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I have two (again, perhaps, somewhat peripheral) comments on the  
discussions of 'economist'.   
 
1)  Certainly it is common in the ancient world, where Aristotle (for  
instance) used it in his discussion of economics as household  
management.   
 
To my way of thinking (influenced by Hegel, for instance), it is  
important to note that Aristotle talked, in the Politics, of the  
household and the polis (city or city-state), and so did not  
differentiate the sphere of household management into the family  
and civil society, as post-18th century 'economic' theory tends to  
do.   
 
So, I think, the use of terms deriving from 'economics' in classical  
theory from Homer and Aristotle up through the 18th century carry  
a very different meaning from the modern usage, which presumes  
the economic sphere (or the system of work and needs) as  
something separate not only from politics (which Aristotle and  
Homer saw) but also as something separate from family life (and  
perhaps other forms of social life and friendship).   
 
My understanding is that the query was really looking for the  
opening usages (in the 18th c.) of economist in its modern sense,  
as one who studies work and needs in a sphere of life separate  
from family and state.   
 
2)  If you are looking for 'modern' usages of 'economist' in the 18th  
c. or so, one thing that (perhaps perversely) interests me is to ask  
the inverse question:  what are the latest usages of the term in its   
(Homeric- Aristotleian) traditional meaning, as 'household  
management'??   
 
I have one answer:  in Sarah Scott's *Millenium Hall*, a kind of  
feminist tract / utopia written in 1762 is the following passage, p.  
109 in the Broadview Press 1995 edition:   
 
        referring to  park near a handsome country house, "We could 
        plainly perceive it had been many years in the possession of 
        good economists, who unprompted by necessity, did not think 
        the profit that might arise from the sale a sufficient inducement 
        to deprive it [the park] of some fine trees .... "   
 
Here "oeconomist" -- spelled with a dipthong in the original -- has  
its traditional household management meaning, which in this  
instance is at odds with -- indeed, opposite to -- the modern  
meaning of economist.   
 
Are there good later examples of the traditional meaning of  
economist? (The dipthong might be a give-away.)   
 
Peter G. Stillman 
 
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