Ryan Walter is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and International Studies at University of Queensland.

• Conventions


• Introduction


• Chapter 1: The Debate over Theory Before Malthus and Ricardo: Burke, Mackintosh, and Stewart


• PART II: Political Economy and Parliamentary Reasoning


• Chapter 2: The Vocabulary of Theory and Practice in the Bullion Controversy, 1797-1811


• Chapter 3: The Corn Laws and Free Trade Casuistry, 1813-15


• PART III: The Greater Stakes of Doctrinal Contest


• Chapter 4: Doctrinal Contest I: Value


• Chapter 5: Doctrinal Contest II: Rent


• Chapter 6: Doctrinal Contest III: Profits


• Conclusion: A New Past


• Bibliography

Before Method and Models examines the shocked reaction to their first appearance of economists in nineteenth-century Britain, where the presumption of Thomas Robert Malthus and David Ricardo to reform society on the basis of theory was unwelcome. Walter shows how the major challenge facing the first economists was, accordingly, to legitimize the activity of theorizing and then reforming economic life, along with the institutions that embedded it in the political nation.