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• Prefatory Note to Volumes Iii and Iv
• Pamphlets and Papers Written For Publication 1809–1811
• Note On the Bullion Essays
• The Price of Gold Three Contributions to the Morning Chronicle1809
• The Price of Gold 1
• [first Reply to ‘a Friend to Bank-notes’] to the Editor of the Morning Chronicle.1
• [second Reply to ‘a Friend to Bank-notes’] to the Editor of the Morning Chronicle.1
• [appendix to ‘the Price of Gold’
• [a Reply By Trower]
• [a Further Reply By Ricardo]1
• The High Price of Bullion 1810– 11
• Three Letters to the Morning Chronicle On the Bullion Report 1810
• [three Letters On the Bullion Report] Report of the Bullion Committee1to Theeditor of the Morning Chronicle.
• [on Sir John Sinclair’s ‘observations’] Bullion Report1to Theeditor of the Morning Chronicle.
• [on Mr Randle Jackson’s Speech] Bullion Report1to Theeditor of the Morning Chronicle.
• Reply to Mr. Bosanquet’s ‘practical Observations On the Report of the Bullion Committee’, 1811
• Chapter I: Preliminary Observations.—mr. Bosanquet’s Objections to the Conclusions of the Bullion Committee Briefly Stated.
• Chapter II: Mr. Bosanquet’s Alleged Facts, Drawn From the History of the State of Exchange, Considered.
• Chapter III: Mr. Bosanquet’s Alleged Facts, In Supposed Refutation of the Conclusion That a Rise In the Market Price of Bullion Above the Mint Price Proves a Depreciation of the Currency, Considered.
• Chapter IV: Mr. Bosanquet’s Objections to the Statement, That the Balance of Payments Has Been In Favour of Great Britain, Examined.
• Chapter V: Mr. Bosanquet’s Argument to Prove That the Bank of England Hasnotthe Power of Forcing the Circulation of Bank Notes—considered.
• Chapter VI: Observations On the Principles of Seignorage.
• Chapter VII: Mr. Bosanquet’s Objections to the Proposition, That the Circulation of the Bank of England Regulates That of the Country Banks, Considered.
• Chapter VIII: Mr. Bosanquet’s Opinion—that Years of Scarcity and Taxes Have Been the Sole Cause of the Rise of Prices, Excessive Circulation No Cause—considered.
• Chapter IX: Mr. Bosanquet’s Opinion, That Evil Would Result From the Resumption of Cash Payments—considered.
• Appendix
• Notes On Bentham’s ‘sur Les Prix’ 1810– 1811
• Notes On the Bullion Report and Evidence 1810
• (a): [notes On the Report of the Bullion Committee]
• (b): [rough Notes On the First Part of the Minutes of Evidence]
• (c): [notes On the Minutes of Evidence] Minutes of Evidence
• Notes On Trotter’s ‘principles of Currency and Exchanges’ 1810
• Observations On Trower’s Notes On Trotter 1811
• Observations On Vansittart’s Propositions Respecting Money, Bullion and Exchanges 1811
• Appendix

NOTE ON THE BULLION ESSAYS

After the Bank Restriction of 1797, the price of gold had remained for two years at its Mint parity of £3. 17s. 10½d.; it began to rise in 1799, reaching £4. 6s. 0d. in January 1801; and returned near to its normal level by 1804, remaining steady until late in 1808. But in 1809 it had again risen sharply, touching £4. 12s. 10½d. on 4 July. Just as the previous period of a rising price for gold had produced a body of controversial literature, including Boyd’s Letter to Pitt (1801), Thornton’s Paper Credit(1802), and Lord King’s Thoughts on the Restriction of Payments(1803), so now the increase in the price of gold which began in 1808 gave rise to the Bullion Controversy.

What is extant of this private controversy is printed in the present volume, after Ricardo’s published letters, below, pp. 34–46. It is clear, however, that there must have been more communications, and their probable sequence was as follows. To Trower’s letter of 23 September published in the Morning Chronicle of 30 October, Ricardo must have replied with two papers:

(a) one not intended for publication and sent privately to Trower, which is not extant;

(b) the letter of 4 November, published in the Morning Chronicle of 23 November.

Trower’s reply to (a), which was found among Trower’s papers, is printed below, pp. 34–6; his reply to (b), consisting of the Observations mentioned by Ricardo (below, p. 43) was probably intended for publication, but was not inserted in the Morning Chronicle, and has not been found.

Malthus’s article appeared in the Edinburgh Review for February 1811, nominally as a review of the pamphlets on Bullion by Mushet, Ricardo, Blake, Huskisson and Bosanquet, and of Ricardo’s Reply to Bosanquet.

On 7 April Malthus, referring to the Appendix, wrote to Horner: ‘I have this moment been reading Mr. Ricardo’s observations on the Review, but remain quite unconvinced— indeed there is no point on which I feel more sure than of the incorrectness of attributing the variations of the exchange exclusively to redundancy or deficiency of currency. I was sorry to find a small monosyllable put into the article either by Jeffrey, or by accident, which made a considerable alteration in the sense, and may have offended Mr. Ricardo in some degree justly. I had said “We do not think these facts are all satisfactorily explicable upon the principles of M Ricardo alone[”],—it is printed at all, which makes a good deal of difference. By the by, have you heard any other critiques on the article. Jeffrey thinks it is not popular enough and probably he is right.’

In the present edition the contributions to the Morning Chronicle are reprinted from the text of the Morning Chronicle, the High Price of Bullion from the fourth edition of 1811 (the variants of the previous editions being given in footnotes), and the Reply to Bosanquet from the original edition of 1811.