148.: malthus to ricardo1[Reply to 144.—Answered by 150] - David Ricardo, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 6 Letters 1810-1815 [1810]
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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.
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First published by Cambridge University Press in 1951. Copyright 1951, 1952, 1955, 1973 by the Royal Economic Society. This edition of The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., under license from the Royal Economic Society.
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148.
malthus to ricardo
[Reply to 144.—Answered by 150]
London Decr 28th 1815
My dear Sir,
I saw your name in the papers, and wrote immediately to the Stock Exchange, hoping to catch you before you left London, and indeed thinking it possible that I might find you in Town the next week. I conclude from your letter that you set off the next day, and that mine has not yet reached you.
It would, I assure you, give me great pleasure to fulfil my engagement at Gatcomb, but circumstances are not favourable to it. I am in Town with Mrs. Malthus and the children, and cannot possibly leave them till they return; and then I shall be so behind hand with regard to my own business, and so likely to be involved in College affairs, that I fear it will be quite impossible for me to leave this neighbourhood. I have been so much interrupted already by College business, that I have made very little progress in my edition since I saw you, and I find it will require altogether more time than I expected. By the by I wish you would mention to me any passages in any part of the work, which may have struck you as objectionable. I still doubt as to the additions which I ought to make to the new chapters you saw. If I complete the subject, and say what I meant to say with respect to Restrictions on the importation of foreign corn, and the effects of high prices on foreign commerce, I fear I shall be led into too great length, and yet if I shorten it I shall probably be thought obscure. It would have been better perhaps in many respects to leave out the whole of the practical question relating to Bounties and Restrictions.
I am glad to hear you have recovered your manuscript, and that it is likely soon to appear in public. You would naturally feel a little agitated in speaking for the first time in the Court, but you are so much in the habit of speaking correctly, when you do speak, and have generally so good a command of words, that I should never feel any apprehension about your acquitting yourself well.
I am writing from Town and among all the children who are reading aloud so I hardly know what I say. In my last to the Stock Exchange I said something on our old subject. I much fear I shall be called upon to write something about the College, which will be very inconvenient to me. Mrs. M desires to be kindly remembered to Mrs. Ricardo
Ever truly Yours
T R Malthus