Part 11 (1/2)

GATCOMB PARK, _2 Jan., 1816_.

MY DEAR SIR,

Your two letters have both reached me, and I am very sorry to find that I shall not have the pleasure of seeing you at Gatcomb this vacation. I left London, as you supposed, the day after the Bank Court. I should have considered it fortunate if whilst I was there I had met you. My house in Brook Street is not yet in a state to receive us; nor will it be this season, unless we consent to go in it with the walls unpapered and unpainted, conditions to which we shall agree. It will be we are told in a habitable state by the latter end of the month, at which time we shall probably quit Gatcomb.

As you have not given me the pleasure of your company here, and as I wish to speak to Murray concerning my book and to consult some Parliamentary papers which I have not got here, I intend taking a trip to town the beginning of next week. Do you think I shall have any chance of meeting you there? Remember that a letter will always find me at or follow me from the Stock Exchange[121].

It is exceedingly provoking that you should have been so much interrupted by college affairs as not to have made more progress with your new chapters. I shall regret your thinking it necessary to abridge or leave out anything which you may have to say connected with the subject, and particularly if you should so determine, because more time will otherwise be required before you can publish. The question of bounties and restrictions is exceedingly important, and, unless you have already given your present opinions on that subject elsewhere, or mean to do so, it ought to form part of the present work[122]; and a little delay in the publication is not very important.

The edition which I have of your work is the first, and it is many years since I read it. When you wrote to me that you were looking over the chapters on the Agricultural and Manufacturing systems with a view to make some alterations in them, I looked into those chapters and saw a great deal in them which differed from the opinions I have formed on that part of the subject. At your house I observed that in a subsequent edition you had altered some of the pa.s.sages to which I particularly objected, and in the chapters as you are now writing them it appeared to me that there was only a slight trace of the difference we have often discussed. The general impression which I retain of the book is excellent. The doctrines appeared so clear and so satisfactorily laid down that they excited an interest in me inferior only to that produced by Adam Smith's celebrated work[123]. I remember mentioning to you, and I believe you told me that you had altered it in the following editions, that I thought you argued in some places as if the poor rates had no effect in increasing the quant.i.ty of food to be distributed,--that I thought you were bound to admit that the poor laws would increase the demand and consequently the supply. This admission does not weaken the grand point to be proved.

As for the difference between us on Profits, of which you speak in your letter, you have not, I think, stated it correctly. You say that my opinion is 'that general profits never fall from a general fall of prices compared with labour, but from a general rise of labour compared with prices.' I will not acknowledge this to be my proposition. I think that corn and labour are the variable commodities, and that other things neither rise nor fall but from difficulty or facility of production or from some cause particularly affecting the value of money, and that no alteration of price proceeding from these causes affect[s] general profits,--allowing always some effect for cheapness of the raw material....

Yours very truly, DAVID RICARDO.

XLII.

LONDON, _10th Jan., 1816_.

MY DEAR SIR,

I arrived in town yesterday and found your letter at the Stock Exchange.

It is very uncertain whether I shall leave London to-morrow evening or Monday evening. I am desirous of getting home on many accounts, but I may not be able to accomplish the business for which I came so soon as I expected, and, if I do not get it done by to-morrow it will in all probability detain me till Monday. Thus then it is still uncertain whether we are to meet, and I do not exactly know how to make you acquainted with my movements. I will, however, let Mr. Murray know if I leave town to-morrow, and, if you are in the neighbourhood of Russell Square, by sending to No. 8, Montague Street (Mr. Basevi's), you will be sure to know. In the City, at the Stock Exchange, any of my brothers will inform you about me. If I should not be gone, will you do me the favour of dining with me on Friday at Mr. Basevi's? His dinner hour is six o'clock, and he begs me to say that he shall be much flattered by your favouring him with your company. I was in hopes of finding you in London and of having the benefit of your opinion of my book[124] in its present state, before I sent it to be printed. That advantage I must now forego, because I am desirous of getting it out before the meeting of Parliament, and have before experienced the inconvenience of too much hurry.

I cannot think it inconsistent to suppose that the money price of labour may rise when it is necessary to cultivate poorer land, whilst the real price may at the same time fall. Two opposite causes are influencing the price of labour, one the enhanced price of some of the things on which wages are expended, the other the fewer enjoyments which the labourer will have the power to command. You think these may balance each other, or rather that the latter will prevail; I on the contrary think the former the most powerful in its effects. I must write a book to convince you.

I am glad you are not going to cut your next edition short.

Very truly yours, DAVID RICARDO.

NOTE.--The MS. referred to in this letter was probably the pamphlet on 'Economical and Secure Currency,' which internal evidence would show to have been printed not earlier than Feb., 1816. Ricardo, as appears from Letter XL, had already submitted the MS. to James Mill.

In the fragment of a letter to Mill (quoted in Bain's 'Life of Mill,' p. 153, and dated Jan., 1816) he writes: 'Fill eight pages in the Appendix, will that be too much?' Professor Bain thinks this must refer to the 'Principles of Political Economy and Taxation'

(1817). But that work has no Appendix; and there seems no reason why it should not refer to the 'Economical and Secure Currency' (1816), which has one. The 'Resolutions proposed concerning the Bank of England by Mr. Grenfell,' and those proposed by Mr. Mellish, together, cover seven pages of that Appendix in the original edition; and Ricardo in the fragment quoted had probably been saying, that these Resolutions, if he printed them, would fill nearly eight pages, etc.

XLIII.

LONDON, _7 Feb., 1816_.

MY DEAR SIR,

I arrived in town yesterday, with the whole of my numerous family. We are already as comfortably settled in Brook Street as under all circ.u.mstances we can expect, and I hasten to inform you that we have a bed ready for you, which I hope you will very soon occupy. I have forgotten on which Sat.u.r.day in the month you meet at the King of Clubs, but conclude from your last meeting that it is the second. If so, you will probably be in town to-morrow or Friday, when I shall hope that you will lodge at our house and give us as much of your company as your numerous friends will allow you to do.

You have probably ere this seen my book[125]. I have been reading it in its present dress, and very much lament that I make no progress in the very difficult art of composition. I believe that ought to be my study before I intrude any more of my crude notions on the public.