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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

Ricardo’s first appearance in print marked the beginning of what came to be known as the Bullion Controversy. It took the shape of an anonymous article on The Price of Gold published in the Morning Chronicle of 29 August 1809. His brother and biographer, Moses Ricardo, records how this contribution came to be published. ‘The immense transactions’, he says, ‘which he had with the Bank of England, in the course of business, tallying with the train of studies on which he was then engaged, led Mr. Ricardo to reflect upon the subject of the currency, to endeavour to account for the difference which existed between the value of the coin and the Bank notes, and to ascertain from what cause the depreciation of the latter arose. This occupied much of his attention at the time, and formed a frequent theme of conversation with those among his acquaintances who were inclined to enter upon it. He was induced to put his thoughts upon paper, without the remotest view at the time to publication. The late Mr. Perry, proprietor of the Morning Chronicle, was one of the few friends to whom Mr. Ricardo showed his manuscript. Mr. Perry urged him to allow it to be published in the Morning Chronicle; to which, not without some reluctance, Mr. Ricardo consented’.1

The publication of Ricardo’s article started an extensive correspondence in the Morning Chronicle. His own further contributions were provoked by a letter defending the Bank of England against his criticisms, which appeared on 14 September 1809 and was signed ‘A Friend to Bank Notes, but no Bank Director’, whom Ricardo ‘soon after found to be an intelligent friend of his own’,1 Hutches Trower. Ricardo’s reply to this letter appeared on 20 September over the signature ‘R.’ A second letter from ‘A Friend to Bank Notes’, although dated 23 September, was not published till 30 October; and Ricardo’s rejoinder, dated 4 November, and signed ‘R.’, did not appear until 23 November.2 This concluded their controversy in public. But once they had established each other’s identity, it seems that the two correspondents communicated their views to one another without waiting for the long delayed publication in the Morning Chronicle. Thus a private controversy arose between them concurrently with the last stage of their published letters and was carried on after their controversy in public had come to an end.

Ricardo’s answer to both of these replies of Trower was found among Trower’s papers and is printed below, pp. 36–46; the first part (pp. 36–43) deals with Trower’s reply to (a) and the second (pp. 43–6) with Trower’s reply to (b).1

Meanwhile Ricardo had decided to give further publicity to his views in the form of a pamphlet, The High Price of Bullion, a Proof of the Depreciation of Bank Notes, which was published by John Murray about a month after his last letter had appeared in the Morning Chronicle.2

The relation of the pamphlet to the Chronicle contributions has been the subject of some confusion. Ricardo himself, in his Introduction to the first three editions of the pamphlet, says that ‘he has thought proper to republish his sentiments on this question in a form more calculated to bring it to fair discussion’. M^cCulloch, however, who had not read any of the contributions to the Chronicle,1 is certainly misleading in his statement that ‘having subsequently collected the letters, and given them a more systematic form, Mr. Ricardo published them in a pamphlet’, as it suggests that the pamphlet was little more than a reprint of the letters.2 As Professor Hollander says,3 ‘An important consequence of McCulloch’s editorial neglect has been a general acquiescence in the view that the Chronicle letters were planned and published in serial form,4 and that the pamphlet on the “High Price of Bullion” was not merely a free version but an essential reproduction of the statements therein contained.’ A comparison of the pamphlet with the contributions to the Morning Chronicle shows that, although the main points discussed in the pamphlet had been outlined in the letters, the former is by no means a mere reprint, but was almost entirely written afresh.

Nor is there any foundation for Professor Silberling’s supposition that the High Price of Bullion was written before the contributions to the Morning Chronicle, indeed several years before.1 He rests his case mainly on the assertion that the pamphlet ‘refers to no political or economic events later than 1805’; but Ricardo’s treatment being essentially abstract, no events apart from the Bank Restriction are referred to, either before or after 1805, other than movements of prices; most of these, notably the rise in the price of gold, the fall of silver compared with gold and the depression of the exchange, refer to the year 1809. It is true that Ricardo refers only to works written before 1804, but it by no means follows that his comments on them were written at the time of their publication. It appears that in the autumn of 1809, after the publication of his original article, Ricardo read or re-read a number of writers on the subject of currency, including Locke, Sir James Steuart, Adam Smith, Lord Liverpool and Thornton, making notes which have been found among Ricardo’s papers.2 None of these writers is mentioned in Ricardo’s original article on The Price of Gold, but they are referred to both in the subsequent letters to the Chronicle (September and November 1809) and in the pamphlet. Indeed, certain controversial passages from these letters, directly replying to Trower’s arguments, are repeated verbatim in the pamphlet,3 which suggests that the latter was written some time between September and November 1809 (the Introduction is dated 1 December), during the final stage of, or immediately after, the controversy in the Chronicle.

On 1 February 1810, a month after the publication of the pamphlet, a speech by Francis Horner in the House of Commons, which led up to the appointment of the Bullion Committee, brought the Controversy to a further stage. Ricardo replied to this speech in a private letter, on 5 February,1 in which he disputed Horner’s statement that other factors besides the superabundance of the paper circulation had contributed to the high price of gold. A number of passages from this letter were embodied in the third edition, ‘With Additions’, of The High Price of Bullion, which was published early in March 1810,2 and, apart from some alterations in arrangement (see below, pp. 67,n. 1 and 74, n. 1), they constituted almost the entire changes in this edition. Further additions were made in the fourth edition, which was published a year later (see below, p. 11).

The Bullion Committee was actually appointed by the House of Commons on 19 February 1810 ‘to enquire into the Cause of the High Price of Gold Bullion’. Their report was formally laid before the House on 8 June, but it was not printed till August, and extracts appeared in all the newspapers of Monday, 13 August 1810.3

The appearance of the Bullion Report gave rise to a great output of controversial pamphlets.4 Ricardo’s contribution at this stage consisted of three letters to the Morning Chronicle in September 1810.5 The first, a review of the Report itself, appeared on 6 September.1 The second, on Sinclair’s pamphlet against the Report, on 18 September. The third, on Randle Jackson’s speech at the Bank Court of 20 September attacking the Report on behalf of the Bank, appeared on 24 September.2

Since the early summer of 1810, the question of who should review the Report in the Edinburgh Review had been under consideration. On 16 July Horner had written to Jeffrey, the editor: ‘I am just returned to town, after an absence of about ten days. The Bullion report, I am rather surprised to find, is not yet delivered from the printers; I revised the proof-sheets before I left town. I would rather do something for you myself, if you will let me know the utmost time you can allow me; rather, I mean, than trust that subject in the hands of any of your mercenary troops, one of whom was guilty of deplorable heresies in the account of a book by one Smith.3 I will do a short article for you this time, to do justice to Mr Ricardo and Mr Mushet, who called the public attention to this very important subject at the end of last year.’1

