Other Work as an Economist
The First Nine Years of the Bank of England was published by Rogers in 1887. It was essentially a reprint of the weekly price of Bank of England stock for the period running from 17 August 1694 to 17 September 1703, a series that had been discovered by Rogers seemingly by accident in the Bodleian Library, and also contains his extensive explanations for the movements in such prices.
The data itself was derived from a statistical paper compiled by London apothecary, John Houghton, and was supplemented by Bank stock price data found in Narcissus Luttrell’s Diary, a work kept at All Souls which had already been used by Lord Macaulay. The Bank of England had no record of its own stock for the nine years in question.Amongst the various contributions made by the volume was a new explanation for the Great Recoinage of 1696 under King William III. Widespread currency fraud, in particular the clipping of silver coins, meant that the value of the pound was in decline in the closing years of the seventeenth century, one result being that English bills were being traded at a significant discount, especially in Amsterdam. This was happening at the same time as William was conducting military operations in the Low Countries, making necessary significant and ongoing remittances. Recoinage was therefore used by the King, argued Rogers, to increase the value of English bills, an objective which had been achieved by the end of 1696 when bills were trading at par.[78]
Rogers’ final major volume was The Economic Interpretation of History, which appeared in 1888; a second edition was published in 1891. The book was based on lectures that Rogers had delivered at Worcester College, Oxford, and was an attempt to blend economics with the daily workings of government. However, it was not very well received by some of his colleagues, with Ashley asserting that the volume was a jumble of ‘hasty assertions and partisan bitterness’ (Ashley 1889: 405).
On full display was Rogers’ usual forceful language and his distaste for some elements of current economic thinking: ‘By this study, I began to discover that much which popular economists believe to be natural is highly artificial; that what they call laws are often too hasty, inconsiderate, and inaccurate deductions; and that much which they consider to be demonstrably irrefutable is demonstrably false’ (Rogers 1888a: vi-vii). Furthermore, ‘two things have discredited political economy—the one is its traditional disregard for facts; the other, its strangling itself with definitions... [I]t is appalling to think of what the consequences would have been if some so-called economical verities had been translated into law’ (ibid.: viii).Rogers used The Economic Interpretation of History to revisit the question of the role of the State in the economy. In Chapter 23, entitled “The Policy of Government in Undertaking Service and Supply”, he lays outs his case for non-interference, stating that ‘There is always a disposition on the part of governments to allege that the Administration can carry out the business of private life and private action better than individuals can' (ibid.: 501). Rogers then proceeds to give numerous instances where State involvement would lead to sub-optimal outcomes, notably the railways, where the result would be shorter hours and higher pay. Despite this particular example, Rogers was in fact a supporter of an economy-wide shortening of the working day to eight hours, even if such a change should, in his view, be achieved by the actions of workers rather than through legislation (see ibid.: 353).
Combining his positions on non-interference by the State and free trade, The Economic Interpretation of History also contains a discussion of the protection of infant industries, with Rogers using this to launch a scathing attack on John Stuart Mill's views on the topic. Instead of granting protection to infant industries, Rogers argues that they should be allowed, if they are fit enough, to come to the fore spontaneously, with the pressures of competition the deciding factor in whether they survive or fail. Rogers also points out that if protection is in fact granted, it can be difficult to subsequently remove, not least because there will inevitably be a question over who decides if and when such protection is ended. The industry enjoying protection is unlikely to argue for its own possible termination. Mill's position was that the shielding of an infant industry from foreign competition was the only situation in which protective duties could justifiably be applied (see Mill 1848, 2: 487-488), Rogers' robust response being that there has perhaps been ‘no passage in any work which exhibits so much ignorance of human nature, and so much ignorance of facts' (Rogers 1888a: 386).[79]
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