CAIRNES (John Elliot).
Some Leading Principles of Political Economy, Newly Expounded.
The final work by the Irish economic theorist John Eliot Cairnes (1823–1875), often described as the ‘last of the classical economists’. A proponent of the classical system of economics ‘as it been set out in Mill’s Principles of Political Economy’, Cairnes ‘did not merely accept Mill’s doctrines, but developed them in important respects. His best-known contribution was to show that the principle of reciprocal demand, which Mill had stated for the case of international trade, was applicable also in domestic exchanges to explain the determination of normal values in cases such as those where non-competing groups existed in the supply of labour. However, … his purpose was ‘to strengthen and add consistency’ to the fabric constructed by Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, and Mill’ (ODNB).