Many of its members became famous as engineers, economists, and men of business.
Some doctrines of the earlier economists, such as the Wages Fund Theory, are now practically abandoned, though it may be said that they contained a certain amount of truth.
The opinions of present-day economists appear to fluctuate between these two extremes.
Moreover, modern economists, while accepting in the main the general tenor of Malthus's theory of population, would not agree with his statement of it.
The European ferment of ideas which preceded the French Revolution expressed itself in men like Alfieri, the fierce denouncer of tyrants, Beccaria, the philosopher of criminal jurisprudence, Volta, the physicist, and numerous political economists of Tuscany.