Edwin Cannan: Classical Liberal Doyen

Lanny Ebenstein

Edwin Cannan was a great economist, who deserves more attention than he has
received. He substantially influenced the emerging economics profession during the
mid-1890s to mid-1930s. Friedrich Hayek wrote that because of Cannan in London–as
well as Ludwig von Mises in Vienna and Frank Knight in Chicago–"the main body of
liberal thought ... [was] safeguarded through that eclipse in the intellectual history of
liberalism which lasted throughout the fifteen or twenty years following the First World
War ..." (1). Cannan was a prodigious author and scholar. His 1904 edition of The
Wealth of Nations remains authoritative. His A History of the Theories of Production and
Distribution in English Political Economy from 1776 to 1848, written in 1893, is a
definitive work. His 1929 A Review of Economic Theory is a quarry from which many
insights may be retrieved. His more occasional writings, as Hayek also observed, possess
"simplicity, clarity and sound common sense [that] make them models for the treatment
of economic problems, and even some that were written before 1914 are still
astonishingly topical" (2). Joseph Schumpeter said in his History of Economic Analysis,
after praising Cannan's more well-known works: "nobody can peruse his lively short
tracts on money and monetary policy without pleasure and profit" (3). Milton Friedman
titled one of his own collections of essays, An Economist's Protest, after Cannan's 1927
work of the same name. Friedman remarked in a 1995 interview: "I'm a great admirer of
Cannan.... Cannan was a first-rate economist ..." (4). Lionel Robbins wrote: "all of
those who came in contact with him regard his teaching as perhaps the most important
influence in their lives" (8).

His teaching lives on in the students of his students and their students. Economics
Nobel laureate Ronald Coase has remarked of his instructor Arnold Plant: "The teacher
who had most influence on him was Edwin Cannan, the professor of political economy,
whose views and commonsense approach to economic analysis were to be reflected in
Plant's own work" (9). As to Plant's influence on him, Coase says: "I attended Plant's
seminar. It was a revelation. He introduced me to Adam Smith's 'invisible hand.' ...
What Plant did was to make me aware that producers compete, with the result that they
supply what consumers value most. He explained that the economic system was co-
ordinated by the pricing system. I was a socialist at the time and all this was news to
me" (10). Coase calls Cannan "the teacher of my teacher" (11).

Cannan's ultimate achievement was perhaps his view of all humanity as of equal
moral worth and, potentially, one. He looked forward to a world in which divisions of
class, nation, and race do not play as nearly significant a role as they do now or during his
time. He was a genuine libertarian in his outlook that freedom is the greatest human
good. He was committed to truth.

Cannan excelled as a student, though much of his regimen was self-imposed. As a
young man he went first to Clifton College before going to Balliol College, Oxford.
Clifton "was dominated by Liberalism and the Broad Church," Kadish has written, and
"aimed at producing young Christian gentlemen inculcated with a strong sense of
duty" (19). Ill health interrupted his studies for a year and a half, and he journeyed
around the world. In the Introduction to his 1912 The Economic Outlook–a collection of
essays and articles–he made autobiographical comments: "The first of the essays in this
volume," an 1889 paper read to the Fabian Society,

owes its origin to the fact that the subject set for the Oxford Cobden Prize Essay of
1886 was 'Political Economy and Socialism: what is the teaching of Political
Economy as to the effects of private property and free exchange on the one hand,
and of State property and regulated contracts on the other hand, on the production
and distribution of wealth?' In the Lower Fifth at Clifton I had for two terms in
the winter of 1877-8 taken 'Political Economy' as what we called 'Verse
Equivalent'–that is to say, in place of attempting to learn how to translate English
into Latin or Greek poetry....

