James Steuart [Sir]

Life
1712-1780; 3rd baronet of Goodtrees and 5th baronet of Coltness, in Scotland; a son of Sir James Steuart, the Sol. Gen. for Scotland; Scottish bar; friendly to the Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, in Rome; retired to the continent after Culloden, 1745, returning in 1763; pardoned, 1777; wrote Political Economy (Dublin 1770), - regarded as the first work in which the term political economy is used i the title, while the text involves an explicit extension of the use of the term for domestic (i.e., familial) economics organised "such manner as naturally to create reciprocal relations and dependencies between them, so as to supply one another with reciprocal wants";

in it he advocated merchantilism and high tarriff walls for imports - the principle of the later Corn Laws; consequently regarded as a conservative theory and partly responsible for British colonial wars against the Dutch and ultimately the Americans; the Dublin printing of his Political Economy which was issued with 203 subscribers, is evidently piratical since he was not a native of Ireland and was not expressly contemplating the Irish economy; in fact his outlook militated against Irish commercial liberty as standing outside the then British Union.