I have read your pamphlet[143] with great pleasure, and am very much
satisfied with your arguments in favour of a college in preference to a
school for the education of the young men destined to manage the
complicated affairs of our Indian Empire. The testimonies from India in
favour of the young men sent from the College, as compared with those
who went out to India before the establishment of the College make
powerfully for you, and do not appear to have been answered by your
opponents. I observe by the papers that the discussion on this subject
will be renewed at the India House on the 6th February, at which time I
conclude that you will be in London. If so, I hope you will make my
house your headquarters. Mr. Murray promised to send copies of your book
to the gentlemen you directed me to mention to him.
It appears to me that one great cause of our difference in opinion on
the subjects which we have so often discussed is that you have always in
your mind the immediate and temporary effects of particular changes,
whereas I put these immediate and temporary effects quite aside, and fix
my whole attention on the permanent state of things which will result
from them. Perhaps you estimate these temporary effects too highly,
whilst I am too much disposed to undervalue them. To manage the subject
quite right, they should be carefully distinguished and mentioned, and
the due effects ascribed to each.
I have been reading again your three last pamphlets on rent and corn,
and cannot help thinking there is some ambiguity in the language. The
word [_sic_], 'high price of raw produce,' is calculated to produce a
different impression on your reader from what you mean. Your first and
third causes of high price appear to me to be directly at variance with
each other. The first is the fertility of land, the third the scarcity
of fertile land. The second cause too, I think, never operates[144].
There is one passage in particular which expresses fully my opinions. I
have not the book by me, and cannot refer you to the page, but it
begins, 'I have no hesitation in stating that independently of
irregularities in the currency,' etc. It is in the essay on Rent[145].
Surely Buchanan is right and your comment[146] wrong; rent is not a
creation but a transfer of wealth. It is the necessary consequence of
rent being the effect and not the cause of high price[147].
Say and I would say that by turning revenue into capital we shall obtain
both an increased supply and an increased demand; but, if the same
capital be so created, I do not approve of its present application, and
taking it out of the hands of those who know best how to employ it, to
encourage industry of a different kind and under the superintendence of
those who know nothing of the wants and demands of mankind, and blindly
produce cloth or stockings of which we have already too much, or improve
roads which nobody wishes to travel....
Very truly yours,
DAVID RICARDO.