Henry Thornton (1760-1815), Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), James Lauderdale (1759-1839) and Simonde de Sismondi (1773-1842)

Henry Thornton's Inquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain (1802) is the repository of much of what is the best and most clear in modern monetary theory. However, it is only in recent years, largely through the efforts of Jacob Viner and Friedrich Hayek, that Thornton's work has been restored to its rightful place within monetary theory. Jeremy Bentham, was an extraordinary exponent of Utilitarianism and a founding father of administrative science, but he published very little on economics and what he did write was so dramatically ahead of its times that while it has proved stimulating to later generations it was virtually unknown in his own times. Similarly, it was Simonde de Sismondi and James Lauderdale, rather than Malthus, who were the true precursors of Keynesian thought. Their ideas and writings were thought incomprehensible and both men were attacked and ridiculed by contemporaries. However, modern economic theory has given them a new significance and coherence, making their writings relevant and comprehensible to economists. Here is a collection of the best of the articles published on these thinkers in the last two decades.