David Ricardo

DAVID RICARDO

A BIOGRAPHY

by

DAVID WEATHERALL

MARTINUS NIJHOFF - THE HAGUE - 1976

 © 1976 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1976
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce book or
parts thereof in any form.

ISBN-13 : 978-94-010-1403-8 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1401-4

DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-1401-4
I. DAVID RICARDO ESQR., M.P. Painted by Thomas Phillips
Esq., R.A. Engraved by T. Hodgetts. London. Published by
Messrs Colnaghi's, Cockspur Street, May 6th 1822.
 Acknowledgements

All the economic writings, all the public speeches, nearly all the
letters, and the bulk of the private papers of David Ricardo have
been printed in The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, edited
by Piero Sraffa with the collaboration of M. H. Dobb, and
published for the Royal Economic Society by the Cambridge
University Press, in eleven volumes, 1951-1973. This is a major
work of scholarship. I am much indebted to it: and for more than
one kindness to its editor.
Of the 104 letters to or from David Ricardo that are quoted in
this book, 88 have been published in Volumes VI-X of The Works
and Correspondence of David Ricardo, 43 of them for the first time: and
are quoted with the kind permission of the Royal Economic
Society.
The private papers of David Ricardo have been presented to
Cambridge University Library. But two small groups have at some
time in the past become detached, and are now, one in the Library
of the London School of Economics, one in the Library of the
University of Illinois. I am very grateful to the Librarians, for
allowing me to read them, for sending me photocopies, and for
permission to quote from them.
To my friend Dr. Arnold Heertje, Professor of Economics in the
University of Amsterdam, and himself an authority on the life and
work of David Ricardo, I am under special obligations. He has
placed his discoveries in the Amsterdam archives at my disposal,
and he has read the text of this book. For both, I thank him.
That so many of the possessions once owned by David Ricardo
are still preserved in the family, despite the sale of Bromesberrow,
of Hardenhuish, of Gatcombe, is the result of a sustained effort on
the part of my cousin Peter Ricardo. I owe much to his knowledge
of them, of their history, and of the history of the family in England.
Further acknowledgements, for information given me, and for
permission to use that information, are made in the notes at the
end of each chapter.
 Contents

Page

Preface v

Acknowledgements VII

IIIustra tions XI

Chapter I. The Jewish Heritage.

Chapter II. London and Amsterdam. 9

Chapter III. 'Change Alley. 15

Chapter IV. Love and Marriage 23

Chapter V. War and Finance. 29

Chapter VI. The Volunteer. 35

Chapter VII. The Stock Exchange. 41

Chapter VIII. Bromley St. Leonard. 47

Chapter IX. The Bullion Controversy. 55

Chapter X. The Unitarian. 61

Chapter XI. The Loan Contractor.

Chapter XII. Mill and Malthus.

x Contents Page

Chapter XIII. Upper Brook Street. 79

Chapter XIV. A Holiday at Ramsgate. 87

Chapter XV. Gatcombe. 93

Chapter XVI. The Corn Laws Controversy. 101

Chapter XVII. "Mr. Bentham's Garden". 10 7

Chapter XVIII. Reason and Sentiment. 115

Chapter XIX. The Principles of Political Economy. 12 3

Chapter XX. Making Money and Keeping Money. 12 9

Chapter XXI. Parliament. 135

Chapter XXII. "Mr. Ricardo's Plan". 143

Chapter XXIII. Town and Country. 149

Chapter XXIV. "Mr. Owen's Plan". 157

Chapter XXV. The Moderate Reformist. 165

Chapter XXVI. The Grand Tour. 17 1

Chapter XXVII. 1823. 179

Chapter XXVIII. Hardenhuish. 18 7

Bibliography 195

Index
 Illustrations

1. David Ricardo, from the portrait by

Thomas Phillips. frontispiece

2. The Stock Exchange, from a print by

T. H. Shepherd. between p. 102/3

3. Henrietta, eldest daughter of David

Ricardo. id.

4. The Desk used by David Ricardo. id.

5. The Memorial to David Ricardo at

Hardenhuish. id.
 PREFACE

This book started with the thought that here was an interesting
man who lived at an interesting time. He was born a Jew, he made
his fortune as a financier, he discovered his vocation as an econo-
mist, he entered Parliament. Such in outline was the life of David
Ricardo.
He was born in 1772 and he died in 1823. It was a time of war
and the aftermath of war, of change and of resistance to change. As
far as possible I have tried always to see him in the context of his
time.
Though much necessarily is said about the economist in the
book, I must make plain that it is not primarily a study of his work.
That has been done elsewhere, and some references will be found
in the bibliography.
In the arrangement of the book I have departed occasionally
from a strictly chronological narrative. Instead I have attempted
to present the life of David Ricardo in a number of facets, as if it
were a diamond.
Perhaps the cutting edge of the diamond would be most applic-
able to him. Nearly everyone who met him noticed the clarity and
lucidity of his mind. To demonstrate or illustrate the quality of his
mind is therefore the first object of the book.
I have been very fortunate in the help I have received in the
research and the writing; and certainly, for any faults in the book,
nobody but myself is to blame.

D. Weatherall
 CHAPTER I

The Jewish Heritage

In the year 1692 there died in Amsterdam a Jew named Samuel

Israel. He was buried at Oudekerk; and he was the great-great-
grandfather of David Ricardo.
He was buried at Oudekerk because he was a Sephardic Jew: and
the history of the Sephardic Jews is long and romantic. When the
Jewish nation was dispersed from the Holy Land it divided into
two branches, the Sephardim of Spain, and the Ashkhenazim of
Central Europe; and in Spain for centuries the Sephardim flour-
ished. But there came a time when aJew could no longer be aJew,
in Spain. By forced conversion most of them became Marranos,
publicly Christians, privately Jews; as Marranos they were sub-
jected to the Inquisition; and whenever they could they fled from
the Inquisition. Many of them fled to Portugal. And though the
Inquisition soon enough reached Portugal, many of them still
preferred Portugal, because emigration was occasionally possible
from Portugal. From time to time there Marranos could escape
from the Inquisition; and some of them escaped to what was at
the end of the sixteenth century the new Free Port of Livorno.
The Grand Duke of Tuscany established the Free Port in 1593.
The charter he gave it then makes plain how much was expected
from Jewish energy and Jewish enterprise in its development.
There was to be no Ghetto, no wearing of the Jewish badge, no
compulsory sermons from Christian priests. It offered a commercial
future to the Jews. It offered a Jewish future to the Marranos.
Livorno quickly rose to be the second Sephardic community of
Europe; and in this community the great majority were Marranos.
There is an odd little postscript to the story of the Marranos;
and a postscript written, or rather drawn, in eighteenth century
England. The word Marrano in Spanish meant "swine", and seems
to have been chosen, from other terms of abuse, because the Jewish
2 The Jewish Heritage

dietary laws forbade them to eat pork, the pig being regarded as an
unclean animal. By the second half of the eighteenth century in
England the Jews were sufficiently numerous, sufficiently influen-
tial, and yet sufficiently individual, to make them the subject of
caricature: to be recognized, in many of the caricatures, not from
any peculiarity of dress or appearance, but from the presence, in
part at least, be it only the hindquarters and little curly tail, of a
pig. It is a curious and continuing association of ideas. But in the
first half of the seventeenth century, when the Marranos were
settling in Livorno, Jews of course were still banished from England. l
The chief commercial activity of the Jews at Livorno was the
trade in coral. Livorno was famous for its coral: and the Jews cut it,
shaped it, worked it, and exported it. Most of the trade was with
India, and was carried on through London. A very lucrative trade,
it was called in London. It may have seemed less lucrative to the
ancestors of David Ricardo engaged on it in Livorno.
For that the ancestors of David Ricardo were among the Marra-
nos settled at Livorno is certain. Five of the sons of Samuel Israel
married in Amsterdam, and the marriage certificates of four of the
five describe them as "van Livorno". Further, the occupations of
three of the five are given as "Koraalmaaker". And then, reaching
back beyond Livorno, there is the name, and the history of the name.
Names had been important to the Marranos. Most Marrano
children were given two first names, one Christian and one Jewish:
and surnames were as important, perhaps more, perhaps most,
when their owners had ceased to be Marranos. Those who had
escaped were free to be Jews again, and free to proclaim themselves
Jews. A change of name was a declaration Qffaith: and the favourite
and obvious name for aJew declaring his faith was Israel. And then
of course the names had to be changed back. Names are meant to
distinguish, not to declare faith. Families had to revert to their
Marrano originals. Israel had to revert to Ricardo. The process was
gradual, over four generations. The son of Samuel Israel was David
Israel; the son of David Israel was Joseph Israel Ricardo; the son of
Joseph Israel Ricardo was Abraham Israel Ricardo; the son of
Abraham Israel Ricardo was David Ricardo. David Ricardo was
thus of the first generation in which the reversion to the old name
was complete.
 The Jewish Heritage 3
Samuel Israel moved with his family to Amsterdam in about the
year 1680. The reasons for the move can only be guessed, but they
were probably economic. Amsterdam in 1680 was at once the
commercial and the financial capital of the world. And while the
commercial capital was to be of service, it was in the financial
capital that the family made their future. The eldest son of Samuel
Israel was a merchant; his eldest son was a stockbroker. He was
the first of three successive generations that were to show that the
Ricardo family possessed a remarkable aptitude for finance.
Was it heredity, or was it environment, that gave them this
aptitude? At first sight it is tempting to think that it was environ-
ment. They were Jews, and on no people have the forces of environ-
ment acted more strongly than on the Jews. There has been the
traditional association of Jews with high finance, exemplified by
the great Court Jews of Central Europe; there has been popular
opinion, expressed in England by the Jew of Venice with his pound
of flesh or the Jew of Malta with his heaped gold; there have been
more practical considerations like the closing of the professions,
save medicine, in all countries to] ews. In short, there is a case for
environment; but it is not a wholly convincing case. It is not
convincing, because if the pressures of environment were strong in
Holland or England, they were stronger far in Spain or Portugal.
The Inquisition should in theory have made cringing hypocrites
out of the Marranos. In practice it made many of them refugees,
some of them heroes, some of them martyrs. Environment, and
above all the sophisticated and cosmopolitan Sephardic environ-
ment, must have played a part in the evolution of the Ricardo
family. But it seems they owed most to heredity.
This hereditary aptitude was certainly possessed by Joseph
Israel Ricardo, the grandson of Samuel Israel and the grandfather
of David Ricardo. Born in 1699, he was established as a stockbroker
by the time he was forty, for in 1739 he was one of a committee
invited to draft new regulations for the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.
But he was then in relatively modest circumstances. He was
assessed for the War Tax of 1742, and his assessment shows him
living in the Heerengracht, on one of the canals that ring the city of
Amsterdam, and keeping one servant. From 1743 his transactions
in the Amsterdam Wisselbank are recorded. They are on the same
relatively modest scale until the year 1757. Then in 1757 he achieved
4 The Jewish Heritage