Those two terms completed my economic studies so far as Clifton was
concerned. At Oxford I underwent in regard to my social philosophy the kind of
change which in regard to religion is described as 'conversion.' As I listened to
Mr. A. L. Smith, the Historical Spirit entered into me, and I became a new man.
I ... took to hear the truth that all important change is gradual, and that social
institutions are not created by the sudden efforts of inspired geniuses but grow 'of
themselves' usually slower than oak-trees....

My own [original] essay has long been decently buried in a winding-sheet
of brown paper in my lumber-room. Exhuming it for a moment, I find that it gives
in its closing sentences the following summary of its answer to the question
proposed: 'The truth which is laid down is simply that Political Economy does not
"take a side" in the struggle between the principle of private property and the
principle of State property. It is possible to form a judgment now as to whether a
particular form of private or State property will have good or bad effects now, and
it will be possible in a.d. 1986 to form a judgment whether the same thing will
have good effects then. But though Political Economy is indispensable at both

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 periods for the formation of sound judgment, Political Economy does not and
cannot say now what the effect of a particular form of property will be if it occur
in 1986. Political Economy does not tell us beforehand what lines the evolution of
society will follow. Some may suppose that future progress will be in the
direction of increasing the sphere of private property, and others may suppose that
it will be in the direction of increasing the sphere of State property, but neither
party should be allowed for an instant to claim that Political Economy is on their
particular side. The grounds, good or bad, for their beliefs are to be looked for in
the teaching of history or experience, not in the teaching of Political Economy. A
knowledge of Political Economy does not lead a man to adopt opposition to
communism or private property as a "principle" of political action.'

It seems clear from this and other passages in the essay that the historical
spirit within me was offended by the wording of the 'subject.' It was repulsive to
be asked about the 'effects of private property' and requested to distinguish them
from the effects of 'State property' without the least reference to time, place, or
circumstances. I was hampered also by a strong desire to show that much of the
teaching on which I had been brought up was wrong, and this led me to introduce
a great deal of matter which would probably seem to most readers irrelevant.
About half the essay looks more like an attempt to reconstruct general economics
than an attempt to deal with the subject proposed. This half I naturally regarded as
the more important, and eventually I developed it into the little work published in
the spring of 1888 under the title of 'Elementary Political Economy' ... The other
part I developed into what I called a 'short and simple examination of the question
whether Political Economy does or does not support in principle that system which
we commonly describe as Private Property or Competition.' This, I thought,
contained a good deal of what would be considered in some quarters 'dangerous
doctrine':–

'But the timid,' I continued, 'may console themselves, for in truth frank
acceptance of the 'dangerous doctrine' here set forth would be far more fatal to
wild schemes of Revolutionary Socialism or Social Revolution than a blind
adherence to decaying dogmas. Purge Political Economy entirely of the taint of
partiality which still clings to it, and there will be hope of inducing the
revolutionary Socialist to listen to the reasoning of the economist and of leading
him back to the path of gradual reform–the safest, shortest, and in reality the only
road by which the human race can progress.' (20)

Government is an inexact science, if it be science at all: "The business of a State
is generally carried on by means of mutual forbearance. Each man gets his own way on

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some points, and has to sacrifice his wishes on others" (65). Government taxes and
services, while they may be burdensome and even onerous, do not generally (at least in
non-totalitarian and democratic polities) constitute severe restrictions on freedom.
Indeed, they may facilitate human cooperation as well as perform some mutual purposes:

Besides the elementary and necessary functions of preserving the public
peace and deciding what constitutes private property, modern states perform
various other functions. They not only give individualistic effort a free field for
the production of wealth, but also enable the united effort of their subjects to
produce various kinds of wealth directly. There is no reason why the review of
this part of the action of the State should be, as it often is, obscured by prejudices
arising from the adoption of particular theories of progress. Each man may have
his own Utopia, provided that he expects its realisation only in a somewhat remote
future, as the eventual result of gradual changes, each of which will be in its time
neither immoral nor inexpedient. It is quite possible that in the distant future such
changes will take place as will lead either to the entire disappearance of State
property and State action in economic matters, or to the entire disappearance of
private property and individualistic effort after wealth. Meantime no reasonable
man can doubt that if either State action or individualistic action is destined to
disappear, it will do so in such a slow and gradual manner that the process will be,
to the ordinary intelligence, imperceptible. For the present, and for at any rate a
considerable time to come, both State action and individualistic action are and will
be absolutely necessary, and the cause of progress, whatever be its goal, will not
be in the least advanced by attempts to establish a rule that the one is always
productive of good results and the other always productive of bad results.

