Letters of David Ricardo to Thomas Robert Malthus, 1810-1823 Part 11

GATCOMB PARK, _2 Jan., 1816_.

MY DEAR SIR,

Your two letters have both reached me, and I am very sorry to find that I shall not have the pleasure of seeing you at Gatcomb this vacation. I left London, as you supposed, the day after the Bank Court. I should have considered it fortunate if whilst I was there I had met you. My house in Brook Street is not yet in a state to receive us; nor will it be this season, unless we consent to go in it with the walls unpapered and unpainted, conditions to which we shall agree. It will be we are told in a habitable state by the latter end of the month, at which time we shall probably quit Gatcomb.

As you have not given me the pleasure of your company here, and as I wish to speak to Murray concerning my book and to consult some Parliamentary papers which I have not got here, I intend taking a trip to town the beginning of next week. Do you think I shall have any chance of meeting you there? Remember that a letter will always find me at or follow me from the Stock Exchange[121].

It is exceedingly provoking that you should have been so much interrupted by college affairs as not to have made more progress with your new chapters. I shall regret your thinking it necessary to abridge or leave out anything which you may have to say connected with the subject, and particularly if you should so determine, because more time will otherwise be required before you can publish. The question of bounties and restrictions is exceedingly important, and, unless you have already given your present opinions on that subject elsewhere, or mean to do so, it ought to form part of the present work[122]; and a little delay in the publication is not very important.

The edition which I have of your work is the first, and it is many years since I read it. When you wrote to me that you were looking over the chapters on the Agricultural and Manufacturing systems with a view to make some alterations in them, I looked into those chapters and saw a great deal in them which differed from the opinions I have formed on that part of the subject. At your house I observed that in a subsequent edition you had altered some of the pa.s.sages to which I particularly objected, and in the chapters as you are now writing them it appeared to me that there was only a slight trace of the difference we have often discussed. The general impression which I retain of the book is excellent. The doctrines appeared so clear and so satisfactorily laid down that they excited an interest in me inferior only to that produced by Adam Smith's celebrated work[123]. I remember mentioning to you, and I believe you told me that you had altered it in the following editions, that I thought you argued in some places as if the poor rates had no effect in increasing the quant.i.ty of food to be distributed,--that I thought you were bound to admit that the poor laws would increase the demand and consequently the supply. This admission does not weaken the grand point to be proved.

As for the difference between us on Profits, of which you speak in your letter, you have not, I think, stated it correctly. You say that my opinion is 'that general profits never fall from a general fall of prices compared with labour, but from a general rise of labour compared with prices.' I will not acknowledge this to be my proposition. I think that corn and labour are the variable commodities, and that other things neither rise nor fall but from difficulty or facility of production or from some cause particularly affecting the value of money, and that no alteration of price proceeding from these causes affect[s] general profits,--allowing always some effect for cheapness of the raw material....

Yours very truly, DAVID RICARDO.

XLII.

LONDON, _10th Jan., 1816_.

MY DEAR SIR,

I arrived in town yesterday and found your letter at the Stock Exchange.

It is very uncertain whether I shall leave London to-morrow evening or Monday evening. I am desirous of getting home on many accounts, but I may not be able to accomplish the business for which I came so soon as I expected, and, if I do not get it done by to-morrow it will in all probability detain me till Monday. Thus then it is still uncertain whether we are to meet, and I do not exactly know how to make you acquainted with my movements. I will, however, let Mr. Murray know if I leave town to-morrow, and, if you are in the neighbourhood of Russell Square, by sending to No. 8, Montague Street (Mr. Basevi's), you will be sure to know. In the City, at the Stock Exchange, any of my brothers will inform you about me. If I should not be gone, will you do me the favour of dining with me on Friday at Mr. Basevi's? His dinner hour is six o'clock, and he begs me to say that he shall be much flattered by your favouring him with your company. I was in hopes of finding you in London and of having the benefit of your opinion of my book[124] in its present state, before I sent it to be printed. That advantage I must now forego, because I am desirous of getting it out before the meeting of Parliament, and have before experienced the inconvenience of too much hurry.

