[1] It was founded in 1821 in London with David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, and Robert Torrens,[2] because there were not any professional associations for free trade economists to peer-review their work.
[citation needed] The founding participants' disagreement on the formulation of their fundamental axioms provoked Ricardo to privately express his infamous assertion of the 'non-existence of any measure of absolute value'.
[7] David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, James Mill, Colonel Thomas Moody, Kt., Robert Torrens, Thomas Tooke, John Stuart Mill, John Ramsey McCulloch, Nassau Senior, John Elliott Cairnes, Henry Fawcett, William Newmarch, Samuel Jones-Loyd, 1st Baron Overstone, Jane Marcet,[9] George Warde Norman, William Blake, Walter Coulson, George Pryme, George R. Porter, William T. Thornton, Walter Bagehot, and Jean-Baptiste Say.
Others were drawn from outside the ranks of economists, including G. G. de Larpent, George John Shaw-Lefevre, John Abel Smith, Henry Warburton, Lord Althorp, William Whitmore, W. B. Baring, Poulett Thomson, Sir Robert Wilmot-Horton, Lord Monteagle, Charles Hay Cameron, James Deacon Hume, George Grote, James Morrison, Edwin Chadwick, Sir Robert Giffen, Charles Buller, and Sir William Clay.
Significant elections after 1840 include Robert Lowe, Sir G. C. Lewis, Rowland Hill, Stafford Northcote, George J. Goschen, William Ewart Gladstone, and W. E.