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• Preface
• A Memoir of Ricardo With Addenda
• Note On the Authorship of the Memoir
• Addenda to the Memoir of Ricardo
• I.: Introductory
• II.: The Family of Abraham Ricardo
• III.: The Delvalle Family
• IV.: Ricardo’s Childhood and Education
• V.: Independence and Marriage
• VI.: The Wilkinsons
• A Family Who’s Who
• I.: David Ricardo’s Brothers and Sisters
• II.: Ricardo’s Children
• Ricardo In Business
• Ricardo In Business
• I.: As a Jobber On the Stock Exchange
• II.: As Loan Contractor
• III.: A Canard
• IV.: Investments and Estates
• V.: Ricardo’s Will
• A Selection of Family and Private Letters
• I: Early Letters to J. H. Wilkinson
• 1.: Ricardo to Wilkinson1
• 2.: Ricardo to Wilkinson1
• 3: Ricardo to Wilkinson1
• 4: Ricardo to Wilkinson2
• 5: Ricardo to Wilkinson1
• 6: Ricardo to Wilkinson1
• Other Correspondence With J.h. Wilkinson
• II: ‘ricardo’s Letter to the Old Doctor’
• III: The Fraud of 5 May 1803
• IV: The Loan of 1807
• V: Jacob Ricardo
• VI: Two Sisters Decline a Present
• VII: A Visit to Cambridge
• VIII: A Letter to a Wine Merchant
• IX: The Cumberland Affair
• 1.: Sydney Cumberland to Ricardo3
• 2.: Sydney Cumberland to Ricardo1
• 3.: George Cumberland to Ricardo1
• 4.: Ricardo to George Cumberland 1
• 5.: George Cumberland to Ricardo1
• 6.: Ricardo to George Cumberland
• X: A Servant and Two Masters
• XI: Fanny’s Marriage
• Edward Austin Sen. to Ricardo 3
• Ricardo to Edward Austin Sen. 1
• XII: Ricardo to Miss Mary Ann
• From Maria Edgeworth’s Letters to Her Family
• 1.: To Her Stepmother Mrs Edgeworth From Gatcomb Park 9 Nov. 1821
• 2.: To the Same From Gatcomb Park 10 Nov. 1821
• 3.: To Her Sister Lucy Edgeworth From Gatcomb Park 12 Nov. 1821
• 4.: To Her Aunt Mrs Ruxton From London 9 March 1822
• Journal of a Tour On the Continent 1822
• Introductory Note to the Journal of a Tour On the Continent
• Appendices
• (a.) Bibliography of Ricardo’s Works
• (b.) a Survey of Ricardo Manuscripts
• (c.) Commonplace Books
• (d) Ricardo’s Library
• Supplement to Volume I New Evidence On the Subdivision of Chapter Viii of the ‘principles’ 1817
• Supplement to Volume Iv Notes On ‘a Reply to Mr. Say’s Letters to Mr. Malthus’
• Corrections to the First Printing of the Previous Volumes*

II.

As Loan Contractor

During the Napoleonic Wars the Stock Exchange played a dominant role in the financing of Government expenditure.1 The Loan which was required every year was raised from contractors who relied on the Stock Exchange as the channel through which they could place the stock among a wide public over a period of time.2 The normal method was for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to invite competitive bids from would-be contractors. He would intimate the sum of money that he required, and the several stocks which he would give for every £100 of money subscribed. (For instance, in the Loan of £27 millions raised in June 1813, for every £100 subscribed there were given £110 in Three per cent Reduced, £60 in Three per cent Consols, and in addition 8s. 6d. in Long Annuity). In the Chancellor’s announcement, however, the amount of one of the stocks (in the above example the Long Annuity) was left undetermined, and bidding would take place in that stock; the competitor who was prepared to accept the smallest amount of it being awarded the Loan. Each of those who were preparing to bid for the loan formed a list of subscribers, who would be associated with him, would pledge themselves to take a share in the loan, and were liable to be asked by him to make an advance deposit. In making up these lists the contractors reserved shares for their friends and also for such influential persons as the Governor and Directors of the Bank of England.1

The principals would attend on the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Downing Street at an appointed time, usually on the morning of Budget day, the latest prices of the stocks being brought to them by runners from the City. They severally handed their sealed bids to the Chancellor, who proceeded to open them and forthwith assigned the Loan to the successful bidder.

