In the debate on the Corn Laws in 1839, Sir Robert Peel cited the views of Lowe and Thomas Tooke, to argue against imposing a low fixed rate of import duty on corn.[4]
Lowe spent a period at Caen in France, from June 1814.[5][7] From September 1815 he was tutor there to Edward Deas Thomson and his elder brother; Thomson later kept in touch and discussed technology with Lowe.[8] He also employed Nathaniel Morren and others as writers.[9]James Mill was a friend of Lowe from school days, and his son John Stuart Mill visited Lowe in France for some weeks in 1821.[1][10]
Lowe was appointed lecturer in Commerce at King's College, London, around 1830, at the end of his life.[11] According to Mill's biographer Alexander Bain, Lowe was partly dependent on Mill, and was unable to retain his position.[12]
An Inquiry into the State of the British West Indies (1807)[13]
Naval Anecdotes: or a New Key to the Proceedings of a late Administration (1807), an anonymous defence of the government, is attributed to Lowe.[5]
The Present State of England in Regard to Agriculture, Trade and Finance (1822) was Lowe's major work, now noted mostly for its Chapter IX, Fluctuation in the Value of Money or in the Price of Commodities, which influenced George Poulett Scrope.[14]Otto Neurath later praised this book as an attempt at a comprehensive sketch of a war economy.[15] Lowe's general conclusions were rather buoyant, allowing the British economy good prospects and the moderation of the culture being promising for the future. He supported free trade and opposed the views of Robert Malthus.[16]
Lowe advocated indexation as applied to bonds, but also to wage contracts and land rents.[17] His advocacy of a "tabular standard" (a precursor of the indexed unit of account) has been recognised as a technical advance in monetary analysis;[18] Lowe used the terms "standard of reference" or "table of reference";[19] the idea itself, and the term "tabular standard" are attributed to George Shuckburgh-Evelyn.[20]
As a statistician, Lowe was one of an early group who collected economic data, and applied it in pamphlets and polemics. In fact the term current then was "political arithmetician". The larger significance of the statistical work of Lowe and Thomas Tooke is that they collected figures from the period of the Continental System, of the latter part of the Napoleonic Wars. These data were then deployed in the theoretical arguments of the 1820s, dominated by David Ricardo and his doctrine on convertibility.[29]
There were no agreed principles on collection and use of data. Others bringing forward sets of figures were Patrick Colquhoun, Frederick Morton Eden, and George Richardson Porter. Their work carried less intellectual prestige than that of the political economists.[30] Lowe was mainly concerned with fiscal policy.[31] He accused those who had drawn up the Bullion Report into monetary policy after the end of the Napoleonic Wars of failing to take into account recent economic growth.[32] He argued the point quantitatively for the previous decade in The Present State of England (1822).[33]
^M. G. Kendall, Studies in the History of Probability and Statistics, XXI. The Early History of Index Numbers, Revue de l'Institut International de Statistique / Review of the International Statistical Institute Vol. 37, No. 1 (1969), pp. 1–12, at p. 5. Published by: International Statistical Institute (ISI). Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1402090
^Redvers Opie, A Neglected English Economist: George Poulett Scrope, The Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 44, No. 1 (Nov. 1929), pp. 101–137, at p. 121 note 3. Published by: Oxford University Press. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1885442
^Anthony Brundage and David Eastwood, The Making of the New Poor Law Redivivus, Past & Present No. 127 (May 1990), pp. 183–194, at p. 192 note 27. Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/650946
^Ronald Findlay, ed. (c. 2006). Eli Heckscher, International Trade, and Economic History. MIT Press. pp. 395–6. ISBN978-0262062510.