in the ledgers of the Wisselbank what was so often to be achieved by

his grandson in the ledgers of the Bank of England, the distinction
of a page to himself. In 1757 his business multiplied fivefold; and
the causes are not far to seek. 1757 was the first full year of the
Seven Years War.
The deciding event of the Seven Years War was the battle
of Rossbach, fought in November 1757. It saved the allied cause in
the war; and it led to the appointment of Prince Ferdinand of
Brunswick, who was held to have distinguished himself in the
battle, to the command of the British and British-paid troops in
Europe. The supply of the troops was in the hands of what was
then known as a Commissary; the Commissary, always in the field,
and usually at headquarters, had above him a chief in London,
with links with the Treasury, and under him, in 1757 and 1758, no
fewer than seventeen agents scattered about the continent. They
are all listed in the letter-books kept by the Commissary in 1757
and 1758, and on the list is Joseph Israel Ricardo of Amsterdam.
Joseph Israel Ricardo performed two functions for the Commis-
sary. Because he was sure to know sooner than anyone in London
his exact whereabouts, he acted as forwarding agent for corre-
spondence, letters being sent to him "under cover". Then he
supplied the Commissary with the money to buy the bread and
fodder needed for the troops and their horses. But the letter-books
disclose more than the details of campaign administration. There
was in 1758 an exchange between the Commissary and his agent
on the subject of "500 ducats", that being the name for the standard
gold coin of Europe then; and the exchange was conducted, not in
English or French, or even in Dutch, but in Portuguese. The Com-
missary was a Sephardic Jew; Joseph Israel Ricardo was a Sephar-
dic Jew; and Portuguese was still the language of the Sephardic
Jewish communities, both in London and Amsterdam.
It was the Seven Years War that introduced the Ricardo family
to the London stock market. For with the victories of Minden and
Quebec, 1759 was the second annus mirabilis in British history; and
after 1759 Dutch capitalists began to invest heavily in the British
funds. One of them was Joseph Israel Ricardo; and when he died in
1762, almost half of his substantial capital was in the British funds.
Most of the Dutch investors found it necessary to have what was
called a "correspondent" to manage their affairs in London, and
 The Jewish Heritage 5

since the posItIOn was one of trust, involving a legal power of

attorney, the "correspondent" was often a member of the family,
usually a younger son. The youngest son of Joseph Israel Ricardo
was Abraham Israel Ricardo.
The precise date on which Abraham Israel Ricardo came to
London is not known, but as he was born in 1738, it was probably
in 1759, when he came of age. During the next ten years his name
appears increasingly in the English records, in the archives of the
London Sephardic community, 2 and in the ledgers of the Bank of
England. But though he was in England at any rate for most of
those ten years, Abraham Israel Ricardo did not immediately
make up his mind whether he wanted to be a British or a Dutch
citizen. It was only at the end of the ten years that he arrived at his
decision.
For a Jew, there was not very much to choose between conditions
in Holland and in England. Such difference as there was can best
be expressed in the statement that where the position of the Dutch
Jews was official, the position of the British Jews was unofficial.
Dutch Jews had to pay the Jewish Tax; British Jews had to pay
rates for the established church. Dutch Jews were restricted by law
to living in particular towns and parts of towns; British Jews were
not restricted by law, but they tended to live in particular towns
and parts of towns, where they had friends, where a community
could be formed, where they could attend a Synagogue. And in
the particular towns of London and Amsterdam there was one
further difference. There was in Amsterdam a Jewish Quarter. It
was not a Ghetto, as the word was then understood, enclosed by
walls and gates, but it was an official Jewish Quarter.
Most of the London Jews had come originally from Amsterdam,
and in the early days at least the relations between the two com-
munities were those of mother and daughter. The Sephardic
Synagogue in London, for instance, was built as a smaller likeness
of the Sephardic Synagogue in Amsterdam. The likeness can still
be seen, and with as much interest as the likeness between any
mother and daughter. But by 1759 the daughter community was
growing up, and was growing up in London. It has often been said
that the greatest danger to the Jewish race is not persecution, but
assimilation. In London in 1759 it was almost the only danger. But
it was a real danger; and more real in London than in Amsterdam.
6 The Jewish Heritage

For intermarriage was always the most likely cause of assimilation,

and intermarriage was always more likely in London.
When Abraham Israel Ricardo had been in London for about
ten years he married. But he did not marry out of his religion. On
April 30th 1769 he married a young English J ewess named Abigail
Delvalle. She was the daughter of a Sephardic family who had been
in England for fifty years, and for fifty years Snuff and Tobacco
Merchants in the City of London. Details are mentioned in several
of their wills, 3 and it was evidently a small but prosperous business,
for it was to continue for nearly another fifty years. But what was to
be of more importance to the future was the intellectual strain that
was marked in the family of Abigail Delvalle. They had a taste for
learning. Her grandfather had been given the title of Rabbi, or
Master, by the London congregation for his learning; and the in-
clination of her sisters was the same. One became a well known
mineralogist; another was sufficiently bookish to specify a bequest
of "Voltaire's Works" in her will. Abigail herself seems to have
transmitted the taste for learning to her son David.
No portraits of Abigail now exist, and all that can be said of her
appearance is that granddaughters very often take after their grand-
mothers; that her granddaughter was beautiful, and beautiful in
the dark-haired, dark-eyed Jewish way; and that her sister the
mineralogist was handsome, in the rather severe classical style of
the period. But the print of her sister was taken in middle age, when
she had become well known. Abigail was sixteen when she was
married.
Shortly after the marriage Abraham Ricardo took the step of
becoming a Denizen. This was the process equivalent to Naturaliza-
tion; and for a Jew the only possible equivalent. It was granted by
the Crown, instead of by Parliament; and unlike Naturalization it
did not require acceptance of the Sacrament. The Denizen com-
paratively suffered some slight personal and commercial disabilities,
but in rights at law, and rights of property, he was a full English-
man. With six other Jews, Aliens Born, Abraham Ricardo, now
naming himself Abraham Ricardo, submitted a Petition to the
King's Most Excellent Majesty on December 24th 1770; it was
referred to Mr. Attorney and Mr. Solicitor General, and granted,
by Letters Patent, onJ une I Ith 177 1. 4
InJune 1771 Abraham and Abigail Ricardo had just established
 The Jewish Heritage 7
themselves, as far as is known for the first time, in a home of their
own. It was in the City of London, at 36, Broad Street Buildings in
the parish of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate. 5 Broad Street Buildings
were terraced houses, erected in 1737; and 36, Broad Street Build-
ings had a rateable value of £30.6 But it may have been rather more
commodious than the low rateable value suggests. A neighbour
in Broad Street Buildings was the second Baron D' Aguilar, son of
the Court Jew to the Empress Maria Theresa; and the second
Baron D' Aguilar was a rich man. Abraham Ricardo was not yet a
rich man, though he was increasingly active as a broker on the
London stock market. At any rate, he was rich enough to take 36,
Broad Street Buildings; and at 36, Broad Street Buildings, on
April 18th 1772, David Ricardo was born.'

