In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

CHAPTER 9 John Locke: Nineteen Shillings do not a Pound make John Locke’s monetary works present us with a split economic personality: a man who tried to use arguments for a market-determined interest rate to prove the necessity of reinstating a statutory monetary standard that had been ignored by the marketplace for over two decades, who believed solutions derived from a stagnant economy applied to an in›ationary one, and who held to a supply-driven quantity theory while building a Natural Law–based theory of demand that negated his own premises. John Locke was born on August 29, 1632, in Somerset, the grandson of a clothier who made his fortune in the “putting-out” system, and the son of a Puritan lawyer who had brie›y served as a captain in the Parliamentary Army.1 Though his family had entered the ranks of the minor gentry thanks to his paternal grandfather’s success, it never entirely lost its commercial connections: Locke’s uncles were themselves tanners and brewers. John Locke received a traditional education, going from Westminster to Christ Church, Oxford, where he received his Bachelor of Arts in 1656 and his Master’s in 1658, and began teaching the same Scholasticism in which he had been schooled. Outside the classroom, however, his interests were more catholic. Locke was introduced to the new “Mechanical” philosophy through his work as an experimental assistant to Robert Boyle, and brought those insights to a new enthusiasm for the work of Descartes. The friendship with Boyle also brought Locke into that same Oxford scienti‹c circle earlier joined by Petty and eventually into the Royal Society in 1668. Locke’s study of medicine2 partook of the same mix of old and new schools that marked his philosophical development: the courses at Oxford were still heavily tilted toward Galen and Aristotle, but his friendship with fellow medical student Richard Lower exposed Locke to Harvey’s theories. This initial exposure was reinforced by Locke’s connections with John Wilkins (1614–1672), then warden of Wadham College, Jonathan Goddard, M.D. (1617?–1675), Gresham professor of physic, and Ralph Bathurst, M.D. (1620–1704), president of Trinity College. 147 It was through Locke’s interest in medicine that he ‹rst made the acquaintance of Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621–1683, created ‹rst earl of Shaftesbury in 1672), having procured some medicine for him in 1666. By the summer of 1667, Locke was in Shaftesbury’s service, quickly evolving from paid physician, secretary, and political pupil to con‹dant and political ally. It may even have been Shaftesbury, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, who prompted Locke’s response to Josiah Child’s 1668 work supporting a reduction in the interest rate. Locke never published the piece (“Some of the Consequences that are like to follow upon Lessening of Interest to 4 Percent”), but the essay contained in rough form many of the conclusions found in Locke’s later economic works.3 It was at this time, also, that Locke became secretary to the Lords Proprietors of the Carolinas, of which Shaftesbury was part owner. When the “Whiggish” Board of Trade that had so troubled the future James II was reconstituted with a much greater ministerial and much smaller merchant input,4 it was certainly Shaftesbury who got Locke the job as secretary to the new Council on Trade and Plantations (of which Chancellor Shaftesbury was president) in 1673. When Shaftesbury’s “Whiggish” ways caused him to fall from favor, it was not long before his Council was dissolved as well (on March 12, 1675), and the now unemployed Locke was off on a European tour before once again taking up his teaching duties (this time under a medical studentship) at Oxford. By 1678, Shaftesbury was making as much political ground as he could over the charges brought by Titus Oates of a popish plot to unseat Charles II.5 Shaftesbury and his Whigs tried unsuccessfully to push through bills to exclude the Catholic James from the succession in three Parliaments from 1679 to 1681, and in the process they gave England its ‹rst version of a modern political party with organized campaigns, member discipline, ideological content, and a partisan press.6 But Whigs brought forth Tories, and the Tory-supported Charles II proved to be a better politician than his father. With money from the French and growing public sentiment that the Whigs had gone too far, Charles resolved to rule without Parliament. Shaftesbury was arrested...

Share