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38.: ricardo to malthus1 - 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.


38.

ricardo to malthus1

My dear Sir

I have written to Mr. Thornton2 to request him to meet you at dinner, at my house, on any day most convenient to him, after saturday, and before thursday, but I have not had his answer in time for this day’s post. I will send you a line at the King of Clubs.3 I shall only ask Mr. Sharp to meet us.

Will you not stay with us whilst you are in Town? I assure you it would be quite convenient, and it would afford me great pleasure. If Mrs. Malthus accompany you it will be still more agreeable, and I am desired by Mrs. Ricardo to add her solicitations to my own.

On many points connected with our old question we are I believe agreed,—though there is yet some difference between us. I have not lately given it so much consideration as you have,—and I always regret that I do not put down in writing, for I have a very treacherous memory the chief points of difference that occur in our discussions. I cannot help thinking that there is no unfavourable exchange which may not be corrected by a diminution in the amount of the currency, and I consider this to afford a proof that the currency must be redundant for a time at least. Whilst the exchange is unfavourable it is always accompanied though not always caused by an excess of currency. With best respects to Mrs. Malthus

I am My dear Sir Your’s most truly

David Ricardo

If you will occupy our room be so good as to write me a line, and again let me say that by complying with my request you will give me great pleasure.

As I was about leaving the city I recd. Mr. Thornton’s answer he is engaged on wednesday and thursday, and has fixed on monday for our meeting but he wishes us to meet at his house as there is to be a debate in the House of Lords on the Bullion question1 and he is not sure that his presence may not be necessary in the Commons. I will settle this point with him and if you do not hear from me I shall expect you at my house on monday, if you do not agree to come on saturday eveng.

[1 ]Addressed: ‘To / The Revd. T. R. Malthus/East India College/ Hertford’.

MS at Albury.—Letters to Malthus, XII.

[2 ]Henry Thornton (1760–1815), M.P. for Southwark, one of the authors of the Bullion Report.

[3 ]A small society, chiefly of Whig politicians, which met monthly for dinner from 1798 to 1823. Malthus had been elected a member on 4 April 1812 and Ricardo was elected on 7 June 1817. Sharp, Mackintosh and Whishaw were among the founders. (See The Clubs of London, 1828, vol. ii, pp. 159–201; and W. P. Courtney, ‘The King of Clubs’, in The ‘Pope’ of Holland House, 1906, pp. 333–40.)

[1 ]The Lords’ debate, however, took place on Friday, 18 December, when the Gold Coin Bill (for continuing Lord Stanhope’s Act of the previous year) was passed.