NOTES

I. The Transactions and Miscellanies of the Jewish Historical Society of Eng-

land cover the whole history of the Jews in England. I am indebted to an address
to the Society by Mr. Alfred Rubens for my knowledge of Jewish caricatures.
2. The most important of the Bevis Marks Records were published by Dr. Lionel
Barnett, then the Honorary Archivist; his son, Dr. Richard Barnett, the present
Honorary Archivist, very kindly drew my attention to the letter-books of the
Commissary in the Seven Years War at the British Museum, Ms Egerton 2227.
3. The Colyer-Ferguson collections at the Jewish Museum in London contain
many abstracts of wills.
4. The Denizen Act of 1740 provided that the foreign-born could attain the
status after seven years residence. The petition presented by Abraham Ricardo
is in the Public Records Office, reference S.P. 44; and transcriptions from Crown-
copyright records appear by permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery
Office.
5. The ratebooks at Guildhall are a sure guide to when and where people
lived in the City of London: in particular the Poor Rate, assessed quarterly; the
Church Rate, assessed half-yearly; the Land Tax and Sewerage Rate, assessed
annually.
6. It is very difficult indeed to render the value of money as it was in the life-
time of David Ricardo in a modern equivalent. An approximation might be to
multiply all sums by ten: and those were the days of £.s.d., when there were
twenty shillings to the pound, and twelve pence to the shilling.
7. Volume X of The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo contains much
new information about his life, including the correct date of his birth. Through-
out this book my indebtedness to it is great.
 CHAPTER II

London and Amsterdam

He was the third child, and the third son. As a son his initiation
into his Jewish heritage began when he was eight days old, in the
rite of circumcision. It was performed while his godfather held him
on his lap, in the presence of his father and two witnesses. All their
names are recorded, and the name of his godfather was George
Capadoce. 1
George Capadoce was probably the closest of all his friends to
Abraham Ricardo. Their friendship was based on similarity. Like
Abraham Ricardo he was born in Amsterdam; like Abraham
Ricardo he became a Denizen; like Abraham Ricardo he was a
"correspondent" and a stockbroker. Where Abraham Ricardo for
many years acted as broker to the Jewish community of London,
George Capadoce for many years acted as broker to the Jewish
community of Amsterdam. For again like Abraham Ricardo, he
was a strict and orthodox Jew. The only dissimilarity seems to
have been that George Capadoce was a bachelor. He was not
perhaps the type of the kindly bachelor uncle - two of his nephews
were sharply dismissed in his will for their manner towards him -
but because he was a bachelor he could be expected to take some
special notice of his young godson. When he made his will he did.
The biggest single bequest in the will was to David Ricardo. But
after the bequest came the disposal of his residuary estate, and half
of the residuary estate was to go to another nephew" .. .if he marry
a woman of the Portuguese Jewish nation ... "
George Capadoce at this time lived in Bury Street, in the parish
of St. Katherine, Cree church ; and to Bury Street in the autumn of
1772 Abraham and Abigail Ricardo moved with their young
family. It was not a move of any great distance. Bury Street was
not more than four hundred yards from Broad Street Buildings;
but it was four hundred yards nearer the Synagogue. About half
10 London and Amsterdam

the names in Broad Street Buildings in 1771, almost all the names
in Bury Street in 1772, are shown by the rate books as Jewish.
Abraham and Abigail Ricardo took over the lease of I, Bury Street
from Philip Delacour, who was a fashionable physician with
practices in London and Bath, and who has a permanent niche in
literary history because in Bath he more than once met Gibbon -
"In truth, there is much kindness in that Jew, and much good sense
likewise," Gibbon said of Dr. Delacour, late of I, Bury Street.
There Abraham and Abigail Ricardo were to live for the next
nineteen years; there eleven of their fifteen surviving children
were to be born; there David Ricardo grew up. Round the corner
from I, Bury Street was the Synagogue. It would be an exagger-
ation, but not much of an exaggeration, to say that he grew up in
the shadow of the Synagogue.
I, Bury Street had a rateable value off 45, which represented a
solid advance on the£ 30 of 36, Broad Street Buildings. That solid
advance had been made by Abraham Ricardo in business, and in
the autumn of 1772 business evidently was flourishing. For the
next year, in October 1773, he became what was called a "Jew
Broker".2 It was a rare distinction. By law, all brokers were required
to be licensed; by the regulations of the City of London, all brokers
were required to be freemen; and since Jews could not take the oath
and could not be freemen, twelve brokerships were set aside for
them, and the twelve were called "Jew Brokers". Neither the law
nor the regulations of the City of London were much or often ob-
served, and licensing made little difference to the day to day busi-
ness of the "Jew Broker". But it emphasized his standing in the
business community. He had to enter into a bond of "five hundred
pounds of good and lawful money"; he had to make a petition; he
had to have his petition endorsed by members of the Commonalty
of the City of London. Fifteen signatories to his petition certified
that they knew Abraham Ricardo to be "a person of good and
honest fame and reputation, and having been educated in trade
understands divers sorts of merchandises ... "
His standing in the religious community was emphasized in
much the same way when in 1781 he was appointed a Parnas,
or Warden, of the London congregation. By then, his son David was
nine years old; old enough to have made his first acquaintance
with the world; and perhaps to have made the discovery that his
 London and Amsterdam I I

was a very small world. It was in fact a world within a world

within a world. At the outermost limit was the City of London and
the financial world; inside the City of London was the Jewish
community and the Jewish world; and inside the Jewish community
were the separate communities of the Sephardim and the Ashk-
henazim, and in the Sephardic community what must have seemed
to him the real world. And even to a child the real world must have
seemed very small. For in London the Sephardim were already
outnumbered by the Ashkhenazim, and already felt that if they
were to keep their identity they must keep themselves separate
from the Ashkhenazim. The difference was not religious. They
were all Jews. They all worshipped at the Synagogue. But there
was the historical difference, in ritual, in language, in dress, and
they worshipped at separate Synagogues: the Ashkhenazim at the
Great Synagogue, in Duke's Place; the Sephardim in nearby Bevis
Marks, at their Synagogue. Its name was the Holy Congregation of
the Gate of Hope.
Attached to the Holy Congregation of the Gate of Hope, as to
most Sephardic Synagogues, was an institution known as a Talmud
Torah. The Talmud Torah, literally, the Study of the Law, was
at once a charity and a school. But it was a charity and a school
with a specific purpose, and that purpose was religion. Social
circumstances required that it should be above all else a religious
school, and should remain a religious school. Religion was its
justification. Its aim, always, was to teach to the Jewish child no
more and no less than the Jewish religion.
When David Ricardo was a boy there was a Talmud Torah in
London and there was a Talmud Torah in Amsterdam. Since he
was sent to school in both London and Amsterdam, the question
necessarily arises: was he sent to a Talmud Torah? It is an im-
portant question, but it is not an easy question to answer.
On his schooling, there are two primary sources of information.
The first is the account he gave to Maria Edgeworth3 when she
was staying at his house in Gloucestershire in 1821, and set down
by her in a letter dated November 14th 1821. "Mr. Ricardo began
to tell me part of his history when we were out walking the other
day through a charming wood. 'We were 15 children - my father
gave me but little education - he thought reading writing and
arithmetic sufficient because he doomed me to be nothing but a
12 London and Amsterdam

man of business - he sent me at I I to Amsterdam to learn Dutch

French and Spanish - but I was so unhappy at being separated
from my brothers and sisters and family that I learned nothing in
two years but Dutch which I could not help learning.' Then ...
Oh there came some interruption from a fine prospect that broke
upon us and I was very sorry - people came up and there was no
resuming.. ."
Thus Maria Edgeworth. She does not quite answer the question,
but she goes a long way towards it; and most of the way because
of what she was herself in November 1821. She was the novelist,
with the eye for character and the ear for dialogue of the novelist.
She was, as she was well aware when she was with David Ricardo,
the author of a novel with a Jewish theme, Harrington, which had
been published as recently as 1817. And she was, and had been for
twenty years, a writer on education. She was interested in edusa-
tion, she was interested in the Jews, and she was interested in the
economist. Had he said that he was at a Jewish school, therefore,
she would probably have registered that he said that he was at a
Jewish school. But what she registered was an impression of a
commercial rather than a religious education.
When David Ricardo died a memoir of him was written by his
brother Moses Ricardo, and published in The Annual Biography and
Obituary for the Tear 1823. "When very young," the memoir says,
"he was sent to Holland. His father, who had designed him to
follow the same business in which he was engaged, sent him thither,
not only with a view to his becoming acquainted with it, but also
that he might be placed at a school of which he entertained a very
high opinion. Mter two years absence he returned home, and
continued the common school education till his father took him
into business. At his intervals of leisure he was allowed any masters
for private instruction whom he chose to have; but he had not the
benefit of what is called a classical education .. ."
Thus the memoir. But the memoir is a remarkably reticent
document; reticent to the point of being misleading. The word
''Jew'' is nowhere used in it. It has to be read more for what it
implies than for what it says; and clearly enough, it implies that
David Ricardo was sent to Amsterdam to the Talmud Torah. The
implication deserves to be taken seriously. The Talmud Torah at
Amsterdam was certainly the most renowned of all Jewish schools
 London and Amsterdam

at the time; and his ancestors had for generations been members of
the Brotherhood contributing to its support. There must therefore
be the possibility. But a possibility is not really an answer to the
question.
Perhaps the best answer is provided by the experience of two of
his contemporaries. Isaac D'Israeli, author of The Curiosities of
Literature, and father of the most brilliant of British Prime Ministers,
was six years older than David Ricardo. He was intended to
succeed his father in business, he was the son of a "Jew Broker", he
was sent to school in Amsterdam - but not to the Talmud Torah, to
a private school in Amsterdam. Then, Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, 4 the
leader in the struggle for Jewish political equality, was six years
younger than David Ricardo. He was of the Ashkhenazi commun-
ity, the inheritor of one of the most famous names in financial
history, and he was born in London and educated in London - but
not at aJewish school, at an English private school.
That this was the case with David Ricardo cannot now be proved,
but it is suggested by all that is known of his later life. He was all
his life a teachable man, and he must have been a teachable boy.
If he was sent to a Talmud Torah, the teaching was the Jewish
religion; and the teaching failed, and failed absolutely. The con-
clusion must be that he was not sent to a Talmud Torah: rather, to
a private school in London, and a commercial school in Amsterdam.
He was in Amsterdam from 1783 to 1785, from the age of eleven
to the age of thirteen. Whatever school he attended, he lived with
relations in the Jewish Quarter; and a description of the Jewish
Quarter as it then was has survived. In 1784 Holland was visited by
John Aikin, physician and scholar; and John Aikin kept a travel
diary. "Amsterdam appeared to be about a third the size of
London," he noted in his diary. "We went first to the Jewish
Quarter, a number of streets inhabited solely by this people, who
are confined to it. It is extremely populous, and full of odd faces
and dresses ... The Jews look sharp, designing, dark; the women
frequently handsome, though brown, with black wanton eyes, and
lively features. Among the old men were several excellent Shylock
faces ... " In this description, of course, there would have been
nothing exceptional if it had been written by the ordinary English
tourist. But John Aikin was not, in religious terms, the ordinary
English tourist. By religion he was a Unitarian; and as a Unitarian
 London and Amsterdam

