There is a letter to the Observer among JJ's papers dated 28/03/68, with which which he submitted two of his Berkeley papers, on the problem of international money, for publication. I have no record of whether they were published in the Observer or not; I suspect not; they did however finally appear in the Querist book. I reproduce the letter to the editor of the Observer in full, as it is illustrative of his then state of mind:

"I enclose two articles on the problem of international money which I hope you will publish.

"Perhaps I should explain the background to my present views in these matters. I graduated in 'Literae Humaniores' in Dublin In 1910 and in Oxford in 1912. I became a Fellow of TCD in 1913. On the nomination of the late Dr Mahaffy I was elected to an Albert Kahn Travelling Fellowship early in 1914. I started off with my bride in July 1914 but got no further than France. After some hesitation we finally began our tour in November and I visited India, Java and China while my wife 'called on' an Australian relative and met me again at Shanghai on route for Japan and USA. When I returned to Ireland in September 1915 the national mood about volunteering to fight for the 'national enemy' in defence of small nations had changed and I got busy writing my AK Report while waiting for the conscription that never came to any part of Ireland. Hence unlike so many of my friends and contemporaries I am still alive in my eighth decade and able to Philosophise about three modern worlds.

"Academically I drifted into lecturing on economics and for nearly 30 years have been Professor of Applied Economics here. But I could never get away from my humanist background and have little sympathy with the pseudo-scientific outlook of my professional colleagues.

"About 30 years ago I became interested in Berkeley's 'Querist' and wrote various articles which sought to explain his views and put them In historical perspective. In the course of the last two decades I have come to the conclusion that his outlook on the problems of the exchange economy are in essence as relevant today as they were 230 years ago, and relevant to the international economy as well as to national economies in the 'western' world. Hence I have prepared a book entitled 'The Querist and essays on the perennial relevance of Berkeley's social philosophy'. But I can find no publisher who is prepared to take the risk of publishing such a book. The reason probably is that professional economists. who advise them on these matters do not believe that Berkeley - a great philosopher - was in any sense an economist to be taken seriously.

"The two articles which I enclose were inspired by Berkeley's thought, and if published in your widely read paper might help to persuade some publisher to take the risk of publishing the book of which these articles are the most relevant and significant part.

"I feel I would fully justify my prolonged existence and make some return for the money spent on my varied education if such a book was published and appealed to a wide circle of readers.

"As a regular reader of your paper I share your general outlook and I hope you will find it possible to publish these two articles."

The foregoing, and other correspondence he left, suggests that he had some difficulty in finding a publisher interested in his Querist project. In the end it was published in 1970 by Dundalgan, with some TCD sponsorship. Some copies were taken up by libraries; it got few reviews, and was remaindered.

He submitted it for the degree of D Litt by extern examiner, and the degree was awarded in May 1972, on the same occasion as the composer Shostakovitch was awarded an honorary degree. I had to help him up the steps to receive it.

Shortly afterwards he went into Limerick hospital (he was then living in an extension of my sister's house near Nenagh) for a minor operation, to do with what the surgeons laconically call 'the plumbing'. He made heavy weather of the anaesthetic, and died as a result. Before the operation I recollect seeing him sitting up contentedly in bed, reading something lightweight, perhaps PG Wodehouse, or a detective story. He was content; he had published his book and got his Doctorate.

In an extended Latin dedication JJ draws attention to Berkeley's fame as a philosopher, and to his unjust neglect as a political economist. The present book, which he dedicates to de Valera, he hopes will remedy this perception.

In a short preface JJ lists the previous editions of the Querist, of which there were eight during Berkeley's lifetime and ten subsequently. He then gives an 8-page biographical introduction, followed by ten closely-argued chapters outlining various aspects of Irish political economy in the 18th century, being the environment with which Berkeley developed his criticism.

After a section in which JJ reconciles the numbering of the queries in the various editions, he then gives the 595 Queries in sequence, indicating which ones were selected by Berkeley for association with his Plan for a National Bank; this is also included, along with his subsequent ironical 'Queries upon Queries'.

I give here short abstracts of JJ's chapters, each of which is headed by a Query, setting the scene for the analysis therein.

Ch 2: Ireland's Place in the Old Colonial System

This deals with the 1663 Act which specified that all Irish trade with the colonies must go via England, and deprived Ireland of the advantages of England's commercial monopoly of the colonial trade, which she had hitherto enjoyed. There was also a preview of the 'economic war' with Irish cattle exports to England prohibited. There were also restrictions on the woollen trade, and a deflation of the currency in 1701. These factors all led to '..one of the the most severe and prolonged business depressions in economic history..' of which one effect was to arouse Berkeley's interest in such matters. The letters of Archbishop King are an important MS source for this period, and JJ introduces him in this chapter as a source for the next.