The Loan was payable in eight or ten monthly instalments of 10 or 15 per cent each,2 and discount was allowed for payment in advance of the due dates. The contractor normally obtained the stocks from the Minister on more favourable terms than were being quoted on the market at the moment; the percentage difference being called the ‘bonus to the contractor’.1 The scrip of the various stocks composing the Loan was usually transferred, until fully paid up, in the composite units in which the Loan was originally contracted. These were called Omnium,2 and quotation was in the form of a premium or discount per £100 subscribed. On payment of the first instalment (usually due two or three days after the conclusion of the bargain), subscription-sheets were issued to the subscribers; these contained on one side a receipt for the sum paid and spaces for indicating payments of successive instalments, and on the other side a form of assignment which when sold by the original subscriber would be signed by him without filling in the name of an assignee and thus endorsed would pass from hand to hand like a banknote.3 When the final instalment was paid up, the Omnium would be converted into its component stocks and these registered in the name of the last holder.4

As soon as the issue of a new Loan was in prospect, it was the practice for those who intended to bid for it and were drawing up lists of subscribers, to begin to ‘prepare’ the market for the Loan. This consisted in selling out the stock which they owned and also in making sales of stock of which they were not possessed. The sales would depress the price against the day of the contract, so as to make the new stock obtainable as cheaply as possible. They would hope to replace the stock they had sold by their share of the Loan.1 At this stage, therefore, it was the would-be contractors who were bears of the Funds. Afterwards the contractors and subscribers were gradually placing among investors the new Loan. In the process they received help from the Bank of England, which after the subscriber had paid the first two or three instalments usually made advances to help with the subsequent ones.2

The number of competitors for a Loan was inevitably limited by the difficulty of forming a list of substantial subscribers, and by the necessity for the contractors to be able to satisfy the Minister of their own financial standing. As to this latter point, we know, for instance, that when John Morgan wished to make a bid for the Loan of £18 millions for 1796 he wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he had at his bankers upwards of £300,000 and could have £200,000 more at a moment’s notice to deposit as a security.3 In the last four years of the war there was no effective competition at all and the Loan was usually divided between the various lists at an agreed price. It is therefore not surprising to find that Trower, when on one occasion he expressed disgust with the Funds (‘the less one has to do with them the better’), should have hastened to add: ‘Excepting upon those golden opportunities which Loans judiciously taken generally afford.’1

In the eighteenth century, before the system of competitive bidding had been introduced, the Loans had been raised directly from the public by subscription. This system lent itself to abuse; for the interval between subscription and allotment made it possible for the friends of the Minister to take advantage of the situation. Thus, when a Loan was issued in 1778 by this method, there was much delay in allotment, meanwhile the Funds fell, the new Loan went to a discount and the public received all that they had applied for. When, however, in 1781 a new Loan went to a premium, it was divided with regard to political influence and those who had suffered from the previous Loan had no opportunity of making good their loss.2 When subsequently the competitive system was introduced, the contractors of the Loan were mainly bankers and merchants. The members of the Stock Exchange sought to retrieve their position by organising a list of their own to compete for the Loan, but seem at first to have met with little success. The Table which followsp. 80 below shows the various groups which competed for the Loans from 1805 to 1820.

In 1806 we find for the first time the names of John Barnes, James Steers and David Ricardo as the would-be contractors bidding on behalf of the list of the Stock Exchange, although they did not secure the Loan on that occasion. They succeeded, however, in obtaining the Loan for £14,200,000 of the following year (1807), outbidding the Goldsmids, the Barings, and Robarts. Those who had previously acted for the Stock Exchange must have caused great dissatisfaction, whether by the eighteenth-century practice of profiting themselves at the expense of the subscribers, or by sheer inability to secure a share in the Loans for their constituents, if we are to judge by the surprised commendation showered on Ricardo and his brother-contractors in 1807 for the integrity of their conduct and for their equitable distribution of the Loan (of which the documents are given below, pp. 125–8).

Barnes, Steers and Ricardo on behalf of the Stock Exchange made bids for the Loans of the three following years, but in each case unsuccessfully. The Loan of 1808 was obtained by Baring Brothers, that of 1809 by Abraham Goldsmid, and that of 1810 jointly by the Barings and Goldsmid. This latter Loan, which was for £12 millions, was bid for on 11 May 1810. For every £100 advanced there were to be given £130 in Three per cent Reduced, and so much in Three per cent Consols as the bidding would determine. The successful contractors were willing to accept £10. 7. 6 in Consols; Barnes, Steers and Ricardo £12. 18. 0 and Robarts & Co. £13. 10. 0. This was the Loan which, after being at a premium on the first day, subsequently went to a heavy discount, resulting in large losses to the contractors and in the suicide of Abraham Goldsmid on 28 September 1810.

