Profile Major Works Resources

George Richardson Porter, 1792-1855.

English businessman, civil servant, empiricist and statistician.  G.R. Porter was an early enthusiast and promoter of the development of statistics at the Board of Trade for government policy.

Born into a London business family, George Richardson Porter was educated at Merchant Taylor's and was an intimate friend of David Ricardo (Porter would go on to marry his sister, Sarah Ricardo). 

George Richardson Porter started out as a sugar broker, following his father's business, but fared poorly. Nonetheless, Porter put his practical business knowledge to print, writing a treatise on sugar production in 1830.  He went on to contribute an entry on life assurance for Charles Knight's Companion to the Almanac in 1831, and the volumes on silk manufacturing (1831) and porcelain and glass manufacturing (1832) for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia. 

These contributions set Porter out as an expert on business, with a particular penchant for organizing detail and data.  When, in 1832, George Eden (Lord Auckland), the President of the Board of Trade, asked Knight about getting someone to sort through the morass of data and information available in government blue books and parliamentary returns, Knight recommended Porter. Originally experimental for the first two years, Porter's statistical office was made a permanent fixture at the Board of Trade in 1834, with Porter as its first superintendent. He commissioned the publication of the Tables of the Revenue, a statistical yearbook, prelude to formal national accounting. 

 In 1840, Porter was also made superintendent of the new railway department at the Board,  and presided over the speculative boom in railway stock in the early 1840s.  Overworked and underpaid in these departmental positions, Porter's labors were rewarded when he was made one of the joint secretaries of the Board of Trade in 1841, with the bump in prestige and salary that brought. 

Porter still found time, in the midst of all his official work, to put out works of his own. Porter's most notable work was his Progress of the Nation (1836-43), arguably the best compilation of empirical material for the state of the Britain and its empire in the first half of the 19th Century.  

G.R. Porter helped found the Statistical Society of London (future RSS) in 1834 and became one of its most active members, serving as long-time vice-president, and later treasurer. G.R.Porter served as president of Section F of the BAAS in 1846.  Porter also contributed the chapter on "Statistics" to Herschel's Manual for the Admiralty.

A firm liberal and Manchester School free trader,  Porter translated Bastiat's best-known work into English in 1849.

 

  

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Major Works of George R. Porter

  • The Nature and Properties of the Sugar Cane, with practical directions for the improvement of its culture, and the manufacture of its products, 1830 [bk] [1843 ed with chapter on sugar beet]
  • "Life Assurance" 1831, Companion to the Almanac,
  • A Treatise on the origin, progressive improvement and present state of the Silk Manufacture, 1831 [bk] (part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia)
  • A Treatise on the progressive improvement and present state of the manufacture of Porcelain and Glass, 1832 [bk]  (part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia)
  • The Tropical Agriculturist: a practical treatise on the cultivation and management of various productions suited to tropical climates, 1833 [bk]
  • Conversations in Arithmetic, 1835
  • The Progress of the Nation in its Social and Commercial Relations from the beginning of the Nineteenth Century to the Present day. 1836-43, v.1, v.2,  v.3,
    • v.1 - Sec. I & II, Population and Production (1836)
    • v.2 - Sec III & IV, Interchange, and Revenue and Expenditure (1838)
    • v.3  - Sec V to VIII on Consumption, Accumulation, MOral Progress, Colonial and Foreign Dependencies (1843)
    • [1847 2nd.ed; 1851 3rd ed].
  • The Effect of Restrictions on the Importation of Corn, considered with reference to landowners, farmers, and labourers, 1839 [bk]
  • America and the West Indies, geographically described, with George Long and George Tucker, 1845  [bk]
  • Popular Fallacies regarding General Interests: being a translation of the “Sophismes Économiques of M. Frederic Bastiat, 1846 [bk]
  • "Article XV - Statistics", 1849 in J.F.W. Herschel, editor, Manual of Scientific Enquiry, prepared for the use of Her Majesty's Navy, p.465 [1850 ed, Art. XV (p.480)], [1859 ed., revised by William Newmarch,  Art VII (p.219)]
  • The Geography of Great Britain, Part I - England and Wales, with George Long, 1850 [bk]
  • "Agricultural Statistics of Ireland", 1850, JRSS (Feb), p.25
  • "On a comparative statement of wages and prices, from 1842 to 1849", 1850, JRSS ,(Aug) p.210
  • "On the Accumulation of Capital by the Different Classes of Society", 1851, JRSS, (Sep), p.193

 
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Resources on G.R.Porter

 

 
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