I beg to remind you that the first Saturday in the next month is
to-morrow se'n-night, on which day or a few days before it, I hope to
have the pleasure of seeing you in Brook Street. We have a bed always at
your service, and I wish you would make the rule invariable to take up
your lodging with us whenever you visit London.
I hope you have quite determined to extend your new edition to another
volume, and that you are now making great progress in it. I wish much to
see a regular and connected statement of your opinions on what I deem
the most difficult and perhaps the most important topic of political
economy, namely, the progress of a country in wealth, and the laws by
which the increasing produce is distributed.
Have you seen Torrens' Letter to Lord Liverpool[127]? He appears to me
to have adopted all my views respecting profits and rent; and, in some
conversation which I had with him a few days ago, he unequivocally
avowed that he was now of my opinion, that the price of labour, arising
from a difficulty in procuring food, did not affect the prices of
commodities. He confessed that his former view on that subject was
erroneous. I should be glad to see all the arguments in favour of my
view of the question clearly and ably stated. I should not wonder if
Torrens undertook it.
The sale of my last pamphlet has far exceeded its merits. Murray is
printing a second edition[128]. I had no idea that the subject was of
much interest to the public, but it seems that they are curious about
the amount of the Bank treasure. In the House of Commons the defence of
the contracts with the Bank was very little satisfactory; they
endeavoured to fix the attention of the House on what the public had got
and saved by the operations of the Bank; they seemed to think that all
the rest belonged of right to the Bank.
Will Ministers be able to carry the Income Tax[129]?
Very truly yours,
DAVID RICARDO.
NOTE.--Torrens came nearest to fulfilment of the above forecast in
his 'Essay on the Production of Wealth' (1821), which was announced
as 'a general treatise upon Political Economy, combining with the
principles of Adam Smith so much of the more recent doctrines as may
be conformable to truth and embodying the whole into one
consentaneous system.' (Pref. p. v.) But he thinks out the subject
vigorously for himself; and, though in all his later books he extols
Ricardo above all his contemporaries, he finds frequent occasion to
differ from him. Indeed he occasionally claims that Ricardo is the
borrower, and he the lender. Ricardo, for example, is indebted to
him (he says) for the doctrine that, when a nation has great
advantage in one production but a much greater advantage in another,
it will confine itself to producing the latter, and will even import
the former (Ricardo, Works, pp. 76, 77; cf. Torrens, Preface to
Essay on External Corn Trade, p. vii). Yet the doctrine has always
passed as Ricardian _par excellence_ (see e.g. Cairnes, Leading
Principles of Political Economy, Part III. ch. i. p. 371, and
Logical Method, p. 81), and we should not guess, from Letter XLVII
for example, that Ricardo was the convert. The Preface to the
'Production of Wealth' ends with the prediction that in twenty
years' time there would be unanimity amongst Economists on all
fundamental principles.