THORNTON, William Thomas (1813-1880), economist and civil servant.
Autograph letter signed (‘W. T. Thornton’) in French to Messrs Guillaumin et Cie. 8 Marlborough Hill, St John’s Wood, 17 June 1853.
8vo bifolium, pp. 2 + 2 blank; traces of mounting to last page, creases where folded, very good.
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Autograph letter signed (‘W. T. Thornton’) in French to Messrs Guillaumin et Cie.
Thornton here replies to Guillaumin’s request for information about him, giving his place and date of birth, stating that he has worked for the East India Company in London since 1836, and listing his publications as Overpopulation and its remedy (1846) and A plea for peasant proprietors (1848).
Over-population was Thornton’s first work on economics, arguing for the colonisation of waste land by Irish peasants, and was praised by Mill in his Principles of Political Economy. Thornton’s most influential work, On labour, would appear in 1869.
Gilbert-Urbain Guillaumin (1801-1864) founded his Parisian bookshop specialising in political economy and commerce in 1833, venturing into publishing from 1837 with his Encyclopédie du commerçant. The information Thornton provides in this letter was incorporated into Guillaumin’s Dictionnaire de l’économie politique (1853-4).