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369.: bentham to ricardo5 - David Ricardo, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 8 Letters 1819-June 1821 [1819]

Edition used:

The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. Piero Sraffa with the Collaboration of M.H. Dobb (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005). Vol. 8 Letters 1819-1821.

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.


369.

bentham to ricardo5

Dear Sir

I question whether I have ever observed to you, that a main cause, and by far the most material one, of my reluctance to see the School quit that place6 is this—that in doing so it would lose the benefit of the inspection of Mr Mill, who, my garden being his, may as it were in no time perform that office, as often as need shall be: which is what, especially considering his engagements at the India House, he could not do any where else. His assistance in that way is of capital importance: not only in itself but in respect of the confidence it will inspire, by the proofs afforded by the progress of his son John, as exhibited in a letter, which I believe you saw, and which, though I have never told him so, I intend to trumpet forth in print, by means which I have over and above the very inconsiderable ones that would be afforded by any publication under my own name.

The letter in question is one written by John Mill in answer to one from my Brother to me, concerning the progress made by him in his studies.1

This is a topic which Mr. Mill could not do justice to himself, and it is therefore necessary that I should endeavour to bring it under your view. He knows not of my writing this, nor can he have any the least suspicion of it.

Yours truly

J. B.

Had it not been for the assurance of his assistance, as above together with Mr. Place’s, I never should have written the Book that I wrote,2 nor taken any other part in the business.

[5 ]MS in R.P.

[6 ]Bentham’s garden; see above, p. 191, n. 2.

[1 ]This letter, written by J. S. Mill to Sir Samuel Bentham on 30 July 1819, was published (apparently for the first time) by A. Bain in his J. S. Mill, A Criticism, London, 1882, pp. 6–9.

[2 ]Chrestomathia; above, VI, 112.