CAIRNES (John Elliot).
The Character and Logical Method of Political Economy; Being a Course of Lectures Delivered in Hilary Term, 1857.
RARE FIRST EDITION WITH DISTINGUISHED PROVENANCE
The scarce first edition of The Character and Logical Method of Political Economy, a work that ‘stands out as the first full-scale statement of the methodology of the English classical economists, building on the essays of Senior and John Stuart Mill, but going beyond them in the uncompromising insistence on the abstract-deductive method, grounded in a few industrial facts (such as diminishing returns) and the principles of human nature (such as the desire to maximise returns at least cost), and achieving universal truths independent of any particularly political or social system’ (Blaug). An enlarged second edition was published in 1875 which is far more commonly encountered.
Often described as the ‘last of the classical economists’, Cairnes was a proponent of the classical system of economics ‘as it had been set out in Mill’s Principles of Political Economy’, although he ‘did not merely accept Mill’s doctrines, but developed them in important respects’ (ODNB).
Provenance: (1) contemporary ownership inscription of the English clergyman and Oxford scholar Arthur West Haddan (1816-1873) to verso of front free endpaper and a ‘Presented by the Publisher’ blind stamp to title; (2) engraved bookplate of the British Liberal politician Leonard Courtney, 1st Baron Courtney of Penwith (1832-1918) to front pastedown; (3) early twentieth century rubber ownership stamp of ‘A.R. & E.M. Burns, Columbia University’ to half title, the English-born Columbia economists Arthur Robert Burns (1895-1981) and Eveline Mabel Burns (née Richardson) (1900-1985).
