Richard Jennings, 1814-1891

Obscure British proto-Marginalist economist.  

Very little is known about Richard Jennings, save that he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and subsequently became a lawyer and landowner in Carmarthernshire (South Wales)

Richard Jennings published two tracts in 1855 on 1856, which may have been influenced by his Cambridge master Whewell, and possibly the Oxford-Dublin school of Whately and Senior (although Jennings's argument most resembles their successor W.F. Lloyd, the latter is nowhere cited)..  Jennings denounced the Ricardian labour theory of value, calling it "the great fundamental fallacy" (1856: p.12).  But, more than his contemporaries, Jennings emphasized reduction of economics to human psychology and drew particularly on the hedonistic psychological theory of James Mill.  He saw the usefulness of mathematics in bringing these two together (e.g. 1855: p.35).

Jennings had a clear notion of diminishing marginal utility to consumption, e.g. 

"With respect to all Commodities, our feelings show that the degrees of satisfaction do not proceed pari passu with the quantities consumed -- they do not advance equally with each instalment of the Commodity offered to the senses, and then suddenly stop, -- but diminish gradually, until they ultimately disappear and instalments can produce no further satisfaction.  In this progressive scale the increments of sensation resulting from equal increments of the Commodity are obviously less and less at each step." (Jennings, 1855: p.98-9).

He also described the notion of increasing distutility of labor (p.116) and noted how the combination of these two laws could explain economic behavior (p.142).  

Jennings failed to proceed systematically along this route to a fully-fledged Marginalist theory of value, but he came quite close to it:

"...no Value can be attached to a limited amount of such objects as exist in unlimited quantities, for the obvious reason that if such an amount were to be withheld, others of equal magnitude could be substituted for it, and this until all the wants of human nature should be satiated.  We further observed, that when a moderate quantity of a Commodity has reached the senses of the consumer, each successive addition of the Commodity produces sensations progressively less and less satisfactory, and vice versa; hence we concluded that, in proportion as objects are less abundant, any limited quantity must be held more valuable, and in proportion as they are more abundant, it must be held less valuable, the Value of every Commodity being dissipated as it increases in quantity, like a circle in the wager, till "by broad spreading it disperse to naught."" (Jennings, 1855: p.208-9).

Jennings's work was denounced by J.E. Cairnes (1857), who saw his attempt to marry economics and phsyico-psychology as being completely off-the-wall.  But W. Stanley Jevons was much impressed by Jennings and quoted him extensively in his 1871 treatise.  

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