But while we condemn indiscriminate attacks upon all kinds of State action
we must be careful not to fall into another error, that of supposing that a state
cannot adopt a course of action extremely pernicious to the general material
welfare. (66)

He stated concerning government services: "The good or bad effect of the
provision of these gratuitous benefits on the general welfare is not capable of being
conclusively demonstrated. Those who disbelieve in the efficacy of State action in
promoting material welfare can easily draw charming pictures of the way in which, as
they imagine, private enterprise would have supplied the various benefits if the State had
never 'interfered,' and there is no way of proving whether such pictures would have been
realised or not. The great preponderance of opinion ... is in favour of the State. Those
who think that roads and drains ought to be maintained by private enterprise and not by
the State, might almost be numbered on the fingers of one hand. There is a much larger

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body of opinion hostile to State poor relief, but the objections commonly urged against it
mostly apply with equal or greater force to the private almsgiving which would prevail in
the absence of State poor relief" (67). He continued: "The general rule ... in this
country ... may be said to be that the State attempts either to distribute its benefits equally
or to give greater benefits to the classes which are not rich than to those which are rich.
Consequently the present distribution of State benefits tends to make incomes more equal
than they would be if State benefits could be supposed not to exist" (68). It should be
recalled that when he wrote, government consumed a far smaller proportion of national
income than it does now.

The role he ascribed to the state in "deciding what constitutes private property"
should be stressed. It is quite nonsensical to posit that no government at all is possible.
Quite apart from the universally acknowledged function of government in preserving the
peace, for a free market economy to operate it is essential that what property is and the
means by which it may be exchanged are established through law. Hayek observed in
The Road to Serfdom:

... another confusion about the nature of this [i.e., the classical liberal] system: the
belief that its characteristic attitude is inaction of the state. The question whether
the state should or should not 'act' or 'interfere' poses an altogether false
alternative, and the term laissez-faire is a highly ambiguous and misleading
description of the principles on which a liberal policy is based. (69)

It is important not to confuse opposition against this kind of planning [i.e.,
socialist planning] with a dogmatic laissez-faire attitude. The liberal argument ...
is based on the conviction that where effective competition can be created, it is a
better way of guiding efforts than any other. It does not deny, but even
emphasises, that, in order that competition should work beneficially, a carefully
thought-out legal framework is required ... It is by no means sufficient that the law
should recognise the principle of private property and freedom of contract; much
depends on the precise definition ... (70)

Probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden
insistence of some liberals on certain rough rules of thumb, above all the principle
of laissez-faire. (71)

Cannan was an unshakable supporter of free trade, and provided one of the best
lines against the purported "infant industries" exception to free trade: "For the purpose of
increasing efficiency in industry there is no greater and more obvious need than the free
competition of foreign products and foreign workmen. Under protection the producers

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have not the same opportunity of copying and improving upon foreign products and
foreign methods of production, and they need not, and generally do not, trouble their
heads about the matter. A protected 'infant industry' is usually suffocated by its foster-
mother [emphasis added]" (85). He gave as the example in Elementary Political
Economy of the "extremely pernicious" actions contrary to the general material welfare
that government can undertake: "An instance of such a course of action is the adoption
of the policy known as Protection" (86).

