Part 17 (1/2)

You will have seen by the newspapers that I have been through all the parade and expense, which my office of sheriff imposes on me, when the judges attend the a.s.sizes, without any advantage. The judge came into the town after midnight, by which his commission became void, and, after sending to London, Jury, Witnesses, Counsel, and Sheriff were all dismissed to their respective homes. It is expected that we shall have a new commission in two or three weeks....

I am sorry that you have not made any great progress in the work that you are about. After the reflection you have given to the subject I am not surprised that my reviewer has not shaken your confidence in your opinions. It would have been little flattering to me if he had, for I have had many opportunities, and have taken a great deal of pains to bring you round to my way of thinking without success. Why should he be so fortunate on the first trial? The truth I begin to suspect is that we do not differ so much as we have hitherto thought. I differed very little from the opinions expressed in that part of your MS. which you read to me, but I wish to h[ave an] opportunity of judging of your system as a whole, and therefore shall be glad when it comes forth in its printed form.

I am glad to hear that Sir J. Mackintosh and Mr. Whishaw are well, pray remember me kindly to them. If either, or both of them, should go to Bowood[197] this season, I shall take it very kind of them if they will come for a few days to me. The Marquis of Lansdown has promised me a visit, and it would be particularly agreeable if they would all come at the same time. Should Mr. Whishaw be as near to me as Bowood he is already under an engagement to come. I met the Marquis and Marchioness of Lansdown at Gloucester; they entered the town on their way home from a tour, just as I was about leaving it; and owing to the breaking up of the courts were detained some time for want of horses. I suppose that you will be confined at Hertford till the Xmas vacation. I very much wish that Mrs. Malthus and you would pa.s.s a part of that vacation with us.... Mr. Mill arrived here yesterday evening to pay me his long promised visit. He brings me no news, excepting that he dined at Mr.

Bentham's with Mr. Brougham, Mr. Rush[198] the American Amba.s.sador, and Sir Samuel Romilly. The old gentleman is becoming gay. A party of four must to him be a formidably large one[199]....

Ever truly yours, D. RICARDO.

NOTE.--Between this letter and the next come probably the two quoted by McCulloch (Ricardo, Works, p. XXVI), to whom (if not to Mill) they were no doubt addressed: 7th April, 1819, 'You will have seen that I have taken my seat in the House of Commons. I fear that I shall be of little use there. I have twice attempted to speak; but I proceeded in the most embarra.s.sed manner; and I have no hope of conquering the alarm with which I am a.s.sailed the moment I hear the sound of my own voice.' 22nd June, 1819, 'I thank you for your endeavours to inspire me with confidence on the occasion of my addressing the House. Their indulgent reception of me has, in some degree, made the task of speaking more easy to me; but there are yet so many formidable obstacles to my success, and some, I fear, of a nature nearly insurmountable, that I apprehend it will be wisdom and sound discretion in me to content myself with giving silent votes.'

Happily he did not keep this resolution. It was at this time that George Grote was introduced to Ricardo, breakfasting with him at Brook Street (March 23 and 28, 1819), and walking with him and Mill in St. James's Park and Kensington Gardens afterwards. Grote used to submit his papers to Ricardo's judgment, and vied with Mill in admiration of him (Personal Life of George Grote, p. 36). A letter from Ricardo to Grote, dated March 1823, is given in Grote's Life (p. 42); Ricardo thanks Grote for having expressed approbation of his political conduct. One of Ricardo's last public appearances, outside Parliament, was at a Reform dinner, where he proposed the chief resolution of the evening in a speech which Grote helped him to prepare (Bain's Life of J. Mill, p. 208).

LXIX[200].

GATCOMB PARK, _21 Sept., 1819_.

MY DEAR MALTHUS,

I must not longer delay answering your kind letter. I have had you often in my mind, and was on the point of writing to you a short time ago, when I received a letter from Mill enclosing one from Mr. Napier, the editor or manager of the Encyclopedia Britannica, requesting him to apply to me to write an article on the Sinking Fund[201] for his publication. The task appeared too formidable to me to think of undertaking; and I immediately wrote to Mill to that effect; but that only brought me another letter from him which hardly left me a choice, and at last I have consented to try what I can do, but with no hope of succeeding. I am very hard at work, because I wish to give Mr.

Napier[202] the opportunity of applying to some other person, without delaying his publication, as soon as I have convinced Mill and him that I am not sufficiently conversant with matters of this kind. This business has lately engrossed all my time, and will probably continue to do so for at least a week to come.

So you moved from Henley to Maidenhead! You were determined not to lose sight of the Thames. I shall expect to see your name entered as a candidate for the annual wherry.

I am glad that you are proceeding merrily with your work. I now have hopes it will be finished. You have been very indolent, and are not half so industrious nor so anxious as I am when I have anything on hand.

I have not been able to give a proper degree of attention to the subject of your letter. The supposition you make of half an ounce of silver being picked up on the sea sh.o.r.e by a day's labour is, you will confess, an extravagant one. Under such circ.u.mstances silver could not, as you say, rise or fall, neither could labour, but corn could or rather might.

