Josiah Tucker

He was born at Laugharne, Carmarthenshire; his father inherited a small estate near Aberystwyth, and sent his son to Ruthin School, Denbighshire.

He was appointed to a minor canonry in the cathedral, and was noticed by Bishop Joseph Butler, to whom he was for a time domestic chaplain.

(According to another version, the person said to make a trade of his religion was Samuel Squire, who succeeded Warburton as Dean of Bristol.

The chancellor refused to give the required promise, until, at Tucker's request, his petitioners signed a petition on behalf of the curate.

Tucker died on 4 November 1799 and was buried in the south transept of Gloucester Cathedral, where a monument was erected to his memory.

Recent research has shown how he was influenced by the meta-ethics and moral philosophy of Bishop Butler, which he transposed into Christian economic discourse at about mid-century.

[4] He made his name as an economist with A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages which Respectively Attend France and Great Britain, with Regard to Trade (1749).

Tucker had a reputation for his knowledge of trade, and in 1755 was asked by Thomas Hayter, then bishop of Norwich and royal preceptor, to draw up a treatise called Elements of Commerce and the Theory of Taxes for the instruction of the future King (George III of Great Britain).

[1] He has been suggested as a source of some of Adam Smith's ideas, even if for a century after his death he was dismissed as a pamphleteer writing controversial ephemera on questions of passing interest.

[8] He wrote in complimentary terms to Tucker some years later, and sent him a copy of the 'Réflexions sur la Formation des Richesses'.

The policy pleased nobody in England, and Tucker, though his views were approved in later years by many of the laisser-faire economists, was for a time treated as a Cassandra, a name under which he published in the newspapers.

In 1781 he published A Treatise Concerning Civil Government, attacking John Locke's principles as tending to democracy, and supporting the British constitution.