SUPPLEMENT TO VOLUME I New Evidence on the Subdivision of Chapter VIII of the ‘Principles’ 1817 - David Ricardo, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 10 Biographical Miscellany [1795]
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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. 10 Biographical Miscellany.
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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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SUPPLEMENT TO VOLUME I
New Evidence on the Subdivision of Chapter VIII of the ‘Principles’ 1817
In the Introduction to the Principles (above, I, xxvi-xxx) the relation between the double-numbering of chapters in ed. 1 and the fact that three leaves are ‘cancels’ was discussed. It was suggested that, after the book had been printed off, Ricardo divided what had previously been Chapter VIII, Taxes on Raw Produce, into two chapters by making out of its last few pages a separate Chapter VIII*, Taxes on Rent; which involved the reprinting of those pages. It was also conjectured that the need to start the new chapter on a fresh page was met by pushing forward the existing matter into a half-empty page at the end of the original chapter.
This operation required that the binder, when folding the printed sheet, should cut off three leaves (six pages) and substitute for them three newly printed ones. The possibility was mentioned that a copy might be found in which by an oversight the original leaves had not been replaced.
Such a copy has now come to light, and confirms the hypothesis as to the cause of the cancels and as to the way in which the subdivision of the chapter was carried out. This copy has been found by Professor George J. Stigler in the Library of Columbia University and is referred to by him in a review-article in the American Economic Review, September 1953, p. 587 n.
In this copy the first two of the leaves that should have been cancelled (signatures P6 and P7, being pages 219–222) have been left in the original position, although slit and torn by the printer as an indication to the binder. The two leaves intended to replace them are also present in this copy, but they have been bound in near the end of the book, between the two leaves forming signature 2R. The position of the two replacement leaves, together with the fact that, as we have seen, they are ‘conjugate’ (see above, I, xxviii) suggests that they were printed together with signature 2R, forming with it a half-sheet. The replacement leaves appear to have been printed from a new setting of type, and one or two misprints have been corrected. In the case of the third leaf to be cancelled, however, P8, the substitution has been effected in the copy in question, so that the original leaf is not extant: no doubt this was because the replacement leaf, having been printed as a separate single leaf, could hardly escape the binder’s attention.
A reproduction in the original size of the four uncancelled pages is given here; and the two crucial pages (220 and 221) can be compared with the corresponding replacement-pages, a reduced facsimile of which is found above, I, xxix.
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