From a later letter it appears that the plan that Horner himself should write the Bullion article had been abandoned, that Ricardo had been approached and had refused2 and that Malthus had finally undertaken to do it: ‘Ricardo has taken such fright at the notion of writing in the Review, that I have not succeeded in that point; he prefers publishing in a separate pamphlet. Malthus has given me hopes that he will be able to scramble up an article this week; and I am very anxious to have the subject in his hands, and to engage him in the discussion, both because he agrees with me upon the fundamental principles of the doctrine, and because we have some differences, or rather difficulties which we try to solve differently, in some parts of the Theory. All I beg of you, though I have no right to ask any thing, is not to let Milne3 lay his hands upon us.’4

The paper which Ricardo had in preparation, and which he was unwilling to publish as a review, was no doubt his Reply to Mr. Bosanquet’s Practical Observations on the Bullion Report, which appeared as a separate pamphlet a month before the number of the Edinburgh Review containing Malthus’s Bullion article. Bosanquet’s ‘dexterous but somewhat unfair pamphlet’, as Horner described it,5 was regarded at the time as the most effective of the criticisms published on the Bullion Report. He directed his criticisms particularly against ‘Mr. Ricardo’s work, not only as having been the immediate cause of the inquiry which has since taken place, under the authority of the house of commons, but as a syllabus of the Report which has been presented by the Committee’. The Practical Observations on the Report of the Bullion Committee, by Charles Bosanquet, was published byJ. M. Richardson in the latter half of November 1810.1 A ‘Second Edition, Corrected, with a Supplement’ appeared in December of the same year,2 the Supplement being published also as a separate pamphlet. The body of Ricardo’s Reply is based on the first edition, and was sent to the press before he had seen Bosanquet’s second edition;3 his Appendix being added later to deal with Bosanquet’s Supplement.4 The Reply was being printed at the end of December 1810, as it appears from a letter of Mill,5 and it was published early in January 1811.6

Early in April7 the fourth edition of Ricardo’s High Price of Bullion was published.8 The main body of the pamphlet contained few changes, but the Introduction was omitted, and an Appendix was added containing his observations on the Edinburgh Review article, and outlining his plan for bullion payments, which he later developed in Economical and Secure Currency.9

On 8 April Horner replied: ‘Ricardo’s reply to your objections is not so well written, in point of clearness, as his usual style. I suspect that upon that dispute the truth lies between you, and that a mode of expressing and stating what takes place might be hit upon, to which you would both assent.’1

So far Ricardo and Malthus had never met, and the controversy between them had been carried on only in print. In June 1811, Malthus introduced himself to Ricardo. Malthus’s second article on Bullion, in the Edinburgh Review for August 1811, contained no criticism of Ricardo,2 and the further controversy between them was restricted to private discussions and correspondence.3

The Report of the Bullion Committee had been issued on 12 August 18101 in the official folio edition. Ricardo’s page- references, however, are to the octavo edition, which was published by Johnson and Ridgeway in September.2 The MS is among Ricardo’s Papers and has been published in Minor Papers on the Currency Question, 1809–1823, ed. by J. H. Hollander, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1932, pp. 45–59.

The reference numbers in the MS of the Notes on the Minutes of Evidence (described as (C) above) correspond to numbers written in pencil in Ricardo’s hand on his working copy of the octavo edition of the Bullion Report which is in the Library at Gatcombe.3

Although the Notes (C) begin with a comment referring top. 102 of the Minutes of Evidence, it is unlikely that any sheets containing comments on the earlier pages have been lost, since there are no numbers written on those pages in Ricardo’s working copy of the Bullion Report.1

65. If the Bank had been more liberal in their discounts at that period, they would have produced the same effect on general credit as was afterwards done by the issues of Exch^r. bills. It would appear that the bank would buy the exch^r. bills but would not discount the merchants bills,—or rather they would not advance money to the merchants without the guarantee of Parliament. If the bank bought the bills it was then by an increase of circulating medium that public credit was ultimately relieved.1 If the public and not the bank purchased the bills then was a portion of the circulating medium of the country which had been withdrawn from circulation again brought forth by the credit of government being pledged for the parties requiring relief.2

Aaron Asher Goldsmid.1 This gentleman’s evidence is very clear and explicit, both with regard to the price of gold, and the manner in which the bargains are executed. He stated, that, for these last 15 months, he had bought and sold more gold than on an average of years.

Does not this admission prove that it is not in consequence of our importations of corn from France that gold is greatly in demand, as if that were the case French gold coin would be particularly sought: of all gold that would be the best remittance. Yet Mr. G. believes that it is return for corn from France and Flanders that gold is2 exported:—The largest quantity sent to Holland. Does not think that the quantity of gold exported considerably exceeded, in the last twelve months, the quantity imported. Has not any idea that the increase or decrease of Bank notes has any connection with the rise or fall of the price of gold,—but acknowledges that he has paid no attention to it. If a person were at liberty to export English Gold, he certainly would get 16 pc^t. more than if he exported foreign gold.

Mr. Binns— 3 has frequently bought light guineas for which he has given not quite so much as 23 shillings

Mr. Merle— 1 has declined buying light guineas, as he thinks it contrary to law to give more than the coinage price for them; he has no doubt that the cause of the disappearance of guineas from circulation, [is]2 the high price of Gold Bullion and the temptation to export it on acc^t. of the high price. He does not think that the increase of Bank notes has had any effect on the price of gold,—but confesses that he has never made any observation on it, nor considered the subject generally. He never thought of considering what effect a large issue of Bank notes might have on the price of gold. He allowed that if there were no legal restrictions against melting guineas, he should consider paper as of less value than specie,—it would make a difference of 10/- an ounce

[p. 106.] Do you not conceive that without a free importation1 of the coin of the country, a diminution in the amount of its currency would produce a fall in the price of all commodities, and a consequent rise of the exchange, in the same proportion as if that diminution of currency had been effected by the export of a part of our coin?—I should suppose it could only have one-half7 the effect.

Page 112.2

1301

Page 1351

It has been contended, by some intelligent men,2 that in the year 1797 when there was a run upon the Bank for specie, —that the Directors would have upheld public credit and have put a stop to the demand for guineas by increasing their discounts, rather than by diminishing them. I am of opinion that the run upon the Bank in 1797 proceeded from political alarm, and a desire on the part of the people to hoard guineas. I was myself witness of many persons actually exchanging bank notes for guineas for such purpose,—therefore it is probable that the Bank could not have prevented the stoppage of payments to which they were obliged to have re- course. But a demand upon the bank for specie3 from fears of the solidity of its resources, or from political alarm, are very different from a demand arising from a high price of bullion and a low rate of exchange and must be differently treated. In the latter case it can proceed only from an excessive issue of paper, if the gold coin is not debased and can only be checked by calling in the excess.4 In 1797 the exchange was at 38 with Hamburgh and gold bullion at £3. 17. 6.—In 1810 the exchange is at 29 and gold bullion at £4. 13—

If the notes of the Bank of England in circulation are employed in making payments of above 1500 millions, and only a part of the Bank of England paper is available for that purpose as a great proportion is wanted for deposits by the county bankers,—does it not follow that the proportion of Bank notes to actual payments is exceedingly1 small?2 If the daily and bona fide payments exceed 5 millions,—and if we suppose what is barely possible3 such payments were made by bills of exchange payable at 60 days might not the bank contending as they do that by discounting bills given for real transactions they can never produce an4 issue of notes be called upon to discount bills in 60 days to the enormous amount of 300 millions?5

[184]6

Mr. Harman1 thinks that the diminution of the paper of the Bank, would, neither immediately or remotely, tend to an improvement of the exchange.

