Teaching Moral Economy, 1799−1809

Abstract This chapter examines Stewart’s new course of lectures on political economy, which was the first of its kind in Britain. Stewart taught political economy as a moral pursuit. His notion of a developmental moral economy provided a bridge between the classical Rockinghamite moral economy and the extractive Pittite political economy that gave way to Utilitarianism in the early nineteenth century. His lectures on the moral economy of public education sought to safeguard the welfare of labourers by guiding future statesmen to mitigate social problems concerning immorality, crime, poverty, and idleness. This initiative to democratize liberal education extended to the moral economy of the British imperial world. Stewart measured a moral economy by the degree to which the labouring ranks of society were incorporated in government policies that encouraged the intellectual and moral progress of humankind. In doing so, he became an intellectual disciple of William Jones’s view of orientalism. Stewart sought to reform the governance of public morals as a philosopher, an armchair imperialist, and an amateur orientalist.