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 humor 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 £1000 a year, and I find it necessary to borrow £10,000, for which I agree to give up to my creditor £500 per annum. My steward says to me: "If you will live on £400 a year and give up another £100 out of your income of £500, 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 £400 a year, and give up annually £600 to my steward in order to pay my creditor. The fist year my steward pays the creditor £100; then the debt would be £9,900, and therefore the income [or interest] due to the creditor would be only £495. But I continue to pay to my steward £600 per annum; and in the next year the steward pays over £105, and so from year to year the debt is diminished, £600 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 £600, half the debt is paid off; only £250 is due to the creditor, and £350 remains in the hands of the steward, his master continuing to live on £400 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 £7000, and devotes the whole £350 in his hands to pay the interest on that sum. What then becomes of my sinking fund? Originally I was in debt only £10,000; now I find myself indebted altogether £12,000; 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.