Ch 3: Archbishop King's Diagnosis

This is based on King's analysis of the depression, and that of his friend Molyneux, both honest Protestants who wished to distance themselves from the Ascendancy situation within which they were constrained by English rule. JJ stresses the fact that by no means all Protestants were members of the governing class, and that the derogatory label 'Protestant Ascendancy' is a 'logical fallacy and a falsification of history'. He points out some remarkable resemblances between the states of public opinion in 1697 and 1932, a key one being the key one that the value of land depends on access to markets.

Ch 4: Commercial Restrictions and Monetary Deflation in 18th Century Ireland

This chapter is revised from JJ's Hermathena paper (LIII, 1939). According to JJ '..Berkeley was profoundly right in thinking that Ireland was to a much greater extent the victim of merchantilist monetary thought (or prejudice) at home than of merchantilist commercial policy abroad..' The solution to the problem was '..well within the power of the Irish Government, in spite of the limitations of its constitutional authority..'. JJ accesses the TCD estate records and analyses the values of the leases, in the context of the disastrous currency change of 1701, which he identifies as being much more significant that the woollen restrictions.

Ch 5: Berkeley and the Abortive Bank Project of 1720-21

This also was revised from JJ's Hermathena paper (LIV, 1939). Banking in the early 18th century was private and prone to failure, yet banknotes of all sorts circulated, and in fact constituted a currency, even though the credit on which they were based was often flimsy. "Whether current banknotes may not be deemed money? And whether they are not actually the greater part of the money of this kingdom?" (Berkeley's Querist). I quote JJ: "...one would have thought that the proposal to establish a solid and substantial corporate bank, which appeared in 1720, would have received a warm welcome... (there was) a petition from the Earl of Abercorn...to raise a fund of £500,000....The King approved...".

There was however considerable hostility aroused, from Swift and others; JJ analyses this, and identifies as one factor the perception among the colonial elite that "...the Papists cannot purchase lands and are at a loss how to lay out their money. They will buy Bank stock and get control of the Bank to the weakening of the Protestant interest..". JJ's hero Berkeley alas at this time is away on his travels, and so is unable to intervene in the dispute. JJ argues that Berkeley would have held out, in accordance with his writings, that the bank should have been nationally owned rather than privately.

Ch 6: Irish Currency in the 18th Century

This was revised from JJ's paper in Hermathena LII, 1938. This is a highly technical paper, in which JJ adduces arguments made by George O'Brien subsequently, and by Thomas Prior and Dean Swift during the century, as well as those of Berkeley. There was no actual Irish currency during the period under review, although there was a notional Irish monetary unit, in which deals were done. There are echoes in the argument of JJ's analysis of the earlier experience of Solon and Croesus in Greece in the 5th century BC.

Ch 7: A Synopsis of Berkeley's Monetary Philosophy

'For, in its essence, money is only a means of conveying and recording power to command the industry of others, and others will not give their services in exchange for it unless they have confidence that they in turn can get what they want in exchange for money'. This far JJ; he then quotes Berkeley: "Whether all circulation be not be not like a circulation of credit, whatever medium (metal or paper) is employed, and whether gold be any more than credit for so much power?".

JJ stresses the identity of money and credit as seen by Berkeley, and relates this to his promotion of the need for a national publicly-owned banking system. Private ownership of the banking system, as is has evolved, regards the distinction between money and credit as being of great importance. For a modern financier, a debt is liquidated when money is repaid. For Berkeley, monetary obligations are only liquidated when transformed into solid goods and services. The latter is JJ's position. JJ concludes by remarking that '... the idealist philosopher who disbelieved in the independent reality of matter was before all else a realist in his economic thinking.'

Ch 8: Locke, Berkeley and Hume as Monetary Theorists

"Berkeley must have read Locke's monetary pamphlets, and Hume may be supposed to have read the Querist. Hume's ideas were absorbed by his bosom friend Adam Smith, and passed by this channel into the main British stream of accepted monetary doctrine. And yet, as we shall see, essential elements in Berkeley's monetary philosophy failed to penetrate the mind of Hume, and accepted monetary doctrine has been impoverished as a consequence. The theory of money that appears in Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' stands decidedly apart from his main line of reasoning."

After some five pages or so of close argument JJ concludes: "...Thus Hume deliberately opposes not only the main theme of Berkeley's book (national banking), but what the event has proved to be the inevitable and necessary form of commercial and monetary development - the growth of paper credit...".

