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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 214.: trower to ricardo3[Reply to 212] - The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 7 Letters 1816-1818

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214.: trower to ricardo3[Reply to 212] - 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.


214.

trower to ricardo3
[Reply to 212]

Dear Ricardo,

Many thanks for the “Principles of Political Economy” which arrived a few days ago; and to the serious consideration of which I shall proceed with great eagerness and interest, and without delay. I see by your table of contents, that your enquiry embraces all the important questions connected with this great subject. I have not a doubt your Book will be very generally read by all those who take an interest in these discussions, and I beg of you to let me know what you hear is said of your performance by those whose opinions are worth attending to.—I see advertised in the paper a letter addressed to you by a Dr. Crombie,1 is it worth my reading? I do not know anything of the character of the writer. Is his object to explain and enforce; or to refute the doctrines laid down by you in the pamphlet he reviews?—

You have probably seen a 3d. letter on Provident Institutions in the Times of the 10 April. I thought it necessary to compleat the arguments in the 2d. letter2 —But, the Editor after having delayed for some time its publication, whilst he infused into his leading paragraphs the substance of what he approved, at length gives a garbled account of it, leaving out all that part which recommended a modified Income Tax to supply the deficiency in the revenue, occasioned by taking off certain commercial taxes; and thus makes me appear guilty of the absurdity of recommending the abolition of millions of taxes, without suggesting how their place might be supplied! Upon my remonstrating with the Editor upon this most unwarrantable liberty, he has written me a letter appologizing, and stating his reasons, with which he hopes I shall be satisfied. But still my apparent absurdity remains, and therefore to those friends, who know the letters to be mine, I am desirous of rescuing myself from the charge of such obvious folly.—

I am much obliged to you for the trouble you took about the parliamentary Papers. In consequence of the new regulation respecting the printing the Votes, I have written to the Deputy Serjeant at Arms, with whom I am acquainted to see if he can put me in the way of getting the Reports and Votes together.—

I thank you for your offer to lend me some of the Reports; and I am disposed to trouble you so far as to beg the use of the Police Report,1 that on education,2 and on the employment of Children in Manufactures.3

Mr. Owen’s plan appears to me to be very absurd as well as objectionable—The evil is want of demand for laborers, that is for manufactures or produce of some sort or other—But, whilst that demand remains the same, what good do you do by setting up new manufactures to be made by children, when the necessary effect of any such measure, if it succeed, is to take such manufactures out of the hands of some other persons, who previously were engaged in it? As a remedy therefore for any of the existing evils it must be perfectly inoperative; and as a system for the education of the lower classes highly objectionable, by collecting together, in large masses, those, who, on every account, (except that of expence) ought to be broken down into small parcels, if I may so express myself.4 Mrs. T. unites in kind remembrances to Mrs. R. and believe me

Yours very truly

Hutches Trower

[3 ]Addressed: ‘To / David Ricardo Esqr. / Upper Brook St. / Grosvenor Sqre’.

MS in R.P.

[1 ]See above, p. 32, n. 1.

[2 ]See above, p. 141.

[1 ]‘Report from the Committee on the State of the Police of The Metropolis; with the Minutes of Evidence’, Parliamentary Papers, 1816, vol. v.

[2 ]‘Report from Select Committee on the Education of the Lower Orders in The Metropolis; with the Minutes of Evidence’, [Brougham’s Report], Parliamentary Papers, 1816, vol. iv.

[3 ]See above, p. 146, n. 2.

[4 ]Robert Owen’s plan for the regeneration of the world was first put forward in the Report to the Committee of the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor, laid before the Committee of the House of Commons on the Poor Laws; the Report was printed in full in The Times of 9 April 1817.