WILLIAM THOMAS THORNTON (1813-1880), English economist, was born at Burnham, Buckinghamshire, on the 14th of February 1813. In 1836 he obtained a clerkship in the London house of the East India Company. In 1858 he became secretary for public works in the India office, a post which he held till his death. He was created a C.B. in 1873. His works include Over-population and its Remedy (1846), in which he put forward a plan for colonizing Irish wastes by Irish peasants; A Plea for Peasant Proprietors (1848), in which his views were developed in greater detail; On Labour (1869); and Old-fashioned Ethics and Commonsense Metaphysics, a volume of essays, published in 1873.