Harriet Martineau's political economy

Abstract

Following the success of her Illustrations of Political Economy (1832-4) series, in which she popularized the political economies of Thomas R. Malthus, Adam Smith, and Jeremy Bentham, Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) was commissioned by Henry, Lord Brougham, to develop a series of similar pamphlets discussing their shared desire for poor law reform. These pamphlets served to explain the proposed amendments Brougham and other parliamentary Radicals and Whigs hoped to pass through Parliament. Using the personal legislative drafts of Lord Brougham, Martineau published Poor Laws and Paupers Illustrated throughout 1833 and 1834 under condition of anonymity. In these pamphlets, Martineau not only popularized Malthusian political economy, like in her earlier series, but in fact reformulated it by delineating the crucial components of a moral and progressive society. Indeed, with Poor Laws and Paupers Illustrated, Martineau was no longer simply a popularizer of science, but in fact stood at the forefront of the science of wealth known as political economy.