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Frightening the ‘Landed Fogies’: Parliamentary Politics and The Coal Question*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Michael V. White
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Extract

In early 1864, disappointed by the response to his previous work, the young Manchester academic W. Stanley Jevons announced that he was undertaking a study of the so-called coal question: ‘A good publication on the subject would draw a good deal of attention … it is necessary for the present at any rate to write on popular subjects’. When Jevons's The Coal Question (henceforth CQ) was published in April 1865, however, it received comparatively little attention and sales were slow. Jevons and his publisher, Alexander Macmillan, then began sending complimentary copies to luminaries such as Sir John Herschel and Alfred Tennyson. In February 1866 the marketing campaign produced its first substantial return. Macmillan had sent CQ to William Gladstone who responded with letters to both Macmillan and Jevons, noting that the book had strengthened his ‘conviction’ on the necessity for reducing the National Debt. In April, John Stuart Mill praised CQ in the House of Commons, calling for action on the Debt and, three weeks later, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gladstone introduced the budget using half his speech to examine the Debt situation and referring to CQ in support for a proposed measure of Debt reduction. With the extensive publicity given to CQ following Mill's speech and the budget, Jevons had achieved his objective in writing the text which went into a second edition in 1866. On the face of it, CQ's success was due to its effect of introducing a change in budget policy and this is the impression given by some accounts of the episode.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , November 1991 , pp. 289 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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Footnotes

*

While the usual caveat applies on responsibility for the final product, I would like to thank an anonymous referee for comments and C. L. Ten for his advice and encouragement.

References

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