An Irishman's Diary

JUST AS IT was once the land of saints and scholars, Ireland also used to be able to boast that it had never produced an economist of any note.

It didn’t need to boast, in fact. The proud claim was made for it by one of the dismal science’s most famous exponents, Canadian JK Galbraith. “All races have produced notable economists, with the exception of the Irish,” he noted generously, “who doubtless can protest their devotion to the higher arts.” Well, that devotion to the higher arts continues today. But sad to say, our impeccable record on economist production no longer bears scrutiny. Not only has Ireland produced a notable economist, it has produced the man considered, by some dismal scientists, to be the most notable economist of all.

His name was Richard Cantillon and, even in Co Kerry where he was born, his existence had been fairly well hushed up until as recently as six months ago. Then, 275 years after he was murdered by his cook, the cover was well and truly blown.

Last July, Cantillon's life was openly celebrated in his home village by an event normally reserved for higher arts practitioners: a summer school. In October, The Irish Timesbusiness section introduced a column named after him. And now he has been honoured by a two-page essay in the Kerry Magazine, the annual publication of that county's archaeological and historical society.

Cantillon’s rediscovery is largely due to Prof Antoin Murphy of Trinity College, for several decades Ireland’s foremost authority on the man. But the mystery is how he was ever lost in the first place. Although his early life is misted over – he was born near Ballyheigue some time after 1680, and as a young man followed the Wild Geese into French exile – he blazed a trail thereafter.

His fame as the “Father of Political Economy” was founded posthumously on a work published 21 years after his death. But while alive, he used his skills to become fabulously wealthy, and was known wherever he went as “the Irish banker” (a term that by the late 20th century was used mainly about horses travelling to Cheltenham).

Indeed, his reputation for making fortunes when others were losing shirts – notably in the Mississippi Scheme and South Sea Bubble – earned him many enemies.

He was jailed briefly in Paris and spent much of the 1720s fighting litigation. The later obscurity may have derived from the care he took to cover his trails, which were widespread. His success as an investor was built on extensive research and travel, so that he had homes in seven different European capitals: including London, the city that did for him eventually.

After a fire in his house there in 1734, Cantillon was found dead in bed with severe burns. At first it was thought he had fallen asleep while reading by candlelight. But a post mortem suggested death had preceded the fire, whereupon the spotlight fell on a cook who had recently been sacked.

The cook escaped. Three other servants were subsequently cleared of charges. And perhaps inevitably, there were suspicions that the shifty economist was not dead at all, but that he had faked his own murder to avoid lawsuits. For the record, a grave in London’s Old St Pancras Churchyard argues otherwise.

Despite all his travels, Cantillon retained Irish tastes, at least in some things. He courted a Kerry woman in exile, Olive Trant; and in 1722 married Mary Anne O’Mahony, the daughter of Count Daniel O’Mahony of Killarney. His wife was beautiful and much younger than he, yet they seem to have been happy for a while, at least until 1733, when he felt the need to send her to a convent for six months.

If the famous banker did stage his death the following year, his wife helped the cover story by promptly marrying her lover.

Cantillon might have gone down in history as just an extreme example of the Cute Kerryman, except for his Essai Sur la Nature du Commerce en Général. Published in 1755, this expounded his very complex economic theories. And more than a century later, it was hailed as "the veritable cradle of political economy".

It was influential from the start, however. According to one account, the essay was “shamelessly plagiarised by Postlethwayt (1757), utilised without acknowledgment by Harris (1758), and referred to by Adam Smith (1776)”. Yet somehow, Cantillon managed to slip back into the shadows and was certainly neglected by his mother country which – all jokes about economists aside – does not normally let distinguished members of the Diaspora go unclaimed.

The earliest mention I can find of him in The Irish Timesis November 1929, under the heading of "Forgotten Irish Economist". Presumably it was the Wall Street Crash, the then latest sequel to the South Sea Bubble, that provoked renewed interest in a man who had a profound understanding of how money is made and lost. Which may also help explain the renewed interest in him in 2009.

There are certainly interesting parallels between his time and ours. The Kerry Magazineconcedes that, in his own dealings, Cantillon was "devious and unscrupulous" and engaged in "sharp practice, if not outright illegality". Against which, it must be noted, that in those early days of banking, there was only very light, if any, regulation. It couldn't happen now, of course.

• fmcnally@irishtimes.com