Ricardo with his partners was successful in obtaining the Loan of 1811, and from that date he was contractor for every Loan that was negotiated until the end of the war. The Omnium of the 1811 Loan went to a premium when it was contracted for (20 May), but fell to a discount during the summer. Ricardo, however, felt little anxiety, since, as he wrote to Mill, he always safeguarded himself when handling

LOANS FOR GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 1805 – 1820

NOTES ON THE TABLE OVERLEAF

Sources: Grellier’s Terms of All the Loans, 1812, and the newspapers of the day; also, ‘Loans Contracted on Account of Great Britain, in each year since 1793; &c.’ in Parliamentary Papers, 1822, vol. xx, N. 145.

Although all British Loans contracted for by competitive bidding are included, this table is not a complete record of funding operations during the period. In particular Loans for the funding of Exchequer Bills and other conversion operations are omitted. Most of the Loans listed are partly on account of Great Britain and partly on account of Ireland: certain small separate Loans for Ireland, however, are not included.

The unsuccessful bidders have been arranged, as far as possible, in the order of their bids (beginning with the second best bid).

The prices of Omnium given are market quotations and as such quite distinct from the calculated ‘bonus to the contractor’ described on p. 76–7.

‘so ungovernable a commodity’ as Omnium: ‘I play for small stakes, and therefore if I’m a loser I have little to regret.’1

In 1812 for the Loan of £22,500,000, which was bid for on 16 June, the three lists (Barnes, Steers and Ricardo; Battye; Robarts) coalesced and made a uniform bid. For the Loan of £27 millions negotiated on 9 June 1813 there were only two lists, that of Barnes, Steers and Ricardo and that of Baring and others. Since their offers were similar, the Loan was divided between them. An unusual feature was that a second Loan was raised later in the same year (on 15 November); this Loan being for £22 millions. In view of the fact that the instalments of the first Loan had not yet been completed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that preference would be given to the contractors of the previous Loan. The offer was accepted on the terms proposed by the Government, and the contractors arranged for the new Loan to be ‘divided amongst the subscribers to the last in the exact proportion of their former subscriptions.’2 This Loan was issued at a time when the Funds were at a very low level; and soon, with the hopes of an early termination of the war, the Omnium went to a considerable premium, which in the ensuing months exceeded 20 per cent.

In the consultations which preceded the Loan of 1814 the Chancellor of the Exchequer asked the contractors for their opinion on the question of reducing the sum to be borrowed by the Government from £24 millions to £12 millions by using the Sinking Fund—a method which had been advocated in Parliament by Pascoe Grenfell.3 All the contractors advised against reducing the Loan in this way, with the exception of Ricardo, who, ‘greatly to his credit’, according to Grenfell, recommended the application of the Sinking Fund and a loan of £12 millions only, as being more advantageous to the country.1 Evidently the Chancellor disregarded his advice; for on 13 June 1814 a loan of £24 millions was negotiated, and was taken by the same two lists as in the previous year, which made identical bids.

The last and biggest Loan of the war (for £36 millions) was that raised on 14 June 1815, four days before the Battle of Waterloo. The Funds which had been depressed because of the uncertainty of the war situation fell still further when the size of the Loan was announced on 10 June.2 On this occasion there were four lists: Steers and Ricardo;3 Baring and Angerstein; Ellis and Tucker; Trower and Battye.4 Once again all the bids were identical; as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Vansittart, told the House, they were also, ‘singularly enough...exactly the minimum of what the Treasury had resolved to accept.’ And unlike other occasions, when uniform bidding was taken as a sign of collusion, the Chancellor found further ground for satisfaction in the fact that ‘four different calculations had been made by four different persons, and all had concurred in naming...the bidding.’5 The terms were very favourable to the lenders, the bonus to the contractors as calculated by the Chancellor being as much as £4. 8. 10¼;1 besides, this was based on an extremely low market price of stocks (Consols standing at 54). On the day of the contract the Omnium was quoted at 2½ to 3¼ per cent premium and remained above 3 on the following day. The first news of the victory at Waterloo was brought to London on the 20th by a Mr Sutton of Colchester, owner of the Ostend packet, who being at Ostend when the news reached there ordered one of his vessels to sea without waiting for passengers.2 It was published in a special edition of the Morning Post late on the 20th.3 In the course of the 21st the Omnium rose to 6 per cent premium. The Times of the following day quoted Stock Exchange opinion as holding ‘that the news of the day before would be followed up by something still more brilliant and decisive’.4 On the 23rd Omnium rose above 9 per cent premium, and on the 27th and 28th it touched 13 per cent, which was the peak at this period. During the rest of the summer it fluctuated between 5½ and 8½, and in the autumn it rose again to over 13 (on 21 November even reaching 16½), at which level it remained until the Loan was fully paid up.

