The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• An Essay On the Influence of a Low Price of Corn On the Profits of Stock 1815
• Proposals For an Economical and Secure Currency 1816
• Section I: In the Medium of Circulation—cause of Uniformity Is Cause of Goodness
• Section II: Use of a Standard Commodity—objections to It Considered
• Section III: The Standard, Its Imperfections—variations Below Without Allowance of the Countervailing Variations Above the Standard, Their Effects— Correspondence With the Standard the Rule For Paper Money
• Section IV: An Expedient to Bring the English Currency As Near As Possible to Perfection
• Section V: A Practice Which Creates a Great Mass of Mercantile Inconvenience— Remedy Proposed
• Section VI: The Public Services of the Bank Excessively Overpaid—remedy Proposed
• Section VII: Bank Profits and Savings—misapplication—proposed Remedy
• Appendix
• Funding System an Article In the Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica 1820
• On Protection to Agriculture 1822
• Introduction
• Section I: On Remunerating Price
• Section II: On the Influence of a Rise of Wages On the Price of Corn
• Section III: On the Effects of Taxes Imposed On a Particular Commodity
• Section IV: On the Effect of Abundant Crops On the Price of Corn
• Section V: On the Effect Produced On the Price of Corn By Mr. Peel’s Bill For Restoring the Ancient Standard
• Section VI: On the Effects of a Low Value of Corn On the Rate of Profits
• Section VII: Under a System of Protecting Duties Established With a View to Give the Monopoly of the Home Market to the Home Grower of Corn, Prices Cannot Be Otherwise Than Fluctuating
• Section VIII: On the Project of Advancing Money On Loan, to Speculators In Corn, At a Low Interest
• Section IX: Can the Present State of Agricultural Distress Be Attributed to Taxation?
• Conclusion
• Appendix (a.): At a Court of Directors At the Bank. On Thursday 20th May 1819.
• Plan For the Establishment of a National Bank
• Notes From Ricardo’s Manuscripts 1818–1823
• Fragments On Torrens Concerning Value 1818
• Note On Fragments On Torrens
• (a 1): [ricardo On Torrens]
• (a 2): [torrens On Ricardo]
• (b): [an Entry In Ricardo’s Commonplace Book]
• A Note On Prices and Taxation 1821
• On Blake’s ‘observations On the Effects Produced By the Expenditure of Government’ 1823
• Note On the Papers On Blake
• [notes On Blake’s ‘observations On the Effects Produced By the Expenditure of Government’ 1823 With Blake’s Replies]
• [an Unfinished Review of Blake’s ‘observations On … the Expenditure of Government’ 1823]
• Absolute Value and Exchangeable Value 1823
• Appendix
• The ‘ingenious Calculator’
• Bullion Report.

Up to March 1813 both his letters and his published writings show Ricardo to have been concerned only with currency questions. By August 1813, however, the question under discussion between Malthus and himself had become the relation between the increase of capital and the rate of profits. Ricardo’s letters at this time contain the essential elements of what he already calls his ‘theory’: that is only improvements in agriculture, or new facilities for the production of food, that can prevent an increase of capital from lowering the rate of profits.1 At this stage, and up to March 1814, Ricardo and Malthus were not explicitly concerned with the question of the importation of corn, which had not yet aroused the public interest. The Committee on the Corn Trade, which had been appointed on 22 March 1813 and had reported on 11 May 1813, had been concerned chiefly with Ireland, and it was not until after the great fall of prices due to the huge harvest of 1813 and the further fall after the peace of March 1814 that their Report was made the occasion for the debate which, after a new Committee had reported in 1814, ended in the Corn Law of 1815.

In February 1814 Ricardo had written some ‘papers on the profits of Capital’ which he had shown to Malthus, Trower and Mill.2 These papers have not survived, but a summary of their contents, contained in a letter to Trower of 8 March 1814, shows that the theory of profits, which was to appear in the pamphlet of the following year, was already fully developed:

‘Interest rises only when the means of employment for Capital bears a greater proportion than before to the Capital itself, and falls when the Capital bears a greater proportion to the arena, as Mr. Malthus has called it, for its employment. On these points I believe we are all agreed, but I contend that the arena for the employment of new Capital cannot increase in any country in the same or greater proportion than the Capital itself, unless Capital be withdrawn from the land[,] unless there be improvements in husbandry,—or new facilities be offered for the introduction of food from foreign countries;—that in short it is the profits of the farmer which regulate the profits of all other trades,—and as the profits of the farmer must necessarily decrease with every augmentation of Capital employed on the land, provided no improvements be at the same time made in husbandry, all other profits must diminish and therefore the rate of interest must fall.’1

When in February 1815 Malthus’s pamphlets appeared, Ricardo was able to write within a few days his Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock,2 by using his already developed theory of profits, incorporating Malthus’s theory of rent, and adding a refutation of the protectionist arguments put forward by Malthus in his Grounds of an Opinion.3 It was published about 24 February 1815.4

Ricardo’s Essay was one of the many pamphlets which were prepared in anticipation of the debates in the House of Commons on the question of the Corn Laws.5 Among these pamphlets some were particularly connected with Ricardo’s and it may be useful to establish the sequence of their publication. The following table is constructed mainly from publishers’ advertisements in the newspapers.6

Of the pamphlets that preceded Ricardo’s, that of West has the most striking similarity with it. Indeed Ricardo’s theory of profits is the same as West’s. West says that the theory had occurred to him ‘some years ago’ and his pamphlet was undoubtedly published before Ricardo’s. That Ricardo, nevertheless, formed his theory independently is shown by his letters to Malthus and Trower in 1813 and 1814, which contain its essential elements. Ricardo made no claim to independence in his published writings, but recorded the fact on his own copy of West’s pamphlet, which is in the Library at Gatcombe: ‘This was published before my Essay on the Profits of Stock, but it never came into my hands till after I had published my Essay. D. Ricardo’.1

All the pamphlets in question have in common the principle of rent based on diminishing returns from the extension of cultivation to inferior qualities of land; and also (all of them with the exception of Torrens’s) from the employment of successive portions of capital on the same land. West certainly, and Torrens possibly,2 arrived at the principle independently of Malthus; Ricardo, however, says in his Introduction that he is very much indebted to Malthus for the theory of rent, and he repeats this in his preface to the Principles.

The popular belief that Ricardo actually invented the theory of rent (whence the phrase ‘the Ricardian theory of rent’)3 derives some support from the Note on Rent in M^cCulloch’s edition of the Wealth of Nations:4 ‘The theory of rent...was first announced to the world in two pamphlets, published in 1815, by Mr. West, (now Sir Edward West, chief-justice of Bombay) and Mr. Malthus. A pamphlet explanatory of the same doctrine was published by Mr. Ricardo, two years after:5 but, although he was posterior to the authors above named, in promulgating the doctrine, and less happy in his mode of explaining it than Sir Edward West, it is well known to many of his friends that he was in possession of the principle, and was accustomed to communicate it in conversation several years prior to the publication of the earliest of these works.’

