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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*

(B.) A Survey of Ricardo Manuscripts

The object of this section is to give a brief account of the collections of manuscripts used in the preparation of this edition. These manuscripts fall into six main groups:

• (1) The Ricardo Papers.
• (2) The Mill-Ricardo Papers.
• (3) The letters to Malthus, formerly at Albury.
• (4) The letters to Trower at University College, London.
• (5) The letters to M^cCulloch in the British Museum.
• (6) The Wilkinson Papers.

The letters to Malthus, Trower and M^cCulloch (as well as other smaller collections) are referred to in the Introduction to Volume VI, while the Wilkinson Papers have been described in the present volume, p. 109 ff. A fuller description of the Ricardo Papers and the Mill-Ricardo Papers is given in what follows.

The Ricardo Papers, the Mill-Ricardo Papers, the letters to Malthus and the Wilkinson Papers, which had been entrusted to the editor for many years, have now been presented on behalf of their respective owners to the University Library at Cambridge.

The Ricardo Papers

These consist in the main of the contents of the wooden box found by Mr. Frank Ricardo in 1930 at Bromesberrow Place, Ledbury, which had been the residence of Ricardo’s eldest son, Osman. The box had apparently been sent there from Gatcomb Park after Ricardo’s death and bears a label inscribed: ‘O. Ricardo Esq.—Papers of the late D. Ricardo Esq. M.P.’ In it was the bulk of the correspondence received by Ricardo, and also those of his own letters of which he had kept copies. Within the box, the letters were classified in eight cardboard cases, no doubt by Osman Ricardo in whose handwriting the contents of each case are described on its cover. The descriptions are as follows:

• Mill—M^cCulloch
• Malthus
• Trower
• Miscellaneous
• Miscellaneous Private
• Samson—French Stock
• Crosse—Wakefield
• Old Bills—Receipts

In addition there were a number of unclassified letters and papers lying loose in the box.

Some papers, however, escaped inclusion in the box and came to form two separate lots. The first and more important of these comprised the Notes on Malthus, the Notes on the Bullion Report, on Trotter and on Vansittart,1 the drafts of the Plan for a National Bank2 and the Commonplace Books;3 also a few stray letters. This lot was found by Mr. Frank Ricardo in 1919 and was entrusted to Professor Hollander, who, having edited with Professor Gregory the Notes on Malthus in 1928, published the rest while the present edition was in preparation; part in 1931 as a pamphlet, Letters of M^cCulloch to Ricardo, and what remained in 1932 as Ricardo’s Minor Papers on the Currency Question.

The second of the two lots mentioned above was found by Mr. Frank Ricardo at his solicitor’s towards the end of 1930: in addition to a packet pertaining to the purchase of Gatcomb Park in 1814, there was a roll of letters from a variety of Ricardo’s correspondents, including a few from Malthus and Mill, of the period October-December 1820. (This unsorted roll may well have been typical of the state in which Osman Ricardo found his father’s papers.)

Finally, the Ricardo Papers include some manuscripts which had always been known to the family: namely, the Journal of a Tour on the Continent, Ricardo’s letter to his wife from Cambridge and both sides of the correspondence between Ricardo and Maria Edgeworth.4

Most of the contents of the eight cardboard cases listed above is familiar from having been included in the present edition. In particular, the letters in the first three cases have been printed in their entirety in the volumes of Correspondence.1 A few words must be said about the rest.

In the ‘Miscellaneous’ case there are mainly letters from economists other than those separately classified. These have been printed with the Correspondence whenever Ricardo’s side has been available, and also in some instances (as with the letters from Grenfell and Tooke) even though Ricardo’s own letters were missing. Among other letters found in this case and not published are:

Two letters from Lt.-Gen. Sir Charles Gregan Craufurd, dated 27 June and 15 July 1819, on currency.

Six letters from C. H. Hancock, an old Stock Exchange friend of Ricardo, now retired from business, from Southampton, February to April 1816, mostly referring to the illness and death of his own son.

A note from Joseph Hume, 16 November 1820, on the proceedings in Parliament against the Queen.

A letter from William James, dated Reading 1 October 1812, asking for the loan of the Bullion pamphlet.

