You say in your last letter 'that you are fortified with new arguments to prove demonstratively that a neat revenue is absolutely impossible under the determination to employ the whole produce in the production of necessaries, and consequently that if there is not an adequate taste for luxuries and conveniences or unproductive labour, there must necessarily be a general glut.' I shall not trouble you to bring forward these arguments, for with a very slight alteration I should entirely concur in your proposition. If I recollect right, it is the very exception which I made[231] and which you mention in your book. You must collect your stock of arguments to defend more difficult points than this.
I am quite sure that you are the last man who would misstate an adversary, knowingly, yet I find in your book some allusions to opinions which you represent as mine and which I do not really hold. In one or two cases you, I think, furnish the proof that you have misapprehended me, for you represent my doctrines one way in one place, and another way in another. After all the difference between us does not depend on these points; they are very secondary considerations.
I have made notes on every passage in your book which I dispute, and have supposed myself about publishing a new edition of your work, and at liberty to mark the passage with a reference to a note at the bottom of the page. I have in fact quoted three or four words of a sentence, noting the page, and then added my comment. The part of your book to which I most object is the last. I can see no soundness in the reasons you give for the usefulness of demand on the part of unproductive consumers. How their consuming, without reproducing, can be beneficial to a country, in any possible state of it, I confess I cannot discover. I have also written some notes on M. Say's letters to you, with which I am by no means pleased. He is very unjust to me, and evidently does not understand my doctrine; and for the opinions which we hold in common he does not give such satisfactory reasons as might, I think, be advanced. In fact he yields points to you, which may almost be considered as giving up the question, and affording you a triumph. In Say's works generally, there is a great mixture of profound thinking, and of egregious blundering. What can induce him to persevere in representing utility and value as the same thing? Can he really believe that our taxation operates as he describes[232], and can he think that we should be relieved, in the way he represents, by the payment of our national debt[233]?
I shall not dispute another proposition in your letter. 'No wealth,' you say, 'can exist unless the demand or the estimation in which the commodity is held exceeds the cost of production.' I have never disputed this. I do not dispute either the influence of demand on the price of corn or on the price of all other things; but supply follows close at its heels and soon takes the power of regulating price in his [sic] own hands, and in regulating it he is determined by cost of production. I acknowledge the intervals on which you so exclusively dwell, but still they are only intervals. 'Fifty oak trees valued at £20 each do not contain as much labour as a stone wall in Gloucestershire which costs £1000['][234]. I have answered your question; let me ask you one. Did you ever believe that I thought fifty oak trees would cost as much labour as the stone wall? I really do not want such propositions to be granted in order to support my system....
I am, Ever truly yours,
David Ricardo.
LXXV[235].
[Minchinhampton, 29 Nov., 1820.]
My dear Malthus,
... I am very glad to hear of your intention of paying me a visit here. I hope it will be for a longer time than you mention. I am desired by Mrs. Ricardo to say that it would give her great pleasure to see Mrs. Malthus and your three children.... There is a coach which leaves London three times a week at five o'clock in the evening, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This coach goes to Minchinhampton, one mile from our house; it carries four inside, travels at a very good pace, and sets off from the Angel Inn, St. Martin's-le-Grand. There is also a morning coach which goes from Gerard's Hall, Basing Lane, Cheapside, three times a week in the morning at a quarter before six. I believe this coach goes on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday; it is a Stroud coach and does not come nearer to our house than within four miles on the Cirencester Road. If you prefer this coach, we will send for you to the place where the roads diverge. This is of course in case Mrs. Malthus does not accompany you....