Francis A. Walker’s The Wages Question is generally credited as having demolished the prior, antiquated “wages fund” theory of wages [see Book I, Chapters VIII and IX]. In the process, Walker simultaneously laid the groundwork for John Bates Clark’s definitive descriptions of the marginal products of labor and capital. His interest in the nature of the firm contributed to Frank H. Knight’s work by clearly describing the factors of production and how to categorize their rewards into wages, rent, and profits. Walker’s work and influence served as models not only because he discussed production, labor, and wages with unusual clarity for his time, but also because his interest in monetary issues (influenced by his father, also an economist) enabled him to describe the difference between nominal and real values. His clarifications of monetary issues coincided with concurrent national interests in the gold/silver/bimetallism parity controversies of the late 1800s, and the meaning of money for an economy. Walker later wrote a textbook that was used in classrooms till the publication of Alfred Marshall’s Principles of Economics. Walker became the first President of the American Economic Association. His professorships at Yale and MIT changed the courses of their economics programs. His leadership abilities were evident in every realm of his life, including his stint as a General during the Civil War. His devotion to economics as a profession paved the way for many generations of U.S. economists. For all his contributions, Walker’s popularity may also have been one of the main sources of the promulgatation of many current misunderstandings. His views of Thomas Robert Malthus’s writings may have been the source of the popular subsequent mis-association of Carlyle’s 1849 term, the “dismal science,” with Malthus. (Walker’s interest in labor and wages naturally led him to consider population, but may also have caused him to emphasize pressures inherent in rapid population growth, race, and class distinctions over Malthus’s original interest in the economic incentives that deter overpopulation.) Walker’s general views and influence may have led to other underlying divisions behind different strains in macro- and micro-economic research that persist to this day. [Description written by Lauren Landsburg, Econlib].

Author of The State, Anthony de Jasay, has been described as one of the few genuinely original minds in modern political philosophy. He breaks new ground with Justice and Its Surroundings - a new collection of essays that seek to redefine the concept of justice and to highlight the frontier between it and other notions which are mistakenly associated with it, such as fairness, equality, or moral intuition.

Letters from Hume to William Strahan covering a number of topics including his trip to France, his thoughts on recently published books (by Smith and Gibbon), and generally about his relationships with leading members of the Scottish and French Enlightenment. It also includes his brief Autobiography.

The book consists of lectures Cairnes gave to explain the basic principles behind classical economics.

Even this is entitled “The First” it is the only part Spooner published. It was meant to be the opening section of a much larger treatise on natural law. It is interesting because Spooner outlines the basic principles of the thinking which he used repeatedly in his other writings.

A selection from Acton’s large mass of correspondence including a number to Gladstone on the budget, foreign affairs, Acton’s library, and women’s suffrage.

This is a critical collection of essays on the origin and nature of the idea of liberty. The authors explore the development of English ideas of liberty and the relationship those ideas hold to modern conceptions of rule of law. The essays address early medieval developments, encompassing such seminal issues as the common-law mind of the sixteenth century under the Tudor monarchs, the struggle for power and authority between the Stuart kings and Parliament in the seventeenth century, and the role of the ancient constitution in the momentous legal and constitutional debate that occurred between the Glorious Revolution and the American Declaration of Independence.

One of the works which appeared independently in 1871 (along with a work by Jevons and Walras) which revolutionized thinking about economics. The theory of marginal utility and new ways of thinking about marginal value and price theory help found the Austrian School of economics, whose later theorists included Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard.

Vindiciae Gallicae was James Mackintosh’s first major publication, a contribution to the debate begun by Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. The success of Mackintosh’s defense of the French Revolution propelled him into the heart of London Whig circles. The turn of events in France following the September 1792 Massacres caused Mackintosh, along with other moderate Whigs, to revise his opinions and to move closer to Burke’s position. A Discourse on the Law of Nature and Nations was the introduction to a popular course of public lectures at Lincoln’s Inn in 1799 and 1800. These lectures provided Mackintosh with an opportunity to complete the evolution of his political thought by expounding the principles of a Scottish version of the science of natural jurisprudence dealing with “the rights and duties of men and of states,” to announce his withdrawal of support for the French Revolution, and to criticize former allies on the radical wing of the reform movement. The Liberty Fund edition also includes Mackintosh’s Letter to William Pitt, an attack on the prime minister, Pitt the Younger, for going back on his own record as a parliamentary reformer; and On the State of France in 1815, his reflections on the nature and causes of the French Revolution.

Priestley supported the early phase of the French Revolution and saw it as an advance in human liberty, thus objecting to Burke’s severe criticisms.