A letter from Joseph Lancaster, the educational reformer, dated Liverpool ‘2nd mo[nth] 22nd 1818’, asking for ‘a little pecuniary assistance’.

A letter from D. Macdonald, Captain, Royal Engineers, September 1820, who writes as a stranger, stating his objections to Ricardo’s Principles and requesting some explanations.

Five letters from Robert Mushet. In one of 8 September 1815 he says that he has been appointed as Melter at the Mint, an office which requires his being joined by two persons in a bond for £5000, and asks Ricardo to be one of them, hoping that Francis Horner will be the other. Four of 1823 (18 and 26 July; 8 and 16 August) are concerned with the sale by him to Pascoe Grenfell of a patent for the manufacture of copper.

Among the letters of this type which escaped classification and formed part of the lot of papers found with the Notes on Malthus the following were published in Minor Papers:

A letter from J. L. Mallet, 24 February 1823, criticising a motion on Savings Banks of which Hume had given notice in the House of Commons.

A letter from Joseph Pinsent, 30 March 1822; he has been introduced to Ricardo by Western and argues in favour of protection to agriculture.

Two letters from Condy Raguet, the American free-trader, dated Philadelphia 20 September 1820 and 19 April 1821, on banking and currency and on commercial conditions in the United States.

The case ‘Miscellaneous Private’ contains mainly letters from relatives and family friends. Among these there are two notable groups, one of 10 letters from James Hitchings, the other of 24 letters from the Smiths of Easton Grey. Of those from Hitchings two, of July and August 1815, deal with his engagement as tutor by Ricardo, while the remainder written between 1818 and 1823 after he had left Gatcomb Park are concerned with the education of the Ricardo children, first at a school kept by himself and later with the sending of Mortimer to Eton. The other group consists of 21 letters from Thomas Smith of 1818 to 1820 (four of them between December 1818 and April 1819 from Rome, Naples and Paris), and three of 1823 from his widow Elizabeth Smith. Most of the letters are of limited interest; but a Gloucester anecdote from a letter of 13 February [1818] is perhaps worth quoting: ‘At a meeting for raising a subscription for the poor, at which the Bishop and many of the Clergy made part of the Company, Mr. Crisp, the Manager of the Gloucester Theatre, came forward very liberally offering a free benefit at his Theatre, for the furtherance of the object of the meeting. Upon this, a Mr. Jacobs, a person of pre-eminent piety, arose, and said he hoped his brethren of the Committee would agree with him in refusing to accept of money flowing from so impure a source— but he hinted to the Mayor, that if he choose to receive this contribution from Mr. Crisp, he might pay it into the fund, without mentioning whence it came. I own if the Devil is to be cheated in this way, he has much less sagacity than we usually impute to him.’

The case inscribed ‘Crosse—Wakefield’ contains papers which have been drawn upon in the chapter on Ricardo’s investments and estates, above, p. 95 ff. There are 71 letters from the solicitors, Bleasdale, Lowless and Crosse (from 1821 changed to Lowless and Crosse) of Threadneedle Street, between 1814 and 1823, and also a number of statements of account. Many of the letters are signed by Thomas Crosse who seems to have been the partner who chiefly dealt with Ricardo’s business.

In the same case there are 56 letters covering the years 1815 to 1823 from Edward Wakefield, Ricardo’s land agent, on whom see above, p. 96, and also VI, xxxviii. He usually dates his letters from his office in Pall Mall, but sometimes from one or other of his clients’ estates in the country. Four letters which refer to the negotiations over the Portarlington constituency have been included in Volume VII.

The case ‘Samson—French Stock’ contains correspondence dealing with Ricardo’s investments in France (see above, p. 99 ff). There are 60 letters from Delessert & Co., 1817–1823; 32 letters from Ardoin & Co. (from 1820 Ardoin, Hubbard & Co.), 1817– 1821; and 14 letters of 1820–1823 from Samson Ricardo and two of 1822–1823 from Jacob Ricardo.

