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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 90.: malthus to ricardo1[Reply to 89] - The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 6 Letters 1810-1815

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90.: malthus to ricardo1[Reply to 89] - 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.


90.

malthus to ricardo1
[Reply to 89]

My dear Sir,

I write a line to say that your visit on sunday will be perfectly convenient, and very agreeable to us, and we are only sorry that you cannot make it longer.

Would it be inconvenient to you to call some time before you come down at Murray’s, and say that I have been expecting a letter from him in answer to one I wrote about a week ago. I wished to know whether from the new turn that affairs had taken in Europe, the question of the corn laws was so completely at an end, as that the public would not be inclined to listen to any further discussion on the subject, in which case I would say what I had to say in a new edition of the Rents, without directly answering Mr. Torrens; or whether it would be adviseable to make a reply to his work in a long note at the end of the Grounds.2 I have felt so much doubt lately as to which of the two plans would be the best, that with the assistance of idleness and engagements I have not proceeded in the execution of either. I think Mr. Torrens’s publication is an able one in many respects. At the same time I think him wrong in many important points, and cannot consider him as having taken a just view of the whole subject. He is particularly wrong respecting rent, which he uniformly views as so much increase of the expence of production, instead of a measure of the excess of produce above that expence.

But we will talk of these things when I have the pleasure of seeing you. I shall rely upon your coming on sunday.

I hope there is yet a small chance of peace, though I fear our ministers are not that way inclined. We ought not to give Buonaparte the moral strength which he will derive from our beginning the attack.

Ever truly Yours

T R Malthus

[1 ]Addressed: ‘D. Ricardo Esqr / Upper Brook Street / Grosvenor Square’.

MS in R.P.

[2 ]Cp. above, p. 201. Neither of Malthus’s pamphlets had a second edition.