admitted a spiritual kinship with the Jews. He knew that Jesus

had been a Jew, and he believed that Jesus had been the Jewish
Messiah. Yet the enlightened Dr. Aikin could write as he did about
the Jews and the Jewish Quarter. He could remark the exotic
quality in them. It must have been seen, it may have been felt, by
the schoolboy of 1784. And the exotic was never a quality to appeal
to David Ricardo.
When he returned from Amsterdam his formal schooling was
almost at an end. But school is only a part of education; and in his
case only a small part. His education in the arts and sciences was
to be the long process of self-education. His education in finance
began when at the age of fourteen he joined his father on the London
stock market.

NOTES

I. Like the Marranas, though for opposite reasons, English Jews often used
two first names. George Capadoce grew up Isaac van Aaron Capadoce, and in
England adopted the first name of George; while the English had difficulty
enough with his surname, which usually appeared in print as "Mr Cappadocia".
2. The Brokers Records, and the originals of the petition and bond of Abraham
Ricardo, are in the Records Office of the Corporation of London.
3. Her letters are the most detailed and the most animated of all contemporary
accounts of David Ricardo: they have been published in Maria Edgeworth, Letters
from England, 1813-1844, edited by Christina Colvin, Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1971. I am indebted to Mrs. Colvin for the explanation of the origin of the name
Osman; and I am grateful to Mrs. Colvin and the Delegates of the Clarendon
Press for allowing me to make several quotations.
4. Isaac Lyon Goldsmid was the nephew of the brothers Goldsmid. There is a
memoir of him, in two parts, in the Bankers Magazine, 1859.
 CHAPTER III

'Change Alley

" There is a Gulph, where thousands fell,

Here all the bold Advent'rers came;
A narrow sound, though deep as Hell:
'Change Alley is the dreatifull name.
Nine times a day it ebbs andflows,
Yet he that on the surface !yes
Without a Pilot, seldom knows
The time itfalls, or when 'twill rise . ..
Meantime secure on Garr'way's cliffs
A savage race, by shipwrecks fed,
Lye waiting for thefounder'd skiffs,
And strip the bodies of the Dead. .. "

By I 786 much had changed since Swift wrote his poem The
Bubble;1 but one place which had not changed was the "Garr'way's"
of the poem, or Garroway's Coffee House. In I 786 as in 1720
Garroway's played an essential part in the life of the London stock
market. Celebrated originally as the first establishment to serve tea
as a drink to the British public, it was situated in 'Change Alley, in
the midst of the market; and for all its long life drew its custom
from those who frequented the market. The Coffee Room was on
the ground floor; and the Coffee Room might have been better
called, as the great Rotunda of the Bank of England was officially
called, the Stock Room. For what occupied the frequenters of
Garroway's Coffee House was business in the stocks. Dealers
assembled there, and some of the dealers used it as their business
address. It was the business address of Abraham Ricardo during
the whole of his career on the London stock market.
There have been many writers on the London stock market, and
 'Change All~

the most famous writer of the eighteenth century was Thomas

Mortimer, author of Every Man His Own Broker. Mortimer did all
that he could to enliven a highly technical subject. He dramatized
scenes, he invented dialogue, he gave illustrations. And he succeeded:
Every Man His Own Broker went through thirteen editions in fifty
years. But he did more. He caught the character of the stock market,
and of the business of the stock market. At one point, what was
still in 1786 the business of Abraham Ricardo on the stock market.
For Abraham Ricardo in 1786 was still a "correspondent", still
engaged in business with Holland; and one of the illustrative
passages in Every Man His Own Broker deals specifically with business
with Holland.
"For instance," Mortimer writes, "if a magistrate of a renowned
city, we will say, a Burgomaster of Amsterdam, whose government
is in alliance or at peace with us, sends over a letter to his corre-
spondent in London, in which he assures him that on such a day
and in such a place the French gained a considerable advantage
over the British Fleet... the gentlemen of the Stock Exchange, who
know the meaning of such letters (some of which during the last
war arrived with almost every mail) receive the intelligence differ-
ently, as it suits their different interests; those who want the stocks
to fall take the utmost pains to propagate the intelligence and to
enlarge upon the authority, credit, and veracity of the letter-
writer; and to put the finishing scene of stockjobbing policy, they
immediately send a copy of the letter to the printers of some of the
newspapers, and advise all their employers to sell ... "
But the most significant sentence in this passage from Every Man
His Own Broker is the reference to "the gentlemen of the Stock
Exchange". For there was already, in 1786, a Stock Exchange. Its
origins can be dated from June 22nd 1773;2 because on June 22nd
1773 three brokers acting as trustees signed the lease for a site with
the Drapers Company. On this site the Stock Exchange was to be
built. The lease was to run for ninety-seven years; the property
consisted of five houses, among them the old Portugal Coffee
House; the rent was to be £ 400 a year; and the trustees were
required to register£ 7,000 in the 3% Annuities as security for the
rent and the performance of covenants. One of the covenants was
for the continuation of a coffee house on an upper floor of the new
building; and in another, the new building was required to be
 'Change Alley 17
done in a "substantial manner". And in a "substantial manner" it
was done. There is a contemporary print of the interior, or as it
was to be known, the "House"; and while it shows a most undigni-
fied scramble among members to get at the latest newspapers,
which are being thrust through a window, the "House" itself is a
fine dignified pillared room. Large ambitions were clearly enter-
tained for the Stock Exchange. The site was in Threadneedle
Street, next door to the Royal Exchange. The Royal Exchange was
the commercial centre of the City of London; the Stock Exchange
was to become the financial centre of the City of London. And
immediately opposite the site in Threadneedle Street was the
Bank of England.
The Bank of England was the third of the financial institutions
with which David Ricardo would have been most familiar in boy-
hood, since while deals might be made at Garroway's or the Stock
Exchange, they were for the most part executed at the Bank of
England. Stock in the South Sea Company was transferred at
South Sea House further down Threadneedle Street; stock in the
East India Company was transferred at India House in Leadenhall
Street; but by far the majority of deals were made in Government
stocks, and these were transferred at the Bank of England. It was
then in the process of becoming the Bank of England of Sir John
Soane. It had its great Rotunda in the middle, where brokers met
their clients, and where printed receipt forms were kept on an
outer circle of standing desks; and grouped round the Rotunda
were the various stock offices, the Bank Stock Office, the Consols
Office, the Reduced Office, where the transfers were made. In
later life David Ricardo was to have much to do with the Bank of
England, and much to say about the Bank of England. The last of
his economic writings, published posthumously, was his Plan for a
National Bank. But in these early years, while it was there that he
learned the practical details of business, he must have learned more
of what business meant at the Stock Exchange.
There was one feature of this first Stock Exchange that was to be
unique in its history. It was open to the public. From without the
bar, free, they could observe the scene of operations; from within
the bar, at a price of sixpence, they could operate for themselves.
No doubt some did, and Mortimer certainly recommended that
some should. But the Stock Exchange had been founded by profes-
18 'Change Alley