He believed the family is the most important institution and decried the fact that
often the state is assumed to dominate over all other institutions. Approximately one-
third of humanity, he estimated, are children at any point in time, and thus in need of the
supervision and sustenance that the family provides. Moreover, the family is the most
important influence on the future success and productiveness of children when they
become adults.

He stated concerning property, after tracing its development: "Property being
established, persons and groups find it to their interest to undertake all sorts of productive
operations which would not be worth while if they could be interfered with by
others" (246). Property "unites" people "by compelling and facilitating their co-
operation. It compels it ... because small patches of land do not contain all the requisites
of existence ... Property facilitates co-operation by making it depend upon innumerable
separate agreements between individuals and groups of individuals instead of on
decisions arrived at by Society at large, acting through some kind of world-wide
authority. I say a world-wide authority because we must not forget that co-operation is at
present world-wide.... The nature of this co-operation is to be discovered chiefly in the
returns of the various custom-houses, which reveal the kinds and quantities of goods
imported and exported.... The whole of this co-operation is dependent on the existence of
the institution of property ..." (247).

For Cannan there was only one race–the human race–and one country: the world.
He sagely, and disparagingly, commented on the "identification of nations with groups of
persons surrounded by customs lines" (252). Separate markets artificially divide people.
To bring about a genuinely world market there would need to be no restrictions on the
exchange of goods or movement of people.

World War I burst the liberal order asunder. The optimistic, this-worldly focus of
classical liberals during the last years of the nineteenth century and first years of the
twentieth gave way before the nihilistic fantasies of secular millenniarism, which were to

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be achieved through the collective harnessing of humanity's efforts, whether this
collectivization took the form of fascism, communism, or socialism. The collectivist
response to World War I was entirely understandable. The old ways had been tried and
apparently had failed. The Great War was a vital crossing point in human history. It
ushered in modernity and killed the ideals of the nineteenth century. Human society, left
to itself, does not result in spontaneous harmony. Each nation needed to organize itself,
in part to protect itself in case of the ultimate catastrophe: war. Moreover, the progress of
modernity demanded that a fairer share for all be had. That all might be better off under
capitalism than they ever had been–and that capitalism made possible the very conditions
that led individuals to be aware for the first time of what they did not have–were not
altogether relevant. The resources existed now to alleviate suffering. Why not use the
state to distribute these resources to achieve optimal results? Why not, indeed,
particularly in light of the irrationality and injustice of so much of the class structure and
system? The organization of society won the First World War.

Cannan became emeritus in 1926 as a result of university policy that required
retirement at 65. He worked until the end. His final book review was published only
weeks before his death and he completed the last edition of Money literally days in
advance of his demise. It was stated in a review of London Essays in Economics: "In
addition to the influence he has ... exerted through the spoken word, Dr. Cannan has been
the most faithful English critic of current economic thought and practice in the pages of
the Economic Journal and in professional controversies among economists. Yet it is only
in the last few years that his reputation has even approached his real eminence as a
thinker. His handicaps have been an independence and originality of mind that enabled
him to penetrate to important truths which his more pedestrian colleagues took a
generation to comprehend and a literary gift that led him to set forth the most elusive
principles in terms so succinct and bright that they seemed obvious truisms. Had he
wrapped up his discoveries with an elaborate display of 'method,' played round with a
little elementary (and irrelevant) mathematics, and adopted bulk rather than point as his
literary goal, his reputation, both professional and lay, would have been greater than it is.
But in that case sound economic principles would have had even less influence on
contemporary political practice than they have had" (304).

The primary project of the first years of his retirement was to prepare A Review of
Economic Theory. He described the purpose of the work: "In the Preface to the 1917
issue of my History of the Theories of Production and Distribution in English Political
Economy from 1776 to 1848 I expressed a hope that 'within the next few years' I might be
able to supplement that book by one in which the period dealt with in it might be 'put in
its proper relation both with what preceded it and with what followed it.' The present
work may perhaps be accepted as a somewhat tardy fulfillment of the half-promise, but,

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to use the perfect frankness which becomes a preface-writer, it is much less a supplement
to the earlier work than a rendering in book form of the substance of the course of about
sixty lectures entitled 'Principles of Economics, including the History of Economic
Theory,' which I gave to second and third year students at the London School of
Economics for many years down to June 1926" (305).

