D. Stewart and J. R. McCulloch: economic methodology and the making of orthodoxy

This article sets out to elucidate how economic methodology relates to the making of what came to be seen as orthodox in the emerging discipline of political economy, focussing on two influential lecturers in early nineteenth-century Britain, D. Stewart and J. R. McCulloch. These two discussed methodology at the beginning of their courses using a similar framework of concepts. At the same time, each of them adapted a framework to legitimise his own reading of his predecessors: a laissez-faire reading for Stewart and a class-harmonious reading for McCulloch. The similarities and differences in this and other collateral respects between the two highlight several formative aspects of the so-called orthodoxy in political economy, or, in other words, the embodiment of a supposed tradition that has been thought of as continually and lineally handed down from Smith through Ricardo to Marshall and beyond.