I must not longer delay answering your kind letter. I have had you often
in my mind, and was on the point of writing to you a short time ago,
when I received a letter from Mill enclosing one from Mr. Napier, the
editor or manager of the Encyclopedia Britannica, requesting him to
apply to me to write an article on the Sinking Fund[201] for his
publication. The task appeared too formidable to me to think of
undertaking; and I immediately wrote to Mill to that effect; but that
only brought me another letter from him which hardly left me a choice,
and at last I have consented to try what I can do, but with no hope of
succeeding. I am very hard at work, because I wish to give Mr.
Napier[202] the opportunity of applying to some other person, without
delaying his publication, as soon as I have convinced Mill and him that
I am not sufficiently conversant with matters of this kind. This
business has lately engrossed all my time, and will probably continue to
do so for at least a week to come.
So you moved from Henley to Maidenhead! You were determined not to lose
sight of the Thames. I shall expect to see your name entered as a
candidate for the annual wherry.
I am glad that you are proceeding merrily with your work. I now have
hopes it will be finished. You have been very indolent, and are not half
so industrious nor so anxious as I am when I have anything on hand.
I have not been able to give a proper degree of attention to the subject
of your letter. The supposition you make of half an ounce of silver
being picked up on the sea shore by a day's labour is, you will confess,
an extravagant one. Under such circumstances silver could not, as you
say, rise or fall, neither could labour, but corn could or rather might.
Profits I think would still depend on the proportions of produce
allotted to the capitalist and the labourer. The whole produce would be
less, which would cause its price to rise, but of the quantity produced
the labourer would get a larger proportion than before. This larger
proportion would nevertheless be a less quantity than before, and would
be of the same money value. In the case you suppose the rise of money
wages does not appear to be necessary in the progress of cultivation to
its extreme limits; but the reason is that you have excluded the use of
capital entirely in the production of your medium of value. You know I
agree with you that money is a more variable commodity than is generally
imagined, and therefore I think that many of the variations in the price
of commodities may be fairly attributed to an alteration in the value of
money. It is difficult to conceive that in a great and civilized country
any commodity of importance could be produced with equal advantage
without the employment of capital. By what you tell me in your
letter[203] you have respected my authority much too highly, and I do
not consent that you should attribute to that respect the little
activity you have displayed in getting your work finished. I wish that
Mrs. Malthus and you would come to us here at Christmas. I shall then be
quite in the humo[u]r to discuss all the difficult questions on which we
appear to differ. My family is now in a settled state, and I think I can
promise you more comfortable entertainment than I have yet been able to
give you here. You must no longer plume yourself on being the principal
object of Cobbett's[204] abuse. I have come in for my share of it, and
just in the way that I anticipated. Even when he agrees with you he can
find shades of difference which calls [_sic_] forth his virulence.
I had the pleasure of passing a few days lately in Mr. Whishaw's company
at Mr. Smith's at Easton Grey. He was in very good spirits and very
agreeable. We had some political discussion, particularly on Reform, and
he was more liberal in his concessions than I have usually found him. I
had Miss Hobhouse heartily on my side; and Mrs. Chandler, an enthusiast
for the Whigs, declared that mine were the true Whig principles. Mr.
Belsham was of the party, but he did not take a decided part. Mr.
Macdonnel, who came with Mr. Whishaw was, I thought, all but an ally.
Are you not weary?...
Believe me, Ever yours truly,
DAVID RICARDO.
NOTE 1.--The Sinking Fund was a frequent topic of Ricardo's
speeches in the House of Commons. It was a delusion to the people,
who fancied it was paying off their National Debt, and a snare to
the Government, who were constantly tempted to divert it from its
proper purpose. So he declared in his first session (e.g. May 13,
June 9, and June 18, 1819), and so he persisted, in his last. The
following apologue on the subject from his speech of 28th Feb.
1823, is in the manner of Cobden, and shows how economists will
rather read a difficult truth 'writ small' than 'writ large:'--'I
have (he says) an income of L1000 a year, and I find it necessary
to borrow L10,000, for which I agree to give up to my creditor L500
per annum. My steward says to me: "If you will live on L400 a year
and give up another L100 out of your income of L500, that will
enable you in a certain number of years to get completely rid of
your debt." I listen to this good advice, live on L400 a year, and
give up annually L600 to my steward in order to pay my creditor.