As the Note was written in the main by John Stuart Mill,1 who had presumably derived the information from his father, it might be supposed to be authoritative. There is, however, no evidence to confirm its contention. The letters of Ricardo up to the time of the publication of Malthus’s Inquiry into Rent contain no discussion of the subject of rent.2 What Ricardo had been familiar with for many years was the principle of diminishing returns on land;3 but in his letters of 1813 and 1814 he had applied this principle only to his theory of profits.4 This is borne out by the writer of Ricardo’s obituary in the Globe and Traveller (Torrens’s newspaper) of 16 September 1823, who, after saying that Adam Smith had left unexplained the principles of the distribution of wealth and that Malthus and West had discovered the laws of rent, adds: ‘Mr. Ricardo, who appears, from frequent conversations with his friends, to have been previously investigating the effects of the gradations of soil, immediately discovered5 the principles which determine the rate of profit and thus completed the theory of the distribution of wealth.’

Although Ricardo opens his Introduction with the statement that in treating the subject of profits it is necessary to consider the principles of rent, the fact is that for the previous two years in his letters he had been working out his theory of profits without ever finding it necessary explicitly to mention rent. Indeed, the theory of profits presented in the pamphlet adds little to what was already contained in his letters of 1813 and 1814, before his attention had been directed to the connection between rent and profits.1

In the summer of 1815 Ricardo was considering the preparation of a revised edition of the Essay on Profits. On 18 August he wrote to Say: ‘Mr. Mill wishes me to write it over again more at large. I fear the undertaking exceeds my power.’ He started work on the project, but it finally took shape, not as a new edition of the pamphlet, but as the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation.2

In July Ricardo and Grenfell met frequently in London and discussed the subject of the Bank.1 At the beginning of August, after Ricardo had gone to Gatcomb, Grenfell wrote urging him to overcome his modesty and write, before the Bank Court to be held in September or October, ‘a Short Pamphlet on the Subject to which I have lately called the attention of Parliament’.2 By the end of August Ricardo was at work on the pamphlet, Grenfell supplying him with the relevant Parliamentary Papers and Accounts, with his own calculations and with Allardyce’s pamphlets on the Bank; from these sources Ricardo drew most of his facts.

A considerable part of the pamphlet was devoted to the development of the points which Grenfell had raised, namely, the excessive profits made by the Bank from its bargains with the Government, and its failure to distribute them among the proprietors. On these questions Ricardo went ‘much further’ than Grenfell.3 Indeed, at one stage of writing it is clear that he intended his main proposal to be that the Government should dispense altogether with the services of the Bank as being ‘an unnecessary establishment’, by appointing independent Commissioners who would be the sole issuers of paper money, would manage the National Debt and act as bankers to all public departments.4 There is, however, only an incidental allusion to this plan, in the closing paragraph of the pamphlet,1 and it was not until 1823 that Ricardo developed the idea, in his Plan for a National Bank.

Though the writing of the pamphlet was suggested by Grenfell, its most important proposal (to make Bank Notes payable in bullion instead of coin) from which it took its title had nothing to do with Grenfell, and was indeed ‘quite new’ to him.2 Ricardo had originally outlined this proposal in the Appendix to the fourth edition of the High Price of Bullion (April 1811) and had submitted it to Perceval, the Prime Minister, in July 1811 and to Tierney, one of the leaders of the Opposition, in December of the same year.3 He now revived it in the expectation that the date for the resumption of cash payments would be fixed in the approaching session of 1816.

Late in September 1815 the MS was finished and sent to Grenfell, who found it excellent.4 Ricardo was unconvinced, and sought Malthus’s opinion of the MS, declaring himself ‘too little pleased with it to think of publishing’.5 Malthus approved the matter but criticised the style and arrangement.6 Grenfell continued to urge publication,7 so Ricardo set to work to improve it.8 Early in November he submitted the revised MS to Mill who, nearly a month later (the MS having gone astray in transit), recommended its publication, but advised him to divide it into sections (for which he suggested the titles), to recast the first section and to write an introduction.9 Ricardo also appealed to Mill’s judgment as to the propriety of his making proposals which might entail repudiation on the part of the Government of the bargain made by Perceval with the Bank in 1808. Mill, while providing legal arguments in defence of such a course,1 advised him to dwell upon ‘the moral part of the argument against the Bank’; this Ricardo did, using Mill’s own words.2

Mill’s encouragement was decisive.3 In January Ricardo saw Murray in London about publication,4 which he was anxious should take place before Parliament met on 1 February 1816. Indeed, a preliminary advertisement appeared in the press5 announcing its publication for 1 February, but some further delay was caused by Mill’s offer to revise the proofs and to improve the expressions and the punctuation.6 The pamphlet was eventually published on 6 February 1816,7 a week before the debate in the House of Commons on Grenfell’s Motion concerning the transactions with the Bank.

Although Ricardo had anticipated so little success for his work that he had offered to Murray to bear the charge in case of loss,8 it sold unexpectedly well, and by 23 February a second edition was being printed.9 The only changes, apart from minor verbal alterations, were two footnotes,10 one on the Bank Court held on 8 February and the other qualifying his calculations of the Bank’s profits.

Nearly three years later, when the question of the resumption of cash payments was about to come before Parliament, M^cCulloch again drew the attention of the public to Economical and Secure Currency by a review in the Edinburgh Review for December 1818; and at his suggestion Ricardo quoted in ed. 2 of the Principles, 1819, a passage from the pamphlet containing the plan of bullion payments.11 The evidence before both the Lords’ and Commons’ Committees of 1819 centred largely on Ricardo’s plan, which was finally adopted as the basis of Peel’s Bill for the Resumption of Cash Payments.

As a result of this new interest a third edition of the pamphlet was published in March 1819.1 This edition is in every respect identical with the second, except for the punctuation and capitalization which appear to have been arbitrarily changed by the printer, with the addition of some misprints. It is clear that Ricardo had no hand in these alterations, and therefore in the present text the second edition has been followed.

The article ‘Funding System’ was written by Ricardo for the Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, edited by Macvey Napier, which was published in parts between 1814 and 1824 by Constable of Edinburgh.1 The half volume containing Ricardo’s article (Part ii of vol. iv) was published early in September 1820.2 It was the practice of the Supplement to have all articles signed with letters, the key to which was given in a Table in vol. i. In Ricardo’s case the signature was ‘(E.E.E.)’.

