Though Adam Smith posed the main questions with which subsequent classical writers dealt, he left a number of loose ends in his argument.
To his successors fell the jobs of refining and revising the classical theoretical structure and of probing deeper into its implications.
Thomas Robert Malthus was to play a prominent part in the next round of classical debate.
High among his interests was the codification of technical terminology and late in life he devoted a book, entitled Definitions in Political Economy, to this subject. The development of the science, he argued, had been retarded by the absence of standardized definitions with the result that writers on economic subjects often confused the public.But analytical tidiness was by no means his dominant interest. He also sought to place the discipline on solid empirical foundations, recognizing both the woeful deficiency of statistical data then available and the shaky empirical basis of many widely accepted theoretical propositions. In the introduction to his main work on economics, he maintained:
The principal cause of error, and of differences which prevail at present among the scientific writers on political economy, appears to me to be, a precipitate attempt to simplify and generalize; and while their more practical opponents draw too hasty inferences from a frequent appeal to partial facts, these writers run to a contrary extreme, and do not sufficiently try their theories by a reference to that enlarged and comprehensive experience which, on so complicated a subject, can alone establish their truth and utility.1 Though not himself altogether innocent of the sins he saw in others, the empirical turn of his mind was often decisive in shaping his position on controversies of the day.
By the time Malthus wrote, re-examination and reconsideration of Smith's findings were clearly in order. The economic climate had undergone a significant change. Smith's successors, though still concerned with the economy's long period prospects, were quite naturally involved in debates over immediate economic problems as well. The Napoleonic wars had stimulated sharp price increases and most particularly in the prices of food grains. Meanwhile real wages had deteriorated, bringing considerable distress to the working class. In addition, the United Kingdom became for the first time a net importer of foodstuffs. These war-induced disturbances were compounded when the end of hostilities brought with it a period of severe deflation. The post-1815 problems of re-adjustment were to stimulate important embellishments in classical theory and to spark a lively public interest in the reflections of political economists.
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