I cannot think it inconsistent to suppose that the money price of labour may rise when it is necessary to cultivate poorer land, whilst the real price may at the same time fall. Two opposite causes are influencing the price of labour, one the enhanced price of some of the things on which wages are expended, the other the fewer enjoyments which the labourer will have the power to command. You think these may balance each other, or rather that the latter will prevail; I on the contrary think the former the most powerful in its effects. I must write a book to convince you.

I am glad you are not going to cut your next edition short.

Very truly yours, DAVID RICARDO.

NOTE.--The MS. referred to in this letter was probably the pamphlet on 'Economical and Secure Currency,' which internal evidence would show to have been printed not earlier than Feb., 1816. Ricardo, as appears from Letter XL, had already submitted the MS. to James Mill.

In the fragment of a letter to Mill (quoted in Bain's 'Life of Mill,' p. 153, and dated Jan., 1816) he writes: 'Fill eight pages in the Appendix, will that be too much?' Professor Bain thinks this must refer to the 'Principles of Political Economy and Taxation'

(1817). But that work has no Appendix; and there seems no reason why it should not refer to the 'Economical and Secure Currency' (1816), which has one. The 'Resolutions proposed concerning the Bank of England by Mr. Grenfell,' and those proposed by Mr. Mellish, together, cover seven pages of that Appendix in the original edition; and Ricardo in the fragment quoted had probably been saying, that these Resolutions, if he printed them, would fill nearly eight pages, etc.

XLIII.

LONDON, _7 Feb., 1816_.

MY DEAR SIR,

I arrived in town yesterday, with the whole of my numerous family. We are already as comfortably settled in Brook Street as under all circ.u.mstances we can expect, and I hasten to inform you that we have a bed ready for you, which I hope you will very soon occupy. I have forgotten on which Sat.u.r.day in the month you meet at the King of Clubs, but conclude from your last meeting that it is the second. If so, you will probably be in town to-morrow or Friday, when I shall hope that you will lodge at our house and give us as much of your company as your numerous friends will allow you to do.

You have probably ere this seen my book[125]. I have been reading it in its present dress, and very much lament that I make no progress in the very difficult art of composition. I believe that ought to be my study before I intrude any more of my crude notions on the public.

It is said that the Bank have made some agreement with Government, but what it is is not exactly known. They talk of the Bank advancing to Government six millions at four per cent., besides continuing the loan of three millions without interest. We shall not, however, be long in suspense on this subject, as a general court of proprietors is to be held to-morrow, when the directors will make some communication to the proprietors to ask for their vote to sanction their agreement. They will ask for this without giving them any information either respecting their savings, their profits, or the amount of public deposits. Is not this a ridiculous piece of mockery, and an insult to our common sense? I hope there may be a few independent proprietors present who may call for information, or who may at least demand a ballot, for which purpose nine only are necessary[126]. You would be surprised at the abjectness of the city men, and the great influence which the directors have in consequence of their power of discounting bills. I am persuaded many of the proprietors would vote very differently at a ballot, to what they would by a show of hands.

I have not thought much on our old subject; my difficulty is in so presenting it to the minds of others as to make them fall into the same chain of thinking as myself. If I could overcome the obstacles in the way of giving a clear insight into the original law of relative or exchangeable value, I should have gained half the battle....

Very truly yours, DAVID RICARDO.

XLIV.

[On the back of this are jotted figures and lists of books in Malthus'

handwriting.]

LONDON, _23rd Feb., 1816_.

MY DEAR SIR,

I beg to remind you that the first Sat.u.r.day in the next month is to-morrow se'n-night, on which day or a few days before it, I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you in Brook Street. We have a bed always at your service, and I wish you would make the rule invariable to take up your lodging with us whenever you visit London.

