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Abstract:
This paper examines the explanation for a long-period or natural wage given by W. F. Lloyd, the third Drummond professor of political economy at Oxford University (1832-37). In the aftermath of the Captain Swing disturbances and continuing debates over the Poor Law, Lloyd argued that the natural wage would settle at a subsistence level because of the high population growth rate. The behaviour of the 'labouring class' in having more children was, however, a reasoned response, in conditions of ignorance and uncertainty, to the perceptions and incentives generated by the contemporary institutional setting. This underpinned Lloyd's references to the importance of property rights for understanding poverty and the role of the Poor Law. While Lloyd owed a good deal to T. R. Malthus, his analysis was quite different in the type of reasoning attributed to the mass of the population. Lloyd's position was also markedly different from that of his predecessors in the Drummond chair, Nassau Senior and Richard Whately.
1 Introduction
[T]hough the interest of the labourer is strictly connected with that of the society, he is incapable either of comprehending that interest, or of understanding its connection with his own. His condition leaves him no time to receive the necessary information, and his education and habits are commonly such as to render him unfit to judge even though he was fully informed. In the publick deliberations, therefore, his voice is little heard and less regarded . . .
Adam Smith ([1776) 1976a, I, xi, p. 266)
The Reverend William Forster Lloyd, Student of Christ Church and former lecturer in mathematics, was elected as the third Drummond professor of political economy at Oxford University in February 1832. Following the requirements of the university statute which established the chair, Lloyd published two of his 1 832 lectures, concerning 'the checks to population', in the next year (Lloyd 1833). Having read that pamphlet, the radical Francis Place wrote to Lloyd because they were both 'fellow labourers for the benefit of the people'. Place had concluded that Lloyd followed Thomas Robert Malthus and Thomas Chalmers in recommending 'late marriages[,] the parties in the meantime living chastely', as the cure for excessive population growth and hence the condition of 'the working people'. Citing a lecture...
