200.: malthus to ricardo2[Reply to 199] - David Ricardo, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 7 Letters 1816-1818 [1816]
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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. 7 Letters 1816-1818.
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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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200.
malthus to ricardo
[Reply to 199]
E I Coll Jany. 26 [1817]
My Dear Sir,
I fear I shall not be able to leave College at the time of the meeting of the Court of Proprietors, or it would give me great pleasure to accept your kind invitation. I am glad you are satisfied with the arguments of the pamphlet. I should not indeed have much fear of its effects, if there were not so strong a body of persons to contend with, who only think of sending out their sons, as soon, and with as little expense of education, as they can.
I agree with you that one cause of our difference in opinion is that which you mention. I certainly am disposed to refer frequently to things as they are, as the only way of making one’s writings practically useful to society, and I think also the only way of being secure from falling into the errors of the taylors of Laputa, and by a slight mistake at the outset arrive at conclusions the most distant from the truth. Besides I really think that the progress of society consists of irregular movements, and that to omit the consideration of causes which for eight or ten years will give a great stimulus to production and population, or a great check to them, is to omit the causes of the wealth and poverty of nations—the grand object of all enquiries in Political Economy. A writer may, to be sure, make any hypothesis he pleases; but if he supposes what is not at all true practically, he precludes himself from drawing any practical inferences from his hypothesis. In your essay on profits you suppose the real wages of labour constant; but as they vary with every alteration in the prices of commodities, (while they remain nominally the same) and are in reality as variable as profits, there is no chance of your inferences being just as applied to the actual state of things. We see in all the countries around us, and in our own particularly, periods of greater and less prosperity, and sometimes of adversity, but never the uniform progress which you seem alone to contemplate.
But to come to a still more specific and fundamental cause of our difference, I think it is this. You seem to think that the wants and tastes of mankind are always ready for the supply; while I am most decidedly of opinion that few things are more difficult, than to inspire new tastes and wants, particularly out of old materials; that one of the great elements of demand is the value that people set upon commodities, and that the more completely the supply is suited to the demand the higher will this value be, and the more day’s labour will it exchange for, or give the power of commanding. The advantage of foreign commerce consists in a great degree in its tendency to increase this value [and] the disadvantage of a fall in the money price of [any] class of commodity which is not made up by a proportionate increase of their quantity, arises from the diminution of the sum of values thus occasioned, or the smaller quantity of labour that these values can command. I am quite of opinion that practically the actual check to produce and population arises more from want of stimulus than want of power to produce.
I think as you say there may be some ambiguity in some parts of the language of my inquiry into rent; but I cannot see the contradiction you allude to, in my first and third causes; nor do I understand at all what you mean by saying that the second never operates. Has the production of food which tends to give the labourer a greater command of it, (provided it be properly distributed) no tendency to increase population? Or are not the fertility of land, and the scarcity of fertile land, both absolutely necessary to produce high rents, or a great excess of the price of corn above the cost of production? Is it possible that high rent can exist without fertility whatever may be the scarcity of land? or is it possible that high rents can exist without scarcity whatever may be the fertility?
The sentence you so much approve of is I think not sufficiently limited. I believe that the bullion price of corn in this country is higher than in Sweden although the last land taken into cultivation in Sweden is less fertile than ours, and I do not think that the reason of this can properly be attributed to irregularity of currency. The points relating to the causes of high money price are those which I most wish to alter.
I am busy about my new edition which is after all to be three volumes. There are some points I want to consult you about, but I am much hurried. Perhaps I shall be able to leave College and will let you know.
Mrs. M desires to be kindly remembered to Mrs. Ricardo.
Ever Yours
T R Malthus
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