Produced by Adrian Mastronardi and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) LETTERS OF RICARDO TO MALTHUS London HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE AMEN CORNER, E.C. LETTERS OF DAVID RICARDO TO THOMAS ROBERT MALTHUS 1810-1823 EDITED BY JAMES BONAR M.A. OXFORD, LL.D. GLASGOW Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1887 [_All rights reserved_] CONTENTS. PAGE 1. PREFACE vii 2. OUTLINE OF SUBJECTS xix 3. LETTERS I TO LXXXVIII 1-240 4. CHRONICLE 241 5. INDEX 245 PREFACE. The following Letters are printed for the first time from the original manuscripts, kindly lent for the purpose by Colonel Malthus, C.B. The representatives of Ricardo have been good enough to make search for the corresponding letters of Malthus, but without success. The Collection covers the whole period of the friendship of the two men. What is of purely private interest (a very small portion) has, as a rule, been omitted. There is seldom any obscurity in the text; the handwriting of Ricardo is clear and good. The earlier letters have no envelopes. The breaking of the seal has frequently torn a page, and destroyed a word or two. In two cases we have nothing but the fragment of a letter. But fortunately the bulk of the series has reached us in a complete state. These Letters were evidently known to Empson and MacCulloch, whose references to them are quoted in their proper place. Other letters of Ricardo, as well as his speeches in Parliament, are quoted here and there when they illustrate the text or fill up a gap. The Correspondence with J. B. Say is given at some length, as it is probably little known to English readers. The Outline of Subjects will be found to contain only a bare sketch of the main positions taken up by Ricardo against Malthus in these Letters. It could not fairly be expanded into an account of both sides of the argument, for, when we are within hearing of only one of the disputants, we cannot with fairness believe ourselves to have the whole case before us. We cannot accept his statement of the terms of the discussion, for, though he had every desire to be just to his opponent, his cast of mind was so different that he can hardly be thought to have entered into his opponent's views with perfect sympathy[1].