Letters of David Ricardo to Thomas Robert Malthus, 1810-1823 Part 16

Ever yours, DAVID RICARDO.

NOTE.--In Say's 'Oeuvres Diverses' (vol. i. p. 413) is printed a letter of Ricardo to Say, dated from Gatcomb, 18th Dec. 1817. He says amongst other things: 'Since your visit to England, I have been by degrees retiring from business; and, as our debt is enormous and the price of stock very high, I have from time to time withdrawn my capital, and have laid out much of it in land.... My life is made up of successes and cares; hence I am providing for the future as much as I can, that I may get rid of anxiety altogether. Our friend Mill is about to publish his book on India, on which he has been at work for several years. With powers like his, nothing can fail to become interesting and instructive under his pen; and I am convinced that this book will exceed the expectations of his closest friends. It is in type; and he has kindly given me an early copy. I have read more than half of the first volume, and I hope it will produce on competent judges the same impression that it has made on me. What he says on the government, laws, religion, and manners of the country is of great weight; and the comparison he draws between the former condition of Hindostan and its present condition seems to me to decide the question of the high state of civilization attributed to the former.... Your _Traite d'Economie Politique_ increases in reputation among us, in proportion as it becomes better known.

Extracts from it (and from my own book) have recently appeared in the British Review, and its merit has been recognised. I have not fared so well; the reviewer has found in my book ample material for criticisms, and hardly a single pa.s.sage worthy of praise.'

LXV.

LONDON, _30th Jan., 1818_[179].

MY DEAR SIR,

During your visit in London next week I hope you will stay with us in Brook Street, and I am commissioned by Mrs. Ricardo to add her solicitations to mine to induce Mrs. Malthus to accompany you.

Lord King[180], Mr. Whishaw and you have done me a great deal of honour in making my work[181] the subject of your discussions, but I confess it fills me with astonishment to find that you think, and from what you say they appear to agree with you, that the measure of value is not what I have represented it to be; but that _natural price_, as well as _market price_, is determined by the demand and supply,--the only difference being that the former is governed by the average and permanent demand and supply, the latter by the accidental and temporary. In saying this do you mean to deny that facility of production will lower natural price, and difficulty of production raise it? Will not these effects be produced after a very short interval, although the absolute demand and supply, or the proportion of one to the other, should remain permanently the same? At any rate then demand and supply are not the sole regulators of price. I should be glad to understand what Lord King and you mean by supply and demand. However abundant the demand it can never permanently raise the price of a commodity above the expense of its production, including in that expense the profits of the producers. It seems natural therefore to seek for the cause of the variation of permanent price in the expenses of production. Diminish these and the commodity must finally fall, increase them and it must as certainly rise. What has this to do with demand? I may be so foolishly partial to my own doctrine that I may be blind to its absurdity. I know the strong disposition of every man to deceive himself in his eagerness to prove a favourite theory, yet I cannot help viewing this question as a truth which admits of demonstration and I am full of wonder that it should admit of a doubt.

If indeed this fundamental doctrine of mine were proved false I admit that my whole theory falls with it, but I should not on that account be satisfied with the measure of value which you would subst.i.tute in its place.

I am sorry that you have determined not to publish this spring.

I have not seen Torrens, and do not know what his intentions are respecting the work which he promised to give to the public.

Sir James Mackintosh is indeed a great acquisition in more respects than one to your College[182]. It must be particularly agre[e]able to you.

I thank you for your congratulations on the hono[u]r [which] has been conferred on me by the appointment [to] the office of Sheriff[183], an honour which I could well have dispensed with. Under all circ.u.mstances I think it best not to offer an objection to it.

I wish you were of our party to-day. Mr. Whishaw, Mr. Smyth, Mr. Mallet, Mr. Sharp and Mr. Warburton dine with me.

I am glad that you have heard Mill's book[184] favourably spoken of. I hope it may be as well thought of by others as it is by me.

Very truly yours, DAVID RICARDO.

LXVI.

LONDON, _25 May, 1818_.

MY DEAR SIR,

I have again to regret that I shall not have you as an inmate of my house on your next visit to London.... I hope, however, that you will be our daily visitors, or as often as engagements will permit. I trust that those on our part will be exhausted before you come, for at no period have I led so dissipated a life as during this season. The King of Clubs will meet on the 6th. Let me know whether Mrs. Malthus and you will favour us with your company on the 8th, as we should be glad to ask a few friends to meet you on that day.

The general opinion here is that Parliament will be dissolved immediately after the prorogation[185], but as the election in that case will interfere with the Circuit I cannot believe that ministers will choose so inconvenient a time.

To-morrow evening there is to be a long debate in the House of Lords on the Bank Restriction Bill[186], on which occasion Lord Grenville means to speak. Lord King mentioned to me his idea of proposing that the Bank should be forbid making any dividend on their stock while the price of gold was above the mint price. I have no doubt that practically such a measure would operate a reduction of the currency and its rise to par; but, if the bank directors were obstinate, it might be attended with the most serious consequences to widows, orphans, and others, who might depend on the bank dividends only for their support.

My walks with Mill continue almost daily. I hope you will sometimes honour us with your company when in London. We could make a very tolerable reformer of you in six walks, if your prejudices be not too strongly fixed. Indeed I should expect to find that our differences were not very great, as, if you are favourable to reform at all and that I believe you are, we should agree on all the important principles. Sir James Mackintosh has been reading Bentham, and was just beginning to give me his opinion of the book[187] when we were interrupted. I hope I shall find another opportunity of hearing his sentiments, which I am very eager to do. In a conversation which I yesterday had with Sharp he told me what he conceived Sir James' sentiments on reform to be[188]. If he is correct, I do not think that Sir James and I should be so much opposed to each other as he now thinks....