This Loan brought to Ricardo the largest single profit he ever made. In writing to Malthus on 27 June, when the Omnium was quoted at 11½ to 13 per cent premium, he says:5 ‘I have all my money invested in Stock,6 and this is as great an advantage as ever I expect or wish to make by a rise’. He had also made a ‘moderate gain’ on the portion of the Loan which he had ‘ventured to take over and above’ his capital. This he had sold quickly (possibly even before the first instalment was due on 17 June) at a premium of 3 to 5 per cent. He closes his account to Malthus by saying: ‘Perhaps no loan was ever more generally profitable to the Stock Exchange’. Mill on his part concluded that Ricardo must be now ‘Bless us all! no body can tell how rich!’ To which Ricardo replied that, ‘though sufficiently rich to satisfy all my desires, and the reasonable desires of all those about me’, he was not quite so rich as Mill seemed to think.1

Malthus, at whose request Ricardo had reserved a share of £5000 in the Loan, became apprehensive as to the result of the military campaign and asked him to take an early opportunity of selling at a small profit provided this was not ‘either wrong, or inconvenient to you’. Accordingly, Ricardo sold Malthus’s share on the opening day, when the premium was about 3 per cent.2

This was the last Loan contracted for by Ricardo, who was now in process of retiring from business. In the years 1816 to 1818 there were no Government Loans. A new Loan was negotiated in the summer of 1819, when Ricardo was a Member of Parliament and during the passage through both Houses of Peel’s Bill for the resumption of cash payments; and it is surprising to find Ricardo reappearing once more in the role of a competitor for the Loan. There was an unusually long interval between the first rumours of an impending Loan, which we first find mentioned in the newspapers at the end of April, and the bargain for the Loan on 9 June. This delay was due to uncertainty on the Government’s part as to whether, in view of the impending passage of Peel’s Cash Payments Bill, the Bank would extend the usual facilities to the subscribers, and consequently as to the size of the Loan which it would be practicable to issue. Meanwhile Grenfell and Ricardo in Parliament were pressing for the adoption of their suggestion to apply the Sinking Fund in diminution of the Loan.1 In the end the Bank refused under any conditions to accommodate the subscribers, and the Ministers were driven to adopt the Grenfell-Ricardo scheme. Accordingly they decided that of the £24 millions required, £12 millions should be taken from the Sinking Fund and only £12 millions raised from the market. The Funds, which had been falling steadily in the expectation of a big Loan, recovered sharply (Consols rising from 66 to 70) when on 4 June the unexpectedly small size of the Loan was announced. As a result, the contract was concluded five days later on unusually favourable terms for the Government.

According to The Times of 30 April three distinct parties were already preparing lists of subscribers with a view to contracting for the Loan. These were as follows:

‘1. Mr. Rothschild—This gentleman’s list is said to be very extensive: it was completely filled before any intimation of a loan had been publicly received from the Treasury; and the sums written for, constitute, as is reported, an aggregate of more than 40,000,000 l.

‘2. Messrs. Ricardo, Brothers, and Co—This is the Stock-exchange list, and nothing has yet been done towards arranging it: the circular letters of this party will not be sent, it is asserted, until the Chancellor of the Exchequer comes forward with the Budget.2

‘3. Messrs. Reid, Irving & Co.; Sir T. Jackson and Co.; in conjunction with Mr. George Ward, Messrs. Ellis, Tucker and Barnett, and Trower and Battye.—These houses are receiving letters from their several friends, and are forming, in fact, distinct lists; but an union of interests and a coalition of the whole into one list is considered extremely probable.’

It was in fact these three groups which on 9 June made bids for the Loan. The best bid was that of Rothschild, and the contract went to him. Ricardo was the runner-up and Reid, Irving & Co. came last.

