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277.: malthus to ricardo1 - 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.


277.

malthus to ricardo1

My dear Sir,

Whishaw in a letter to me the other day told me that he understood you were coming in for Portarlington. I hope this is true, and wish to hear it confirmed by you, as I should be sorry that you should not come into Parliament, having once determined to take any steps towards it. Portarlington I think was the place for which Sharpe formerly came in, and I should suppose it was an agreeable and very quiet sort of borough.

We have some thoughts of going to Bath this winter for the whole or part of the vacation, in which case I shall certainly make a point of paying you a visit at Gatcomb; but it will probably be from Bath, and not in our way down, as on our journey, we shall be too large a party. I believe we shall have one of the Miss Eckersall’s as well as our children. Shall you be at Bath any part of the winter?

Whishaw is returned from his autumnal tour, and we hope to see him and Smyth here, early in the next month. But he talks a little of going previously to Bowood if he can find the time, to meet Dugald Stewart and Miss Edgeworth who are there. He can hardly be expected to resist such temptations.

I am going on with my volume, though slowly, and with more interruptions than I intended or expected. I boggle ever at the title; and it [is]1 not till after some delay and difficulty, that I have at length determined upon “The Principles of Political Economy considered, with a view to their practical application”. I could not find any term like tracts or essays which I liked. Will the title do? what do you say?—But though I have at length determined on what I am going to write about, I doubt whether I shall finish this spring.

I hear the sale of your work goes on swimmingly, and that you are preparing another edition; but pray don’t render all my fine arguments useless. I am inclined to think that where we shall most essentially differ in our practical conclusions is on the point where Say and Mill are distinctly with you. Your conclusions however naturally follow from your original definition of value in exchange and your too decided seperation of wealth and value, which I have always thought fundamentally wrong. You have quite overlooked the consideration of value as the prime power of industry and the grand stimulus to production.

I hope Mrs. Ricardo and your family are quite well Mrs. Malthus joins with me in kind regards:

Ever truly Yours

T R Malthus

[1 ]Addressed: ‘D. Ricardo Esqr / Gatcomb Park / Minchinhampton. / Gloucestershire.’—MS in R.P.

[1 ]Omitted in MS.