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Robert Torrens as a ‘neglected economist’

English, Irish and Subversives among the Dismal Scientists

ISBN: 978-0-85724-061-3, eISBN: 978-0-85724-062-0

Publication date: 23 December 2010

Abstract

On rent, Seligman's claim is based on the fact that in the first edition of the Essay on the External Corn Trade (1815) Torrens conceives rent as a ‘net surplus’, which is undoubtedly true, but not in itself very significant: Adam Smith had already written of rent as surplus produce,18 and following Smith the same conception is to be found in a number of authors, for instance in Spence's 1807 tract Britain Independent of Commerce, which Torrens certainly knew, having written The Economists Refuted against it in 1808. Spence in fact speaks of rent as ‘the surplus produce paid to [the class of land proprietors] under the denomination of rent’ (Spence, 1807, p. 17).19

Citation

de Vivo, G. (2010), "Robert Torrens as a ‘neglected economist’", Allington, N.F.B. and Thompson, N.W. (Ed.) English, Irish and Subversives among the Dismal Scientists (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 28 Part 2), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 89-110. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-4154(2010)000028B007

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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