Very truly yours, DAVID RICARDO.

LXVII.

[Addressed to Albury, Guildford.]

LONDON, _24th June, 1818_.

MY DEAR SIR,

Your letter arrived here whilst I was in Gloucesters.h.i.+re. I came to town last night, having on Monday presided at the County meeting, and made a return of our two members.

I thank you for your inquiries after the infant[189] that you left so ill.... It died ... on the day you left London. Dr. Holland was surprised at the rapidity with which the disease advanced....

I believe it is now finally settled that I am not to be in Parliament, and truly glad I am that the question is at any rate settled, for the certainty of a seat could hardly compensate me for the disagreeables attending the negociation for it. Mr. Clutterbuck's[190] answer announced to me that the seat he had in view for me was disposed of; and thus end my dreams of ambition.

Having once consented to yield to the opinion of my friends, I let no opportunity slip of getting into the Honourable House; but I am fully persuaded that, if I consult my own happiness only, I shall do wisely in stopping where I am. It is easier to animadvert on the actions of others than to act with wisdom ourselves; and I strongly fear that I want both the judgment and discretion which are requisite to make a tolerable senator. I am surprised at the kindness and consideration with which my friends now treat me, and it would be a great want of prudence to afford them more easy means of sifting my claims.

I am equally pleased with you that Sir Samuel Romilly's election is going on so well in Westminster, and more pleased than you will be at Sir Francis Burdett's recent success on the poll[191]. Sir Francis is, I think, a consistent man. I believe Bentham's book has satisfied him that there would be no danger in universal suffrage; but his main object, I am sure, is to get a real representative government; and he would think that object might be [secur]ed by stopping very far short of universal suffrage. [With] such opinions it is a mere question of prin[ciple][192]

(as to the obtaining of his object) whether he shall ask for the more or the less extended suffrage. I agree with you that it would be more prudent to ask for the less, and I agree also with you in thinking that with our present experience we should not venture on universal suffrage if it could be had. I am glad, however, to find, that you think the election in Westminster will afford us a fair sample of the sense of the nation.

I will take care that all demands against you shall be faithfully discharged.

I have not left myself room to enter at any length into the question of the comparative advantage of employing capital in agriculture or on manufactures[193]. If by wealth you mean as I do all those things which are desirable to man, wealth I think would be most effectually increased by allowing corn to be grown or imported as best suits those concerned in the trade. You say that in the one case the corn obtained would only be sufficient to support the workmen employed _and pay fully the profits of stock_; and in the other case it would pay in addition the increased amount of rent, and support an additional population proportioned to it.

Now, _if the profits of stock to be paid fully_ in one case would be much greater both in value as defined by you, and in value as defined by me, than in the other, it is evident that the difference might not only equal the additional amount of rent but exceed it. I contend that the profits of stock would be higher than this whole amount if we consented to import corn, and therefore, although I will admit that in the case supposed our wealth has increased by the increase of rent from 1790 to 1818, yet I would contend that, if the trade had been free, and corn had been imported in preference to growing it, under the new and improved circ.u.mstances of agriculture, our wealth would have increased in a still greater ratio than it now has done....

Truly yours, DAVID RICARDO.

NOTE.--In the new Parliament of 1818 Portarlington was represented, as in the last Parliament, by Richard Sharp, who seems to have retired in the course of six or seven months, for we find Ricardo's name in a division list as early as March 2, 1819. (Hansard, _sub dato_, p. 846.) It was a pocket borough, and there is nothing to show that Ricardo ever visited his const.i.tuents; but this did not prevent him from strongly denouncing the system of election. The biographer of J. B. Say a.s.serts (apparently on pure conjecture) that Ricardo had bought an estate at Portarlington, and with it the seat in Parliament as one of its appurtenances (Say, Oeuvres Diverses, p. 406): 'Possesseur de vastes domaines, il s'en trouvait qui, par un abus deplore par lui-meme, lui donnaient entree au parlement.' In his Biography of James Mill, p. 172, Professor Bain speaks as if Ricardo had entered Parliament at the General Election in 1818.

LXVIII.[194]

[On outside of letter with the frank MINCHING HAMPTON (_sic_), _Aug. 20, 1818_.]

MY DEAR SIR,

I am very much obliged to you for the kind manner in which you express yourself respecting the praise that has been so lavishly bestowed on me by the reviewer of my book, in the Edinburgh Review[195]. Immediately on reading it, I guessed that the writer of the article was Mr.

M'Culloch[196], for from the publication of my book he appears sincerely to have embraced the views which I wished to impress on all my readers.

I cannot but feel highly gratified at his praise, which I should not have been in anything like an equal degree if it had come from Mr. Mill, because, though I should not have doubted his sincerity, I should have imputed much to his friends.h.i.+p and good opinion. The praise indeed is far beyond my merits, and would perhaps have really told more if the writer had mixed with it an objection here and there.

I do not remember what the question was which I answered consistently with my general principles in my last letter, and not having your letter here I cannot refer to it. I admit that by improvements in agriculture an enormous quant.i.ty of wealth may be created, and that in the natural progress of society much of that wealth may ultimately go to landlords in the shape of rent, but that does not alter the fact of rent being always a transfer, and never a creation of wealth--for before it is paid to the landlords as rent it must have const.i.tuted the profits of stock, and a portion is made over to the landlord only because lands of a poorer quality are taken into cultivation....

... You must have found your excursion to the Isle of Wight very pleasant....