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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 99.: malthus to ricardo1[Answered by 100] - The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 6 Letters 1810-1815

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99.: malthus to ricardo1[Answered by 100] - 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.


99.

malthus to ricardo1
[Answered by 100]

My dear Sir

We leave this place tomorrow for the Bath country, and aware of your engagements at present, I will not take up more of your time than to say how much obliged to you I am for your kindness about the Loan, and the trouble you have taken for me. Should the Allies be successful at the commencement of the campaign, omnium will certainly rise very considerably; but on the other hand if Bonaparte should begin prosperously, I think there might be a panic which would occasion a rapid fall; and tho on the whole the probabilities of a rise are perhaps the greatest, yet I am fully and entirely satisfied with what you have done and beg to thank you sincerely.2

I saw Lord King last night. He speaks of having heard of very general distress among farmers and shopkeepers all over the country. I confess I feel more and more convinced of the unavoidable evils attending a general fall of prices, and of the unobserved advantages attending the high prices of corn and labour (when not arising solely from diffy of production[)]. I mentioned the subject to Lord K. but we had not time to discuss it. He said he would consider it, and that the view which I took of the effect of such prices on foreign commerce appeared to him to be quite new.

By the by I have just obtained the prices of wheat and labour in America. Before the late war, labour was about 4s. 6. or 5 shillings stirling a day and wheat about 11s. 3d. a bushel. I am surprised at these prices in a specie currency. —But I am doing what I did not intend.

Mrs. M desires to be kindly remembered to Mrs. Ricardo.

Believe me very truly Yours

T R Malthus.

My address in a few days will be Claverton House near Bath.

[1 ]Addressed: ‘D. Ricardo Esqr /56. Upper Brook Street / Grosvenor Square’.—MS in R.P.

[2 ]A loan of £36,000,000 had been contracted for by Ricardo and others on 14 June. Ricardo had presumably sold the share of £5000, which he had reserved for Malthus, on the same day, when the Omnium was quoted at 2½ to 3¼ per cent. premium. The news of Waterloo (18 June 1815) did not reach London till the evening of 20 June, and on the following day the Omnium rose to 6 per cent. premium.