I write to remind you that the time is come at which you once gave me
hope almost to certainty that I should have the pleasure of seeing you
here; and even when I last saw you you promised, if you could make it
convenient, to come and pass a part of your vacation with me. The
weather is beautiful, and my desire to see you as ardent as ever. Come
then and inhale the pure atmosphere of our hills, and be under no fear
that your visit will retard any object to which your attention may now
be devoted, for you shall be free to write, study, or read, as many
hours in the day as you please, unmolested by any one's intrusion.
My lost MS.[118] is recovered. Mr. Mill recommends its publication, but
advises me to write an introduction, and to divide it into sections. I
had almost resolved to throw it aside, but I have been again at work
upon it, and, though I cannot put it in any shape to please me, it is I
think rather better than when you saw it; and the probability at present
is that I shall venture to publish it.
I attended the Bank Court the other day. I had no intention whatever of
speaking; but some very bad reasoning on the other side and a total
deviation from the question called me up, and I spoke for five or ten
minutes with considerable inward agitation, but without committing any
glaring blunder. My speaking is like my writing too much compressed. I
am too apt to crowd a great deal of difficult matter into so short a
space as to be incomprehensible to the generality of readers. The
Chronicle, I see, has reported what he thought or heard I said, but he
has imputed to me what I neither felt nor uttered. Allusions were made
to the Bullion question, and it was said that it had been prophesied
that, if the Bank directors were corrupt, they might with the power they
had of issuing paper occasion the greatest public distress; no such
distress, however, had been experienced. I observed in reply that the
goodness of the system was not proved by the distress not having
occurred,--that the speaker had been only paying a compliment to the
integrity of the directors, in which no one in the court was more ready
to join than myself,--but, if the directors had been corrupt, I still
thought that they had been armed with the power of doing mischief.
Though I was ready to declare my confidence in the integrity of the
directors, there were many parts of their system of which I could not
approve, etc. etc. This is very different from the report in the
Chronicle; but I understand that the reporters were most carefully
excluded from the court.
I hope the business at the college has been settled to your
satisfaction, and that the result of the late unpleasant
disturbance[119] will give you some security against its recurrence in
future.
I conclude that you have quite finished writing the alterations and
amendments which you projected for the new edition of your book[120].
When I last saw you I think you had made considerable progress, and
therefore it is probable that you may be already in the press. What
point will next engage your attention? For I hope, as M. Say says, that
you will 'travaillez toujours' [_sic_]....
Ever yours,
DAVID RICARDO.
[Fragment. Within this year, or earlier. See Letter XL]
[I began] by assuring you that I was not going to weary you with a
repetition of my hundred times told tale, and I am ashamed to see that I
have filled four sides with nothing else. There are some other points on
which I shall make some remarks when I have the pleasure of seeing you.
If you should come to town, will you do me the favour to call at the
Stock Exchange, unless my house should not be much out of your way. I
recommend your calling there because I am just about deserting Brook
Street for some time. Mrs. Ricardo and all the family are going to
Ramsgate to-morrow morning, and she will not consent to let me remain at
home by myself, so that when I am in London I shall be chiefly with my
brother at Bow; now and then I shall pass a night at home. My business
is so uncertain that I cannot at all foresee what portion of the next
two or three months I shall be able to spend at the sea side. It is
probable that I shall be so much in town that I shall be found by you at
the Stock Exchange....
Yours most truly,
DAVID RICARDO.