There had been a preliminary meeting at Downing Street on 4 June at which the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had informed the intending contractors of the details of the Loan. This was reported as follows in The Times of Monday, 7 June 1819:

‘When they went up on Friday to Downing-street, Lord Liverpool stated to the parties, that he had sent to the Bank a paper, proposing three plans, to ascertain if the Bank would take in the Omnium, and advance the instalments in the usual manner, provided any one of them was adopted. The plans were, to raise a loan of

‘But the Bank had that morning refused to take in the Omnium under any of these plans. He therefore now proposed a loan for only 12,000,000 l.; and in the event of the offer being accepted, he reserved to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and himself the power of submitting to Parliament a proposal for applying to the service of the year such part of the Sinking Fund as they might deem necessary. The amount of Sinking Fund so to be applied is understood to be 12,000,000 l., which, Lord Liverpool trusted, would not be inconvenient...

‘Mr. Rothschild begged to know whether Exchequer-bills would remain at their present rate of interest, or whether the rate would be increased? The Earl of Liverpool said, they must reserve to themselves the discretion of varying the interest as circumstances may require.

Ricardo’s circular to the subscribers on his list for the Loan of 1819 (reduced from the original in the possession of Sir John Murray)

‘Mr. Ricardo desired to know, as the loan was to be so small, whether it was intended that the corporate companies should have portions of it assigned to them as heretofore?

‘Our readers are probably aware, that on the loans contracted by the Government, a certain proportion has been uniformly reserved for the advantage of the Bank of England and other corporate bodies.1

‘A desire is said to have been expressed that the custom shall cease, and accordingly it was determined that no sum shall be reserved for the Bank or other public companies.’

The final meeting at which the bidding took place on 9 June, is reported as follows in The Times:

‘The Loan.—Yesterday morning at 10 o’clock pursuant to appointment, the contractors for the loan waited on the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the First Lord of the Treasury, to deliver their proposals. The lists, which were three, were respectively headed by Mr. Rothschild; Messrs. Ricardo (brothers) and Co; and Messrs Reid, Irving and Co. The negotiation only lasted a few minutes. Previously to its commencement, Mr. Ricardo suggested to the Chancellor of the Exchequer the propriety of changing the day fixed on for the second payment, viz. the 17th July, as, that being the settling day for the account in Consols, much inconvenience would be caused by double arrangements of so much magnitude taking place in the same day. The Right Hon. Gentleman readily assented to the alteration, and the second payment now stands postponed to the 23rd of July.... The sealed proposals of each contractor were thenopened. It will be recollected, that for every 100 l. subscribed in money, 80 l. were to be given in Consols, and that the biddings were to take place in Reduced, the party willing to accept of the smallest sum in that stock, of course obtaining the contract. The following are the sums named by each contractor:

‘The loan, therefore, is taken by Mr. Rothschild. Before the gentlemen quitted the room, Mr. Ricardo expressed a desire to learn from the Chancellor of the Exchequer the manner in which Exchequer-bills are to be received in payment of the instalments of the loan. The Chancellor replied, that the Exchequer-bill itself, with the premium of 20s., and the interest due upon it, would be taken as so much money; the balance of the instalment to be paid in notes.’

After calculating that the bonus to the contractor was £1. 3. 3 (while on Ricardo’s bid it would have been £2. 13. 9 and on Reid Irving’s £2. 19. 0), The Times reports the ‘scene of agitation’ which ensued when the particulars were known on the Stock Exchange: ‘The most rapid fluctuations immediately took place, and in the course of the day Omnium was done at all prices, from 1¾ premium to 2 discount. The market closed at 1½ discount’.

The terms were so exceptionally advantageous for the Government that the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget speech later on the same day expressed the hope that they would not prove unfavourable to the ‘adventurous parties’ with whom it had been negotiated, although the terms were so low that ‘the bidding might not at first sight appear justifiable on the score of prudence.’1 The outcome cannot have been very profitable to the contractor; but for Rothschild who had been mainly concerned in the floating of foreign loans, success in his first bid for a British Government Loan may have been chiefly a matter of prestige. In October there was a fall in the Funds; and Rothschild, who already in his evidence before the Bank Committee had opposed the resumption of cash payments, set about pressing the Ministers for a postponement of that measure, although without success.1

