James Steuart

Sir James Steuart (1712 to 1780), third baronet of Goodtrees and later of Coltness, was a Scottish Jacobite and one of the last major representatives of mercantilist economic thought. Born in Edinburgh and trained at the Scottish bar, he spent many years in exile on the Continent after the 1745 rising and was fully pardoned only in 1771. In 1767 he published An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, the first book in English to carry political economy in its title and often described as the first systematic English treatise on economics. He argued from a moderate mercantilist position that profit arose from the seller charging more than the commodity cost at the point of sale. The book was soon overshadowed by Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, but the historical school of economics received it much more favourably a century later. In later life he took the surname Denham after inheriting estates, so older literature also calls him Sir James Steuart Denham.