Apart from the unpublished letters the only manuscripts which perhaps deserve further mention in this survey are a dozen odd sheets of brief summaries and excerpts made by Ricardo while reading, or more probably re-reading, some writings on currency questions; they belong, as we shall presently see, to the autumn of 1809 when he was engaged in the gold-price controversy in the Morning Chronicle. The writings in question are Locke’s Further Considerations concerning Raising the Value of Money, sections of Steuart’s Principles of Political Oeconomy and of the Wealth of Nations, Lord Liverpool’s Treatise on the Coins of the Realm and Thornton’s Paper Credit. Whereas the notes on the first four of these are no more than précis, those on Thornton contain some comments by Ricardo; most of these however have been embodied in his High Price of Bullion. The chief interest of these manuscripts is as determining the period at which Ricardo undertook a study of these works on money (a matter which has been discussed above, III, 7); for most of the sheets are water-marked 1808, and two of them are letter-covers one of which (on Adam Smith) contains a reference to 5 July 1809 and the other (on Thornton) is dated 14 Oct. 1809.

Similar to these is a summary made by Ricardo of Copleston’s Second Letter to the Right Hon. Robert Peel on the Causes of the Increase of Pauperism, 1819. This is a complete ‘marginal contents’, paragraph by paragraph, carried out in accordance with the rules laid down by Mill in his letter of 1 Dec. 1815 (above, VI, 329).1

The Mill-Ricardo Papers

These are the papers of Ricardo which were in the possession of James Mill and passed at his death to his son, John Stuart Mill, and from him to his friend, J. E. Cairnes. Some account of the finding of them in 1943 at the Cairnes’ home at Raheny, Co. Dublin, has been given in the General Preface in Volume I. These papers neatly arranged in a green cloth folder were contained in a brown-paper parcel inscribed ‘Mr. David Ricardo’s Manuscripts’ and addressed in another hand ‘J. S. Mill Esq. India House City per P.D.C^y’.2 They consisted of the whole series of Ricardo’s letters to Mill and of a number of manuscripts which appear to have been sent to James Mill at Ricardo’s death, no doubt with a view to his deciding which were suitable for publication.3 Two of these were published soon after: namely, the Plan for a National Bank and the papers on Parliamentary Reform.4 The remaining manuscripts have been included in the present edition,1 with the exception of a few miscellaneous notes and jottings. Among the latter the only considerable item is a series of rough notes, covering fourteen pages of MS, made while reading Malthus’s Measure of Value. (These can be dated from the fact that two of the sheets on which they were written are old lettercovers bearing postmarks of 7 April and 7 May 1823.) The notes in question were largely used in writing the letters to Malthus of 29 April and 28 May 1823 (above, IX, 280, 297), which are devoted to a criticism of that pamphlet.

[1 ]Above, III, 343–78, 379–403 and 411–23.

[2 ]See above, IV, 273–4.

[3 ]See below, p. 393 ff.

[4 ]On the letters to Maria Edge-worth, which were returned to the Ricardo family, see above, VI, xxxii. It may be added that the paper in which they were folded (an old cover postmarked 20 Aug. 1823) is inscribed in Miss Edgeworth’s handwriting: ‘Ricardo’s invaluable letters’.

[1 ]In the ‘Mill-McCulloch’ case, however, there is also a paper probably in Bentham’s handwriting on the effect on profits of cultivating successive qualities of land.

[1 ]The summaries described in this and the preceding paragraph were printed in extenso in Ricardo’s Minor Papers.

[2 ]These initials stand for the London Parcels Delivery Company, which was established in 1838 (or at any rate it first appears in the Post Office Directory for that year). Thus the despatch of these papers from the Mill family home to J. S. Mill’s office must have occurred some years after the death of his father in 1836, possibly many years after, but not later than his retirement from the India House in 1858.

[3 ]On the other hand the correspondence with James Brown in 1819 had probably been sent by Ricardo himself at the time to Mill for his advice (cp. above, VIII, 100, n. 1).

[4 ]See above, IV, 274 and V, 493.

[1 ]These are as follows: ‘Absolute Value and Exchangeable Value’ (IV, 357 ff.), two of the Fragments on Torrens (IV, 309–315), a review of Blake’s pamphlet (IV, 353–6), the speech of 10 July 1822 (V, 231), and the draft letter on Peel’s Bill (V, 515 ff.).