It therefore follows that a diminution of the quantity of Bank notes would lower the prices of commodities;—but if prices were considerably lowered and the exchange were not affected, this real fall in their price would not fail to en- courage foreign purchasers. But such purchases2 according to the principles of those who are for ascribing every effect on the exchange to the balance of trade, would speedily turn the balance in our favor or at least render the present balance less unfavorable and would therefore indirectly raise the exchange. It is to be regretted that the Committee did not press Mr. Harman for some explanation of these opinions which might have been proved so inconsistent.3

Mr. Richardson’s evidence is full of information with respect to the details of money transactions in London as well as in the country. He proves most satisfactorily that there have been of late years great improvements in the way of economising the use of Bank notes which renders the same amount of notes effective for an enlarged commerce: He was asked whether he thought that ten millions of Bank notes would keep afloat the same quantity of business as fifteen millions would have done ten years ago. His answer was, “Not quite so much perhaps ten years ago”. It must however be admitted that a considerable saving in the use of notes has been effected.1

Trotter’s pamphlet attacking the Bullion Report appeared anonymously under the title The Principles of Currency and Exchanges applied to the Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons Appointed to Inquire into the High Price of Gold Bullion, &c. &c., London, ‘Printed and sold by W. Winchester and Son’, 79 pp., dated on the title-page ‘Dec. 1, 1810’.1 Coutts Trotter, the author, was a partner in the banking house of Thomas Coutts & Co.

The MS of Ricardo’s Notes, which is among Ricardo’s Papers, covers seventeen octavo pages.2 Each comment begins with a page-reference to Trotter’s pamphlet; when there are two or more comments referring to the same page, they are given progressive numbers. This suggests that (as in the case of his Notes on the Bullion Report and also of his Notes on Bentham) Ricardo wrote corresponding numbers on his working copy of the pamphlet; but no such copy has been found.3

14 A circulation can never be so saturated as to [be]1

[p. 15.] When a country banker increases his issues of notes ‘the range of this bank...which is confined to the circle in which the partners are known, are observed, and are trusted, becomes filled with their notes to the extent of the former circulation of metals...; and gold, no longer wanted here, but still possessing qualities of universal attraction, finds its way to other districts, and finally to other countries. This done, the measure is full; the banker can, by no assiduity or skill, force upon his neighbourhood more of his notes than there was before of specie...; should he attempt to do so, they will return incessantly upon him, and he will be called upon for their value in what is of universal, not of local, request; that is, will be called upon for gold, or for Bank of England notes’.1

[26] 3 No; they have deposits of Exchequer bills in London, and have very few Bank of England notes. There is no temptation to exchange country bank notes for any thing but bills on London. See Mr. Stuckey’s evidence Bullion Rep^t. 1

[32] 2 We do not complain of any fall in the value of paper which it suffers in common with gold, but of that fall over and above that which gold sustains.1

40. 1 In either case the holder of bank notes has equal cause for complaint. Why should he not rise from the value1 of bullion as well as lose from the fall. If bullion falls in value, the value of money, whilst the mint is open to every one falls in the same proportion. Why should not the owner of money be benefited by the rise of bullion? Did not the author say Page 35 that the cause of the rise of the prices of commodities was the decreasing value of gold generally, yet we are now told that bullion has risen. These opinions are directly at variance

Both MSS were found among Trower’s papers. Trower’s MS is unpublished and is in the possession of Dr Bonar. Ricardo’s MS has been published in Appendix A (2) to Letters of David Ricardo to Hutches Trower and Others 1811–1823, ed. by J. Bonar and J. H. Hollander, Oxford, 1899,1 from which it is here reprinted. The MS is in the possession of Professor Hollander.

During the intervening weeks Resolutions were drawn up and circulated both by the supporters and by the opponents of the Report;1 on 22 April Horner’s sixteen Resolutions embodying the conclusions of the Report were printed,2 and on 26 April Vansittart’s seventeen Counter-Resolutions were printed under the title ‘Propositions respecting Money, Bullion and Exchanges’.3 On 3 May were printed Horner’s Amendments to Vansittart’s Propositions, and also a revised version of these Propositions.4

Ricardo’s Observations refer to the first printed version of Vansittart’s Propositions, dated 26 April 1811.1 This establishes the earliest date for the writing of Ricardo’s Observations and suggests as the latest date 3 May, when the revised version of Vansittart’s Propositions was printed.2

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

‘Mr. ’ of the Bullion Report

In his Notes on the Bullion Report (above, p. 347 ff.) Ricardo comments extensively on the evidence of the anonymous Continental merchant who was a witness before the Bullion Committee, and refers to him several times in his Reply to Bosanquet (above, pp. 163, 168, 185) and once in his Notes on Bentham (above,p. 288).

This witness gave evidence on four days (2, 5, 7 and 8 March1810), being described in the Minutes as ‘Mr.—, a Continental Merchant’; he is referred to in the Report as ‘a very eminent Continental Merchant’1 and again as ‘the Merchant who has been already mentioned as being intimately acquainted with the trade between this Country and the Continent of Europe’.2

Professor Cannan, speaking of him in the Introduction to his reprint of the Bullion Report,3 says ‘An obvious conjecture is that this modest Mr. Blank was the great N. M. Rothschild.’ Later writers have required no further proof and have taken this identification with Rothschild for granted.4 This suggestion however can be dismissed, apart from the circumstances mentioned below, simply by comparing the evidence of Mr. with that given by Rothschild before the Secret Committees of 1819 (Resumption of Cash Payments) and 1832 (Renewal of the Bank Charter);5 the differences in style and the contradiction between the opinions of Mr. in 1810 and of Rothschild in 1819 and 1832 are such as to rule out the hypothesis of their being the same person.