If for Rothschild the Loan of 1819 was only a stage in the building of a financial empire, for Ricardo it was the closing incident of his business career. There could hardly have been two more contrasting types. It was in the making of money that Rothschild found the main enjoyment of life: not so much prizing the money for what it could buy, as ‘finding intense delight in the scrambling and fighting, the plotting and tricking, by means of which it was acquired.’2 A story is told that, when someone said to him: ‘I hope that your children are not too fond of money and business, to the exclusion of more important things. I am sure you would not wish that’, Rothschild replied: ‘I am sure I should wish that. I wish them to give mind, and soul, and heart, and body, and everything to business; that is the way to be happy.’3 Ricardo, however, brought up his sons to be country gentlemen, and as for himself had no craving for the bustle of the City and viewed financial success as a means of retirement into the country, to the quiet pursuit of his ‘favourite science’. When he first went to Gatcomb he wrote to Malthus: ‘I believe that in this sweet place I shall not sigh after the Stock Exchange and its enjoyments.’4

This was Ricardo’s last appearance in the Loan market; and at the end of the year he even ceased to be a member of the Stock Exchange.

[1 ]The fullest source of information on the manner in which Loans were negotiated is the Report of the Evidence before the ‘Select Committee to Enquire into the Circumstances of the Negotiation of the late Loan’, 1796. (Journals of the House of Commons, vol. li, 1795–6, pp. 309–360. The Report was also published as a separate volume.) This loan for £18 millions had been given by Pitt without competition to Boyd, Benfield & Co., and the enquiry arose from the complaints of one of the parties excluded from bidding. See also the Section on ‘Manner of Transacting Loans’ in the Appendix to R. Hamilton’s Inquiry concerning...the National Debt, 3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1818, pp. 310–13, and J. J. Grellier’s The Terms of all the Loans, 3rd ed., ‘with an Appendix from the year 1805 to the present year, by R. W. Wade’, London, Richardson, 1812. (This edition is distinct from the ‘third edition’ which had been published in 1805.) The daily newspapers published paragraphs on the negotiations for the Loan and the final bidding; the fullness of these reports increased in later years and that of The Times for the Loan of 1819 is quoted from extensively below, pp. 85–9.

[2 ]An exception had been the ‘Loyalty Loan’ of £18 millions for 1797, which was issued to the public by direct subscription at a fixed price in December 1796. The list of Subscribers, which in this case was published, includes Abraham Ricardo for £3000 and David Ricardo for £1000. (In Parliamentary Papers, vol. 102 of the General Collection.)

[1 ]Thus in the Loan of £18 millions for 1796 (not to be confused with the Loyalty Loan mentioned in the previous footnote) the list prepared by the contractors included the following: Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank, £100,000; Governor, Deputy Governor and Directors of the Bank, £400,000; Abraham Newland [Principal Cashier at the Bank], ‘for himself and Office’, £100,000; East India Company, £300,000; etc. The list, which is given in Appendix 2 to the Report of the Select Committee of 1796 (see above, p. 75, n. 1), is the only subscribers’ list in a loan issued to contractors which is extant for the period of Ricardo’s activity. No subscribers’ lists could be found for this period either at the Bank of England Record Office or in the Treasury papers at the Public Record Office.

[2 ]The dividends, however, were payable on the whole capital on the first normal dividend date of each stock after the Loan was contracted. (Hamilton, Inquiry, 1818, p. 311.)

[1 ]In 1796 a bonus of about 4 per cent was regarded as being fair to both the contractor and the public (see speech of William Smith, Chairman of the Select Committee on the Negotiation of the Late Loan, in the House of Commons, 22 Feb. 1796, Parliamentary History, XXXII, 769).

[2 ]‘Omnium is the whole subscription undivided; and is known in the Alley by the name of Omnium Gatherum, a cant phrase for, all together’ (Thomas Mortimer, Every Man his own Broker; or, A Guide to Exchange-Alley, 4th ed., London, 1761, p. 145–6).

[3 ]‘For the conveniency of sale, every subscriber for a considerable sum, has sundry receipts for different proportions of his whole sum, by which means he can the readier part with what he thinks proper’ (Thomas Mortimer, The Nefarious Practice of Stock-jobbing Unveiled, London, For the Widow of the Author, 1810, p. 50).

[4 ]Hamilton’s Inquiry, 1818, p. 312–13.

