Profile Major Works Resources

William Edward Hearn, 1826-1888.

Irish-Australian proto-marginalist.

Born in County Cavan, Ireland to an old Anglo-Irish family, William E. Hearn enrolled at Trinity College Dublin in 1842, which was still in the glow the Oxford-Dublin school, presided by Whately professors James A. Lawson and W. Neilson Hancock.  Future heavyweights Cairnes and Cliffe-Leslie were Hearn's classmates and the slightly older J.K. Ingram was still around.  Hearn graduated in 1847, and went on to become professor of Greek at Queen's College Galway.  Hearn emigrated to Australia in 1854, to become professor at the University of Melbourne, teaching economics among other subjects.

William E. Hearn's 1863 economics treatise Plutology was drawn in part from his reading of the work of John Rae and the Oxford-Dublin school (esp. Longfield).  Hearn vigorously disputed the Classical school doctrines and stressed the role of demand side of price-determination.  Although used as a textbook in Australia, Hearn apparently made only one disciple (the inventor Wordsworth Donisthorpe) back in England.  Nonetheless, Hearn was acclaimed as a predecessor by both Jevons and Marshall.

 

  

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Major Works of William E. Hearn

  • Cassell Prize Essay on the Condition of Ireland, 1851 [bk]
  • Theory of Legal Rights and Duties: An Introduction to Analytical Jurisprudence, 1863 [bk]
  • Plutology: the theory of the efforts to satisfy human wants, 1863 [bk] [1864 repr]
  • The Government of England, its Structure and its Development, 1867 [bk]  [1886 2nd ed]
  • The Aryan household: its structure and its development : an introduction to comparative jurisprudence, 1878 [bk] [1891 repr]

 
HET

 
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Resources on William Hearn

  • "Hearn, William E." in in R.H. Inglis Palgrave, editor, 1894-1901 Dictionary of Political Economy [1901 ed.]
  • William E. Hearn, First Australian Economist, by D.B. Copland, 1935
  • "W.E. Hearn" by J.A. LaNauze,, 1972, in Australian Dictionary of Biography
  • "A Biographical Sketch of William Edward Moore: A slightly Irish perspective" by Gregory Moore, 2005 [pdf]
  • "The Anglo-Irish context for William Edward Hearn's economic beliefs and the ultimate failure of his Plutology", by Gregory Moore, 2011, EJHET
  • Hearn profile at Melbourne Law School
  • Principles of Plutology by Wordsworth Donisthorpe (w), 1876 [bk]
  • Wikipedia

 

 
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