At the beginning of September 1819 Napier had asked Mill, who was one of his chief contributors, to induce Ricardo to write the article on the Sinking Fund. After much persuasion Ricardo agreed to put down his thoughts but warned Napier that eventually he would have to write the article himself.3

At Mill’s request, Francis Place, who had been agitating against the Sinking Fund for many years,4 sent him at Gatcomb a parcel of books on the subject.5

By 21 September Ricardo was ‘very hard at work’, as he wrote to Malthus, although still protesting that he was not competent.6 On 25 September he wrote to Trower that he had made the attempt but had not succeeded and would probably abandon it. ‘The truth is that Dr Hamilton’s book on the Sinking Fund is so good that very little of original observations can be made on the subject. It would be unjust not to refer to him on all occasions, and if you do so it may be asked whether you have done any thing yourself?’ He added that the only point on which he thought he was entitled to attention was his plan for paying off the national debt by a tax on property,7 which he had incorporated in the article.8 He had already outlined this proposal in the Principles, in 1817,1 and had mentioned it casually in a speech on 9 June 1819;2 before the article was published, more deliberate references to the proposal in his speeches on 16 and 24 December 1819 gave rise to considerable discussion.3

By 28 September 1819 Mill and Place had received Ricardo’s manuscript in London. Mill thought it excellent4 and after a second reading had nothing but a few verbal corrections to suggest.5 Place, however, sent a long commentary, and this led to a correspondence with Ricardo which continued till November, turning on the question whether in effect there was or was not a Sinking Fund.6

On 9 November Ricardo wrote to Malthus: ‘I finished in my hasty way the article I had undertaken to do on the Sinking Fund, and then became so disgusted with it, that I was glad to get rid of it.—I have given so many injunctions not to regard my supposed feelings in deciding whether it shall or shall not be published, that I much doubt whether it will ever see the light.’7

When, a month earlier, M^cCulloch had written to Ricardo that he had heard he was to write the article Funding System,8 Ricardo apparently replied that he was not writing on the Funding System in general but only on the Sinking Fund.9 Nevertheless, in December, Napier having shown the article to M^cCulloch, the latter wrote to Ricardo: ‘You have in fact written an article on the Funding System in general, and not on the Sinking fund; and all that is necessary to give it this shape is to transpose a few of the pages’.10 But Ricardo replied that he would ‘make it worse rather than better, by further meddling with it.’ ‘You’ he added ‘can transpose passages, and new model the productions of your pen with great facility—I with the greatest difficulty. To compose is to you an easy task, with me it is a laborious effort.’11

It thus appears that the article remained much the same as it had first been written, except that a Table originally attached at the end was omitted.1

Publication of the article was delayed as it was found that Part i of vol. iv of the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in which it should have been included, was becoming too bulky; it was therefore included in Part ii of the Volume, which was published in September 1820.2

When the question of payment arose, Ricardo regarded himself as not entitled to any, on the ground that, as Mill reported to Napier, the article was ‘not worth payment’ and in any case payment had formed no part of the motive which induced him to write it. He appears eventually to have accepted 20 guineas, being the ordinary rate of 10 guineas per sheet.3

This was the only article that Ricardo contributed to the Supplement.4 At one time Napier appears to have intended asking Ricardo to write the article Lottery and he consulted Mill. But the matter was dropped when, on 15 March 1821, Mill replied: ‘Till this moment I have overlooked what you say about Lottery. I see not however any thing in that for which Ricardo is particularly qualified. The question is one of morals, rather than political Economy, and I think you should reserve him for the important questions in his own science.’1

On Protection to Agriculture was published on 18 April 1822,1 the day after the reassembly of Parliament following the Easter recess. A few days later the debate on the Report of the Agricultural Committee of 1822 was due to begin. Even less than Ricardo’s other writings can this pamphlet be detached from the circumstances in which it was written; it is in effect, no less than his speeches, one of Ricardo’s contributions to the debate on the agricultural distress, and as Professor Hollander has observed ‘is a manner of minority report of the Committee’.2

The proposals made in the pamphlet3 for an unlimited importation of corn to be permanently permitted once the price of wheat had risen to 70s., with an import duty of 20s. a quarter, which should be reduced by 1s. a year till it reached its final level of 10s., and for a drawback of 7s. on exportation, were embodied in the Resolutions which Ricardo moved in the House of Commons on 29 April 1822.4 His resolutions were lost by 25 votes to 218 on 9 May.

Early in the following Session, it was agreed to revive the Agricultural Committee and to refer back to them the Report of 1821. The composition of the revived Committee was almost identical with that of 1821, except that Lord Londonderry (as Castlereagh had now become) was Chairman in place of Gooch. The Report of 1821, having been originally drafted by Huskisson, supported in principle a free trade in corn, but the landlords on the committee had succeeded in adding a number of protectionist recommendations. The Report of 1822 was much more definitely protectionist. It was read by the Chairman to the Committee on 25 March1 and presented to the House of Commons on 1 April, when it was agreed to postpone its consideration till after the Easter recess. However, on 3 April the presentation of a petition on the agricultural distress provided an opportunity for anticipating the debate on the Report; Ricardo’s speech on this occasion, attacking the Report, contained many of the points which he made shortly after in Protection to Agriculture. Lord Londonderry was perhaps aware that Ricardo was already engaged upon his pamphlet, when, referring in the same debate to the evils of abundance, he said, ‘if the hon. member for Portarlington turned his intelligent mind to it, he could make the House understand this part of the subject.’2 On the same day the House adjourned until 17 April.

Ricardo remained in London during the recess,3 occupied in completing and seeing through the press his Protection to Agriculture. As he had become acquainted with the contents of the Report only on 25 March, it cannot have taken him much more than three weeks to write and publish the pamphlet.

Whishaw wrote to Thomas Smith on 20 April: ‘I have not seen Ricardo’s pamphlet, but hear a good account of it from Warburton and the adepts. He did not send me a copy, as he had done of his former works, considering me perhaps as a heretic.’ And on 27 April: ‘I have not yet read Ricardo’s pamphlet, but hear it much praised. The ministerialists, in particular, are much pleased with his doctrines, evidently because he says little against taxation.’4

‘fortified considerably’ by the sanction and confirmation received from ‘the able work which has recently been published by the hon. member for Portarlington (Mr. Ricardo), than whom it is impossible for the House on such questions to have higher authority’.1

Within a few days of its publication new editions of the pamphlet were called for; on 29 April The Times advertised the second edition, and on the same day the Morning Chronicle advertised the third; the fourth edition followed soon after.2 In each successive edition Ricardo introduced small alterations, mainly verbal.

ThePlan for the Establishment of a National Bank was published in February 18241 six months after Ricardo’s death.

