A Note on Hollander's 'Notes on a Possible Bentham Manuscript: A Mystery Unresolved.'

Nathalie Sigot ()

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 1999, vol. 23, issue 3, 371-78

Abstract: Samuel Hollander recently found a manuscript, in Mill's hand, on the effects on profits of cultivating successive qualities of land. In this journal, he discussed the authorship of the document, suggesting either Bentham or Mill. The first hypothesis means that it was written long before 1815, so that Bentham should be acknowledged as a forerunner of the Malthus-West-Ricardo theory of differential rent. The present note aims at establishing that Bentham cannot be the author of the manuscript, since the land-scarcity issue is only circumstantial in his analysis and the argument of diminishing returns in agriculture is hard to find in his writings. We then present some arguments supporting the other assumption, that the manuscript was authored by James Mill. Copyright 1999 by Oxford University Press.

Date: 1999
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