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15.: malthus to ricardo 3[Answered by 16] - David Ricardo, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 6 Letters 1810-1815 [1810]

Edition used:

The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. Piero Sraffa with the Collaboration of M.H. Dobb (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005). Vol. 6 Letters 1810-1815.

Part of: The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, 11 vols (Sraffa ed.)

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15.

malthus to ricardo 3
[Answered by 16]

Dear Sir

In the eagerness of our discussion when I had the pleasure of seeing you, I forgot to thank you for the account of the Jamaica Exchange. An export of bullion under a favourable computed exchange appears to me as strong a proof as one can well have of a depreciated paper currency in the country to which the bullion is exported; but in the present case as a nominal premium is still given for an English bill, the evidence would be more striking if it could be shewn that a greater premium was given formerly, when little or no bullion was exported. Perhaps you may have an opportunity of ascertaining what was the premium in 1808, and what has been the progress of its fall.

With regard to the points of difference, between us, though perhaps we have approximated a little in our late conversations, I think, it seems, that we are not likely entirely to agree. I have only to add that in the use of the term redundant as applied to currency, I have been, as far as I recollect, always consistent. I have always applied it to such a state of things as tends to produce a comparative rise of prices, generally, without a tendency to lower the prices of any commodities; and never to a state of things where a rise in the prices of one set of commodities is necessarily accompanied by a fall in the price of others, as in the case of a scarcity of corn or of any necessary articles; and I still think that these two states of things which lead to two such different consequences ought to be differently designated.

If you have leisure I wish to recommend to your attention the 18 chapter1 of the 2nd book of Sir James Steuarts Political Economy. Though I by no means agree with him in his general conclusions in that chapter; yet I think you will see there, what I mean by a comparative rise of prices not occasioned by a comparative redundancy of currency.

Hume, Smith, Huskisson and all the most respectable writers on these subjects have uniformly considered an unfavourable real exchange as tending strongly to correct itself before it arrives at the expence of transporting the precious metals; and I cannot help most decidedly agreeing with them. I do not see otherwise what would be the encouragement to the exportation of a greater quantity of manufactures during a war. But no such encouragement would be given if, as you say, the variations in the rate of exchange always represent corresponding variations in the values of the currencies.

We expect our house to be full with Mrs. Malthus’s family for the next week, after which I shall go into Lincolnshire for about ten days.1 On my return I hope we shall have the pleasure of seeing you at Hertford. I am dear Sir

Sincerely Yours in great haste

T R Malthus

[3 ]Addressed: ‘David Ricardo Esqr / 16 Throgmorton Street / London’.—MS in R.P.

[1 ]Entitled ‘Methods of lowering the Price of Manufactures in order to make them vendible in foreign Markets.’

[1 ]This and later visits of Malthus to Lincolnshire (below, VII, 193, VIII, 226 and cp. VIII, 349) were no doubt in connection with the living of Walesby, Lincs., to which he had been presented by Henry Dalton, his father’s cousin, in 1803, and which he held ‘as a non-resident incumbent for the rest of his life, leaving the parish in charge of a succession of curates.’ (See J. M. Keynes, ‘Robert Malthus’ in Essays in Biography, reprint of May 1933, p. 113.)