The position of Charles Stewart Parnell and William O’Brien of
the Irish National Land League was very close to that of William Thomas
Thornton (1813-1880). Thornton suggested as much in 1874 in his revision of his
most important work, A Plea for Peasant Proprietors (1848).
Thornton contended that had his proposals been adopted in
the 1840s, “Fenianism” (Irish nationalism) would not have gained so much
support. Thornton was a very strong supporter of widespread ownership of all
forms of capital, and an opponent of the “scarcity economics” and population
theories of the Reverend Thomas Malthus.
Unfortunately, in common with many economists and
politicians down to the present day, Thornton was locked into the “slavery of
past savings.” This had been embedded into public policy in the United Kingdom
with the British Bank Charter Act of 1844, (7 & 8
Vict. c. 32. See Lord Overstone, Tracts
and Other Publications on Metallic and Paper Currency. London: 1857; The Evidence Given By Lord Overstone on Bank
Acts. London: Longman, Brown & Co., 1858.) and in the United States
with the National Banking Act of 1863 (reformed 1864). (Ch. 58, 12 Stat. 665,
February 25, 1863.)
Thornton’s Plea was
written in response to the Great Famine in Ireland (1846-1852). In it, Thornton
detailed a feasible proposal to create widespread ownership of landed capital
among the Irish. His On Labor: Its
Wrongful Claims and Rightful Dues in 1869 (revised 1871) laid out a similar
proposal for other forms of capital. (Vide
the appendices in the “Economic Classics Edition” of William Thomas Thornton’s A Plea for Peasant Proprietors.
Arlington, Virginia: Economic Justice Media, 2011.)
Like Kelso and Adler, in On
Labor, Thornton lumped land and other capital together as non-labor
(non-human) factors of production. Henry George, of course, objected, and claimed that Thornton did not understand the difference between landed and non-landed capital. George did not, of course, bother to prove that Thornton did not understand
the alleged difference between landed and non-landed capital. He simply
asserted, ridiculed Thornton and other economists foolish enough not to agree
with the georgist program, and moved on.
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