On 3 August he wrote to Malthus: ‘I have been writing a few pages in favor of my project of a National Bank, with a view to prove that the nation would lose nothing in profits by abolishing the Bank of England, and that the sole effect of the change would be to transfer a part of the profits of the Bank to the national Treasury.’2

His plan had first taken shape in 1815 while he was writing the Economical and Secure Currency. In a letter to Malthus of 10 September 1815 he had outlined a scheme for transferring the power to issue paper money from the Bank to independent commissioners who would also manage the National Debt and act as bankers to the Government, but he did not develop the idea at that time.3

A similar proposal appears to have been made by Say in 1814 in an unpublished paper which he had submitted to Ricardo. At that time Ricardo, while agreeing that the profits arising from the issue of paper currency ought to belong to the public rather than to a company of Bankers, doubted whether the Government if entrusted with the power of issue would not abuse it.4

In 1817, in the Principles, Ricardo put his scheme before the public for the first time.5

In April and May 1822, when the Government intended to renew in advance the Bank Charter which was due to expire only in 1833, Ricardo in the House of Commons, opposing the renewal, suggested that the paper currency should be issued without the assistance of the Bank of England and said that the profits ought to belong to the public.1

The preface to the published pamphlet says that Ricardo showed the MS to ‘a member of his own family’ who was staying with him. This was no doubt his brother Moses Ricardo, who was on a visit to Gatcomb at the time of Ricardo’s last illness.2 That Moses Ricardo was also the writer of the preface and was responsible for the publication is suggested by his later interest in the matter. When the question of the renewal of the Bank Charter came up for discussion in 1832, he suggested to John Murray, the publisher, that if he had in stock any considerable number of copies of his brother’s Plan for a National Bank they might be re-issued with a new title-page and with ‘a concise account of his plan for a secure and economical currency, together with a few preliminary observations’, which he offered to furnish.3 Nothing came of this suggestion. Shortly after, on 3 May 1832, Moses Ricardo proposed the following question for discussion to the Political Economy Club: ‘Would not the establishment of a National Bank for the issue of Notes be advantageous to the country?’4

(3) A complete draft of the pamphlet, covering fifteen quarto pages (together with three revised passages, undoubtedly belonging to this draft,1 which are written on the back of a sheet of the fragment denoted as 1). This draft is not printed here as a separate item, since to a large extent it agrees with the text of the posthumous edition of 1824, which is reprinted below. The chief variants are given in footnotes.2

Since the above Note and the text below were in page-proof the MS from which the edition of 1824 had been printed came to light with the Mill-Ricardo papers. This consists of 14 leaves, written on both sides in Ricardo’s handwriting (with eight corrections in Mill’s handwriting, referring to changes of phrasing)3 and bears obvious signs of having been handled by a printer.

Early in September 1817 Robert Torrens wrote a review of Ricardo’s Principles: it was offered to the Edinburgh Review, which did not accept it.1 Following this there were discussions concerning the theory of value between Ricardo and Torrens. Ricardo refers in particular to ‘a long conversation’ with Torrens on the question of value, ‘without convincing each other’, which probably took place in February 1818;2 and Malthus in a letter of that month expresses surprise ‘that Major Torrens should puzzle himself so long with his peculiar objections to your measure of value’.3

One of Torrens’ objections can be inferred from the paragraph added in edition 2 of Ricardo’s Principles4 which begins: ‘The same result will take place if the circulating capitals be of un-equal durability’; and which, as Ricardo wrote to M^cCulloch, ‘more fully answers Major Torrens’ objection’.5 This is the same problem as is discussed in the two Notes printed below as (A 1) and (A 2); and we can therefore conjecture that these are contemporary with the discussions of February 1818.6

In edition 1 of his Principles Ricardo had said that, after capital had accumulated in the hands of persons who set labourers to work, relative values of commodities ‘occasioned by more or less labour being required to produce them’, were also affected by a rise of wages (a) when ‘fixed and circulating capitals were in different proportions’, and (b) when fixed capital was ‘of different durability’.7 Now Torrens (in a Note which has not been found) appears to have confronted him with a source of variation which did not fit into either of these categories.

In the paragraph added in edition 2 of the Principles, Ricardo dealt with the problem by introducing a third category, i.e., one in which ‘the circulating capitals be of unequal durability’.1 But in the Note (A 1) he had adopted a different solution. He included the case under discussion within the first of the two existing categories: ‘in this case the raw material in both manufactures is really fixed capital of equal duration, but of unequal value’.2

He evidently noticed immediately that the inclusion of raw material in the category of fixed capital could not be limited to ‘this case’; and there follows the interesting passage crossed out in the manuscript, in which he extends the definition of fixed capital to include all that is used in production ‘except that which resolves itself into wages’ (thus leaving wages as the sole constituent of circulating capital). This was a radical departure from his distinction between the two sorts of capital as being one of degree, which he declared it to be in the Principles (above, I, 150). The distinction which he here arrived at under the name of fixed and circulating capital coincided with that between constant and variable capital later established by Marx. This interpretation of fixed and circulating capital was first advanced in a published work by George Ramsay in his Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, 1836, whom Marx regarded as the originator of this notion.3 However, Ricardo reverted to his original definition, and emphasised it in edition 2 of the Principles (above, I, 31).

In the autumn of 1818 Torrens met M^cCulloch in Edinburgh and discussed with him Ricardo’s theory of value. They agreed to continue their argument in the Edinburgh Magazine in amicable battle.4 An article by Torrens appeared in the October number of the Edinburgh Magazine in the form of a letter to the Editor, signed ‘R’, under the title ‘Strictures on Mr Ricardo’s Doctrine respecting Exchangeable Value’. In this Torrens declared that Adam Smith was correct in maintaining that ‘after stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons who set industrious people to work by advancing them wages and material, the quantity of labour employed in production is not the circumstance which determines the exchangeable value of commodities’. Since the market price of commodities exceeds the wages of the labour by which they are produced and the rate of profit on capital tends to equality in different industries, and since ‘equal capitals generally put unequal quantities of labour in motion’, it follows inevitably: ‘first that the products obtained by the employment of equal capitals will be equal in value; and, secondly, that things on the production of which equal quantities of labour were bestowed will not be equivalent to each other in the market’. This doctrine that the products of equal capitals will be equal in value he qualified by the statement that ‘when capitals equal in amount, but of different degrees of durability, are employed, the articles produced, together with the residue of capital, in one occupation, will be equal to the things produced, and the residue of capital in another occupation’.1

It was probably soon after he had seen Torrens’ article on 25 November2 that Ricardo entered in one of his commonplace books3 the parallel quotations of Torrens’ objections side by side with the passages in his own Principles which proved them groundless.