Besides, there is nothing that could be even remotely compromising in Mr.—’s evidence and it is difficult to imagine that anyone should feel so endangered by the acknowledgement of its authorship as to adopt the extraordinary expedient of being reported anonymously. The only possible reason for anonymity must have been to conceal the presence of the witness in London at the time. But there was no secret about Rothschild’s residence in England, where he had been established for many years. Thus there could be no reason for his anonymity.1

As the anonymous merchant was the only witness, besides Sir Francis Baring, whose evidence on the whole supported the conclusions of the Committee, he was frequently referred to in the pamphlet literature and was singled out for attack by the Anti- bullionists; but none of these writers supplies any clue to his identity.2 What was said in the Bullion debate in the House of Commons by critics of the Report is a little more informative. George Rose, Vice-President of the Board of Trade, said of him that ‘though a most respectable man, [he] has more of Continental than of British interests’.1 And Nicholas Vansittart, the leading opponent of the Report, referred to him as ‘One gentle- man...of whom (as he is not named) we know nothing more, than that he resides abroad, therefore has not had the means of forming his judgement on the spot’.2

That he was a resident abroad, and that he had more of Continental than of British interests is thus all the information that was disclosed at the time. Retaining this, we turn for further clues to his own evidence before the Committee.

Other Continental merchants3 who were heard, under their names, by the Bullion Committee, were asked as one of the first questions: ‘Are you acquainted with the subject of the exchanges between this Country and the Continent?’4 Whilst merchants specialising in the trade with any one country were at once asked a question on the currency of that particular country.5

Now, the first question asked to the anonymous Continental merchant was the significant one: ‘Are you acquainted with the subject of the exchange between this country and Hamburgh?’6 And although he replied ‘I am, and with other foreign Countries’, his factual evidence on foreign countries refers largely to Hamburg or else to the other Northern countries. Indeed, when he is asked ‘Can you state how much per cent. may be the present expence and risk of transporting Gold from London to Amsterdam or Hamburgh, or any other principal places of trade on the Continent?’ he answers simply ‘Independent of the premium of insurance, it would be from 1½ to 2 per cent. from London to Hamburgh.’1

If therefore we assume that Mr.— was a resident of Hamburg, the reason for his wishing to remain anonymous and to conceal his presence in London becomes apparent. For Hamburg had been in French occupation since the end of 1806, and under the Berlin and Milan Decrees a visit to England constituted a serious offence.2

It is recorded that only seven British firms were able to continue their activity in Hamburg during the French occupation, as their partners had the Hamburg citizenship. The names of the firms in question are: Parish & Co.; Kirkpatrick & Co.; Humphrey Carvick & Co.; J. B. Smith, Barclay & Co.; Peacock & Co.; George Walker; Thomas Tattlock.3

Certain allusions in Mr.—’s evidence, taken in conjunction with an entry in one of the accounts in the Appendix to the Bullion Report, indicate the firm among those listed with which he was probably connected.

Mr.— in his evidence mentions repeatedly ‘foreign subsidies’4 and ‘the expenditures for the account of Government abroad’5 among the ‘extraordinary causes’ which he regards as having operated on the exchange so as to depress it below par at times when the balance of trade was in favour of England.

Appendix LXX to the Bullion Report contains an account of the Bills of Exchange drawn on the Treasury for expenses abroad, from 1804 to 1809. One of the largest single items in this account is a payment for over £700,000, in the year 1806, to Edward Thornton, Minister at Hamburg, for ‘Public services’; in connection with which, payments for over £5000 were made to each of two firms of Hamburg merchants, Thornton and Power, and Parish and Co., for ‘Interest and commission on the negociation of bills drawn by Mr. Thornton, &c.’1

It was the more likely that a Hamburg merchant would be acquainted with the British Government’s expenses abroad and their subsidies to the Allies if he had been himself connected with such transactions; now Thornton and Power had ceased activity in Hamburg after the French occupation, so we may concentrate our attention on Parish & Co.2

The firm, one of the largest merchant houses in Hamburg, had been founded by John Parish, who had gone there as a boy from Scotland in 1756. He retired from the business in 1796, entrusting it to his sons, and fled from Hamburg when the city was occupied by the French, settling at Bath in 1807, where he remained till his death in 1829. In 1809 three of his sons, John, Richard and Charles, were in charge of the firm. It appears that at this time Richard conducted the ordinary commercial activity of the firm, Charles was engaged in the dangerous business of breaking through the Continental blockade, with bases at Heligoland and the small ports of Holstein, and John, the eldest brother, had undertaken the even more dangerous task of transmitting the British subsidies to Austria, then at war with Napoleon.

John Parish, junior describes his enterprise in a report to the Emperor of Austria as follows. At the beginning of the year 1809, being in London, he was asked on behalf of the British Government if he could devise means for transmitting to the Austrian Government an instalment of the British subsidy. ‘At that moment this seemed almost impossible, as all communication with the Continent was so hindered by the French measures that there was danger of life even in receiving a simple letter.’ He decided to hazard for the purpose his fortune and his person ‘since no one else was then in a position to achieve the object desired.’ In May he went from London to Hamburg to make arrangements for advancing the money from his own resources, as it was not possible to transfer it from England; and in June he proceeded, by way of Berlin, to the Austrian headquarters where he made the payment.1

This was not an isolated transaction, for in the autumn of 1810, a confidential British agent on the Continent, J. M. Johnson, wrote to the Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office that John Parish, junior ‘has on various occasions rendered important services to the british government, and...it is thro’ his house that most government payments have of late years been made on the continent’, adding that Parish ‘was frequently consulted by Mr. Canning and Mr. Hammond’.2 Subsequently Parish went to London, with a letter of Johnson, dated 29 Nov. 1810, introducing him to the Under-Secretary as one ‘who has rendered essential services to our government on many important occasions.’3

We know, therefore, that Parish was on secret visits to London both in the spring of 1809 and in the autumn of 1810. There is no direct evidence of his being there in March 1810, when Mr.was being examined by the Bullion Committee. But there is a circumstance which may have provided the occasion for a visit at that time. When Austria concluded her armistice with Napoleon (in July 1809), the monthly subsidy from the British Government naturally came to an end. Metternich, however, requested J. M. Johnson, the British secret agent, to demand of the British Government that the subsidy be continued up to the ratification of the peace, on the ground that after the armistice ‘the threatening attitude of the Austrian armies’ continued to operate as a powerful diversion in favour of England. The message was to be delivered by the agent himself on his arrival in England; otherwise, as the agent reported, Metternich ‘particularly requested that in case any unforeseen event prevented my immediate return to England I should not make the foregoing communication in writing untill a perfectly safe mode of conveyance presented itself’. In fact Johnson went only as far as Hamburg, where he wrote his report to the Foreign Office on 7 January 1810, and sent it to London where it did not arrive until 16 February.1 It is probable that the transmission of the message would be entrusted to the house of Parish, which was the usual channel of communication;2 and in connection with this negotiation (which does not appear to have achieved Metternich’s object) John Parish, junior himself may have travelled to London just at the time when the Bullion Committee began its hearings.

Turning back to Mr.—’s evidence we find one or two details which tally with events in the life of John Parish, junior as given by Ehrenberg. Mr.— in his evidence describes, as from first- hand knowledge, the state of public opinion and the general commercial conditions in England, following the suspension of cash payments in 1797, and refers to the commercial distress which existed in the year 1799;3 now, in 1799 John Parish, junior made a prolonged visit to England.4 Also, Mr.— alludes to the currency events in Austria in the summer of 1809,5 when as we know Parish was on a mission to that country.

