I have left you quite free for Friday, but I regret that your
engagements will not conveniently allow you to come to us on that day.
We shall expect you on Saturday morning. I hope Mrs. Malthus' visit will
not be deferred longer than the next meeting of the King of Clubs[33].
It appears to me that you ascribe the difference in the variations of
price which would probably be the effect of doubling the quantity of
coffee, sugar, or indigo, on [the] one hand, or of doubling the quantity
of the precious metals on the other, to a wrong cause. Coffee, sugar,
and indigo are commodities for which, although there would be an
increased use if they were to sink much in value, still, as they are not
applicable to a great variety of new purposes, the demand would
necessarily be limited; not so with gold and silver. These metals exist
in a degree of scarcity, and are applicable to a great variety of _new_
uses; the fall of their price, in consequence of augmented quantity,
would always be checked, not only by an increased demand for those
purposes to which they had before been applied, but to the want of them
for entirely new employments. If they were in sufficient abundance, we
might even make our tea-kettles and saucepans of them. It is to this
essential difference between these commodities, and not to the
circumstance of one of them being employed as a circulating medium, that
I should attribute the different effects which would follow from the
augmentation of their quantity. In any point of view however I do not
see how it bears materially on the question between us, namely whether
the precious metals are frequently resorted to for the payment of debts
between countries when no disturbance has taken place in the amount or
proportion of the currency.
I wonder as you do that the stocks have not felt the effects of Mr.
Vansittart's vigorous system. The delay which has taken place in
creating new stock, the good news from abroad, and, above all, the want
of reflection in the mass of stockholders may be considered as the
cause.
Ever truly yours,
DAVID RICARDO.
NOTE.--'The King of Clubs' is described in the Life of Sir James
Mackintosh, (by his son,--2nd ed. 1836), vol. i. p. 137 (under date
1800): 'As an agreeable rallying point in addition to the ordinary
meetings of a social circle, a dinner-club (christened "The King of
Clubs" by Mr. Robert Smith [Bobus, brother of Sydney Smith]), was
founded by a party at his [Mackintosh's] house, consisting of
himself [Mackintosh] and the five following gentlemen, all of whom
still survive:--Mr. Rogers, Mr. Sharp, Mr. Robert Smith, Mr.
Scarlett, and Mr. John Allen. To these original members were
afterwards added the names of many of the most distinguished men of
the time; and it was with parental pride and satisfaction that he
received intelligence some time after of their "being compelled to
exclude strangers and to limit their numbers, so that in what way
'The King of Clubs' eats, by what secret rites and institutions it
is conducted, must be matter of conjecture to the ingenious
antiquary, but can never be regularly transmitted to posterity by
the faithful historian."'--The biographer adds in a note that the
Club was suddenly dissolved in the year 1824. Some of the most
distinguished members are enumerated, among them Ricardo (l. c. p.
138 _n._). To judge by a letter of Mackintosh to Sharp on 29th June,
1804, the Club at that date included (besides the writer and his
correspondent) only Sydney Smith, Scarlett, Boddington, the poet
Rogers, Whishaw, and Horner (Mack. Life, vol. i. 209). The time of
meeting seems to have been the first Saturday of every month. See
below Letter XLIV, but cf. XLIII. Add Memoirs of Horner, i. 193,
under date April 1802, and Holland's Memoir of Sydney Smith i. 91,
&c.