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THE ENTHUSIASM OF DAVID RICARDO

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2016

RYAN WALTER*
Affiliation:
School of Politics and International Studies, University of Queensland E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Britons viewed speculative thinking as a primary cause of the French Revolution and the disorders that followed. In this context, Edmund Burke and others identified a form of enthusiasm that was theoretical, not religious, in nature, but which also corrupted reasoning to disastrous effect. This article investigates how this accusation was made against David Ricardo and his political economy, and the variable defences that he deployed. The result is to uncover the language that was used to appraise political economy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, along with the intellectual disciplines that were prescribed to protect economic reasoning from falling into fantasy.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

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48 Fetter, The Politics of the Bullion Report of 1810, 104–6.

49 Ibid., 108–11, 118.

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57 Bosanquet, Practical Observations, 1–2. In saying so Bosanquet seems to have inaugurated the tradition of erroneously tracing paternity of the inquiry to Ricardo. On this fallacious tradition see Fetter, Frank W., “The Bullion Report Reexamined,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 56/4 (1942), 655–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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59 Ibid., 3.

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61 For a discussion of these theoretical issues in historical context see chap. 2 of Frank W. Fetter's Development of British Monetary Orthodoxy.

62 Bosanquet, Practical Observations, 10.

63 Ibid., 16.

64 Ibid., 17.

65 Ibid., 25.

66 Ibid., 23.

67 See Laslett, Peter, “John Locke, the Great Recoinage, and the Origins of the Board of Trade: 1695–1698,” in Yolton, J., ed., John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, a Collection of New Essays (Cambridge, 1969), 137–64Google Scholar.

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70 Ibid., 47.

71 Ibid., 48.

72 Ibid., 108.

73 Ibid.

74 House of Commons Select Committee on the High Price of Gold Bullion, Report of the Select Committee on the High Price of Gold Bullion (London, 1810), 2.

75 Bosanquet, Practical Observations, 108–9.

76 Ricardo, “Reply to Bosanquet,” 160.

77 Ibid.

78 Ibid., 165.

79 Ibid., 172.

80 Ibid., 190.

81 Ibid., 218.

82 Ibid., 165.

83 That is, as if gold (the standard in England) and silver (the standard in Hamburg) held a constant exchange ratio with one another as bullion.

84 Ricardo, “Reply to Bosanquet,” 169–70.

85 Ibid., 170–72.

86 Ibid., 173–4.

87 It was used by Dugald Stewart, and likely disseminated through his students. See Collini, Winch and Burrow, That Noble Science, 33. To take Francis Horner as an example, Depoortère, Christophe, “On Ricardo's Method: The Scottish Connection Considered,” History of Political Economy, 40/1, (2008), 73110CrossRefGoogle Scholar, finds a link between Stewart and Ricardo via Horner.

88 Ricardo, “Reply to Bosanquet,” 181.

89 Ibid., 182.

90 Ibid., 252.

91 Ibid., 202–3.

92 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, in Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 1–2: 328–9.

93 Bosanquet, Practical Observations, 86–91.

94 Smith's point was that the price of money is determined by its supply and demand; taxes were simply one factor influencing demand.

95 Ricardo, “Reply to Bosanquet,” 238.

96 Ricardo further claimed that the committee was perfectly amenable to the idea that taxation accounted for part of the rising prices; only 18 per cent was to be attributed to the depreciation of the circulating medium because that was the extent of the divergence between the markets in the mint price of gold. Ibid., 239.

97 Ibid., 239.

98 Ibid., 195.

99 See Tribe, Keith, Land, Labour and Economic Discourse (London, 1978), chap. 6Google Scholar, for a discussion of pamphlets from the same year by Malthus, Torrens and West. I am indebted to Tribe's text and Peach, Terry’s detailed study of Ricardo, Interpreting Ricardo (Cambridge, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100 David Ricardo, An Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock (1815), in Works, 4: 1–42, at 21.

101 David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation (1817), in Works, 1: 1–443, at 5. All references are to the first (1817) edition of Ricardo's Principles, since this was the edition reviewed in the British Review article discussed at length below. Sraffa collated all editions, taking the third edition (1821) as the base text.

102 Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, 13.

103 Peach, Interpreting Ricardo, 150.

104 For which see ibid., 161–4.

105 He also homogenized different types of labour for the purposes of analysis—acknowledging the differences in skill and reward but then setting aside this complication. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, 20–22.

106 Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, 26–9.

107 A key mechanism in the Essay carried into the Principles, which allowed Ricardo to generalize effects in agriculture to the entire economy. Ricardo, An Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock 13, 23–6.