sionals for professionals; and from its foundation the greater part of
all its business was done by brokers and jobbers. And from its
foundation the distinction between brokers and jobbers was well
established. A broker worked for a client; ajobber worked for him-
self. This led to a further distinction. A broker was more respect-
able; a jobber made more money. David Ricardo must very soon
have seen that while the brokers made money, the big money was
made by the jobbers.
To exist at all, a market needs business. To exist effectively, a
stock market needs a large volume, and a continuing volume, of
business. This was what was provided by the jobber. It was the
characteristic of the jobber in the eighteenth century that he was
always ready to make a bargain. He would always quote a price at
which he would buy, and he would always quote a price at which
he would sell. The element in which he worked was time. Nearly
all his bargains were time-bargains: thus, he had to meet his
commitment to buy or sell after a longer or shorter period of time.
The system of time-bargains demanded from the jobber a sort of
special sense. He knew the market would move. He had to sense
how, and when, and why, the market would move. If he possessed
that sense, the rewards of stockjobbing were great.
That the Jews possessed that sense, or possessed more of that
sense, was a belief widely held from the beginning to the end of the
eighteenth century. Throughout, the literature of the eighteenth
century associated Jew with stockjobber, just as the caricature
associated Jew with pig. But literature had more right on its side
than caricature. The belief that all stockjobbers were Jews was
mistaken, but mistaken with some reason. Mistaken, at any rate,
for one good reason. The greatest of all the stockjobbers in the
eighteenth century was Sampson Gideon;3 and Sampson Gideon
undeniably was aJew.
The career of Sampson Gideon anticipates in so many ways the
career of David Ricardo that it is worth some examination. The
likeness of course is not exact. There were differences between them:
as between two different generations, as between two different men.
But the resemblance nonetheless is real, and even the differences
are informative.
One event in one year made the financial fortunes of Sampson
Gideon. The event was the' 45, when in July the Young Pretender
 'Change Alley 19
landed on the west coast of Scotland. News of the landing caused
an immediate crisis. There was a run on the banks, and particularly
on the Bank of England; there was a rapid fall in the funds; there
was an urgent need of the Government for money. The special
sense that Sampson Gideon undoubtedly possessed enabled him to
rise to the crisis. He pledged his support for the Bank of England;
he bought heavily in the funds; he advised the Government on the
issuing of a loan, and took a large share of it himself. By these
means, the crisis was overcome; and because it was overcome, very
profitably overcome for Sampson Gideon. He was a rich man
before the '45; he was a very rich man after. Yet it must be said
that riches were never the first ambition of Sampson Gideon.
His ambition was dynastic, and it was achieved in four successive
steps. He married an English wife, his children were brought up
in the Church of England, and one of the children was a son. That
was the first step. He made money, enough money by 1747 to own
land; and as a landowner he could be granted arms. That was the
second step. In 1752 he bought a mansion in Kent; a mansion
fitted to be, as it had been, a family seat. That was the third step.
Then in 1757 he wrote a memorandum for the Lord Chamberlain,
rehearsing his services to the state, and submitting his claim to
some form of hereditary honour; the justice of his claim was re-
cognized when the King raised his son, still a schoolboy, to the
rank of Baronet. That was the fourth, and final step. In 1762
Sampson Gideon died.
The Jewish name of Sampson Gideon was the Sephardic name of
Abudiente. He remained a Jew until the year 1753. That was the
year of the Parliamentary "Jew Bill": whose intention was to
improve the legal position of the Jews; whose effect was to expose
them to a storm of hostile publicity; whose accomplishment was to
be passed and repealed within the same year. Sampson Gideon was
at the centre of the storm roused by the "Jew Bill". He was the
best known Jew of his day; now, known as aJew and ridiculed as a
Jew. As if to remind him that he was a Jew the London congrega-
tion, ardent in support of the Bill and claiming to speak in the
name of the whole Jewish community, claimed to speak in the name
of Sampson Gideon. It was too much. He repudiated the congre-
gation. He resigned from the community. But if he no longer
wished to live in his religion, at least he wished to die in it. Before
20 'Change Alley

he died he made a will, and in his will asked that he might make a
benefaction to the community, that his name might be remembered
as a benefactor on Days of Atonement, and that he might be buried
among his forebears in the Sephardic burying-ground. And as he
asked, so it was given him. He died as he was born, aJew.
Sampson Gideon was always a private man. The advice he gave
to several Chancellors of the Exchequer was private. His ambitions
were private. The one step he never took was from the private to
the public man.
All that was meant by a public man was exemplified in the
contemporary figure of Sir John Barnard, the rival to Sampson
Gideon as an authority on finance in the eighteenth century; and
as a public man Sir John Barnard had three qualifications. First,
he had adopted the public religion. He was born a Quaker and
converted to the Church of England, the indispensable preliminary
to public life. Then, he had a public identity. He was one of the
leading merchants of the City of London: in turn Alderman,
Sheriff, and Lord Mayor of London; and in 1732 knighted by
King George II. And then, he was a Member of Parliament, six
times Member of Parliament for the City of London. It was in
Parliament that he established himself as an authority on finance,
and from Parliament that he projected himself to the country at
large. Success in Parliament was the making of the public man.
Sir John Barnard disapproved of Sampson Gideon. He disapprov-
ed of the Jew, and he disapproved of the stockjobber. He attacked
both; and in 1734 he promoted the "Act to Prevent the Infamous
Practice of Stockjobbing" , better known as Barnard's Act. Barnard's
Act was intelligently planned. The object of attack was the stock-
jobber as speculator; and the line of attack was through the specul-
ative time-bargain. Speculative time-bargains were known to be
vital to the operations of the stockjobber. It seemed that if an end
could be made to speculative time-bargains, an end could be
made to stockjobbing. Barnard's Act prohibited speculative time-
bargains.
Barnard's Act remained law throughout the lifetime of David
Ricardo, indeed until the year 1860. But any law is bad law if it is
ineffective; and though litigation was often brought under it - in
December 1796 The Times reported that fifty actions for stock-
jobbing were pending - the inherent contradictions in suing at law
 'Change Alley 21

for what was prohibited by law always rendered it ineffective, and

the litigation always failed. And it had a consequence, perhaps
unexpected by Sir John Barnard. Because the stockjobbers were
now outside the law, they had to make their own laws, or at any
rate their own codes of conduct, and their own means of enforcing
their codes of conduct. They had to organize. One form of organ-
ization was the Stock Exchange.
With the establishment of the first Stock Exchange a new rela-
tionship came into the City of London, and one that inevitably
affected the position of the "Jew Broker". That position was delicate
at the best of times. He was a Jew living in London; and as late as
1779 the Jewish community was still making, as it had been making
for nearly a hundred years, its annual present to the Lord Mayor,
just for the privilege ofliving in London. Now that position became
more delicate. There was a conflict of loyalties, between the Stock
Exchange and the City of London; and in the conflict Abraham
Ricardo seems to have felt that his loyalty lay with the Stock
Exchange. In 1784 he surrendered his licence, and ceased to be a
"Jew Broker". And in 1785 he became one of the trustees holding
the lease of the premises in Threadneedle Street on behalf of the
Stock Exchange.
To have been appointed trustee was a high compliment to have
been paid to Abraham Ricardo. It was paid to a man of integrity
and a man of substance: and to "a man of business". But was he a
stockbroker, or was he a stockjobber? Most probably, he was both.
For while the function of the broker and the jobber was quite
separate, the person of the broker and the jobber was often the
same. This was another of the lessons to be learned by his son
David, during his seven years apprenticeship on the London stock
market.
NOTES

I. "The Bubble" was of course the South Sea Bubble, or speculation in the
shares of the South Sea Company. The crash came in September 1720.
2. The documents relating to its founding are in the archives of the Drapers
Company: Abstracts of Leases, and Minutes of the Court of Assistants, 1771 - 1779.
I am grateful to the Archivist for telling me about them, and to the Master and
Wardens for permission to quote from them.
3. The best single account ofhis career is L. S. Sutherland, "Sampson Gideon,
18th Century Financier", in the Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of
England, XVII.
 CHAPTER IV

Love and Marriage

Stratford-atte-Bow, the Stratford-atte-Bow celebrated by Chau-

cer, had become over the centuries the village of Bow in Middlesex.
In I 792 Bo~ was still a village, still separated from London by
market gardens and common land; but London was reaching out
towards it, reaching out most rapidly of course along the main
road, the Great Essex Road, that drove right through the village,
dividing it into two parts. The part north of the road, where the
houses were built along the river Lea, was known as Old Ford;
the part south of the road was known as Bow Town. Early in 1792
Abraham Ricardo moved with his family to Bow, and took a house
in Old Ford. In a house in Bow Town there lived a surgeon who in
1792 had been practising at Bow for nearly forty years. His name
was Edward Wilkinson.l
Edward Wilkinson cannot be said to have been a likeable man.
David Ricardo was to write later of his "detestable disposition" and
"ungovernable temper". But he had nevertheless his redeeming
features. He was a Quaker. He was a poet. And he was a husband
and father.
His youngest daughter was born on November 5th I 768. She
was named Priscilla, and the name was evidently a favourite in the
family, for she was the third of her generation to be given it. Both
her predecessors died in infancy; as did, in all, four of the eight
children of Edward and Elizabeth Wilkinson. The third Priscilla
was their seventh child. She was born at Bow, she grew up at Bow,
and was thus a young woman living at home with her parents and
her elder sister Fanny, when Abraham and Abigail Ricardo came
to live in the village.
A glimpse of her as she was at this time has come down to us. She
and her sister, it has been recorded, "were then called the pretty
Quakers". It can be assumed with confidence that the demure
24 Love and Marriage