M^cCulloch wrote a reply to Torrens, dated 2 Nov. 1818, which was published in the November number of the same magazine over the signature ‘M’. Ricardo shared Mill’s dissatisfaction with M^cCulloch’s vindication4 and himself wrote an answer to Torrens’ attack, and sent a copy of this to Mill.5 This answer was not written with the intention of publication (‘I have not entered into a long dissertation in my answer to Torrens. I wrote it for my own satisfaction and with no idea of publishing it’)1 . Unfortunately this reply has not been found. In sending the copy of it to Mill, however, Ricardo made an important comment upon what he considered to be his true difference of opinion with Adam Smith, which affords some indication of the tenor of the missing reply to Torrens.2 Torrens’ theory was reproduced in closely similar terms in 1821 in his Essay on the Production of Wealth, which is discussed by Ricardo in his paper on Absolute Value and Exchangeable Value (below, pp. 393–6).

This Note is concerned with the question whether a tax on commodities could raise prices without an increase in the quantity of money. This was a matter on which Ricardo twice changed his mind. In 1811 in his Reply to Bosanquet1 he held that this was possible. In 1817 in edition 1 of the Principles he denied the possibility; but in edition 3 he reverted to his earlier view, adding two footnotes in which he accepted the possibility ‘on further consideration’2 . The argument of the Note printed below is so closely similar to that of the footnotes added to edition 3 in 1821 as to indicate that it belongs to this period.

Soon after the publication of edition 3 the same problem was discussed by the Political Economy Club, in the form of the following question proposed by Torrens on 30 April 1821: ‘The quantity of Money being constant, would a general tax upon all commodities in a country raise their prices?’3 This and a similar question proposed by Tooke at a later meeting were discussed at a series of meetings up to June 1823. Ricardo describes one of these discussions in a letter to M^cCulloch of 8 Feb. 1822.4

Observations on the Effects Produced by the Expenditure of Government during the Restriction of Cash Payments, by William Blake, F.R.S., was published on 8 March 1823.1 The author states in the preface that he had written it in February 1822. Sometime between these two dates (‘before he printed it’) he showed it to Ricardo, who afterwards wrote: ‘I used the privilege of a friend in freely giving him my sentiments upon it: he was kind enough to give to my remarks the most attentive consideration, but he at last came to the conclusion that he had taken a correct view of the subject.’2

This exchange of ‘sentiments’ before publication however is distinct from the controversy contained in the papers printed below, which took place after, probably immediately after, publication. Ricardo wrote a series of remarks on the margins of his own copy of the published Observations; he wrote them first in pencil, and then went over them carefully in ink, no doubt to enable his friends to read them.3 Blake dealt with Ricardo’s criticisms one by one, in a reply which extends to 19 quarto pages of MS.

M^cCulloch published a long review of Blake in the form of a leading article in the Scotsman of 12 April 1823. But notwithstanding the guidance he had received it did not meet with Ricardo’s approval, as is made clear in a letter to M^cCulloch of 3 May 1823.1

The original copy of Blake’s pamphlet annotated by Ricardo is in the Library of Somerville College, Oxford. I am indebted to Professor F. A. Hayek for finding it and to the Librarian for making it available. This copy is inscribed ‘From the Author’, not in Blake’s hand. The volume of pamphlets at the end of which it is bound up2 bears the printed label: ‘This book formed part of the Library of the late John Stuart Mill, presented to the College by Miss Helen Taylor, in 1905.’

[B.] If the author has fallen into an Error here, he has done it upon the authority of one of the most intelligent practical and extensive Exchange Merchants with whom he is acquainted and one who in his Evidence before the Committee on Resumption of Cash payments was disposed to view the author’s opinions with great distrust. The author apprehends1 the critic to mistake the theory of Exchange—he speaks this with great deference. There is no doubt that the tendency of the Exchange under the supposed circumstances would be to a state of par—but during an intercourse such as the author has supposed deviations would occur that would give rise to exchange operations by which the deviations would be corrected—previously to such correction the language used by the critic would subject him to the contradiction stated in the note. If there were only two countries trading together their exports and imports would balance upon the whole and the tendency of the Exchange would be to a par—but temporary deviations would occur and during those deviations Exchange operations w ^d. take place.

[R.] Compare this passage with that in page 56. marked1 .[B.] p. 70. and p. 56. do not disagree. In the latter case the capitalist and the workmen both consume their respective portions—in the former it is supposed that the capitalist does not consume his portion and therefore there would be no motive for distributing the capital amongst the workmen.

[B.] Allusion is here made perhaps to the remark at p. 69, where the author does not mean to ridicule the idea of greater consumption but to inforce it. He does not think the mere waste of war adds much to consumption. But a population fully employed and receiving more1 wages (not higher wages) he conceives to be tantamount to an extra population for the time being.

The existence of these writings was hitherto unknown. They were found among the Mill-Ricardo papers, and are now published for the first time. A hint of their existence which had been given by M^cCulloch in the early anonymous versions of his Life and Writings of Mr. Ricardo1 has been completely over-looked. He stated that Ricardo, on retiring to Gatcomb in the summer of 1823, ‘engaged, with his usual ardour, in a profound and elaborate investigation concerning the absolute and exchangeable value of commodities. But he was not destined to bring this investigation to a close!’ In the later and better known versions of the Life, however, this allusion was dropped.2

Prompted by his disagreement with Malthus’s Measure of Value, which was published in April 1823, there was a prolonged correspondence on the subject between Ricardo and Malthus, which later extended to his other friends. During M^cCulloch’s visit to London between the middle of May and the end of June 1823 he joined in a number of discussions on this question which took place among Ricardo’s circle: discussions once referred to by Mrs. Grote as ‘the interminable controversy about the “measure of value”’.1 After these conversations Ricardo wrote to Malthus: ‘M^cCulloch and I did not settle the question of value before we parted—it is too difficult a one to settle in a conversation’; adding that he himself had promised ‘to bestow a good deal of consideration on it’ during his holiday.2 And on 8 August Mill, in a letter to Ricardo, remarked: ‘He [M^cCulloch] also told me that you were to reconsider the subject with your pen in your hand’.3

The paper which was the product of Ricardo’s reconsideration must have been sent to Mill after Ricardo’s death, together with the Plan for a National Bank; but unlike the latter it was apparently regarded by Mill as not suitable for publication. Ricardo himself evidently felt dissatisfied with his results: in his last letter to Mill on 5 Sept. 1823 he confessed that he had ‘been thinking a good deal on the subject lately, but without much improvement.’4

The draft was written on odd pieces of paper paginated 1 to 18. Some of them are covers of letters addressed to Ricardo; those which bear postmarks being dated in all but two cases between 6 and 9 Aug. 1823, and some insertions (below p. 364, n. 2 and n. 4, and p. 365, n. 2) being written on a letter-cover postmarked 23 Aug. 1823. We may, therefore, conclude that this draft was mainly written not earlier than the second week of August5 , and was revised not earlier than the last week of that month.