Apart from his evidence to the Bullion Committee (if it is admitted that he was the anonymous witness) John Parish, junior’s only contribution to the subject appears to have been a paper on the Austrian Banking and Currency system, which he sent to Friedrich von Gentz in August 1816.1 In that year, at the age of 42, he retired from business with a large fortune, bought the estate of Senftenberg in Bohemia and was made a baron by the Emperor of Austria in recognition of his services. He died in1858.

The hypothesis here advanced as to the identity of Mr. has since been confirmed as a result of a search in the Hamburg Archives kindly undertaken by Dr Eduard Rosenbaum at my request. There is in the Archives, among the papers of Karl Sieveking (a contemporary of Parish) an unpublished ‘History of the Pound Sterling from 25 February 1797 to the Second Peace of Paris’. Reviewing the evidence given before the Bullion Committee Sieveking writes: ‘Particularly remarkable is the evidence of a Continental merchant, who is said to be Mr John Parish of Hamburg, at present owner of the estate of Senftenberg in Bohemia’.2 Sieveking was in a position to know, for when writing his history in 1817 he was in touch with Parish who supplied him with a copy of the Bullion Report and a set of the Edinburgh Review.3

TABLES OF CORRESPONDING PAGES for Ricardo’s Pamphlets in the original editions, 1811, M^cCulloch’s edition (Works, 1846 etc.), Gonner’s edition (Economic Essays, 1923 etc.), and the present edition.

[1 ]Annual Biography and Obituary for the Year 1824, pp. 371–2. The passage continues: ‘and it was inserted in the shape of letters under the signature ofR., the first of which appeared on the 6th day of September, 1810.’ This is quite incorrect, for in fact it was inserted in the shape of an article, unsigned, which appeared on 29 August 1809: the two other contributions to the Chronicle of 1809 were evoked by criticisms of the article after publication and could not have formed part of the original MS shown to Perry. The biographer is confusing the three contributions of 1809 with the three letters to the Chronicle of 1810.

[1 ]Annual Biography and Obituary for 1824, p. 372.

[2 ]The authorship was acknowledged in a leading article of the Morning Chronicle of 27 August 1810, after the publication of the Bullion Report: ‘The letters of our invaluable correspondent Mr Ricardo, contributed most essentially to open the eyes of the public to the true cause of the depreciation of paper.’ Ricardo’s article and his two letters to the Morning Chronicle of 1809 were reprinted under the title Three Letters on the Price of Gold, by David Ricardo, ed. by J. H. Hollander, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press,1903.

[1 ]The first part of Ricardo’s answer was first published by Dr Bonar under the title ‘Ricardo on Currency’ in Economic Journal, March 1896, pp. 64–9. The two extant papers of this private controversy between Trower and Ricardo were published in their entirety as Appendix A (1) and (2) to Letters of David Ricardo to Hutches Trower and Others 1811–1823, ed. byJ. Bonar and J. H. Hollander, Oxford, 1899. Trower’s paper is here printed from the MS now in the possession of Dr Bonar. Ricardo’s paper is reprinted from Letters to Trower; the MS is now in the possession of Professor Hollander (see The Economic Library of J. H. Hollander, Ph.D., privately printed, Baltimore, 1937, p.314).

[2 ]There is some doubt as to the exact date of publication. Murray’s advertisement in the Morning Chronicle of Tuesday, 26 Dec. 1809, announced ‘On Thursday next will be published, The High Price of Bullion...’, and Bosanquet (Practical Observations, p. 2) refers to it as ‘published late in 1809’. However, the first advertisement under the usual heading ‘This day is published’ occurred in The Times of Saturday, 30 December; even this may have been premature, as it gave no price, whereas the practice was to do so on actual publication. The earliest advertisement stating the price (2s.) which has been found is that published in The Times of 3 Jan. 1810. Thus, publication may have been delayed a few days into the new year, which would agree with the date 1810 on the title-page of the pamphlet.

[1 ]As is shown by the fact that in his Life and Writings of Mr. Ricardo (1824 and later editions), he gives the date of the first contribution to the Chronicle as ‘6 September 1809’, which is an attempt to reconcile the date given in the Annual Obituary (see above, p. 3, n. 1) with the year given in Ricardo’s Introduction.

[c]Culloch in the successive editions of his Life and Writings of Mr. Ricardo.

[3 ]Introduction to Ricardo’s Three Letters on the Price of Gold, p. 4.

[c]Culloch was following the Annual Obituary; see above, p. 3, n. 1.

[1 ]‘The tract was probably first thrown together several years before as essentially a criticism (through the eyes of Horner and Lord King) of Thornton’s hesitant conclusions: it contains some evidence of Wheatley’s influence, and, like Wheatley’s Essay, refers to no political or economic events later than1805. The main body of the tract was, in all probability, prepared prior to the articles in the Chronicle newspaper.’ (‘Financial and Monetary Policy of Great Britain during the Napoleonic Wars, II, Ricardo and the Bullion Report’, in Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 1924, p. 423, n.) Professor Silberling’s strange theory that the publication of the Bullion pamphlet was part of a bear manoeuvre on the Stock Exchange will be discussed in connection with Ricardo’s business activities.

[2 ]These notes contain conclusive evidence (in the form of dated postmarks) of having been written in 1809, and some of them after the middle of October 1809.

[3 ]See below, pp. 24 and 82, and pp. 27 and 87–8.

[1 ]Below, VI, 1.

[2 ]Advertised in Monthly Literary Advertiser of 10 March 1810. The second edition, ‘Corrected’, which is a reprint of the first with merely verbal alterations, was first advertised in The Times of 28 February, but is likely to have been prepared for publication before Ricardo wrote his letter to Horner of 5 February.

[iv], p. 98), is also disproved by the letter of Horner quoted below, p. 9.

[4 ]Ricardo annotated, more or less extensively, several of these pamphlets. His Notes on Trotter’s Principles of Currency and Exchanges are printed below, p. 379 ff.; the remainder are merely marginal jottings, mostly illegible.

[5 ]Although the date of the first of these letters had been given in the Memoir of Ricardo in the Annual Biography and Obituary for 1824, (see above, p. 3, n. 1), that reference has been regarded as merely a misprint for the date of the original article of 1809, and consequently the existence of the 1810 group of letters was generally overlooked until the discovery of their cuttings among Ricardo’s Papers, when they were reprinted in Ricardo’s Minor Papers on the Currency Question, Baltimore, 1932.

[1 ]This letter was reprinted, without acknowledgement to the Morning Chronicle, in The Tradesman; or Commercial Magazine for 1 Oct. 1810, pp. 344–50, under the title ‘Observations on the Report of the Bullion Committee’ and over the signature ‘R.’ What purported to be a sequel to it was inserted, unsigned, under the same title in the number for 1 Nov. 1810 of The Tradesman; this, however, was not by Ricardo, and had appeared as an anonymous letter in the Morning Chronicle of 8 Sept.1810.

