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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 144.: ricardo to malthus1[Answered by 148] - The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 6 Letters 1810-1815

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144.: ricardo to malthus1[Answered by 148] - 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:

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144.

ricardo to malthus1
[Answered by 148]

My dear Sir

I write to remind you that the time is come at which you once gave me hopes, almost to certainty, that I should have the pleasure of seeing you here; and even when I last saw you, you promised, if you could make it convenient, to come and pass a part of your vacation with me. The weather is beautiful, and my desire to see you as ardent as ever. Come then, and inhale the pure atmosphere of our hills, and be under no fear that your visit will retard any object to which your attention may now be devoted, for you shall be free to write, study or read, as many hours in the day as you please unmolested by any one’s intrusion.

My lost manuscript is recovered.1 Mr. Mill recommends its publication but advises me to write an introduction, and to divide it into sections. I had almost resolved to throw it aside,—but I have been again at work upon it, and though I cannot put it in any shape to please me, it is I think rather better than when you saw it, and the probability at present is that I shall venture to publish it.

I attended the Bank Court the other day.2 —I had no intention whatever of speaking, but some very bad reasoning on the other side, and a total deviation from the question called me up, and I spoke for 5 or ten minutes with considerable inward agitation but without committing any glaring blunder. My speaking is like my writing too much compressed. —I am too apt to crowd a great deal of difficult matter into so short a space as to be incomprehensible to the generality of readers. The Chronicle, I see, has reported what he thought or heard I said, but he has imputed to me what I neither felt nor uttered. Allusions were made to the Bullion question and it was said that it had been prophecied that if the Bank Directors were corrupt, they might with the power they had of issuing paper occasion the greatest public distress,—no such distress however had been experienced. I observed in reply that the goodness of the system was not proved by the distress not having occurred,—that the speaker had been only paying a compliment to the integrity of the Directors, in which no one in the court was more ready to join than myself,—but if the Directors had been corrupt I still thought that they had been armed with the power of doing mischief. Though I was ready to declare my confidence in the integrity of the Directors, there were many parts of their system of which I could not approve, &ca. &ca..—This is very different from the report in the Chronicle,—but I understand that the reporters were most carefully excluded from the Court.

I hope the business at the College has been settled to your satisfaction, and that the result of the late unpleasant disturbance will give you some security against its recurrence in future.1

I conclude that you have quite finished writing the alterations and amendments which you projected for the new edition of your book.2 When I last saw you I think you had made considerable progress and therefore it is probable that you may be already in the press. What point will next engage your attention? for I hope as Mr. Say says that you will travaillez toujours.—

Make my kind compliments to Mrs. Malthus.

Ever Yrs.

David Ricardo

[1 ]Addressed: ‘To / The Revd. T. R Malthus / East India College / Hertford’.—MS at Albury.—Letters to Malthus, XL.

[1 ]The MS of Economical and Secure Currency; cp. letter 138.

[2 ]21 December. The debate was on the motion of P. P. Bouverie (‘the speaker’ referred to below) ‘that an account be laid before a ’General Court...of the amount of the surplus profits of this Company’.

[1 ]The Committee of Directors who had the superintendance of the East India College had expelled a number of boys in consequence of the latest outrages (The Times, 1 Dec. 1815).

[2 ]The Essay on Population; cp. above, p. 289.