Profits I think would still depend on the proportions of produce allotted to the capitalist and the labourer. The whole produce would be less, which would cause its price to rise, but of the quant.i.ty produced the labourer would get a larger proportion than before. This larger proportion would nevertheless be a less quant.i.ty than before, and would be of the same money value. In the case you suppose the rise of money wages does not appear to be necessary in the progress of cultivation to its extreme limits; but the reason is that you have excluded the use of capital entirely in the production of your medium of value. You know I agree with you that money is a more variable commodity than is generally imagined, and therefore I think that many of the variations in the price of commodities may be fairly attributed to an alteration in the value of money. It is difficult to conceive that in a great and civilized country any commodity of importance could be produced with equal advantage without the employment of capital. By what you tell me in your letter[203] you have respected my authority much too highly, and I do not consent that you should attribute to that respect the little activity you have displayed in getting your work finished. I wish that Mrs. Malthus and you would come to us here at Christmas. I shall then be quite in the humo[u]r to discuss all the difficult questions on which we appear to differ. My family is now in a settled state, and I think I can promise you more comfortable entertainment than I have yet been able to give you here. You must no longer plume yourself on being the princ.i.p.al object of Cobbett's[204] abuse. I have come in for my share of it, and just in the way that I antic.i.p.ated. Even when he agrees with you he can find shades of difference which calls [_sic_] forth his virulence.

I had the pleasure of pa.s.sing a few days lately in Mr. Whishaw's company at Mr. Smith's at Easton Grey. He was in very good spirits and very agreeable. We had some political discussion, particularly on Reform, and he was more liberal in his concessions than I have usually found him. I had Miss Hobhouse heartily on my side; and Mrs. Chandler, an enthusiast for the Whigs, declared that mine were the true Whig principles. Mr.

Belsham was of the party, but he did not take a decided part. Mr.

Macdonnel, who came with Mr. Whishaw was, I thought, all but an ally.

Are you not weary?...

Believe me, Ever yours truly, DAVID RICARDO.

NOTE 1.--The Sinking Fund was a frequent topic of Ricardo's speeches in the House of Commons. It was a delusion to the people, who fancied it was paying off their National Debt, and a snare to the Government, who were constantly tempted to divert it from its proper purpose. So he declared in his first session (e.g. May 13, June 9, and June 18, 1819), and so he persisted, in his last. The following apologue on the subject from his speech of 28th Feb.

1823, is in the manner of Cobden, and shows how economists will rather read a difficult truth 'writ small' than 'writ large:'--'I have (he says) an income of 1000 a year, and I find it necessary to borrow 10,000, for which I agree to give up to my creditor 500 per annum. My steward says to me: ”If you will live on 400 a year and give up another 100 out of your income of 500, that will enable you in a certain number of years to get completely rid of your debt.” I listen to this good advice, live on 400 a year, and give up annually 600 to my steward in order to pay my creditor.

The fist year my steward pays the creditor 100; then the debt would be 9,900, and therefore the income [or interest] due to the creditor would be only 495. But I continue to pay to my steward 600 per annum; and in the next year the steward pays over 105, and so from year to year the debt is diminished, 600 being still received by the steward. At the end of a certain number of years the result is this--that out of a yearly reserve of 600, half the debt is paid off; only 250 is due to the creditor, and 350 remains in the hands of the steward, his master continuing to live on 400 per annum. At this period some object occurring to the steward which he thinks might be of benefit to me or to himself, he borrows 7000, and devotes the whole 350 in his hands to pay the interest on that sum. What then becomes of my sinking fund?

Originally I was in debt only 10,000; now I find myself indebted altogether 12,000; so that instead of possessing a sinking fund, as I had hoped, I am positively so much more in debt.' Ricardo's moral was that we should honestly give up pretending to have a sinking fund. One of his own friends remarking that this was to believe, with the French lady, that the best way to overcome temptation was to yield to it, Ricardo retorts (speech of 6th March, 1823): 'If I knew I was going to be robbed of my purse, I should spend its contents myself first.'

NOTE 2.--It is worth while to quote some parts of the pa.s.sages of Cobbett, to which this letter refers. They were too violent to be taken seriously. If Dr. Johnson really loved a good hater, he lost much enjoyment by ending his days before Cobbett wrote. In the letter which appears in the Political Register for 4th Sept. 1819, Cobbett delivers himself as follows: 'I see that they [the borough-mongers] have adopted a scheme of one Ricardo (I wonder what countryman he is), who is I believe a converted Jew. At any rate he has been a 'Change Alley-man for the last fifteen or twenty years. If the Old Lord Chatham were now alive, he would speak with respect of the muckworm, as he called the 'Change Alley people.

Faith, they are now become _everything_. Baring a.s.sists at the Congress of Sovereigns, and Ricardo regulates things at home. The muckworm is no longer a creeping thing; it rears its head aloft, and makes the haughty borough-lords sneak about in holes and corners.'... He goes on to say that the doctrines preached in the 'Courier' and elsewhere about the inutility of ready money and the convenience of paper show that cash payments are not really thought practicable by these people. 'This Ricardo says that the country is happy in the discovery of a paper money, that it is an improvement in political science. Now if this were true it would be better to have a paper money in _all_ countries. And what standard of _value_ would there then be? It is manifest that there could be none, and that commerce could not be carried on. Besides, what would be the peril in case of war?' Even as it is, the French expect us to be in their power in a very few years from this very cause, &c. In another letter to Hunt in the following number of the Register he goes on (p. 112): 'I wonder that Ricardo, hot from the 'Change, who talks of the _lower orders_ in such goodly terms, and was shocked at the idea of their increasing, ... had not thought of the fine and copious _drain_ that is continually going on from England to America. This was a little thing of suns.h.i.+ne amidst the gloom.'

There are other references to Ricardo in the Register not much more complimentary.