108 Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, 59–60. See Peach's discussion of this in Peach, Interpreting Ricardo, 162–3.

109 Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, 61, 63.

110 Ibid., 17.

111 Pinsent, Joseph, Letters to the Chairman of the Committee of the Hon. the House of Commons on the Agricultural Distresses, Stating the Causes of Those Distresses and Pointing out the Remedies for Them: and to David Ricardo . . . in Answer to his Speech of the 7th of March, 1821, Designed to Demonstrate the Errors of the Theory Which that Gentleman Advocates (London, 1821)Google Scholar, repr. in Peach, Terry, ed., David Ricardo: Critical Responses, vol. 1 (London, 2003), 229–38, at 232Google Scholar.

112 Anonymous, “Causes and Remedies of Agricultural Distress,” Farmer's Magazine, May 1822, 200–22, repr. in Peach, David Ricardo: Critical Responses, 290–311, at 291.

113 Anonymous, “Review of On Protection to Agriculture,” British Critic, May 1822, 449–68, repr. in Peach, David Ricardo: Critical Responses, 312–28, at 322–3.

114 Ibid., 323.

115 Anonymous, “Review of Des Principes de l'Economie Politique et de L'Impót,” British Critic, Dec. 1819, 561–78, repr. in Peach, David Ricardo: Critical Responses, 130–44, at 136.

116 Ibid., 138–9.

117 Anonymous, “Review of Principles of Political Economy, Part II,” British Critic, Sept. 1820, 275–93, repr. in Peach, David Ricardo: Critical Responses, 193–208, at 198.

118 Ibid., 208.

119 Anonymous, “Review of Principles of Political Economy, Part I,” British Critic, Aug. 1820, 117–38. repr. in Peach, David Ricardo: Critical Responses, 173–92, at 180.

120 Ibid. 175–6.

121 Anonymous, “Article XV. Political Economy and Taxation,” British Review, Nov. 1817, 309–33, at 309.

122 Ibid., 309.

123 Ibid., 310.

124 Ibid., 318.

125 Ibid., 312, 314.

126 Ibid., 319.

127 Ibid., 310.

128 Ibid., 320.

129 Ibid, 311–12.

130 Ricardo, Works, 7: 219.

131 Ibid., 222.

132 Anonymous, “Article XV. Political Economy and Taxation,” 313–16.

133 Ibid., 315.

134 Ricardo, Works, 7: 256.

135 Thomas Robert Malthus, Principles of Political Economy (1820), in Works, 5–6: 5.

136 Ibid., 7.

137 Ibid.

138 Ibid., 8.

139 Ricardo, David, “Notes on Malthus's Principles of Political Economy,” in Works, 2: 1452Google Scholar, at 6–7.

140 David Ricardo, in Works, 8: 184.

141 Anonymous, “Review of On Protection to Agriculture,” 323.

142 Winch, Donald, “Introduction,” in James Mill: Selected Economic Writings, ed. Winch, Donald (London, 1966), 197–8Google Scholar. Note also Clark's suggestion that by attacking the Corn Laws Ricardo was attacking the existing social order. Clark, J. C. D., English Society 1660–1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics during the Ancien Regime, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2000), 188–9Google Scholar.

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145 Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History, 201–3.

146 A similar point has been made by Depoortère, “On Ricardo's Method: The Scottish Connection Considered,” 106, who also disputed the justness of characterizing Ricardo as an a priori thinker.

147 Pownall, “A Letter from Governor Pownall to Adam Smith,” 340.

148 Stewart, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 222.

149 Torrens, Robert, Essay on the Production of Wealth (London, 1821), ivGoogle Scholar.

150 See de Marchi, N. B. and Sturges, R. P., “Malthus and Ricardo's Inductivist Critics: Four Letters to William Whewell,” Economica, 40/160 (1973), 379–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hollander, Samuel, “William Whewell and John Stuart Mill on the Methodology of Political Economy,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 14/2 (1983), 127–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Both Whewell and Jones made the allegation of enthusiasm: Jones, Richard, An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, and on the Sources of Taxation (London, 1831), xiiixivGoogle Scholar; Whewell, William, Mathematical Exposition of Some of the Leading Doctrines in Mr Ricardo's “Principles of Political Economy and Taxation” (London, 1831), 7Google Scholar.

151 See the essays collected in Lively, Jack and Rees, John, eds., Utilitarian Logic and Politics: James Mill's “Essay on Government,” Macaulay's Critique and the Ensuing Debate (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar.

152 Susie I. Tucker, Enthusiasm: A Study in Semantic Change (Cambridge, 1972), 163.