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Seligman is an important and ironically somewhat neglected figure today in the history of American economic thought. However, an examination of his scholarly achievements reveals that he had a considerable impact on the development of professional economics in America and could count the most influential economists in Europe as personal friends and collaborators (Moss, 2003; Rutherford, 2004; Mehrotra, 2005). Asso and Fiorito (2006), in their introduction to Seligman's autobiography (1929) argue that ‘his personal influence as an academic economist, as a teacher and as a central figure in the dissemination of economic knowledge was second to none and perhaps more meaningful than any single work he wrote’ (p. 1). They also record (quoting his student, Alvin Johnson) that ‘with Seligman…American economics began to acquire a distinctive professional reputation, some very high scholarly standards and a sort of “moral magnificence”’ (p. 2). What this means is that through Seligman's work and guidance economics came to encompass a moral dimension that fed through into social policies, many of which were adopted by American legislatures. The major influences on his method included the German Historical School and a number of heterodox Continental writers that informed Seligman's in great Whig interpretation of the development of economics. He also engaged critically with the more abstract methods of contemporary economic analysis of the early twentieth century.

It is not difficult to understand why the Sketches would be credited to Sharp. His death four years before the publication of Ricardo's Principles placed him within the period under discussion by Seligman. Sharp possessed an extremely wide range of interests and was a prolific writer on a remarkable variety of topics. By 1809 he was a prominent public figure and had produced more than 40 separate works, several of which had reached second or third editions. He had established a reputation as a controversialist and his oeuvre is certainly consistent with Seligman's generalisation that the ‘greater part of the economic literature’ between 1776 (the year of The Wealth of Nations) and 1817 consisted of ‘pamphlets dealing with current practical problems’ (Seligman, 1903, p. 336). Sharp had published on the conditions in West Africa, the illegality of the press-ganging of sailors, parliamentary reform, colonial law, frankpledge, a popular militia and public charities.

If a reason is sought for not neglecting Cazenove, we need look no further than to his views on demand, consumption, saving and gluts, and to his criticisms of what he called ‘Say's principle’ and ‘Say's new theory’.

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