Quaker dress, which eschewed colour and which was still worn at
the end of the eighteenth century, was the perfect setting for a
pretty girl. But for an idea of how pretty in fact she was, it is
necessary to translate her, as it were, thirty years back in time, from
1822, when her portrait taken in miniature was exhibited at the
Royal Academy, to this year 1792. The translation is not too difficult,
for beyond the imposing presence and the fine clothes the miniature
shows pink cheeks, auburn hair, hazel eyes. The pink cheeks, the
auburn hair, the hazel eyes, would have been the same: the same
in 1792 as in 1822: the same as when she was the "pretty Quaker" :
the same as on the day that she first met David Ricardo.
In temperament, few people can have seemed more unlike, when
they first met, than Priscilla Wilkinson and David Ricardo. He was
above all else a reasonable man; reasonable, sometimes, to the
point of seeming the reasonable man in an unreasonable world.
She was decidedly a part of that unreasonable world; and most
decidedly, in matters of religion. It was religion, indeed, that made
them seem most unlike; and yet it was religion, or rather their
respective religions, that first brought them together. However
much they differed in doctrinal terms, in political and social terms
the Jews and the Quakers had much in common. Both had known
persecution. Both were excluded from public life. Within these
terms, they were natural allies, with a natural sympathy between
them. That natural sympathy would have allowed Jewish and
Quaker families to meet. It seems to have allowed David Ricardo
and Priscilla Wilkinson to meet. But it could not allow them to fall
in love.
Therefore, once they had fallen in love, they had to face opposi-
tion. It came from both families: from hers, with the authority
then thought proper for the protection of a daughter; from his,
with the passionate possessiveness of the Jewish race for one of its
own. Their opposition made itself felt. It is clear that obstacles
were put in the way of the lovers: in the way of their meeting, and
in the way of their writing. For though they wrote to one another,
they wrote under assumed names. They wrote under the names
rendered by Maria Edgeworth as "Osman and Jesse". Nothing is
known of what they wrote, except the names, and the choice of
names.
J essie would have been considered a Scots name, and because a
 Love and Marriage 25
Scots name, a poetic name, a romantic name. The historical move-
ment known as the Scottish Enlightenment had begun thirty years
earlier: Edinburgh was already the "Athens of the North", and
the great Scottish philosophers had already written their major
works. And with the awareness of the Scottish Enlightenment had
come an awareness of Scots poetry, and particularly of course the
poetry of Burns. It was in May 1793 that Burns published in
London his Select Collection of Scottish Airs for the Voice, and one of the
songs in the collection was called "Jessie". Perhaps it was learned
at Bow, perhaps it was sung at Bow, during the summer.
The name Osman, more important and more appropriate, was
taken from a dramatic context. In 1 732 Voltaire wrote his tragedy
Zaire; it was translated into English in 1 736, and thereafter read and
performed regularly; and in English its hero is named Osman. Set
in the Holy Land at the time of the Crusades, it opposes the religions
of Islam and Christianity; and the tragic conflict is thus the conflict
between love and religion. But the heroine alone is torn by the
tragic conflict: Osman is never in doubt. Perhaps David Ricardo
was never in doubt. At any rate, the name held a special signifi-
cance for the lovers of 1793. They then agreed, so Maria Edge-
worth noted, "that they would call their eldest son Osman."
The conflict between love and religion must very soon, however,
have developed into a conflict between religion and marriage. To
both families and to both religions, marriage was the point:
marriage outside the faith. And in both religions marriage outside
the faith entailed the most serious consequences: for a Quaker,
being denied or disowned; for a Jew, it was generally believed, the
recital over his name of the prayer for the dead. They could, in
part, have escaped these consequences by conversion. But neither
David Ricardo nor Priscilla Wilkinson seem ever to have considered
conversion.
In considering marriage, they were helped fortuitously by a
British Lord Chancellor. Hardwicke's Act, "For the Prevention of
Clandestine Marriages", had become the law in 1753, and was
still the law in 1793. Lord Hardwicke had indeed specifically
exempted Jews and Quakers, together with members of the Royal
Family, from the provisions of the Act; but by requiring all marri-
ages, unless exempted, to be solemnized by the Church of England,
he gave a guidance which must have been very welcome at this
 Love and Marriage

time to David Ricardo and Priscilla Wilkinson. They knew that if

they had resided in a parish for fifteen days, were of age, and were
neither Jew nor Quaker, they could be legally married. They knew
that almost any parish, under existing circumstances, would be
preferable to Bow; and they knew that whatever they might be in
form, in fact they would be neither Jew nor Quaker, if they persisted
in their plans for marriage.
The Quaker community at Bow worshipped at Ratcliff, about
two miles away; at Ratcliff, monthly meetings were held, as was
usual among the Quakers, to consider the good ordering of the
community; and it was at a meeting held on December 14th 1793
that the case of Priscilla Wilkinson was first discussed. A deputation
of two "women friends", the meeting was told, had visited her and
had concluded that she was likely to marry outside the Society.
The meeting thereupon appointed a deputation of two "Elders" to
visit her. But the two "Elders" did not manage to visit her, before
her marriage had taken place; it was thus against Priscilla Ricardo
that testimony of denial had to be prepared; to Priscilla Ricardo
that in due course it was delivered; and as Priscilla Ricardo that
she was formally disowned by the Society ofFriends. 2
The records of this transaction are illuminated in every line by
the gentleness and humanity that have always characterized the
Quakers. Priscilla Ricardo responded in the same spirit. Though
disowned, she remained on good terms with them; the births of all
her children were registered at the Society; a stillborn daughter was
buried in their burying-ground; and for many years she occasion-
ally attended their religious meetings, even when she had become
a supporter of the established church. Thus, her departure from
her faith can almost be called harmonious.
It is doubtful whether the same can be said of her departure
from her home. "Priscilla left you without a pang of regret,"
David Ricardo later told his father-in-law. But even at home the
reaction was relatively mild. There may have been angry scenes,
but then there were often angry scenes in the household of Edward
Wilkinson. And the anger was relatively short-lived. A matter of
months after the marriage David and Priscilla Ricardo are to be
found staying in the house at Bow Town. Half a mile away was
that other house, at Old Ford. There is no evidence that they even
visited at that other house.
 Love and M arri age 27
For the consequences of the marriage were felt much more in the
family of David Ricardo than they were in the family of Priscilla
Wilkinson. The shock was greater, the wound was deeper. And
because the faith in Jewish families is the particular concern of the
mother, they were felt most, it appears, by his mother. More than
eight years were to pass before her death. But so far as is known,
from the day of his marriage to the day of her death, David Ricardo
never saw or spoke or wrote to his mother again.
With the other members of the family reconciliation was gradual.
It began with his brothers and sisters. At the time of the marriage
neither of his elder brothers was in a position to judge of events:
the eldest, Joseph, because he was seeking his fortune in America,
and the second son, Abraham, because all his life financial provi-
sion had to be made for him, and it is clear that he was not quite
normal. Next in age was a sister, Hannah, who was twenty at the
time. She was married four years later, and though she was married
to the Jewish "Jamaica merchant" David Samuda, once she was
married, resumed relations. And in time, the same thing happened
with all the younger brothers and sisters. It happened with his
eldest brother. In time, it happened with his father. We are assured,
on the word of a son-in-law, that before Abraham Ricardo died in
1812, reconciliation was complete.
There was one other way in which the estrangement of this most
gifted, perhaps most loved, of their sons affected his parents. This
was the influence that he exerted on his brothers and sisters; and it
meant that where he led, they followed. They followed him out of
his religion, out of their religion. To Abraham and Abigail Ricardo
it would have seemed the most grievous of all the consequences of
the marriage, that of all their children the only one to rest with
them in the London Sephardic burying-ground was their second
son, the not quite normal Abraham.
The break with his religion was the most fateful single step ever
taken by David Ricardo. Impatience was a cause, but a secondary
cause: the impatience of a son with his father, the impatience of the
young, the impatience of a young man in love. The primary cause
is more difficult to discover. It was not the arguments of atheism.
It was not the attractions of an alternative. It was perhaps the
reasonableness that has been distinguished as a characteristic. He
believed that he was being reasonable himself. He wanted his
 Love and Marriage

family to be reasonable. He wanted his religion to be reasonable.

The Jewish religion has certainly not survived its four thousand
years of tragedy and triumph, by being reasonable.
The decision to proceed with the marriage was reached at some
time between November I Ith and December 5th 1793. The dates
can be determined by reference to a will, or rather to a will and a
codicil. The will was drawn up on November 11th, and shows that
on November 11th George Capadoce still regarded himself as the
godfather of David Ricardo. For the first, as it were, secular sent-
ence of the will reads, "I bequeathe to my godson David Ricardo ... "
But the bequest was never made. Early in December David
Ricardo became a resident in the parish of Lambeth. He took a
house there, at 2, Brooks Place. The ratebooks have a pencil entry
for that month, misspelling but giving his name as tenant; and the
tenancy must have begun not later than the 5th, because the
statutory period of his residence was completed by the 20th. On
that day, Friday December 20th 1793, at the Parish Church of St.
Mary's, Lambeth, David Ricardo and Priscilla Wilkinson were
married.
George Capadoce did not attend the marriage. He heard about
it two days later. Then he took his pen and wrote the final word:
the final word of the family friend, the godfather, theJew: "Sunday
night at 10 o'clock... On the 11th November this same year 1
made my testament and bequeathed to my godson David Ricardo,
son of my good friend Abraham Ricardo, one hundred pounds, but
as he has disobliged my good friend Abraham Ricardo 1 annul the
said legacy, and leave him nothing... "3

NOTES

I. Edward Wilkinson was born in 1728 and died in 1809. He published first
lyrics, then satires, then the didactic poem Wisdom. His wife Elizabeth died in
July 1793.
2. The records of the Society of Friends are at Friends House. I am grateful
to the Librarian for allowing me to use the library, for his knowledge of the
history of members of the Society, and for permission to quote from the records.
3. His will is in the Public Record Office, Prob. 11/1405 s. 161: as is the will
of David Ricardo, Prob. I I /1676 s. 595.
 CHAPTER V