[2 ]A few days later, on 1 October, Whishaw wrote to Horner from London: ‘Your Bullion Report is, I think, very successful. It is much talked of and has made a greater impression than I expected; of which R. Jackson’s speech (for which he has received or is to receive an handsome present from the Bank) and the various publications which have appeared, are the most decisive proofs. The discussion has been tolerably well kept up in the Morning Chronicle, to which Ricardo has contributed many very good observations.’ (Unpublished MS in the possession of Lady Langman.)

[3 ]The author of the review of Thomas Smith’s Essay on the Theory of Money and the Exchange, in the Edinburgh Review for October 1808, was James Mill (see Bain, James Mill,p. 91).

[ii], p. 24.

[2 ]The Notes on the Bullion Report (below, p. 347 ff.) written by Ricardo about this time may have been in connection with this proposal.

[3 ]Mill, whose family name was sometimes spelt Milne (Bain, op. cit. p. 3); cp. above, p. 9, n. 3.

[4 ]Horner to Jeffrey, 3 Dec. 1810. Unpublished MS in the possession of Lady Langman.

[ii],p.41.

[1 ]The postscript to the 1st ed. is dated 14 Nov. 1810.

[2 ]The preface to the 2nd ed. is dated 3 Dec. 1810.

[3 ]See below, pp. 204 and 247.

[4 ]In the Library at Gatcombe there are Ricardo’s copies of the 1st ed. of Practical Observations and of the separate Supplement. The former contains many comments in Ricardo’s handwriting, but they are almost entirely illegible.

[5 ]25 Dec. 1810, below, VI, 14. This letter accompanied the first part of the MS of Dumont’s translation of Bentham’s work on prices which Ricardo proceeded to read and criticise; see below, p. 259 ff.

[6 ]Advertised in Monthly Literary Advertiser, 10 Jan. 1811. The Reply did not go to a second edition. A slip of errata containing five entries was printed and is found in some copies. The corrections are noticed in footnotes below.

[7 ]Shortly before, on 21 March 1811, Ricardo took part in a General Court of the Bank of England at which the subject of the Bullion Report was raised, and spoke briefly on the price of gold; see below, V, 461–2.

[8 ]Advertised in Monthly Literary Advertiser for 10 April; the earliest advertisement in the Morning Chronicle did not appear till 27 April.

[9 ]The Appendix was also published as a separate pamphlet, see below, p. 99,n. 1.

[1 ]Both MSS, unpublished, are in the possession of Lady Langman.

[2 ]Cp. below, VI, 47–8.

[3 ]The Bullion Controversy entered upon its final stage in April and May 1811, with the debates in the House of Commons on the Resolutions of Horner and the counter-Resolutions of Vansittart. Ricardo’s Notes on the latter (printed below, p. 411 ff.) are all that he seems to have written on the subject at this stage.

[1 ]See above, p. 8, n. 3.

[2 ]Advt. in The Times, 23 Sept. 1810; and a new ed., ib. 13 Dec. 1810 [nos. 2 and 4 in F.W. Fetter’s ‘Editions of the Bullion Report’, Economica, 1955,p. 153–4]. Ricardo’s two copies are of the former edition. For dating the Notes see also the reference to Randle Jackson’s speech of 20 Sept. 1810, below, p. 358, and the allusion to the table of discounts, which was first published in the Morning Chronicle of the 15 Oct., below, p. 358.

[3 ]There is another copy of the same edition of the Bullion Report that belonged to Ricardo in the Goldsmiths’ Library of the University of London, but it bears no reference numbers.

[1 ]On the other hand, some later sheets of the MS may have been lost, since there are a few numbers written on pages after p. 102 which have no corresponding comment; see below, p. 360, n. 1 and p. 372, n. 1.

[1 ]This sentence is ins.

[2 ]Replaces ‘for the suspected parties.’

[1 ]The passages referred to are in Bullion Report, ‘Minutes of Evidence’, 8vo ed., pp. 4–18.

[2 ]‘chiefly’ is del. here.

[3 ]Bullion Report, ‘Minutes of Evidence’, p. 23.

[1 ]ib. pp. 26 and 37–8.

[2 ]Omitted in MS.

[1 ]Corrected by Ricardo on his copy ‘[expo]rtation’.

[2 ]The exclamation marks on the margins of this page are Ricardo’s.

[1 ]In Ricardo’s copy of the Bullion Report, the figures 2, 3 and 4 are written against other questions to Greffulhe (the first, fourth and fifth following the one reprinted above), but there are no corresponding notes in the MS. They may have been written on a sheet now lost.

[1 ]This note, which is a general comment on Chambers’ evidence, pp. 135–7, follows in the MS the note to p. 136.

[iii]. Cp. Bullion Report, 8vo ed., p. 65.

[3 ]Replaces ‘But a run upon the bank’.

[4 ]Replaces ‘checked by a diminution [replacing ‘limitation’] of the amount of notes.’

[1 ]Written above ‘very’, which however is not del.

[t]. was made by a bill of exchange’ is del. here.

[3 ]Last six words are ins.

[4 ]‘excessive’ has probably been omitted here by an oversight.

[5 ]An earlier version does not contain the two lines, from ‘contending’ to ‘issue of notes’, but it has in addition at the end of the paragraph: ‘if they were to consider as they profess to do that they can never err in discounting bills for bona fide transactions’.

[6 ]MS, by a mistake, has ‘181’.

[1 ]This note refers to the answer marked ‘2’ in Ricardo’s copy of the Bullion Report. Although the figure ‘1’ is written against the first answer in Harman’s evidence (‘though the state of the exchanges is constantly watched, the amount of our discounts is not regulated with any reference to that circumstance’), there is no corresponding comment in Ricardo’s MS.

[2 ]The last two lines beginning ‘this real fall’ replace ‘foreigners would be induced to purchase more of our commodities,—this’ which however is not del.

[3 ]Replaces ‘of these discordant opinions’.

[1 ]On the last sheet of the MS (B) there is written by Ricardo the following paragraph which appears to refer to Account No. XIX of the Appendix to the Bullion Report: ‘What is the reason that gold monies in the years 1805, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 1810 should be coined at the mint from foreign gold, when by the evidence of the dealers in bullion English gold as it is called can be purchased cheaper?’

[1 ]A ‘Second Edition’ of 80 pp. was published under the author’s name and ‘sold by Cadell and Davies, andW. Winchester and Son’; it is odd that it bears the same date, ‘Dec. 1, 1810’. From the page references in Ricardo’s Notes it is clear that he was using the first edition.

[2 ]The Notes have been published in Minor Papers on the Currency Question, ed. by J. H. Hollander, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1932, pp. 91–99.

[3 ]There is a copy of the first edition of Trotter’s pamphlet which belonged to Ricardo in the Goldsmiths’ Library of the University of London, but it bears no such numbers; ‘by Coutts Trotter’ is inscribed in Ricardo’s hand on the title-page.