I hope you have quite determined to extend your new edition to another volume, and that you are now making great progress in it. I wish much to see a regular and connected statement of your opinions on what I deem the most difficult and perhaps the most important topic of political economy, namely, the progress of a country in wealth, and the laws by which the increasing produce is distributed.

Have you seen Torrens' Letter to Lord Liverpool[127]? He appears to me to have adopted all my views respecting profits and rent; and, in some conversation which I had with him a few days ago, he unequivocally avowed that he was now of my opinion, that the price of labour, arising from a difficulty in procuring food, did not affect the prices of commodities. He confessed that his former view on that subject was erroneous. I should be glad to see all the arguments in favour of my view of the question clearly and ably stated. I should not wonder if Torrens undertook it.

The sale of my last pamphlet has far exceeded its merits. Murray is printing a second edition[128]. I had no idea that the subject was of much interest to the public, but it seems that they are curious about the amount of the Bank treasure. In the House of Commons the defence of the contracts with the Bank was very little satisfactory; they endeavoured to fix the attention of the House on what the public had got and saved by the operations of the Bank; they seemed to think that all the rest belonged of right to the Bank.

Will Ministers be able to carry the Income Tax[129]?

Very truly yours, DAVID RICARDO.

NOTE.--Torrens came nearest to fulfilment of the above forecast in his 'Essay on the Production of Wealth' (1821), which was announced as 'a general treatise upon Political Economy, combining with the principles of Adam Smith so much of the more recent doctrines as may be conformable to truth and embodying the whole into one consentaneous system.' (Pref. p. v.) But he thinks out the subject vigorously for himself; and, though in all his later books he extols Ricardo above all his contemporaries, he finds frequent occasion to differ from him. Indeed he occasionally claims that Ricardo is the borrower, and he the lender. Ricardo, for example, is indebted to him (he says) for the doctrine that, when a nation has great advantage in one production but a much greater advantage in another, it will confine itself to producing the latter, and will even import the former (Ricardo, Works, pp. 76, 77; cf. Torrens, Preface to Essay on External Corn Trade, p. vii). Yet the doctrine has always pa.s.sed as Ricardian _par excellence_ (see e.g. Cairnes, Leading Principles of Political Economy, Part III. ch. i. p. 371, and Logical Method, p. 81), and we should not guess, from Letter XLVII for example, that Ricardo was the convert. The Preface to the 'Production of Wealth' ends with the prediction that in twenty years' time there would be unanimity amongst Economists on all fundamental principles.

XLV.

LONDON, _5 March, 1816_.

MY DEAR SIR,

The public papers have ere this informed you of the result of yesterday's ballot at the India House; Mr. Jackson's motion was lost by a majority of twenty-one or twenty-two. Mr. Jackson, in his reply, said everything of you that your most partial friends could wish; and indeed the general tone of his speech, yesterday, was much more moderate than that by which he introduced his motion. Mr. Bosanquet's[130] comments on some pa.s.sages in your pamphlet[131] lead me to think that he must have misunderstood you, as I conceive that it was not your intention by recommending the directors to appoint more young men than there were vacant writers.h.i.+ps, that the unsuccessful candidates should be finally and irrecoverably dismissed from all chance of going out to India[132].

I imagine that it was your intention to let them be again compet.i.tors for one of the prizes of the following year, and therefore that the punishment of their neglect would rather be a delay in their appointment than an absolute dismission. Mr. Bosanquet appeared to me to argue on the latter supposition.

Mr. Elphinstone[133] spoke very kindly and very handsomely of the professors; yet I thought that he was by far the most formidable opponent of the College as at present const.i.tuted, and the one that I should have been least able to answer. His speech was short, but from the moderation of his language it produced, I think, a considerable effect, and gave great courage to Mr. Jackson's party. I hope this subject will not be again revived, or, rather, I hope that the proficiency of the young men, and the absence of all turbulence, will satisfy every one of the impolicy of interfering with the establishment.

I am sorry to be under the necessity of putting off my visit to you, but I shall not be able to be with you on Sat.u.r.day[134].... We are going ...