When moving house in December 2005 I came across a suitcase in the attic full of JJ papers, all dating from about 1972. This must have been received from my sister Dr Maureen Carmody, when she moved house from her place in Stonyhigh near Nenagh, to a smaller house in Nenagh town. JJ and my mother ended their days in Stonyhigh, in an extension that my sister built for them.

When I helped him vacate his rooms in Trinity College in or about 1970, he made a selection of papers to bring with him. This must be that selection. It was done in a hurry, and under some pressure; the Provost wanted him out. So as regards being representative of his 'distilled wisdom', it is probably flawed, but it does perhaps give an indication of what in his last years he thought important. I list the papers here, and they may end up accessible in some libary, if this work turns out to have been relevant to current concerns. RJ Dec 2005.

I have grouped the material as follows: current outside interests, family, unprocessed background papers, and organised background papers. I suspect he felt the latter group might in the end prove to be publishable.

Current Outside Interests

Folder relating to the Inland Waterways Association.

Miscellanous folder, which includes program of the Berkeley bicentenary in 1953, share certificate for CIE dated 1945, photos, including a group dining event with unidentified heavies, Keynes correspondence and related published paper.

Envelope with Board minutes convering questions relating to Fellowship; I have put the Max Henry obituary cutting inwith this.

Family

Folder with some Geddes papers, and one with papers pertaining to my sister Maureen.

Papers relating the sale of his house in Dundrum.

Unprocessed background papers

Folder of material relating to his analysis of Common Market issues in the 1960s.

A thicker folder which seems to be developing the foregoing in the light of the 1970s situation, perhaps with insights from Querist economics.

'General Economics' essay.

Folder containing a notebook relating to his French trip in 1916.

Bound draft essay material related to Querist economics.

Folder containing critical essays from the 1940s.

Folder containing reviews and correspondence relating to his Berkeley book.

Organised background papers

Envelope containing a collection of essays on Berkeley (this could be raw material for the existing book).

Substantial folder tied up with string and labelled by JJ 'New Book on Querist'. This presumably is a collection of earlier essays in th Querist tradition, which had been left out of his existing published selection. Notebooks, in my mother's excellent legible handwriting, giving the text of what seems to be an unpublished work written in the mid 1920s, entitled 'Profits: an Adverse Criticism' by 'Utio', with '=Joseph Johnston' pencilled in. This I suspect was a precursor of his 1926 'Groundwork', and of his work on retail trade. It is basically a critical review of a book entitled 'Profits', but the author's name is not in evidence. He had re-read it in the 1960s and made some marginal notes; it is probable he considered developing it in his 'Berkeley as economist' context.

Envelope containing collected papers on the Berkeley theory of credit.

Folder entitled 'Misc Essays' which look like he had them in mind in a Berkeley development context.

I have collected this material in a box labelled 'JJ Final Selection Nenagh 1972'. They may be worth working over if anything develops around Berkeley as the pioneer of development economics, and as an Adam Smith precursor. The following quote from Appendix 5 is relevant:

'...(JJ's Berkeley) book had impact, and may yet have more. I am indebted to Collison Black, late of Queen University Belfast, and who served with my father on the Council of the SSISI in the 1950s, for drawing my attention to some work in the University of Illinois by Salim Rachid.

In a Manchester School paper (Vol LVI no 4, December 1988) Rachid mentions JJ's Berkeley work in support of his thesis regarding the existence of an Irish School of Economic Development 1720-1750. This included Berkeley, Molyneux, Swift, Dobbs and Prior, and was closely linked to applied-scientific development activity via the Dublin Society. Rachid distinguishes this group from the 'Merchantilists' with whom all economic thought prior to Adam Smith has tended to be uncritically identified by historians of economic thought, and shows how they were in fact Smith precursors. JJ went further and regarded Berkeley as being a Keynes precursor.

I suggest that there is perhaps some raw material here for exploitation by scholars interested in the historical roots of development economics. I would go further and suggest that in the composition of this group, with the strong scientific component as expressed in Dobbs and Prior, we have a good model which in current development economic thinking needs to be recaptured. The key to economic development is technical competence in the useful arts, and this was the Dublin Society's prime objective...'

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999