[1 ]Omitted in MS.

[1 ]Ricardo refers to this passage in his comments on Trotter’s pp. 19, 57, 59 and 71.

[1 ]Bullion Report, ‘Minutes of Evidence’, 8vo ed., pp. 210–13.

[1 ]This comment must refer to the first part of the quotation, although Ricardo appears to have overlooked the peculiar sense which Trotter attaches to ‘convertibility’. Trotter says in effect: Had paper retained its value in terms of commodities in proportion to its gold cover only, it must have fallen in terms of commodities (as well as of gold). Ricardo’s interpretation seems to be: Had paper retained its value in terms of gold by retaining its convertibility, it must have fallen in terms of commodities.

[1 ]A slip, for ‘why should he not gain from a rise in the value’.

[1 ]It is there prefixed to another paper, written by Ricardo in 1809, which in the present edition is printed above,p. 36 ff.; cp. p. 5.

[1 ]Both sets of Resolutions are in Parliamentary Papers, 1810–11, vol. x.

[2 ]The Resolutions, like the Report, were drawn up by Horner, Huskisson and Thornton: ‘I understand that the first ten or twelve were by Mr. Huskisson, and those which follow by Mr. Horner, except the resolution stating that “it is the duty of the Bank”, et cetera, which is by Mr. Thornton.’ (Letter of Lord Auckland to Lord Grenville, 25 April 1811, in Historical MSS Commission, Report on the MSS of J. B. Fortescue at Dropmore, 1927, vol. x, p. 131.)

[3 ]That Vansittart was ‘the godfather, but not the father’ of the famous third Resolution which equalizes Bank-notes with gold was disclosed by Canning in a speech in the debate on the Bank Charter, 13 Feb. 1826; but when challenged he declined to name the ‘father’ (Hansard, N.S., XIV, 331). According to the Dictionary of National Biography, article ‘Vansit- tart’, the Counter-Resolutions were ‘drawn up by the request of Perceval’.

[4 ]A third version, only slightly differing from the second, was printed under the date 14–15 May 1811.

[1 ]In the second version, besides some alterations in the statistics, Resolutions 6 and 7 are transposed; Ricardo’s comments follow the order of the first version.

[2 ]See also below, pp. 420, n. 2 and 421,n. 1.

[1 ]Report, 8vo ed., p. 19.

[2 ]ib. p. 26.

[3 ]The Paper Pound of 1797–1821, London, 1919, p. xlii.

[4 ]See A. Brady, William Huskisson and Liberal Reform, Oxford, 1928 (‘The evidence of a few merchants, including N. M. Rothschild’, p. 25) and L. Stuart Sutherland, in Economic History Review, April 1932 (‘Mr. ,to be identified in all probability, as has been suggested, with Nathan Rothschild’, p. 378).

[5 ]I owe this comparison to Professor Hayek. evidence either in broken English, or in the patois of his country, thought fit to guard their readers against the poison of his representations.’

[1 ]Another false identification is suggested by the title of an anonymous pamphlet published many years later, at the time of the Bank Charter inquiry of 1832: The Evidence that WOULD have been given by Mr.—, Late a Continental Merchant, before the Committee of Secrecy Appointed to Inquire into the Expediency of Renewing the Bank Charter, London, Pelham Richardson, 1832. A note on the author’s own copy which is in the British Museum (8229. aaaa. 21/4) identifies him as John Cazenove (ca. 1788–1879), a member of the Political Economy Club and writer of several pamphlets on economic subjects, who was the son of a Geneva merchant migrated to London. Although the author describes himself in the same terms as the anonymous witness of 1810, they cannot be the same person, as they hold altogether different views on the subject; in any case Cazenove would have had no reasons for concealing his presence in London, and he could hardly have been ‘a very eminent’ merchant at 22 years of age.

[2 ]Sir John Sinclair, in his Observations on the Report of the Bullion Committee, 1810, p. 6, wrote: ‘They have also reported the evidence of an anonymous witness, contrary to the usage of Parliament, unless special reasons can be, and actually are assigned, for the concealment; and they seem to have laid peculiar weight on the doctrines of this nameless individual. Yet this unknown individual may be a foreigner, or a person usually resident abroad, who may not be so anxious, as a British merchant would necessarily be, to deliver opinions favourable to the prosperity of this country.’ On which the Quarterly Review for November 1810 (p.524) observed: ‘Now, for anything that Sir John has learned to the contrary, “this unknown individual may be a foreigner”; and yet the Committee have not, by printing his

[1 ]6 May 1811, Hansard, XIX, 836.

[2 ]7 May 1811, Hansard, XIX, 931.

[3 ]These were, as the description usually implied, London merchants trading to the Continent.

[4 ]See the evidence of J. L. Greffulhe, ‘Minutes of Evidence’, p. 61 and ofW. C. Chalmers, p. 135.

[5 ]See the evidence of T. Hughan, ‘a merchant, trading to the West Indies’, p. 55, and of S. Williams, ‘a Merchant trading to the United States of America’, p. 140.

[6 ]p. 77.

[1 ]pp. 83–4. Many others of his answers are equally significant as to his origin, e.g. (p. 78): ‘Taking Gold...at Hamburgh at what we call its par, which is 96 stivers banco for a ducat....’

[2 ]As Mr.— told the Committee, ‘when the French got possession of the North of Germany [they] passed severe penal decrees against a communication with this Country’ (p. 88).

[3 ]This list, from a document of August 1807, is given in H. Hitzigrath, Die Kompagnie der Merchant Adventurers und die englische Kirchengemeinde in Hamburg 1611–1835, Hamburg, 1904, p. 62.

[4 ]‘Minutes of Evidence’, p. 97.

[5 ]ib. p. 105; see other allusions to these ‘extraordinary causes’, pp. 107 and 109.

[1 ]‘Appendix of Accounts’, p. 99; similar entries, for much smaller payments, in 1807, p. 101. In both cases the dates are no doubt those of the payment of the bills, which may have been (in the case of the 1807 bills, certainly had been) drawn during the previous year.

[ii] of the series Grosse Vermo¨gen).

[1 ]From an address (in German) of John Parish, jun. to the Emperor Francis, published by Ehrenberg, op. cit., pp. 117–18. No date is given, but it was apparently written several years after the events described, probably in1816.

[2 ]J. M. Johnson to C. C. Smith, from Gothenburg, 25 Nov. 1810. (Public Record Office, F.O. 7/92, quoted by C. S. B. Buckland, Metternich and the British Government from 1809 to 1813, London, 1932, pp. 131–2.) George Hammond was the permanent head of the Foreign Office under Canning till 1809.

[3 ]F.O. 7/93, unpublished.

[1 ]This account of Johnson’s mission is derived from Buckland, Metternich and the British Government, pp. 37–9.

[2 ]Buckland, op. cit., pp. 128 and 131.