The later version is neatly written on seven uniform sheets of paper with scarcely any corrections. It breaks off at the end of a page. This version must have been written between the last few days of August and 5 September when Ricardo fell ill, since it contains passages from M^cCulloch’s letter of 24 August, from Malthus’s letter of 25 August, and from Ricardo’s reply to Malthus of 31 August.1

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

The ‘Ingenious Calculator’

In 1797 the Bank of England, although unwilling to disclose the absolute figures for their cash and for their discounts, had delivered to the Secret Committee of the Lords on the Suspension of Cash Payments two separate ‘scales’ (or, as they would now be called, index numbers) for cash and for discounts over the years 1782 to 1797. These scales were printed in the Appendix to the Report.

Ricardo, in Economical and Secure Currency, says that ‘by comparing these tables with each other and with some parts of the evidence delivered before the Parliamentary Committees, an ingenious calculator discovered the whole secret which the Bank wished to conceal.’1 He refers again to the same ‘ingenious individual’ in his Plan for a National Bank.2 But in neither of these cases does Ricardo quote his source or give any clue to the identity of the calculator.

Dr Bonar has suggested that it might be Thomas Tooke.3 Tooke’s first contribution to the question, however, was in 1829 when he applied the key furnished by the calculator of 1797 to the further scales disclosed to the Committees of 1819.4

If we look into the matter further the following facts emerge. The ‘ingenious calculator’ published his results in an article ‘On the Finances of the Bank’, dated ‘London, Oct. 16, 1797’, which appeared in the Monthly Magazine for October 1797; he signed himself ‘M. N.’

The article was reprinted by Alexander Allardyce in his Address to the Proprietors of the Bank of England, 3rd ed., 1798,5 where he refers to the author as ‘a writer, eminent for financial knowledge and acuteness’.6 In a MS note in a copy of Allardyce’s book which belonged to Lord Henry Petty (afterwards Lord Lansdowne) ‘M. N.’ is identified as ‘Mr. Morgan’.

No doubt Ricardo read the article in Allardyce’s book, which had been sent to him by Grenfell when he was writing Economical and Secure Currency;1 having guessed his identity, he must have written about it to Grenfell, for the latter, writing on 20 September 1815, asked him: ‘Where is the calculation of Mr. Morgan, as to the Cash and Bullion of the Bank in 1793 &c.?’2

This Mr. Morgan was no doubt William Morgan (1750–1833), F.R.S., actuary to the Equitable Assurance Society and author of many financial pamphlets.

Morgan discovered the key for deciphering what he calls the ‘cabalistical numbers’ of the Bank in an unpublished part of the evidence: he had ‘very good reason for believing (although the circumstance is not inserted in either of the reports) that one of the Directors acknowledged that the Bank, in the course of six days before it stopped payment, had been drained of its cash after the rate of £100,000 each day.’ Since the scale had been given both for 18 and 25 February 1797 (the beginning and the end of the period in question) he was enabled to calculate the absolute figure of the cash for all the dates included in the scale. The differences between the figures thus obtained and the aggregate figures for cash and bills discounted, which were published, gave the amount of bills discounted.

In 1810, at the request of the Bullion Committee, the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank again ‘furnished a comparative Scale, in progressive numbers, shewing the increase in the amount of their discounts from the year 1790 to 1809, both inclusive.’ But, no doubt as a result of their previous experience, they requested that the document should not be made public; the Committee therefore returned it to the Bank.3 Another leakage occurred, however, when the following letter appeared in the Morning Chronicle of 15 October 1810. As it also gives the voting in the Committee, which is not available in full elsewhere, it is here reprinted.

Bullion Report.

To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle.

Sir,

Happening to call upon a friend of mine the other day, who was a Member of the Bullion Committee, I found on his table the printed Report of that Committee, and on looking at the beginning of it I noticed in my friend’s handwriting, opposite to the title-page, what follows:—

I presume this must be the account delivered by the Bank of England to the Committee, for the purpose of shewing the rate of increase on their discounts since they have ceased paying in cash; and from this statement it appears that their discounts have increased since 1797, in the enormous proportion of 688 to 241, that is, that it has nearly trebled its amount. Why this statement was not printed with the other documents I am at a loss to conjecture. If the Bank Directors were anxious for its being withheld from the public, it proves that they are conscious that under this head of issue at least, they have made profits which they are desirous should not be publicly disclosed.

In another part of the same page I read what follows in my friend’s handwriting.

I make no comment upon this interesting manuscript; I only desire that these several names may be adverted to when the Bank Directors and learned Counsel insinuate that the great question was carried as a Party Question.

A.B.

It is probably to this publication that Ricardo refers in his Notes on the Bullion Report, when he writes that he is ‘credibly informed’ as to the proportion in the increase in discounts since the suspension of cash payments.1

Its authenticity was confirmed in the House of Commons on 5 April 1811, when Huskisson, in anticipation of the Bullion debate, moved unsuccessfully for the production of the scale in question, saying that it ‘had been communicated to the Committee by the Governor of the Bank, under an injunction not to insert it in the Report, and it had since been published in one of the daily vehicles of intelligence.’2 Alexander Baring, opposing the motion, observed that ‘a loose paragraph in the papers possessed no authenticity but what was conferred on it by the hon. gentleman himself’.3

Similar scales, brought up to date and on the same basis as those of 1797, were again supplied by the Bank to the Lords’ and Commons’ Committees on the Resumption of Cash Payments in 1819, and again they were withheld from the public.4 Tooke published them for the first time in 1829, by permission, together with the absolute figures which he worked out with the aid of the key supplied by the ‘ingenious calculator’ of 1797.5

The absolute figures for cash and for discounts, including the periods (though not the actual dates) of the scales of 1797, 1810 and 1819 were finally disclosed to the Bank Charter Committee of 1832 and published in Appendix 5 to their Report.

TABLES OF CORRESPONDING PAGES
for Ricardo’s Pamphlets in the original editions, 1815–24, M^cCulloch’s edition (Works, 1846 etc.), Gonner’s edition (Economic Essays, 1923 etc.), and the present edition.

[1 ]To Malthus, 17 Aug. 1813, below, VI, 94–5. In the previous letter, of 10 August, he had argued that the extension of foreign trade does not by itself increase profits. The light thrown on the origin of the theory of profits by these two letters has been obscured hitherto by their having been misdated 1810 in Letters to Malthus, Oxford, 1887.

[2 ]See Trower’s letter of 2 March 1814, below, VI, 102.

[1 ]Below, VI, 103–4.

[2 ]Referred to hereafter as the Essay on Profits.

