Introduction
William Forster Lloyd (1794—1852) was born in Bradenham, Buckinghamshire, and attended Westminster School and then Christ Church College, Oxford, graduating with a BA in Mathematics and Classics in 1815 and an MA in 1818.
He eventually became Drummond Professor of Political Economy at the University of Oxford, occupying this post between 1832 and 1837, having succeeded Nassau Senior and Richard Whately, and ‘delivered a celebrated series of lectures, challenging many of the accepted doctrines of the day' (Smith 1997: 59). Some of Lloyd's lectures were not published at the time of their formal presentation and are now lost, those lost being estimated at 24 in number (see Moore and White 2009: 34; Romano 1977). He was (or became) a member of what has subsequently been called the Oxford-Dublin School of proto-marginalist political economists, the other members being Senior and Whately as well as Samuel Longfield, W Neilson Hancock and WE. Hearn (see Senior 1836; Whately 1831).Lloyd was, unusually for an economist, ordained as a minister in the Church of England in 1822, his books being designated on their title pages as authored ‘by The Rev. W.F. Lloyd, Student of Christ Church, Professor of Political Economy'. His brother was the Bishop of Oxford. After leaving his
V. Barnett (*)
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post at Oxford in 1837, Lloyd produced no new publications. His most significant work in economics was undoubtedly Two Lectures on the Checks to Population of 1833, but he also composed A Lecture on the Notion of Value as Distinguishable Not only from Utility, but Also from Value in Exchange of 1834, Four Lectures on Poor-Laws of 1835, Two Lectures on Poor-Laws of 1836 and then Two Lectures on the Justice of Poor-Laws and One Lecture on Rent of 1837. These works were all initially presented as lectures delivered at Oxford between 1832 and 1836, as it was a condition of Lloyd's Professorship that he was to publish at least one lecture per year.
However, Lloyd's first published work had been Prices of Corn in Oxford in the Beginning ofthe Fourteenth Century of 1830, which is in some ways anomalous, as it was much more narrowly and empirically focused than his other works in political economy. He cited two main reasons for publishing this volume. The first was to be able to better estimate ‘the condition of the labouring poor in former periods of our history' by means of the facilitation of more accurate price and wage data comparisons (Lloyd 1830: iv). The second was to better understand whether and to what extent the equalisation of prices across different parts of the country occurred, and whether this price equalisation process depended on the facility of communication between regions.
Lloyd concluded that, in general, the price data showed that the prices of wheat and malt usually rose and fell together, but that the price of wheat usually varied more than the price of malt (see ibid.: 11). The book also contained much factual information on the legal controls that were placed on bread and other food products at the time, for example, in regulating the size of loaves, but it gave no indication whatsoever of the type of work in economics that Lloyd would go on to publish. Consequently, this chapter will examine both Lloyd's most well-known contributions to political economy, such as his work on the problems of common land ownership and on marginal utility, and also some of his less recognised ideas in fields such as behavioural economics.
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