Thomas Tooke (1774–1858), Mountifort Longfield (1802–1884) And Richard Jones (1790–1855)

Thomas Tooke was the founder of the contra-quantity theory of money – the view that monetary policy is powerless to influence prices because the supply of money depends on the flow of money expenditure and hence is the result and not the cause of price change. Yet his prominence within economic circles was also derived from his work as a lobbyist for free trade and the principal spokesman of the banking school, arguing against statutory control of the currency.

Long neglected, Mountifort Longfield has now attracted the attention of modern economists who have praised him for, amongst other things, the discovery of the modern factor proportions theory of international trade and a theory of distribution which was a genuine alternative to Ricardo’s. Modern readers have been amazed by his Lectures, a path-breaking book which sketches out a subjective theory of value and a marginal productivity theory of distribution – all this in 1834, only 11 years after the death of Ricardo.

Richard Jones was the first institutionalist critic of Ricardo and a historically-minded economist years before the emergence of the British and German Schools. He launched himself into the task of reconstructing the whole of economics on historical and evolutionary grounds. However, not being able to carry this ambitious programme beyond the field of rent theory, and his great reluctance to make unsupported generalizations, caused his work to fall into oblivion. Only recently has modern scholarship begun to reassess his importance.