He traced the beginning of economics to "the sixteenth century, though it did not
get a name and a recognition of its separate existence till long afterwards" (306). He
disparaged the ancients: "ancient philosophers were not and could not be economists in
our sense of persons who are interested in and think and perhaps talk or write about the
material welfare of mankind. They professed to be concerned with higher things, and if
there were not always so in fact, it was because they thought of themselves rather than
because they thought of their fellow-men. Their State, of which they made so much,
covered a contemptible little district with one small town in it and a population of which
the great majority were not citizens but slaves. It was impossible for economics to
develop in such an environment" (307).

He challenged

the soundness of the idea on which all arguments like that of Herbert Spencer rest.
This is, that economic competition, bounded only by such conditions as are
supposed to be consistent with a policy of strict laisser faire, is a struggle for
existence....

economic competition is not war, but rivalry in mutual service. The pressure
which it exercises is not directed towards the extermination of the 'unfit,' but
towards inducing everyone, whether 'fittest' or 'unfittest,' to do the kind of work
which will pay him best. We say, loosely, that a blind or legless man is at a
disadvantage in competition, but such a man has far more chance of being able to
support himself by labour in a society of men co-operating by way of 'competition'
than he would have in a state of isolation. In short, competition has no tendency to
weed out the 'unfit'; it rather provides situations in which they can manage to live.
(308)

He added: "Let us have no nonsense about ignoble motives. Superior persons–of whom
some are incapable of earning anything, and others quite willing in private life to grind
the poor–are fond of denouncing 'money-getting' or 'acquisitiveness' as 'sordid' or even
'immoral.' They would have us believe that everyone who wants to earn money wants it
in order to spend on whiskey and cigars consumed in gloomy seclusion. In fact, the great
majority of money-getters are getting it not for themselves, but for others for whom they

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have some regard. To say that their motive is self-interest is misleading. It is interest not
in self, but in something considerably wider ... And even the minority who work for
themselves alone are doing it because they are not willing to become a burden on their
fellows. It is not the worker under the present system who is immoral, but the work-
shy" (309).

In his 1971 autobiography, Lionel Robbins depicted Cannan during his student
days:

It is not altogether easy to explain ... [his] ascendancy. It certainly did not
derive from any of the more obvious gifts of presence or arts of display. A short ...
figure in not very well-cut clothes, ... a grey-bearded face, he gave the initial
impression of force of character, but no particular elevation of vision. Despite
superb command in his written work of a wholesome English prose, he was a poor
lecturer, apt to mumble into his beard or, when he spoke up, not necessarily in full
control of the tonality of his voice.... He gave few recommendations for reading.
He assumed as a matter of course that, if we wished to pass the final examination
with any distinction, we should acquaint ourselves with the great historic classics
with which he dealt.... it was his settled view ... that the best way to help a student
in this respect was to fling him in the deep end, so to speak, of a properly stocked
library and let him find things for himself. Reading lists, still more compilations
of extracts, he utterly despised. There was therefore little in outward appearances
or pedagogic practice which might be expected to establish outstanding influence
on the students who had to sit under him.

Nevertheless, such influence existed. Beneath the ... doctor's hat was the
brow of a penetrating thinker and a man of wide understanding. There was an
integrity and a sense of proportion about Cannan's outlook and teaching which
transcended all the superficial disabilities. I still think that this comes through in
his writings.... But the effect was more powerful still in the lectures. ... Once one
had tuned in to Cannan, so to speak, everything he said seemed to matter–the keen
ones would turn up early to get seats in the front rows so as not to miss any
sentences which were more than usually enveloped in the beard. We discussed his
every obiter dictum. We relished and put into wider circulation his pawky
humour.... what came through in the large, and what remains in the memory as
something immensely valuable, was a weight of erudition, a broad feeling for
history and institutions, an invincible common sense, a combination whose
impressiveness it is difficult to exaggerate. I do not know anyone who sat under
Cannan in these years who was not powerfully affected by his teaching....