War and Finance

On September 20th 1792, in the new d!partement of the Marne,

was fought the battle of Valmy. The Prussian forces engaged and
defeated were commanded by Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick,
nephew of the hero of Rossbach; and Valmy has an importance
comparable with Rossbach. It was described at the time as the
Thermopylae of the French Republic; at any rate, it saved the
French Revolution; and it encouraged the French Government to
persist in their policy of revolutionary war. War was declared
against England on February 1st 1793.
The war that began on February 1st 1793 was to last for more
than twenty-two years, and to fall into three phases. The first was
the war with Revolutionary France, which ended uncertainly
with the Peace of Amiens in March 1802. The second was the war
with Imperial France, which began in May 1803, and ended with
the Surrender of Paris in March 1814. The third was the Hundred
Days, which began with the escape of Napoleon from Elba in
February 1815, and ended on the battlefield of Waterloo. Of the
three phases, the third was the most dramatic, the second was the
most arduous, and the first was the most unpopular.
The war in its first phase was unpopular, because it was felt to
be political, and it was seen to be unsuccessful. Both the British
landings in the Netherlands were repulsed. Both the European
coalitions against the French collapsed. Even the great naval
victories seemed tarnished by the mutinies at the Nore and Spit-
head. Yet there was one area of British strategy in which the foun-
dations for the future were being laid. This was the system of war
finance, introduced in his dual capacity of First Lord of the Treas-
ury, or Prime Minister, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, by Pitt.
In 1793 Pitt had been in office for nine consecutive years.
Perhaps the title of First Lord of the Treasury best suited him; for
 War and Finance

it was on his financial and administrative abilities that his reputa-

tion had so far rested. They were the abilities that he brought to
the first phase of the war. He recognized that the problem of paying
for the war would be critical. It could be paid for in two ways:
either by taxation, to be paid in the present, or by loans, with
interest to be paid in the future. He decided that at least a third of
the cost of the war should be met by taxation; that taxation should
therefore be increased; and that there should be a new form of
taxation, to become known as Income Tax. By these decisions, he
kept within acceptable limits the yearly issue of the loans that were
to finance the war.
The existence of a stock market was helpful and indeed necessary
to the financing of the war, because with every loan a large quantity
of stock was released, that came on to the market and had to be
absorbed by the market. To the brokers and jobbers operating in
the market, consequently, every loan offered great opportunities.
But they were not easy opportunities. They were made less easy by
the conditions that always affected the market at the time of a loan.
Pitt believed in the principle of competition among contractors,
and used a procedure that had already been established. The
Government determined on the amount of the loan, and the stocks
to be issued with it; while the contractors made up their lists of
subscribers, and raised the money for it. Both Government and
contractors wanted to make the best possible bargain: and if the
Government could require bidding for the loan in one of the stocks,
the contractors by timely selling could force down the price of
stocks. Thus, very exact calculations were demanded from the
brokers and jobbers trying to anticipate the effects on the market of
a loan. Fortunately for himself, from the beginning, David Ricardo
demonstrated that he was supremely good at these very exact
calculations.
When he "disobliged" his father in December 1793 all relations
between them were broken off. These included business relations;
henceforward, in business, he was to be independent, and it must
have seemed at first a precarious independence. But it was not an
independence for which he was altogether unprepared. During the
preceding summer he had begun to do business, in a small way, but
in his own right. His name appears in the ledgers of the Bank of
England for transactions on a small scale in three of the major
 War and Finance

stocks. He had accumulated a small capital. He had made some

small reputation. And that reputation was known to three men.
Their names were Edward Forster, John Lubbock, and Samuel
Bosanquet, and they were partners in a private bank.
There were in 1793 about sixty private banks in London, the
forerunners of the modern clearing banks. All depended for their
viability on the possession of capital, and judgment in the use of
capital. Forster, Lubbock, Bosanquet were at 1 I, Mansion House
Street in the City of London; the partners were all merchants in the
City of London; and some of their capital was employed in the City
of London. Some was lent to the brokers and jobbers of the stock
market: some was lent to David Ricardo. Their judgment in his
case was described thirty years later, when he was himself a legend
in the City of London. "An eminent banking-house ... knowing
his character, and knowing how he had been used, sent for him
and told him that as they had every confidence in him, he need be
at no loss for money; for if he continued prudent, 'they would
honour any cheque which he pleased to draw upon them .. .'''
At this critical time of judgment David and Priscilla Ricardo
were still living at 2, Brooks Place, but 2, Brooks Place did not long
remain their home. By 1 795 Priscilla Ricardo was expecting her
first child; and in the spring of 1 795 they moved a few hundred
yards down the Kennington Road to 7, New Buildings, Kenning-
ton Place. The object of the move was probably to a larger house,
and the houses in Kennington Place had a higher rateable value -
at 7, New Buildings, £ 32 - than 2, Brooks Place. But even then
Priscilla Ricardo was not quite satisfied, and a year later, in the
spring of 1796, they moved again, from 7, New Buildings to 5, New
Buildings, Kennington Place. 1 At these two houses in Kennington
Place their first four children were born to them, Henrietta,
Priscilla, and Fanny at 5, New Buildings, and the eldest, Osman, at
7, New Buildings. And it was from 7, New Buildings that they went
on their first family holiday, in September 1795, to Brighton.
The earliest surviving letters written by David Ricardo date
from this holiday at Brighton. They were written to his brother-in-
law Josiah Wilkinson, who was a surgeon in the City of London,
and still at work in the City of London; and they were sealed with
the impression of a cat, and the inscription, Touch Not the Cat.
Since this is a Scottish proverb, "Touch not the cat but (with) a
32 War and Finance

glove", the seal may have been a tribute to the Scottish Jessie;
and in this second year of marriage, a sense of the happiness of
the marriage can be felt in every line. They hint at the future
economist: "We have already hired a cook at half-a-guinea per
week, but find we cannot do without another servant, and there-
fore will be obliged to you to send to our house at Kennington for
Thomas, and put him in the way how to come down to us in the
cheapest way - which I think will be by the slap-bang, or on the top
of a Brighton coach ... " They hint at the future politician: "We
see the Princess every day, she is very fond of children, and in
passing our house looked up and took particular notice of our boy,
which Priscilla is so proud of I fear she will become a violent
aristocrat... " The "Princess" was the unlucky Princess of Wales.
When as Queen Caroline she was brought to trial in 1820 David
Ricardo ranged himself on her side; and he may have remembered,
or perhaps he may have been reminded, that on a day in Brighton
in 1 795 she had looked up and taken "particular notice".
It was about this time that the scientific side of his nature began
to develop. He had always had a liking for mathematics, and
mathematical problems. From these he went on to the physical
sciences. At his house in Kennington he fitted up a laboratory, and
in it conducted experiments in electricity. Then in 1 796 his aunt,
Rebecca Delvalle, married Wilson Lowry, the engraver: they
shared an enthusiasm for mineralogy, and they communicated
their enthusiasm to David Ricardo. Lowry was one of the original
founders of the Mineralogical Society, which later became the
Geological Society; and later David Ricardo became a member.
He formed his own collection of geological specimens, and kept
them in a geological cabinet. For years mineralogy was his favourite
pastime. But mathematics were more serviceable to him on the
stock market.
By December 1 796 he had come a long way on the stock market.
How far can be measured. For in December 1796 Pitt tried a
variation in the system for floating loans. Instead of competition
and a contractor he appealed direct to the public, in a loan that
was at once christened the Loyalty Loan. But though his appeal
was heard, and the loan was subscribed in a matter of hours, later
results were less satisfactory, since the war was going badly, the
market was falling rapidly, and the public found that it had lost
 War and Finance 33
much of its money in the Loyalty Loan. There were complaints;
the complaints reached Parliament; and the outcome was the
publication of a Parliamentary Paper. The names of the subscribers
were printed in the Parliamentary Paper, which can thus be used
as an index to measure the relative prosperity of the "moneyed
men" of that date. Since his name is in the Parliamentary Paper it
is apparent that already, at that date, David Ricardo was one of
the "moneyed men".
As might be expected, the list is headed by the Bank of England.
Next come the great loan-contractors, Boyd, Benfield, with one
hundred thousand pounds; and the financiers, Benjamin and
Abraham Goldsmid, with fifty thousand pounds; and the mer-
chants,John and Francis Baring, with fifty thousand pounds. There
are the private bankers, Forster, Lubbock, Bosanquet, twenty
thousand pounds; and the country bankers, Hobhouse of Bath, ten
thousand pounds. Among the subscribers are many Jewish names:
Benjamin D'Israeli, four thousand pounds; Nathan Basevi, three
thousand pounds; David Samuda, three thousand pounds. The
governing class is well represented: W. Pitt of Downing Street, ten
thousand pounds; William Wilberforce, M.P., four thousand
pounds. The rating of the stock market is relatively low: Abraham
Ricardo, three thousand pounds; William Hammond, soon to
become the first Chairman of the Stock Exchange, two thousand
pounds; George Capadoce, the erstwhile godfather, one thousand
pounds; David Ricardo himself, one thousand pounds. When the
list closed, "Yesterday was one of the proudest days England ever
beheld," it was reported in The Times. 2 But what pleased The
Times most, in the Loyalty Loan, was the contrast it afforded
between the financial systems of patriotic England and enemy
France. The Times anticipated, correctly, that these financial
systems were now to be put to the test, in the first great climax of
the war.