[1 ]See Ricardo’s Evidence on the Usury Laws, above, V, 341, Q. 23; on Ricardo’s sales before the Loan of 1815, above VI, 233. When the Loan of 1819 is impending, Trower writes to him: ‘I think you Gentlemen have pretty well, what is called prepared for the Loan this time, by the violent shake you have given the prices of the funds’ (above, VIII, 31; Ricardo, however, on this occasion, had not sold any stock against the Loan, because he thought the price already low, ib. 33).

[2 ]‘If he [the Loan-monger] can pay 2 or 3 instalments of his subscription, the Bank on the credit of these, advances the greater part of the remainder.’ (W. Morgan, A Comparative View of the Public Finances, 1801, p. 39.) ‘The Bank of England generally lends its aid in advancing some of the instalments.’ (Hamilton’s Inquiry, 1818, p. 311.) See also the references, in 1819, to the Bank ‘taking in the Omnium’, and advancing the instalments ‘in the usual manner’, by Lord Liverpool, below, p. 86 and by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, above, VIII, 134–5, note.

[3 ]Appendix No. 1 to the ‘Report of the Select Committee’ on the Loan, 1796.

[1 ]Letter of 23 July 1815, above, VI, 238.

[2 ]John Francis, Chronicles and Characters of the Stock Exchange, London, 1850, pp. 118–19.

[1 ]Letter of 26 Sept. 1811, above VI, 52.

[2 ]Letter from Ricardo to John Robins, 12 Nov. 1813, quoted by Hollander from the MS in his own possession in David Ricardo, A Centenary Estimate, p. 39.

[3 ]Cp. above, V, 21–22.

[1 ]This episode was recounted by Grenfell in a pamphlet of 1817 and again in a speech in the House on 13 May 1819 (see above V, 4–5 and n. 1).

[2 ]See The Times of Monday, 12 June 1815.

[3 ]John Barnes, the other associate of Ricardo, had died a few months before; he, as the obituary says, had been ‘at the head of the list of Members of the Stock Exchange who have contracted with Government for the late Loans; and in this high trust received the cordial thanks of that body for his honourable conduct.’ (Gentleman’s Magazine, Feb. 1815, p. 185; cp. below, p. 125 ff.)

[4 ]All these persons had been associated with the Loans of the previous three years, but the last two lists had apparently been linked with the Barings’. The Trower listed was John, brother of Hutches Trower.

[5 ]Hansard, XXXI, 801–2.

[1 ]This figure he gave in the Budget speech, ib. 802.

[2 ]The Times, 21 June 1815.

[3 ]Morning Chronicle, 21 June 1815.

[4 ]The Times, 22 June 1815.

[5 ]Above, VI, 233.

[6 ]Since only one instalment (10 per cent) of the Loan had as yet been paid, this could be taken to mean that Ricardo had kept so much of the Loan as to have the whole of his money absorbed by the first payment—in which case the current premium would have represented a more-than-doubling of his money in a fortnight; this however, may possibly be too sanguine an interpretation in view of his professed role (in 1811) of playing for small stakes.

[1 ]Above, VI, 251 and 262. There was a popular rumour at the time that ‘upon a single occasion, that of the battle of Waterloo’ Ricardo had ‘netted upwards of a million sterling.’ (Sunday Times, 14 Sept. 1823.)

[2 ]Above, VI, 229 and 231.

[1 ]See above, V, 4–6.

[2 ]A facsimile of the printed circular which was eventually sent by Ricardo to the subscribers on his list will be found on p. 87 below.

[1 ]Cp. above, p. 76, n. 1.

[1 ]Hansard, XL, 1005. For Ricardo’s praise of the Chancellor for his good management ‘within the last two or three days’, see above, V, 21.

[1 ]See a letter written by the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, N. Vansittart, from Walmer Castle on 31 Oct. 1819: ‘Nothing can be more foolish than Rothschild’s following you, and intending to follow me, into the country. If his proceeding is known it can of course only augment the general alarm, and increase all the evils he is desirous of preventing....The point, however, upon which I feel most anxiety is the idea suggested by Rothschild, of a continuance of the Bank restriction. I am satisfied that no measure could be more fatal, and that the very notion of its being a matter for consideration would do harm.’(C. D. Yonge, Life of Lord Liverpool, London, 1868, vol. ii, p. 416–17.) Cp. also above, VIII, 134–5.

[2 ]H. R. Fox Bourne, English Merchants, London, 1886, vol. ii, p. 262.

[3 ]T. F. Buxton, Memoirs, London, 1848, p. 344.

[4 ]Letter of 25 July 1814, above, VI, 115.