Francis Wayland: preacher-economist.

• Author: Vance, Laurence M.
• Position: PREDECESSORS - Biography

One of the nineteenth-century's great but long-forgotten works of political I economy was not written by a politician or an economist, but by a Baptist minister. Francis Wayland was born in New York City in March 1796 and died in Providence, Rhode Island, in September 1865. He was an author, a preacher, a teacher, a pastor, and an administrator.

Although Wayland was the son of a Baptist minister of the same name, he studied medicine after his graduation at a young age from Union College until his religious conversion and call to the ministry. He underwent another conversion as well. When he was in medical school, "a remarkable change" took place in his "intellectual condition" (Wayland and Wayland 1868, I:41). Although he was "very desirous of knowledge" and "read everything" he could, he read only for amusement--"travels, novels, and works of humor" (Wayland and Wayland 1868, I:41). He wondered "how persons could take so much pleasure in the didactic essays" and confessed that he was attracted to "no abstract thought of any kind" until "by accident" he commenced reading "something purely didactic" and found, to his surprise, that he "understood and really enjoyed it": "The very essays, which I had formerly passed over without caring to read them, were now to me the gems of the whole book, vastly more attractive than the stories and narratives that I had formerly read with so much interest" (Wayland and Wayland 1868, I: 42). He then "awoke to the consciousness" that he was "a thinking being" (Wayland and Wayland 1868, I: 42, emphasis in original). Wayland's two conversion experiences altered forever the course of his life.

After a brief period of study for the ministry and an even briefer stint asa college tutor, Wayland accepted the pastorate of a Baptist church in Boston, where he remained for four years. He distinguished himself throughout his life as an effective preacher and a prolific author. Near the end of his life he served as the pastor of a Baptist church in Providence, Rhode Island, and devoted himself to humanitarian causes.

Between his two pastorates, Wayland served as president of what is now Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, from 1827 to 1855, and he is credited with instituting much-needed reforms and reorganizing the curriculum. He looked back on his own college education with regret, believing that it should have been delayed until he was "capable of understanding, of appreciating, and of loving what I studied" (Wayland and Wayland 1868, I: 43). His opinion of what was wrong with education in the early 1800s might be stated with equal validity in our own time: "All that is sought is to enable the pupil to repeat the words of the text-book, without inquiring whether he is able to comprehend them, or to form from them any conception whatever. The result is, that we sec boys, and even children, pursuing studies that can be comprehended only by adults. The time is worse than wasted; for not only is no knowledge acquired, but the habit is formed of reading without understanding--a habit which, once formed, is apt to continue through life" (Wayland and Wayland 1868, I: 43).

During his presidency at Brown, Wayland wrote what became one of the most widely used and influential American textbooks of the nineteenth century, The Elements of Moral Science. First published in 1835, it was reprinted by Harvard University Press with a lengthy introduction in 1963. Although currently out of print, the book is still listed in the Harvard University Press catalog.

It is no surprise that Wayland, a Baptist minister, held to the absolute authority of the Bible, but he was equally an advocate of liberty, property, and peace. Because of his strong religious convictions, he made no attempt to separate God from these temporal conditions. In fact, he grounded them in the will of God.

Politically, Wayland was a Jeffersonian (Wayland 1963), but he declared: "I do not wish to be connected with politics. Indeed, I dare not commit myself with politicians. No one knows what they will be next year by what they are this year" (Wayland and Wayland 1868, I: 405). When speaking about liberty, he sounds like a modern libertarian: "Thus a man has an entire right to use his own body as he will, provided he do not so use it as to interfere with the rights of his neighbor. He may go where he will and stay where he please; he may work or be idle; he may pursue one occupation or another or no occupation at all; and it is the concern of no one else, if he leave inviolate the rights of everyone else; that is, if he leave everyone else in the undisturbed enjoyment of those means of happiness bestowed upon him by the Creator" (1963, 183). Wayland took what would now be considered "politically incorrect" positions on voting, poverty, and "the rich." Voting privileges should be restricted to "those who are able to read and write" (1841, 130). He opposed "poor laws"--that is, "provisions for the support of the poor, simply because he is poor" (1841, 120). He considered such provisions a "bounty upon indolence" that tended "to greatly increase the number of paupers" (1841, 121). We have "few beggars" in this country, he observed, and "but for intemperance and vice, we should have none" (1841, 309). He regularly defended "the rich" from the false charges frequently leveled against them. Indeed, one reason why poor laws are "destructive" is that they falsely assume "that the rich are under obligation to support the poor" (1841, 121).

Wayland likewise considered the right of property to be "the right to use something as I choose, provided I do not so use it as to interfere with the rights of my neighbor" (1963, 210). Because he believed that "men will not labor continuously nor productively" unless they receive some benefit from their labor, he deplored property "held in common"; under such an arrangement, there was "no connexion between labor and the rewards of labor" (1841, 109). He insisted that the "division of property, or the appropriation, to...