Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 28.: malthus to ricardo1 - The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 6 Letters 1810-1815

Return to Title Page for The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 6 Letters 1810-1815

28.: malthus to ricardo1 - 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.)

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


28.

malthus to ricardo1

My dear Sir,

I am quite vexed to be obliged to say that the Professor’s bed which I expected to have obtained for you on saturday is engaged. You know I believe that we have only two in our own house. I had engaged Mr. Hamilton’s1 bed, before I went to Town for either Horner or Sharp, and when I saw you I expected to be able to get another; but I could not speak, as I told you, with certainty, and it now turns out, that I was right not to be too confident. The Inn is too far off to allow of its being proposed at this time of the year.

I hope this disappointment will not be the occasion of any long delay of a visit from you. Can you come on the saturday following?2 I think Mr. Sharp3 may be persuaded to accompany you; and if you will then have the goodness to bring the remarks which you alluded to on the last Edinburgh Review,4 I shall have great pleasure in hearing them, and, we can have a fair and full discussion of the whole subject. One reason indeed that makes me regret rather less my present disappointment than I otherwise should do, is, that I find from Mr. Whishaw5 that it is the intention of the party to return on sunday morning, which if we asked any body to meet them on saturday, would allow little or no time for the discussion of such a point as that which we wish to [decide.]6

I hope you will be able to come on saturday s’ennight.

I am my dear Sir very sincerely Yours

T Robt Malthus

[1 ]Addressed: ‘David Ricardo Esqr / 16. Throgmorton Street / London’.

MS in R.P.

[1 ]Professor Alexander Hamilton.

[2 ]14 December.

[3 ]First written ‘Sharpe’, then corrected.

[4 ]Malthus’s article on bullion in the August number; see above, p. 47, n. 2. Ricardo’s remarks have not been found.

[5 ]John Whishaw (1764–1840), of Lincoln’s Inn, one of the Commissioners of Audit, and a prominent figure in Whig society. He had been a contemporary of Malthus at Cambridge. (See ‘A Memoir of Whishaw’ by W. P. Courtney, in The ‘Pope’ of Holland House, Selections from the Correspondence of John Whishaw and his friends, ed. by Lady Seymour, London, 1906, pp. 19–37; a book which is largely made up of Whishaw’s letters to the Smiths of Easton Grey.)

[6 ]Covered by seal.