Nassau’s Gold Lectures

Description

Nassau William Senior (1790-1864) was a British classical economist who greatly influenced the political and economic policies of the day. His theories overlap with Adam Smith, and he was good friends with Alexis de Tocqueville. Karl Marx comprehensively addressed his theories in Capital under the heading of “Senior’s Last Hour”). From Marx’s perspective, Nassau was not a “scientific” economist, but rather a “vulgar” one. This is one of this noted economist’s earliest works. First printed in 1828, both editions are very scarce. It is a lecture on the transmission of gold in international trade and two lectures on attempts by protectionists and mercantilists to restrict this. For example, from page 24: “[T]he value of a note for one hundred sovereigns is subject to vary in value, in correspondence not only with the money which it promises to pay, but with the honesty and solvency of the issuer. The only mode of ascertaining its value in gold, is to present it for payment, and thus relinquish, pro tanto, the convenience of paper, an expedient which will not be resorted to while confidence exists… The confidence thus blindly given must be subject to be as blindly withdrawn.” Eloquently written, Nassau’s commentary is reminiscent of modern-day financial journalist James Grant’s articles in the eponymous Grant’s Interest Rate Observer. Goldsmith’s Library of Economic Literature #26199.