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 He was also–what surely all good teachers should be–a good moralist, both by
example and precept: you could not sit under Cannan without learning a proper
regard for the true goods of life, the virtues of family affection, civic tolerance and
compassion, and a contempt for the false idols, especially nationalism and all
forms of exclusive sects. And if you served with him, as I did later, as a colleague,
you soon discovered other more intimate qualities. Behind the somewhat gruff
exterior and appearance of cockiness, there lay a shy and sensitive spirit and an
affectionate and sympathetic friend. (318)

According to Gregory: "No man ... was ever less 'professional' in his manners or
his way of life. He hated humbug and cant, and like many other shy and proud men,
could get on very well with simple and so-called 'uneducated' minds. Many of Cannan's
profoundest views on practical matters of economic policy were greatly influenced by
conversations with porters and ticket-collectors, the jobbing gardeners he employed and
the innumerable tradesmen, odd-job men and others that he had got to know in Oxford ...
There never was a less exacting and less authoritarian chief. If, at the London School of
Economics to this day, the youngest assistant and the most senior professor can meet on
terms of equality, it is largely owing to Edwin Cannan that that is the case. He was
entirely without pretension ..." (320).

His teaching was in the finest liberal tradition: "There can be no doubt," Robbins
continued, "that the sixty-lecture course with its broad conspectus of the best of economic
thought up to Marshall with Cannan's own positive and critical comments, was a
magnificent safeguard against immersion in the doctrines of any particular School and
neglect of doctrines which already had been discovered" (330). His teaching was not
merely the material presented, however: "it was not the positive content of what he
taught which gave his teaching what one feels is its lasting value, so much as the attitude
from which it sprang. Cannan was a great systematiser of knowledge. But he was not a
system maker. What he communicated was not so much a body of doctrine as a
technique of approach–a sense of proportion–an obligation to attempt to get things in
their proper perspective" (331). Robbins added: "I do not think that it can be possible for
any of Cannan's pupils ever to become completely immersed in any particular
investigation without at some time hearing at the back of his head the friendly 'But what
does it all mean if you look at it broadly?' ... he was impatient with what he regarded as
over-preoccupation with exceedingly short-run effects. What he wanted to know was the
secular influence, the long-period trend of the big causes" (332). In A Review of
Economic Theory Cannan commented: "a thousand years is not very long in the history
of mankind" (333). Gregory, who was a student as well as colleague of his, recalled his
"invaluable phrase: 'Is there anything much in that?' and ... habit of puncturing the most
sustained pieces of eloquence ... by the use of the simple word 'why'" (334).

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He was an elitist, though he had a strong regard and empathy for the common
person. Robbins remarked on the "sturdy assumption that he was catering for first class
students only" (335). He was nonetheless egalitarian in his outlooks for ultimate social
outcomes, perhaps based on the lesser knowledge that existed in his time regarding
genetic human differences. To the extent that the goal of equality falls before advancing
human knowledge, this will confirm–though in a perverse sense–Marx's concept of the
economic and technological (and thus informational and knowledgeable) basis of human
society. Cannan lived in that time when utopia seemed more possible because human
nature appeared more tractable. According to Robbins: "no one who sat under Cannan
could fail to feel that Economics, however abstract and general its initial propositions,
was a science with the most intimate bearing on the great problems of human
welfare" (336). Robbins also stated: "he gave one a sense of the sweep and the power of
the subject and its relevance to human happiness" (337).