Ch 9: Bishop Berkeley and Kindred Monetary Thinkers

In this paper, published in Hermathena LIX, 1942 (wrongly given as 1940 in the published book), JJ '..detects in Berkeley's monetary philosophy certain elements which occur also in Aristotle, and in the writings of the French economist Boisguilbert...who died in 1714 and published his most important works in 1704... Berkeley visited France in 1713, 1714 and 1720 and...was almost certainly influenced by the work of Malebranche...'.

JJ goes at length into the economic ideas of Aristotle, Boisguilbert and Adam Smith as well as those of Berkeley, and relates them to the then current ideas as expressed by Keynes in the General Theory.

The paper is full of quotable bits, like '..the practical navigator would pay little attention to a science of navigation based on the long-run tendency of the sea to present a flat surface...' and '...take care of consumption and production will take care of itself..'.

This paper is a candidate for reproduction in full. In a footnote JJ admits that it was written in 1937. As his Senate role began to dominate in 1938, it is probable that he shelved it, and only resurrected it during the war, when things were at a low ebb.

Ch 10: A Sample of Agricultural Rents 1700-1850

This was not published elsewhere, and is based mainly on Arthur Young's Tour in Ireland supplemented by analysis of the records of the Lecky Estate, and the College estates.

Ch 11: Commercial Expansion and Economic Recovery in 18th Century Ireland

This also was not published elsewhere, and is also rooted in Young's travels; the focus is on the falsity of the prosperity experienced during the Napoleonic wars, and the failure of the wealth engendered to find its way into the improvement of agricultural and industrial capital, being instead squandered by absentee landlords.

Here is a review which appeared in the Lincoln Record, the 'old boys' newsletter of JJ's Alma Mater, signed by one VHHG. He had trouble getting it reviewed, and did not have the energy to push it. There was a revival of interest in Berkeley in the US shortly after, and he missed this wave. The publisher, Dun Dealgan, had negative experience of US distributors, and discouraged my attempts at promotion. But see some additional material which I discovered subsequently. RJ 11/12/2005.

Joseph Johnston (1910), Bishop Berkeley's Querist in Historical Perspective, Dundalgan Press, Dublin, 1970.

George Berkeley first showed an interest in economic studies in his Essay Towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain, published in 1721, which represented his reaction to the South Sea Bubble and possibly to the collapse of John Law's Mississippi scheme, so leading him to formulate the monetary philosophy which he was later to expound in the Querist. For a time he concerned himself with trying to found a Christian college in the West Indies in the belief that no western European country was capable of being a true centre of a Christian civilization; but though he spent some years in America, his plea did not prosper and in 1734 he was made Bishop of Cloyne, now a small and rather dreary village in the vicinity of Cork, where he was to remain as a resident bishop until 1752.

Berkeley's contacts with the grim realities of Irish rural life, frequent famines, epidemics, poverty, led him to consider the possible ways in which the Irish situation might yet be retrieved from potential ruination. The policy of the British Government, far from improving things, seemed to him to promote the troubled state of the country.

Berkeley, himself a philosopher of genius, turned his attention to what he believed to be the primary causes of the continuing critical condition of the Irish economy. He put forward sonic of his ideas in the Querist, published anonymously between 1735 and 1737. His object in writing the book was to bring home to the ruling class the nature of the evils by which the country was afflicted. He believed rightly that Ireland suffered from a shortage of reliable currency, especially of the smaller denomination coins, and he held that an essential feature of the remedy was the provision of an adequate monetary medium through the instrumentality of a state-owned national banking system.

His recommendations fell on stony ground, though some minor currency reforms were made in 1737. In advocating a nationalized currency and currency system, and in maintaining that the true 'basis of credit' was neither the precious metal nor 'foreign balances' but an equitable distribution of the national income in a just society, Berkeley showed an insight rare in contemporary writers.

Indeed there is, as the author observes in his preface, 'a certain perennial relevance of the Querist's social philosophy ... to the national and international problems' of modem times.

The author, Joseph Johnston, senior fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and Professor of Applied Economics, reprints the Querist, placing it in its historical context by describing the political and social background which gave rise to it. There are valuable chapters on Ireland and the old colonial system, Archbishop King's diagnosis of the Irish problem, the abortive Bank project of 1720-1, and a full consideration of the state of Irish commerce and economy in the first half of the eighteenth century. All in all, this must be accounted an important scholarly contribution to Irish eighteenth-century history as well as to the biography of Berkeley himself.

V. H. H. G.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999