240.: ricardo to malthus3[Reply to 237] - 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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240.
ricardo to malthus
[Reply to 237]
Gatcomb Park 16 Decr. 1817
My dear Sir
I believe I am within the time stated in your letter for your visit to Surry, and consequently that this will reach you there. I am sorry that you were not sufficiently loyal to give her majesty some mark of your attention at Bath, during your present vacation, as in that case I might have hoped to have seen you here. As it is we may probably be in London nearly at the same time. We have not yet absolutely fixed on the day for our journey but it will not be deferred beyond the middle of next month. I hope I may see you before your return home.
I am glad to find that we may soon expect another volume from your pen, although, if you attack me, I am prepared for nine tenths of our readers deciding in favour of your view of the question. I want an able pen on my side to put my opinions in a clear light, and to divest them of that appearance of paradox which they now wear. I wish I could assist you to a good title but no one is more able to give a work the best air and arrangement than yourself. Have you seen the Review of M Say and myself in the British? In some of the remarks you would I believe agree, yet it is some consolation to me that after designating every part of my performance absurd, and nonsensical, they attack you on the subject of Rent, and say that both you and I have endeavoured to make the nature of rent, which was before so clear, obscure. Rent is nothing more than the hire paid for land. I feel delighted that they have given me so desirable a companion.—In the Scotsman, a scotch newspaper, I have been ably defended —the writer has evidently understood what I meant to say, which the Reviewer has not done.—
I have been reading Mill’s book for this last week, and have got through about half of the first volume. I am not qualified to give an opinion of its merits, but I am very much pleased with it. It is very interesting, and is I think calculated to excite a great deal of attention, for it not only descants on the religion, manners, laws, arts, and literature, of the Hindus, but compares them with the religion manners &ca. of other nations which the world has generally considered as much inferior to the Hindus, and if these in the Hindus are to be deemed marks of a high state of civilization, Africa, Mexico, Peru, Persia, and China, might also lay claim to the same character. He also gives his own sentiments as to what constitutes good laws, a good religion, a high state of civilization, and shews at what a very low degree Hindostan deserves to be estimated for these acquirements. The Political Economy is I think excellent, and the part that I have read may be considered as the author’s view of the progress of the human mind.—I hope it will bring him fame and reputation,—his perseverance, as well as his other qualities well deserve it.—
I am very glad to hear from Mr. Smith, that Mr. Whishaw has returned so well pleased with his journey; I should have been very much pleased to have heard him open his budget to [you] and Mr. Smyth, when he met the latter at your house. [He] is very kind in writing to Mr. Smith, from whom I often hear the little anecdotes which he has communicated to h[im] of his journey.—
Like the Patriarchs of old I am surrounded by all my descendants, sons, daughters and grandchildren,—they have assembled from all quarters to visit us, and if I were not afraid that they would soon become too numerous for the limits of our house I should insist on its being an annual custom.—
You have probably seen in the papers that I am gazetted as one of the three from whom the choice of Sheriff is to be made, and as Coll. Berkeley, the first named, will in all probability be excused on account of his intended application to the House of Lords for the Peerage, which must otherwise be given to his brother, who is nearly of age, I shall no doubt be selected. This honour I could well have dispensed with. I hope Mrs. Malthus is well. Mrs. Ricardo joins with me in kind regards to her.
Ever Yrs.
David Ricardo