Samuel Mountifort Longfield (1802 – 21 November 1884) was an Irish lawyer, judge, mathematician, and academic. He was the first Professor of Political Economy at Trinity College, Dublin.

Life

He was son of Mountifort Longfield, vicar of Desert Serges (Desert Magee),

County Cork County Cork ( ga, Contae Chorcaí) is the largest and the southernmost county of Ireland, named after the city of Cork, the state's second-largest city. It is in the province of Munster and the Southern Region. Its largest market towns are ...

, and his wife Grace, daughter of William Lysaght of Fort William and Mount North, Co. Cork. He was educated at

Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

, graduated as moderator and gold medallist in science in 1823, became a fellow in 1825, and proceeded to the degrees of M.A. in 1829 and LL.D. in 1831. In 1828 Longfield was

called to the Irish bar The Bar of Ireland ( ga, Barra na hÉireann) is the professional association of barristers for Ireland, with over 2,000 members. It is based in the Law Library, with premises in Dublin and Cork. It is governed by the General Council of the Ba ...

, but did not practise. When the professorship of political economy in Trinity College was founded in 1832, he was appointed the first professor; and in 1834 he resigned his fellowship and became Regius Professor of Feudal and English Law there, a post he held for the rest of his life, from 1871 having as deputy N. Ritchie, Q.C. Longfield was reputed as a

real property In English common law, real property, real estate, immovable property or, solely in the US and Canada, realty, is land which is the property of some person and all structures (also called improvements or fixtures) integrated with or affixe ...

lawyer. In 1842 he became a

Queen's Counsel In the United Kingdom and in some Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth countries, a King's Counsel (Post-nominal letters, post-nominal initials KC) during the reign of a king, or Queen's Counsel (post-nominal initials QC) during the reign of ...

, and in 1859 a bencher of the

King's Inns The Honorable Society of King's Inns ( ir, Cumann Onórach Óstaí an Rí) is the "Inn of Court" for the Bar of Ireland. Established in 1541, King's Inns is Ireland's oldest school of law and one of Ireland's significant historical environment ...

. On the passing of the Incumbered Estates Act in 1849 he was appointed one of the three commissioners for it, holding office until the landed estates court was constituted in 1858. He became a judge of the court, and continued to sit until 1867. A liberal in politics, Longfield helped draft the Irish measures of the first and second Gladstone administrations. In 1867 he was sworn a member of the Irish Privy Council. He was appointed a commissioner of Irish national education in 1853, and on several occasions was an assessor to the general synod of the

Church of Ireland The Church of Ireland ( ga, Eaglais na hÉireann, ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Kirk o Airlann, ) is a Christian church in Ireland and an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the second ...

; with Joseph Galbraith he was one of the architects of the church's finances. Longfield was an active member of the Social Science Congress and the Dublin Statistical Society. He died at 47 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin, on 21 November 1884.

Economist

His most important work in economics was "Lectures on Political Economy", which was published in 1834. He argued against the

labor theory of value The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of " socially necessary labor" required to produce it. The LTV is usually associated with Marxian e ...

and developed a marginal revenue productivity theory of labour and capital. It was unusual for its time and was only rediscovered after 1900; some of his ideas on capital and interest foreshadowed the work of the

Austrian School The Austrian School is a heterodox school of economic thought that advocates strict adherence to methodological individualism, the concept that social phenomena result exclusively from the motivations and actions of individuals. Austrian school ...

. His main approaches revolved around the

, an analysis of

capital Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...

and distribution theory (based on a concept of

marginal productivity In economics and in particular neoclassical economics, the marginal product or marginal physical productivity of an input ( factor of production) is the change in output resulting from employing one more unit of a particular input (for instance, t ...

). He applies insofar as the representative of the

marginal utility theory In economics, utility is the satisfaction or benefit derived by consuming a product. The marginal utility of a good or service describes how much pleasure or satisfaction is gained by consumers as a result of the increase or decrease in consumpti ...

''avant la lettre''.

Works

* ''Four Lectures on Poor Laws'', 1834. * ''Lectures on Political Economy'', 1834 * ''Three Lectures on Commerce and One on Absenteeism'', 1835 * ''An Elementary Treatise on Series'', published by Hodges, Foster & Figgis, Dublin, 1872The Dublin University calendar for the year 1877
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Family

In 1845 Longfield married Elizabeth Penelope, daughter of Andrew Armstrong.

References

External links