Henry Dunning Macleod

Parent(s)Roderick Macleod, 4th_of Cadboll (father)
Isabella Cunninghame (mother)Academic careerFieldCommercial law
Political Economy
EconomicsAlma materEton; Edinburgh University, and Trinity College, CambridgeContributionsCoined the term "Gresham's law"^[1]

Henry Dunning Macleod (31 March 1821 – 16 July 1902) was a Scottish economist and lawyer.

Life

Henry Dunning Macleod was born in Edinburgh, and educated at Eton, Edinburgh University, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1843.^[2] In 1843 Macleod was entered as a student at Inner Temple, travelled in Europe, and in 1849 was called to the English bar.^[3]

Macleod was a director of the Royal British Bank, after the failure of which he was one of those convicted of conspiracy to misrepresent the bank's financial position,^[4] and was sentenced to 3 months imprisonment.^[5]

He was employed in Scotland on the work of poor-law reform, and devoted himself to the study of economics. In 1856 he published his Theory and Practice of Banking,^[6][7] in 1858 Elements of Political Economy,^[8] and in 1859 A Dictionary of Political Economy.^[9] In 1873 his Principles of Economical Philosophy^[10][11] appeared, and in 1889 his The Theory of Credit.^[12][13][14] Between 1868 and 1870 he was employed by the government in digesting and codifying the law of bills of exchange.^[3] In 1896, he published The History of Economics.^[15]

Contributions

Macleod's principal contribution to the study of economics consists in his work on the theory of credit, to which he was the first to give due prominence.^[3] A major feature of his work was to create a theory of money starting from a theory of credit instead of the usual reverse path. In The Theory of Credit he says:^[16]

Money and Credit are essentially of the same nature: Money being only the highest and most general form of Credit

Macleod's Credit Theory of Money influenced Alfred Mitchell-Innes and later work of the modern Chartalists. John R. Commons considered Macleod's work to be the foundation of Institutional economics.^[17]

In his 1954 History of Economic Analysis, Joseph Schumpeter mentions Macleod:^[18]

The English leaders from Thornton to Mill did explore the credit structure, and in doing so made discoveries that constitute their chief contributions to monetary analysis but could not be adequately stated in terms of the monetary theory of credit. But they failed to go through with the theoretical implications of these discoveries, that is, to build up a systematic credit theory of money...

Then, he adds a footnote:

We might see the outlines of such a theory in the works of Macleod. But they remained so completely outside of the pale of recognized economics...

Then, Schumpeter concludes:^[19]

Henry Dunning Macleod [...] was an economist of many merits who somehow failed to achieve recognition, or even to be taken quite seriously, owing to his inability to put his many good ideas in a professionally acceptable form.

It was Macleod who coined in 1857 the term "Gresham's law".^[20][4]

For a judicious discussion of the value of Macleod's writings, see an article on "The Revolt against Orthodox Economics" in the Quarterly Review for October 1901 (no. 388).^[3][21]

Bibliography

• Macleod, Henry Dunning (1855). The Theory and Practice of Banking. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.
• Macleod, Henry Dunning. (1858). The Elements of Banking. Longmans.
• Macleod, Henry Dunning (1859). A Dictionary of Political Economy, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans
• Macleod, Henry Dunning (1873). Principles of Economical Philosophy, Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer
• Macleod, Henry Dunning (1889). Theory of Credit, Longmans, Green, and Company
• Macleod, Henry Dunning (1896). The History of Economics. London: Bliss, Sands and Co.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)^[22]

See also

• List of multiple discoveries
• A History of Banking in all the Leading Nations (1896), to which Macleod contributed the chapters in vol. 2 on the history of banking in Great Britain.
• Catallactics

References

Further reading

• "Obituary". The Times: 8. 18 July 1902.
• "Obituary". Economic Journal. 12 (48): 583–584. December 1902. JSTOR 2957330.
• Supplementary Statement and Testimonials of Henry Dunning Macleod, Esq., M.A. of the Trinity College, Cambridge; and The Inner Temple: Barrister-At-Law; Formerly Chairman of the Board of Management of the Easter Ross Union; Selected by the Royal Commissioners for the Digest of the Law to Prepare the Digest of the Law of Bills of Exchange, Bank Notes etc.; Lecturer of Political Economy of the University of Cambridge; A Candidate for the Chair of Commercial and Political Economy and Mercantile Law in the University of Edinburgh. London: Printed by A. P. Blundell & Co. 1880. Retrieved 7 December 2023 – via Google Books.
• Allibone, S. Austin (1872). A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors Living and Deceased from the Earliest Accounts to the Latter Half of the Nineteenth Century Containing over Forty-Six Thousand Articles (Authors). Vol. II. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott& Co. p. 1191 – via Internet Archive.
• Blaug, Mark, ed. (1986). "MACLEOD, Henry Dunning". Who's Who in Economics: A Biographical Dictionary of Major Economists 1700-1986 (2nd ed.). Wheatsheaf Books Limited. p. 552 – via Internet Archive.
• Burke, John (1937). "MACLEOD, of CADBOLL". A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry; or, Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, Enjoying Territorial Possessions or High Official Rank, But Uninvested with Heritable Honours. Vol. II. London: Henry Colburn, Publisher. p. 175. Retrieved 6 December 2023 – via Google Books.
• Foster, Joseph (1885). Men-At-The-Bar: A Biographical Hand-List of the Various Inns of Court Including Her Majesty's Judges (2nd ed.). London and Aylesbury: Printed for the Author by Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Limited. p. 297 – via Internet Archive.
• Hayek, Friedrich A. (1933). "Macleod, Henry Dunning". In Seligman, Edwin R. A. (ed.). International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Vol. 10. New York: The Macmillan Company. p. 30 – via Internet Archive.
• Higgs, Henry, ed. (1928). "Macleod, Henry Dunning". Palgrave's Dictionary Political Economy. Vol. II. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited. p. 941 – via Internet Archive.
• Maloney, John (1985). "Two economic outsiders: Macleod and Crozier". The Professionalization of Economics: Alfred Marshall and the Dominance of Orthodoxy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 120-133 – via Internet Archive.
• Marshall, Alfred (1948). Principle of Economics: An Introductory Volume (8th ed.). New York: Macmillan Company. p. 821 – via Internet Archive.
• Milgate, M.; Levy, A. (2008). "Macleod, Henry Dunning (1821–1902)". The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1–2. doi:10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_824-2. ISBN 978-1-349-95121-5.
• Richelot, Henri (1863). Une révolution en économie politique : exposé des doctrines de M. Macleod. Paris: Capelle – via Internet Archive.
• Rist, Charles (1940). History of Monetary and Credit Theory from John Law to the Present Day. Translated by Degras, Jane. New York: Macmillan Company. pp. 73, 102, 203, 205, 261 – via Internet Archive.
• Rothbard, Murray N. (2008). "catallactics". In Durlauf, Steven N.; Blume, Lawrence E. (eds.). The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Vol. 1 (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 704-705 – via Internet Archive.
• Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1954). Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter (ed.). History of Economic Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 718, 1115 – via Internet Archive.

External links

• Media related to Henry Dunning Macleod at Wikimedia Commons