had freed up a Lectureship at Balliol. He also held out the prospect of succeeding the ageing Price as Drummond Professor. The Marshalls did indeed go to Oxford in the autumn of 1883. His classes drew in many men from other colleges and outside of the Indian Civil Service Probationers who were the primary audience. However, Henry Fawcett died in November 1884, and Marshall was appointed to the Cambridge Chair in December.
Jowett wrote on Christmas Day 1884 thanking Marshall but also scouting out possible candidates for his replacement, yet again holding out the potential to succeed Price:
We shall greatly miss you at Oxford: the Undergraduates say to me “Who will teach Political Economy to us now?” I have no doubt that there is an excellent field for teaching it...partly because it is “in the air” now, & also because it enters so largely into various University examinations (Jowett to Marshall, 25 December 1884, quoted in Whitaker 1975: 27).
Jowett continued: ‘But the lecturer if he succeeds would have a good chance of obtaining Price's chair which must be vacant in 2 or 3 years time, as Price is not likely to be reelected' (ibid.: 28).
In the Michaelmas term of 1884, Price had lectured on a “Summary of Political Economy” twice a week, whereas Marshall had given double that amount covering “Production, Rent &c” and “Economic Theory”. Thus in the following Hilary term of 1885, Price lectured alone on “Money, Banking, Socialism, Wages”.
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