Henry Thornton (1760 - 1815), economist, banker, philanthropist and MP for Southwark was one of the founders of the Clapham Sect and campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade. A close friend of William Wilberforce, he is credited with bring the financial brain behind the many campaigns for social reform and philanthropic causes espoused by the group.

A highly successful merchant banker, as a monetary theorist he has been described as the father of the modern central bank. An opponent of the Real Bills doctrine, he was a defender of the Bullionist position and a significant figure in monetary theory, his process of monetary expansion anticipating the theories of Knut Wicksell regarding the "cumulative process which restates the Quantity Theory in a theoretically coherent form".

His work on 19th century monetary theory has won praise from present-day economists for his forward-thinking ideas, along the lines of those later developed by John Maynard Keynes.

Works

• An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain, 1802