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A biography of Edward Stillingfleet Cayley, British defender of protectionism. He was born on August 13, 1802 at Newbold Hall, in East Riding of Yorkshire, England, studied at Rugby and Brasenose College in Oxford but left without a degree and later married his cousin Emma. He learned political economy by self-study and became a leader of agricultural party in House of Commons. It presents his contribution on economic thought with his 1830 book "On commercial economy," his perspective on capital accumulation and opposition to Say's Law.

The article presents an analysis of the Ricardian Socialists and their influence on the economic ideas of Karl Marx. From the perspective of Marx, Ricardian Socialists are British and Irish writers who are against capitalism, favorably inclined to the working class, and made their reputation in the debates of the 1820s and 1830 which would include economists named by Esther Lowenthal in her 1911 book "The Ricardian Socialists" as well as pseudonymous Piercy Ravenstone, Thomas Rowe Edmonds and Robert Owen. It discusses the criticisms of Marx against the Ricardian repudiation of capitalism as allegedly bourgeois illusion.