Rice Vaughan

Rice Vaughan (d. circa 1672)[1] was a seventeenth-century Anglo-Welsh lawyer and economist known for writing a seminal work on economics and currencies entitled A Discourse on Coins and Coinage.

Biography

Rice Vaughan was the "second son of Henry Vaughan of Gelli-goch, Machynlleth, and Mary, daughter of Maurice Wynn of Glyn, near Harlech."[1] He graduated from the Shrewsbury School in 1615 and later in life entered Gray's Inn for a career in the law before being admitted to the bar in 1648.[1] During the English Civil War, he sided with parliament against King Charles I. He is thought to have died before the publication of his works, the earliest in 1672.

Works
  • 1651: A Plea for the Common Laws of England (a reply to Hugh Peter's A Good Work for a Good Magistrate; Practica Walliae, or, The Proceedings in the Great Sessions of Wales (published posthumously, in 1672)
  • 1675: A Discourse of Coin and Coinage (published posthumously and edited by poet, Henry Vaughan)

A Discourse of Coin and Coinage

Vaughan wrote an early work on currency, A Discourse of Coin and Coinage[2] (1675). He argued that it was a mass voluntary consensus, the "concurrence of mankind", that gave currency its value as a medium of exchange, not the laws which enforce the usage of currency or the inherent worth of a currency's material composition (such as gold or silver).[2] This work also contained the earliest known research on price level changes and price indices. John Ramsay McCulloch included A Discourse... in his A Select Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts on Money[3] (1856).

References
  1. Jones, J. Gwynfor. "Vaughan, Rice (d. c.1672)" in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition: Sept 2010). Retrieved 21 January 2013.
  2. "A Discourse of Coin and Coinage".
  3. "John Ramsay McCulloch, A Select Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts on Money [1856]". Cornell University Library.


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