The fist year my steward pays the creditor L100; then the debt
would be L9,900, and therefore the income [or interest] due to the
creditor would be only L495. But I continue to pay to my steward
L600 per annum; and in the next year the steward pays over L105,
and so from year to year the debt is diminished, L600 being still
received by the steward. At the end of a certain number of years
the result is this--that out of a yearly reserve of L600, half the
debt is paid off; only L250 is due to the creditor, and L350
remains in the hands of the steward, his master continuing to live
on L400 per annum. At this period some object occurring to the
steward which he thinks might be of benefit to me or to himself, he
borrows L7000, and devotes the whole L350 in his hands to pay the
interest on that sum. What then becomes of my sinking fund?
Originally I was in debt only L10,000; now I find myself indebted
altogether L12,000; so that instead of possessing a sinking fund,
as I had hoped, I am positively so much more in debt.' Ricardo's
moral was that we should honestly give up pretending to have a
sinking fund. One of his own friends remarking that this was to
believe, with the French lady, that the best way to overcome
temptation was to yield to it, Ricardo retorts (speech of 6th
March, 1823): 'If I knew I was going to be robbed of my purse, I
should spend its contents myself first.'
NOTE 2.--It is worth while to quote some parts of the passages of
Cobbett, to which this letter refers. They were too violent to be
taken seriously. If Dr. Johnson really loved a good hater, he lost
much enjoyment by ending his days before Cobbett wrote. In the
letter which appears in the Political Register for 4th Sept. 1819,
Cobbett delivers himself as follows: 'I see that they [the
borough-mongers] have adopted a scheme of one Ricardo (I wonder
what countryman he is), who is I believe a converted Jew. At any
rate he has been a 'Change Alley-man for the last fifteen or twenty
years. If the Old Lord Chatham were now alive, he would speak with
respect of the muckworm, as he called the 'Change Alley people.
Faith, they are now become _everything_. Baring assists at the
Congress of Sovereigns, and Ricardo regulates things at home. The
muckworm is no longer a creeping thing; it rears its head aloft,
and makes the haughty borough-lords sneak about in holes and
corners.'... He goes on to say that the doctrines preached in the
'Courier' and elsewhere about the inutility of ready money and the
convenience of paper show that cash payments are not really thought
practicable by these people. 'This Ricardo says that the country is
happy in the discovery of a paper money, that it is an improvement
in political science. Now if this were true it would be better to
have a paper money in _all_ countries. And what standard of _value_
would there then be? It is manifest that there could be none, and
that commerce could not be carried on. Besides, what would be the
peril in case of war?' Even as it is, the French expect us to be in
their power in a very few years from this very cause, &c. In
another letter to Hunt in the following number of the Register he
goes on (p. 112): 'I wonder that Ricardo, hot from the 'Change, who
talks of the _lower orders_ in such goodly terms, and was shocked
at the idea of their increasing, ... had not thought of the fine
and copious _drain_ that is continually going on from England to
America. This was a little thing of sunshine amidst the gloom.'
There are other references to Ricardo in the Register not much more
complimentary.
Ricardo and Malthus, however, wear their rue with a difference.
Cobbett reaches his spring-tide level of vituperation in the letter
written from Long Island on 6th Feb., and printed in the Political
Register for May 8, 1819 (vol. 34, no. 33): 'To Parson Malthus, on
the Rights of the Poor and on the cruelty recommended by him to be
exercised towards the Poor.'
'Parson, I have during my life detested many men, but never any one
so much as you. Your book ... could have sprung from no mind not
capable of dictating acts of greater cruelty than any recorded in
the history of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Priests have in all
ages been remarkable for cool and deliberate and unrelenting
cruelty; but it seems to have been reserved for the Church of
England to produce one who has a just claim to the atrocious
preeminence. No assemblage of words can give an appropriate
designation of you; and therefore, as being the single word which
best suits the character of such a man, I call you Parson, which
amongst other meanings includes that of Borough-monger Tool' (pp.
1019, 1020). He goes on to say he has drawn up a list of 743
obnoxious parsons, who have dared to exclude his Register and
'Paper against Gold' from their parish reading-rooms. 'I must hate
these execrable Parsons; but the whole mass put together is not to
me an object of such perfect execration as you, a man (if we give
you the name) not to be expostulated with but to be punished'
(1021).
The best commentary on this scurrility may be found in a speech of
Ricardo himself (July 1, 1823, on the 'Petition of Christian
Ministers for free discussion'), where he says that ribald language
should always be allowed full publicity, for it 'offends the
common-sense of mankind' and can hope to make no serious converts.