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206.: ricardo to malthus2[Answered by 207] - David Ricardo, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 7 Letters 1816-1818 [1816]

Edition used:

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.

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.


206.

ricardo to malthus2
[Answered by 207]

My dear Sir

The public papers have ere this informed you of the result of yesterday’s ballot at the India House; Mr. Jackson’s motion4 was lost by a majority of 21 or 22.

Mr. Jackson, in his reply, said every thing of you that your most partial friends could wish, and indeed the general tone of his speech, yesterday, was much more moderate than that by which he introduced his motion.

Mr. Bosanquet’s5 comments on some passages in your pamphlet,1 leads me to think that he must have misunderstood you, as I conceive that it was not your intention by recommending the Directors to appoint more young men than there were vacant writerships, that the unsuccessful candidates should be finally and irrecoverably dismissed from all chance of going out to India. I imagine that it was your intention to let them be again competitors for one of the prizes of the following year, and therefore that the punishment of their neglect would rather be a delay in their appointment than an absolute dismission. Mr. Bosanquet appeared to me to argue on the latter supposition.

Mr. Elphinstone2 spoke very kindly, and very handsomely of the professors, yet I thought that he was by far the most formidable opponent of the College, as at present constituted, and the one that I should have been least able to answer. His speech was short, but from the moderation of his language, it produced, I think, a considerable effect, and gave great courage to Mr. Jackson’s party.

I hope this subject will not be again revived, or rather I hope that the proficiency of the young men, and the absence of all turbulence, will satisfy every one of the impolicy of interfering with the establishment.—

I am sorry to be under the necessity of putting off my visit to you, but I shall not be able to be with you on saturday. We have, before we expected it, received an account of Mrs. Austin’s accouchement, and her mother is so very desirous of seeing her, and Mrs. Clutterbuck, who is with her, that we are going very early on Monday morning, accompanied by Fanny, into Gloucestershire, so that I must defer my visit to you to some more favourable opportunity.—

Perhaps you may be in London to the King of Clubs. If so pray come to us. I wanted to shew you my observations1 on your pamphlets before they go to the printers. If I do not see you on friday I shall send them by the coach in a few days. As they are the last article in my very poor performance the printer will probably not want them till my return. When you have read them pray send them with your observations to Brook Street by the coach.

Mrs. Ricardo joins with me in kind regards to Mrs. Malthus

Very truly Yrs.

David Ricardo

[2 ]Addressed: ‘To / The Revd. T. R Malthus / East India College / Hertford’.

MS at Albury.—Letters to Malthus, XLV (where it is dated 1816).

[3 ]Actually written ‘1816’; postmark, 1817.

[4 ]See above, p. 130, n. 3.

[5 ]Jacob Bosanquet, an East India Director.

[1 ]Statements respecting the East India College.

[2 ]William Elphinstone, an East India Director.

[1 ]The last chapter of the Principles (‘Mr. Malthus’s Opinions on Rent’).