[3 ]It is remarkable that in the first half of the Essay on Profits there is an unusually large number of footnotes, and that most references to Malthus are contained in them: this suggests that it is the revised version of a text prepared before the appearance of Malthus’s pamphlets. The second half, on the other hand, is a direct reply to these pamphlets.

[4 ]See below, p. 5, n. 5.

[5 ]The debate began on 17 February and ended with the passing of the new Corn Law on 10 March 1815.

[6 ]At that time there was no fixed ‘day of publication’. The earliest advertisement stating ‘this day is published’ and giving the price of the pamphlet has been taken to indicate the date of publication.

[1 ]See the facsimile opposite. Cp. also Ricardo’s letter to Malthus of 9 March 1815 (below, VI, 179–80): ‘I have read his [West’s] book with attention and I find that his views agree very much with my own.’

[2 ]Torrens, in his Essay on the External Corn Trade, pp. x and 281, quotes Malthus’s Grounds of an Opinion, published after the Inquiry into Rent.

[3 ]Among the further consequences of this mistaken notion is that of regarding Ricardo as the originator of the whole marginal theory. ‘The Ricardian law of rent...is the first great example of the marginal method, later to become the keystone of the entire Austrian system of economic theory.’ (J. M. Clark, art. ‘Distribution’, in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, 1931.)

[4 ]Edinburgh, Black, 1828, vol. iv, pp. 124–5.

[5 ]The writer here confuses the Essay of 1815 with the Principles of1817.

[1 ]See an entry in MS list of published writings of J. S. Mill, in the Mill-Taylor papers in the Library of the London School of Economics: ‘1827. A dissertation on Rent, in the notes subjoined to MacCulloch’s edition of Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Some parts of this note were however altered by MacCulloch.’ [The list has been printed as Bibliography of the Published Writings of J. S. Mill, ed. by N. MacMinn and others, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., 1945; the item in question is mistaken by the editors for McCulloch’s Note on Taxes on Rent.]

[2 ]The letter to Malthus of 6 Feb. 1815, however, refers to some discussion of rent between them at an earlier time: see below, VI, 173.

[3 ]He stated it as early as 1810 or 1811 in his Notes on Bentham, above, III, 287.

[4 ]It is remarkable that West also, in the first 48 pages of his pamphlet, applies the principle of diminishing returns on land exclusively to the theory of profits: it is only in the last 7 pages that he applies it to rent.

[5 ]It was Ricardo’s publication of the theory of profits, rather than his discovery of it, that followed Malthus’s pamphlet.

[1 ]‘The law of rent came into Ricardo’s system, not as a basis, but as a better proof of a theory already developed.’ (S. N. Patten, ‘The Interpretation of Ricardo’, in Quarterly Journal of Economics, April 1893, vol. vii, p. 329.)

[2 ]In the early editions of his Life and Writings of Mr. Ricardo, McCulloch emphasised the connection between the two works: ‘This Essay is particularly worthy of attention, as it contains a brief statement of some of the fundamental principles subsequently demonstrated in the “Principles of Political Economy and Taxation.”’ But in the later versions (including the one prefixed to Ricardo’s Works, 1846) he omitted this passage.

[1 ]See below, VI, 267–8.

[2 ]Below, VI, 241–2. The pamphlet was published too late for the Bank Courts both of September and December. It was in time however for the debate on Grenfell’s motion in the House of Commons on 13 Feb. 1816.

[3 ]Below, VI, 268.

[4 ]Letter to Malthus of 10 Sept. 1815, below, VI, 268. He added, ‘I always enjoy any attack upon the Bank and if I had sufficient courage I would be a party to it.’ No doubt Malthus had this remark in mind, when, having read the MS, he wrote, ‘I conclude that you have no reason to care much for the resentment of the Bank. The publication will no doubt make the Directors very angry.’ (16 Oct. 1815, below, VI, 302.)

[1 ]Below, p. 114. The wording of the paragraph in question suggests that it was drafted or revised by Mill.

[2 ]Below, VI, 286. Also unconnected with Grenfell’s agitation was the proposal to issue dividend warrants in advance of the date of payment, in order to relieve the periodical pressure on the money market, below, pp. 74–5.

[3 ]Below, VI, 43 and 67.

[4 ]ib. 285–6.

[5 ]ib. 294–5.

[6 ]ib. 298 and cp. 315.

[7 ]ib. 305.

[8 ]ib. 315.

[9 ]ib. 331.

[1 ]See below, VI, 337–8.

[2 ]See below, p. 93 and cp. VII, 5. Mill had also to allay Ricardo’s fears that, ‘as a loan contractor, and a successful one’, he was himself open to the accusation of having made excessive profits.

[3 ]Below, VI, 335.

[4 ]Below, VII, 1.

[5 ]The Times, 22 January; see below, VII, 13, n. 4.

[6 ]See below, VII, 4.

[7 ]See below, VII, 16 and 19. Advertised as ‘lately published’ in Monthly Literary Advertiser for 10 Feb. 1816.

[8 ]Below, VII, 14.

[9 ]ib. 24. It was advertised in The Times of 28 February.

[10 ]Below, pp. 87–8 and 97.

[11 ]Above, I, 356–61 and cp. below, VII, 353.

[1 ]Advt. in The Times, 25 March 1819.

[1 ]The 5th ed. (1815) and the 6th ed. (1823) were virtual reprints of the 4th ed., which had been published at intervals between 1801 and1810. All the new matter was contained in the Supplement.

[2 ]Advertised in Scotsman, 9 Sept. 1820; cp. below, VIII, 240.

[3 ]Below, VIII, 54 and 60.

[4 ]See Graham Wallas, Life of Francis Place, p. 159 ff.

[5 ]See below, VIII, 66.

[6 ]ib. 72.

[7 ]ib. 78–9.

[8 ]Below, pp. 196–7.

[1 ]Above, I, 247–8.

[2 ]Below, V, 21.

[3 ]Below, V, 34–5 and 38–9; cp. VIII, 147.

[4 ]Below, VIII, 83.

[5 ]ib. 105.

[6 ]ib. 105 and 118 ff.

[7 ]ib. 131. Mill had forwarded the article to Napier in October; see ib. 141 and 144.

[8 ]ib. 81.

[9 ]ib. 127.

[10 ]ib. 137–8.

[11 ]ib. 141.

[1 ]See below, VIII, 188.

[2 ]See above, p. 145, n. 2.

[3 ]See below, VIII, 240–1.

[4 ]John McVickar, in his Outlines of Political Economy, New York, 1825, p. 76, n., says that the article Trading System in the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica over the signature E.E.E. is by Ricardo. As Professor Viner, to whom I owe this reference, suggests, Trading System must be an error for Funding System. There is no article Trading System in the Supplement.

[1 ]Unpublished, in British Museum Add. MSS 34612, fol. 414.