[3 ]‘Minutes of Evidence’, pp. 101, 107 and 97.

[4 ]Ehrenberg, op. cit., p. 92.

[5 ]Referring to the influence of the quantity of paper on its price: ‘we have seen a strong instance of it last summer, when, from the extraordinary exertions of the Austrian Government....’ (‘Minutes of Evidence’, p. 86.)

[iii],p. 336. Gentz, in October 1816, described Parish as ‘unstreitig einer der ersten mercantilischen Ko¨pfe unserer Zeit’ (Gentz und Wessenberg, Briefe, ed. A. Fournier, 1907, quoted by Buckland, p. 132; see also Ehrenberg,p. 117, n.).

[r]. John Parish von Hamburg, jetzig. Besitzers der Herrschaft Senftenberg in Bo¨hmen’.

[iii],p. 395.

[1]‘permanently multiplied beyond the gold and silver which’ was first written here, and then replaced by ‘so multiplied as to be permanently’, which was also deleted.

[1]‘in your fav’ is del. here.

[1]This sentence is inserted.

[2]This sentence is ins.

[3]‘its real amount’ replaces ‘it’.

[1]‘even if’ replaces ‘unless’.

[2]‘sufficiently’ is del. here.

[3]The Note is del. and no number corresponds to it on Dumont’s MS.

[1]‘depend on the’ is del. here.

[2]Replaces ‘the £10,000 would not represent only the million of goods but 100 times’.

[1]‘No other security’ is del. here.

[2]Ricardo had first opened this Note with: ‘Does not all pecuniary revenue excepting’; then he deleted it and started again: ‘I feel some difficulty in distinguishing what the author means by “Capital Pecuniare”, and as the same sum of money forms successively the pecuniary revenue of many different people,—I cannot agree that it is the pecuniary revenue which constitutes the price of those articles of which the real revenue is composed. Suppose the real revenue of a society valued in money to be 100,000£, and 1000£ to be sufficient to circulate that revenue, it will then appear that the whole society will have the £1000 go thro’ their hands so often as to constitute a revenue of £100,000,—prices then’. This was also del.

[1]‘any’ is del. here.

[2]Ricardo had first written ‘parvienne’, but then altered it to ‘parviene’. In Dumont’s handwriting ‘parvient’ is hardly distinguishable from ‘parviene’.

[3]This paragraph is ins. between Note 20 and the first Note 21: it seems to belong to the latter.

[1]‘or any other’ is ins.

[2]The whole paragraph is del.

[3]The cross-reference is obscure, there being no Note 44 onLivre I, whilst Note 44 on Livre II deals with a different subject. Probably a mistake for ‘No 4’, meaning the second Note 21; see following footnote.

[4]This note, which is misnumbered 21, presumably refers to Bentham’s 4th form of relative revenue, that is to say, to what immediately precedes the passage marked 22. Bentham’s grounds for including the wages of labour, or a part of them, in relative revenue are not given in Dumont’s MS; Dumont in a subsequent passage here omitted says that the explanation is wanting in Bentham’s original MSS and offers as his own conjecture: ‘les gages du travail pourroient être ane´antis— est-ce le cas que l’auteur entend quand on reduit l’ouvrier à l’esclavage?’

[5]‘society’ is del. here.

[6]i.e., Dumont’s note.

[7]The whole Note is del. No number to correspond with it is written on Dumont’s MS.

[1]Wealth of Nations, Bk. i, ch. iv; Cannan’s ed., vol. i,p.30.

[2]Replaces ‘source’.

[3]‘But luxury if by that term we mean’ is del. here.

[1]‘equally good’ is ins.

[1]‘Minutes of Evidence’, 8vo ed., p. 81. On ‘Mr.—’ see below,p. 427 ff.

[1]‘Minutes of Evidence’, 8vo ed., pp. 162–3, 164, 212, etc.

[2]Last six words replace ‘which they can speedily turn into’.

[1]This sentence replaces ‘but as the augmentation of money adds nothing to the real riches of a country, the annuity cannot be subject to any further variation from this cause.’

[1]This sentence is ins.

[2]‘and nothing reproduced’ is ins.

[1]This sentence is ins.

[2]The last five words are ins.

[3]The remainder of the Note replaces ‘but I do not quite accord with the steps by which the author has arrived at it.’

[4]The number 9½ appears on Dumont’s MS, but not on Ricardo’s. What is here assumed to be Note 9½, is written in Ricardo’s MS, upside down and without reference number, at the back of the page containing Notes 23 to 30 below: the assumption seems to be justified by the relevance of the comment to the text, as well as by the sequence implied in the opening of Note 10, ‘Here again’ etc.

[1]‘The augmentation’ is del. in this place.

[2]Replaces ‘never’.

[3]‘that the augmentation of goods is the only legitimate cause for an increase of money’ is written above the latter part of this sentence in the MS, but it is not clear whether it was intended as a correction or as an addition.

[4]Replaces ‘Is not this saying what has been before explained that an increased commerce and capital’.

[5]‘its depreciation’ is del. here.

[1]The last six words are ins.

[2]The remainder of this sentence replaces ‘The calculation here requires 15 pct. on the new capital.’

[3]‘I cannot allow that money can be augmented’ is del. here.

[4]Four earlier attempts at opening this Note were del. in succession: 1, ‘It would be a tax of’; 2, ‘A tax of two’; 3, ‘This tax would be’; 4, ‘Can this be called a tax? It would be a tax to the former possessors of money only a great [‘a great’ replaces ‘but the exact’] amount of which would be gained by other members of the society.’

[5]Left unfinished in MS.

[1]‘the augmentation of’ is ins.

[2]‘The author supposes that we should retain the same’ is del. here.

[1]Although this paragraph appears in the MS as part of Note 21, it was probably intended as a separate Note, commenting on the opening of the next Chapter (‘Accroissement des prix par disette’).

[1]Above, p. 310.

[1]‘I think the answer can not be doubtful.’ is del. here.

[1]‘old’ is ins.

[2]‘of increase’ is ins.

[3]Replaces ‘That money has’. Ricardo obviously intended to delete ‘been’, two words below.

[4]‘necessary to’ is written above ‘the cause of’, which however is not del.

[1]‘it destroys all security’ is del. here.

[2]‘real’ is ins.

[2]‘quantity of the’ is del. here.

[3]‘diminished’ is ins.

[1]‘when’ is del. here.

[2]‘increased’ is ins.

[1]‘metallic’ is ins.

[2]‘an increase of’ is ins.

[3]‘land and’ is ins.

[4]‘The produce of’ is ins.

[5]Replaces ‘can make no difference.’

[6]‘nearly’ is ins.

[1]This sentence, first written as a literal translation of the French text, was subsequently altered as above.

[2]Replaces ‘That inasmuch as’.

[3]Replaces ‘it causes no’.

[4]‘foreign’ is del. here.

[5]Replaces ‘affected’.