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 passages 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 quantity 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.