[1 ]It was first advertised in the Morning Chronicle of 16 April 1822 among ‘Books published this day’, but as no price was stated this may have been only a preliminary announcement: on 18 April it was again advertised, this time with the price, 3s.

[2 ]David Ricardo, A Centenary Estimate, 1910, p. 54.

[3 ]See below, p. 263. These proposals had been outlined already in Ricardo’s Principles, 1817, above, I, 266–7.

[4 ]Below, V, 158–9.

[1 ]See below, IX, 180.

[2 ]Below, V, 154.

[3 ]See below, IX, 179.

[4 ]The ‘Pope’ of Holland House, ed. by Lady Seymour, London, 1906, pp. 248–9. Cp. below, V, 127, n.

[1 ]Below, V, 155.

[2 ]In some copies of the fourth edition there is attached Murray’s list of ‘Works Recently Published’ dated June 1822.

[1 ]Advertised ‘Tomorrow will be published’, in Courier 23 Feb. 1824.

[2 ]Below, IX, 325–6. A few days later he wrote of it to Mill (ib. 329) and to McCulloch (ib. 331.)

[3 ]See below, VI, 268, and cp. above, pp. 45–6.

[4 ]Below, VI, 165–6.

[5 ]Above, I, 361–3.

[1 ]Below, V, 156 and 193.

[2 ]See Annual Biography and Obituary for 1824, p. 376.

[3 ]Letter from Moses Ricardo, 27 March 1832, MS in possession of Sir John Murray.

[4 ]Political Economy Club, Minutes of Proceedings, 1821–1882, p. 110.

[1 ]The location of these three passages is given at the end of the relevant footnotes, viz., p. 286 n. 1, p. 289 n. 4, p. 291 n. 1.

[2 ]These three MSS have been published in Ricardo’s Minor Papers on the Currency Question, ed. by J. H. Hollander, Baltimore, 1932. There the grouping of the MSS is somewhat different from that adopted here. The MSS here denoted as 1 and 2 are there printed as a single item under A. The draft here denoted as 3 is there printed in full under B. And the revised passages, here included in item 3, are there printed as a separate item under C.

[3 ]For example, Mill corrects ‘because, if it be not, the merchants will suffer’ to ‘for this reason— that if it be not, the merchants will suffer’ (below, p. 278, lines 5–6); and again ‘is estimated to amount to about 10 millions’ is altered to ‘is estimated at about 10 millions’ (below, p. 292, lines 16–18).

[1 ]Below, VII, 179.

[2 ]ib. 338, n. 2.

[3 ]ib. 253.

[4 ]Above, I, 61 n.

[5 ]Below, VII, 338.

[6 ]One sheet of (A 1) bears the watermark of 1817 and has on the back of it in Ricardo’s handwriting some particulars of the 4th Report of the Committee on Finance of 5 June 1817.

[7 ]Above, I, 56. An alternative version of the same conditions was: ‘if the fixed capital employed be either of unequal value or of unequal duration’ (ib. 53).

[1 ]Below, VII, 338 and above, I, 61: see also the paragraph added in I, 31.

[2 ]Below, p. 311.

[3 ]Theorien u¨ber den Mehrwert, ed. 1923, vol. iii, pp. 381–2.

[4 ]Below, VII, 316.

[1 ]Edinburgh Magazine, Oct. 1818, p. 337.

[2 ]Below, VII, 332, n. 3.

[3 ]This entry follows one from the Edinburgh Review of September 1818 and precedes one from Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws, which he says in a letter to Mill on 28 Dec. 1818 that he had been reading (below, VII, 382).

[4 ]Below, VII, 364.

[5 ]Below, VII, 376. Ricardo had completed this reply by 12 Dec. 1818 (ib. 360).

[1 ]Below, VII, 372.

[2 ]ib. 377.

[1 ]Above, III, 242–3.

[2 ]Above, I, 213, and cp. 169.

[3 ]Political Economy Club, Minutes 1821–1882, p. 40 ff.

[4 ]Below, IX, 158–9.

[1 ]Advt. of the Publishers (John Murray and E. Lloyd & Son) headlined ‘To-morrow, 8vo, 4s.’ in Morning Chronicle, 7 March1823.

[2 ]Letter to McCulloch of 25 March 1823, below, IX, 275.

[3 ]Occasionally the ink version differs from the pencil one, but in such cases the pencil script is mostly illegible. From the quotations given in Blake’s replies it is clear that he had before him the ink version as printed here.

[1 ]Below, IX, 284 ff.

[2 ]The other pamphlets in the volume are Ricardo’s Protection to Agriculture, 3rd ed., 1822 and Whitmore’s Letter on the Present State and Future Prospects of Agriculture, 2nd ed., 1823, inscribed ‘From the Author’: there are no MS notes on them. The volume is uncut, bound in boards with vellum back and on the back the titles are written in ink in Ricardo’s handwriting.

[1 ]Replaces ‘I apprehend’; and, below, ‘he speaks’ replaces ‘I speak’.

[1 ]Quotation XXVIII.

[1 ]Replaces ‘extra’.

[1 ]See Edinburgh Annual Register for 1823 and the pamphlet Memoir of the Life and Writings of David Ricardo, London, 1825.

[2 ]In these later versions, such as the one prefixed to his own edition of Ricardo’s Works, 1846, p. xxix, McCulloch merely speaks of Ricardo’s engaging ‘in elaborate inquiries regarding some of the more abstruse economical doctrines.’

[1 ]Quoted below, IX, 301.

[2 ]ib. 303.

[3 ]ib. 334.

[4 ]ib. 387.

[5 ]The fact that two pages are postmarked respectively 28 and 29 July 1823, does not affect the above conclusion, since these consist of the final page and a page added later.

[1 ]See below, pp. 409–10.

[1 ]Above, p. 99 and cp. p. 112 n.

[2 ]Above, p. 279.

[3 ]‘Who was the “ingenious calculator” who found out the Bank’s cash and bullion in 1797; was it Tooke?’ (Economic Journal, 1923, p. 414.)

[4 ]See below, p. 418.

[5 ]Appendix, pp. 82–90.

[6 ]Address, p. 32.

[1 ]See below, VI, 260.

[2 ]Below, VI, 275.

[3 ]Bullion Report, 8vo ed., p. 62.

[1 ]Above, III, 358.

[2 ]Hansard, XIX, 731.

[3 ]ib. 734.

[4 ]See Lords’ Second Report, p. 31 and Commons’ Second Report, p. 152. Two of the numbers were mentioned in the evidence before the Commons’ Committee, ib. p. 45.

[5 ]A Letter to Lord Grenville, on the Effects Ascribed to the Resumption of Cash Payments on the Value of the Currency, by Thomas Tooke, London, Murray, 1829, pp. 42–6.