One element of the world that Cannan saw–which was and is so essential a part of
the vision of classical liberals (and now libertarians)–is, as Robbins characterized it,
"internationalism": "he had no use for the business of frontiers and he regarded
civilisation as one. So great indeed was his contempt for the belief that there was any
difference between trade within and trade across frontiers that he always steadfastly
refused to lecture on international trade and rather ostentatiously chose his examples of
inter-regional exchange from counties rather than countries.... if there is a difference
between a Cannan man and others, it is, I think, that he will perhaps feel a greater
instinctive disgust than most at discussions in terms of the desirability of this or that
limited advantage for this or that national area–a greater sense of betrayal at the spectacle
of economic analysis in the service of economic nationalism" (343). Allyn Young,
Cannan's successor at LSE, noted that he was "one of the very small group of
economists ... who have concerned themselves with the problem of economic
nationalism" (344).

He observed in A Review of Economic Theory: "The attitude of the public towards
the existing concentration [of industry] is most remarkable. The concentration which
exists inside any 'country' ... is usually regarded with absolute complacency even by the
stoutest opponents of the policy which they call laisser faire. I know of no protectionist
who thinks the cotton industry and the woollen industry should change places between
Lancashire and Yorkshire or even should be equally divided between the two ...
Yorkshire does not think itself ruined because the cotton factories are in Lancashire ...
The people of the places where a particular industry is not concentrated know that they
get the product of the industry cheaper because it is concentrated, and recognise that they
would gain nothing by trying to produce it themselves. But when we come to consider

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concentration of industries not in different parts of the same country but in different
'countries,' we find the people of each ... displaying the utmost animosity ... That the only
object of exporting ... goods is to get others in exchange, they seem incapable of
realising" (345). The primary justification of a gold standard was, for Cannan, that it
fosters the dream of one human race.

In his reminiscence of him, Gregory observed: "a now forgotten novel ... helped
in the comprehension of Edwin Cannan's personality ... Peter Homunculus, in which ...
Cannan was drawn to life" (346). In this Edwardian romance, Peter, a young man, comes
in contact with the Cannan character. After listening to Peter’s problems, the Cannan
figure responds: “No man can do more than live nobly, decently, and in accordance with
the truth as he knows it: no man stands alone, as, praise be to God, nothing in this world
stands alone, not even the mind of a man. Purity in one mind breeds purity in ten
thousand others.” (347)

Coats writes:

Cannan's debunking of esoteric language and his advocacy of an
unpretentious 'common sense' approach to economic problems–for which he has
been praised by no less an authority than Joseph Schumpeter–led his former
student and colleague, T. E. Gregory, to remark that 'No man ... was ever less
'professional' in his manners or his way of life.' The precise meaning of his
compliment becomes less obscure when it is set against Cannan's Presidential
Address to the Royal Economic Society in 1933, which was undoubtedly directed
in part against Robbins ...

Under the title 'The Need for a Simpler Economics,' Cannan complained
that 'the almost complete absorption of the younger teachers in making what they
rightly or wrongly believe to be important advances in the higher branches of
theory is leaving the public at the mercy of quacks' and he appealed to them 'to
assist common sense to grasp the basic elements of economic science.... The mind
of the public is an Augean stable' he declared, in characteristically blunt terms, and
it was the economists' job to cleanse it: 'Do not let them [i.e., the young teachers
of economics] avert their eyes from the disgusting mess and run back to find
contentment in neat equations and elegant equilibria.'

Robbins concluded his obitual article on Cannan that–though he would have
disagreed–his essential attitude stemmed "not from Economics as such, but from Social
Philosophy. But I do not think it is a reproach to Cannan that besides being a great
teacher of Economics in the narrow sense, he was also a social philosopher of the lineage

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of David Hume, Adam Smith and Bentham. And I do not think that many who worked
with him will be discontented in that faith to live and to die" (353). Cannan was a
philosopher of life.

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