[77] Cf. 'Nature and Progress of Rent,' p. 30, note.
[78] 'Rent,' pp. 21, 34. In the latter, Malthus says 'it would return only the common profits of stock with little or no rent.' Cf. ib. p. 36.
[79] 'Grounds of an Opinion.' See note on Letter XXII, p. 56.
[80] Probably the passage in Book II, ch. v, quoted by Ricardo in Pol. Econ. ch. ii (on Rent), p. 39 foot (McCulloch's ed. of Works). It contains the Physiocratic paradox that in manufactures nature does nothing, man does all; in agriculture nature does nearly all and man very little.
[81] Ricardo's opinion, expressed frequently and emphatically afterwards in the House of Commons, and most fully on paper in his article on the Sinking Fund written for the Encycl. Brit., was that no safeguards could prevent the Sinking Fund from being appropriated by a needy government, and that it was therefore from the point of view of the public interest a mere snare and delusion.
[82] Cf. Ricardo's Pol. Econ., ch. vi. 65 (ed. McCulloch).
[83] In his 'Letter to Samuel Whitbread, Esq., M.P.; being a Sequel to Considerations on Protection of Brit. Agriculture, with Remarks on the Publications of a Fellow of University College, and Mr. Ricardo, and Mr. Torrens.' Dated 25th Feb. 1815. He discusses West in a long 'Note,' and the two others in a longer 'Appendix.' Ricardo (whose tract on 'The Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the profits of Stock' he has just read) has, he says, 'little practical knowledge,' but brings forward 'truisms mixed with vagaries, clothed in the technical cant of political economy.' Torrens does not escape much more easily.
[84] The New Corn Law, prohibiting importation when the home price of wheat should be under 80s. a quarter.
[85] Possibly William Phillips, F.R.S., F.G.S., the Quaker and eminent mineralogist and geologist, member of the Geological Society. Born 1773, died 1828. Ricardo in early life was himself devoted to geological study.
[86] Part of this letter (5th sentence to 8th) is quoted by Empson, Edinb. Review, Jan. 1837, p. 499.