NOTES

I. Some of the ratebooks, and a good deal of information on Lambeth in 1793,

are to be found in the Minet Library.
2. Newspapers then were very influential and very expensive. The Times cost
6d. in 1800, and 7d. in 1823.
 CHAPTER VI

The Volunteer

Throughout the war the financial policies of England and France

were conducted on opposing principles. In February 1793, the unit
of currency in France was the assignat, theoretically based on the
confiscated church lands and the former royal estates; the assignat,
since it made a promise to pay, was the equivalent of a banknote;
and already the assignat was heavily depreciated. It was the accom-
plishment of the much-maligned Directory, when it was the Govern-
ment of France, to repudiate and replace the assignat. In February
1797, therefore, France was abandoning the system of a paper
currency, at the precise moment when the system of a paper cur-
rency was being adopted by England. For in February 1797 Pitt
was confronted by a cash payments crisis; and the cash payments
crisis was followed by the suspension of cash payments, or in the
words of The Times, resorting to capital letters to show the magni-
tude of the event, by " ... an Order in Council. .. TO RESTRAIN THE
MONEY PAYMENTS OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND ••• "
Perhaps the best explanation of the cash payments crisis has
been given by King George III. "I have received Mr. Pitt's note,
by which I find that timidity which I have ever thought but too
possible to arise in the country has already got to an extent that is
truly unreasonable, but that calls the more for the exertions of
those who look with a more judicious eye to lose no time in taking
measures to prevent that alarm from being fatal to the public
credit ... " The King was writing in haste, for he was replying to
Pitt on the same day that he received his note; and he was writing
at the end of a most anxious week. On February 20th there had
been a run on the northern banks, particularly at Newcastle; on
February 22nd the Bank of England had estimated that cash with-
drawals were averaging one hundred thousand pounds a day; on
February 23rd the Prince of Wales had been assured that three
36 The Volunteer

thousand guineas in gold had been collected for his personal use; on
February 24th the Prime Minister had spent the entire night
pacing up and down the drawing-room at Downing Street, making
up his mind; and on February 25th he had written to the King.
And what was thought by the King was thought, more coherently,
by an observer who was even closer to the events of that anxious
week. The observer was David Ricardo. "I am of opinion," he
wrote later, "that the run on the Bank in 1797 proceeded from
political alarm, and a desire on the part of the people to hoard
guineas. I was myself witness of many persons actually exchanging
banknotes for guineas for such purpose... "
From their convenience in carrying and correspondence bank-
notes had long been used in England, ranging in denomination
from a hundred pounds to five pounds. But banknotes had always
been redeemable in gold. By the public, redeemable in guineas,
since the guinea had for more than a century been the standard
British gold coin. The guinea was a most attractive coin. Named
after the part of Africa where the gold came from, it had originally
on its reverse side a small design of an elephant and castle, the
badge of the Africa Company. On February 26th 1797 it was a
twenty-one shilling piece, but it had first been issued as a twenty
shilling piece; there had always been twenty shillings to the pound,
and now it was to be displaced by a twenty shilling banknote. This
was the new one pound note; and on March 4th 1797 the one
pound note made its first appearance. The guinea was still minted,
of course, and was to be minted for sixteen more years; but the
guinea was needed elsewhere. British guineas, or as they were
sarcastically called, Chevaliers de St. Georges, subsidized every
European alliance from the beginning to the end of the war. The
guinea became in fact a weapon of war.
Much of what was witnessed by David Ricardo in February 1797
was caused by the threat of invasion. Men put their minds back to
the last threat of invasion, the '45, and there was the same sense of
crisis in 1797 as in 1745. At the end of February, The Times re-
ported, more than four thousand of the "most opulent merchants
of the City of London" met to pledge their support in the time of
crisis; and, The Times added, "Mr. Forster the banker said that he
was one of the few present who recollected what had passed in the
year 1745 ... " For the threat was real. Already there had been two
 The Volunteer 37
attempted landings: the expedition in December 1796 to Bantry
Bay, which was frustrated more by British weather than by British
arms, the flagship, the unluckily renamed Fratemite, having on
board both the naval and the military commanders, being driven
out to sea by an easterly gale; and the raid on the Pembrokeshire
coast, earlier in February 1797, which was intended to cause alarm,
and which would have caused more alarm, Lord Holland, who
was a young man at the time, has noted, if the raiding force had not
mistaken the red cloaks of the Welsh women for the red coats of
British soldiers, and surrendered too soon. And all through 1797
the threat of invasion grew.
The threat of invasion changed many things. It changed a
political into a patriotic war. It changed what people felt about the
war, and what people did about the war. It changed the civilian
into the soldier. It changed the young financier into Lieutenant
Ricardo of the Loyal Lambeth Volunteers.1
Napoleon was app0inted to the command of the Army of France
in November 1797. As the army gathered in the spring of 1798, the
military formations in England were of three kinds. There was the
regular army, intended to serve, and for the most part already
serving, overseas. There was the Militia, officially entrusted with
home defence, and though embodied on a county basis, in theory
at least a mobile force. And there were the Volunteers, organized on
a parish basis, whose defensive function was static. All these forma-
tions comprised both infantry and cavalry; all were given more or
less of the same military training; all were issued with more or less
of the same military equipment. All received at various times the
honour of being reviewed by the King.
David Ricardo was commissioned a First Lieutenant in the
Loyal Lambeth Volunteers on July 10th 1798. The corps was to
consist of three companies of infantry, each of sixty private soldiers,
and one troop of cavalry. He became the First Lieutenant in the
First Company of Infantry. The officers resolved to provide their
own clothing and to serve without pay. They were to exercise one
day each week; and it must be presumed that they started exercising
well before their colours were presented to them, on what was
probably the most memorable day in the whole history of the corps,
September 22nd 1798.
It was certainly a long day. It began at nine o'clock with their
 The Volunteer

appearance in full uniform - helmet, red feather with white tip, red
jacket with black collar, cuffs and lapels, yellow breastplate in-
scribed with the monogram LLV, white crossbelts and breeches,
half-gaiters - and fully armed, the officers with swords - at a
muster in their field of exercise near Vauxhall. From there they
marched to the Parish Church of St. Mary's, entering it on the
stroke of noon, where the colours were consecrated by Dr. Vyse,
the Rector of Lambeth and Chaplain to the Association. Divine
service followed, and a sermon. The corps then marched back to
the field of exercise; the colours were presented by the wives of the
Commanding Officer and Second-in-Command; speeches, com-
posed by the ladies, and read by the Secretary, were delivered;
exercises were performed before a large crowd; and the day ended,
at ten o'clock, after "a most ample and elegant cold collation."
It was all reported in the newspapers, and a cutting was kept by
David Ricardo. But in fact, by September 22nd 1798, the greatest
danger of invasion was already past. This was not known outside
the highest circles of government, not completely known even there,
and not known for a long time. All that was known to the Loyal
Lambeth Volunteers was that the war continued, and was likely to
continue, indefinitely. It seemed likelier than ever to continue
when Napoleon was nominated First Consul in November 1799.
Under these circumstances, the Loyal Lambeth Volunteers served
through 1798 and 1799, Lieutenant Ricardo among them.
Towards the end of 1799 David and Priscilla Ricardo suffered a
personal loss. Their third daughter and fourth child was stillborn.
It was a loss felt particularly by Priscilla Ricardo; always subject to
low spirits she fell ill; and to help her recover after her illness, in the
winter of 1799, David Ricardo took her to recruit at Bath.
By this period in its history Bath was much more than a spa.
Though people still came to drink the waters, most people came
to meet other people, which they did through the custom of the
social call. Wilberforce, who was at Bath in this winter of 1799,
complained that there were too many calls, which took up too much
time. David Ricardo at least had time to visit the Circulating
Library. There he noticed a copy of The Wealth of Nations by Adam
Smith. After turning over a page or two, he ordered it to be sent to
his house.
The Wealth of Nations has been well described by Gibbon, in a
 The Volunteer 39
letter written some three weeks after the date of its first publication,
March 9th 1776. He calls it "an extensive science in a single book".
The "extensive science" was what was known then as political
economy, literally, the management of the resources of a state, and
is known now as economics. The "single book" was certainly the
most important ever read by David Ricardo. It disclosed to him
his vocation.
Adam Smith was one of the greatest of the philosophers of the
Scottish Enlightenment; and on March 9th 1776 it must have
seemed as if he had touched the philosopher's stone. For he seemed
to have solved a problem that had never before been solved. What
constitutes wealth? Previous philosophers had disagreed: some
had argued for trade, and the benefits of trade; some had argued
for land, and the produce ofland. Adam Smith adopted the idea of
labour, and the command of labour; and with the command of
labour introduced to the world the concept of the capitalist society.
It was from this concept that David Ricardo was to proceed; and
his relationship to it, at the lowest level, can be simply put. Adam
Smith explained what the capitalist system was. David Ricardo
explained how the capitalist system works.
There are in existence two copies of The Wealth of Nations that
are associated with his name. One is the edition of 18 I 4, which he
used when he was writing his Principles of Political Economy, and
which is marked in one hundred and fifty separate places by his
hand. The other is a first edition, which was found nearly a hundred
years after his death, bearing the bookplate of his son Osman, in
the house that had been the home of his daughter Henrietta. The
historic copy that was in the Circulating Library at Bath has long
since vanished into oblivion.
John Cam Hobhouse, the son of the banker at Bath, the friend of
Byron, and the future statesman, sat next to David Ricardo at a
Parliamentary dinner in March 1822. The conversation turned to
political economy, and Adam Smith, and The Wealth of Nations;
and David Ricardo told him about his first acquaintance with
political economy, and his first reading of The Wealth of Nations.
Hobhouse kept a diary, and in his diary set down what David
Ricardo told him. The conclusion can thus be put, if not in his
own words, at least in his own way: "He liked it so much as to
acquire a taste for the study .. "2
 NOTE

I. Rowlandson's Loyal London Volunteers was published by Ackermann in 1799.

There are 77 plates, among them two of the Loyal Lambeths, one for the in-
fantry, one for the cavalry. Details are to be found in the Journal of the Society for
Army Historical Research, XL.
2. Many extracts from the diaries of John Cam Hobhouse are printed in his
Recollections of a Long Life. There is a collection of Hobhouse Papers at the British
Museum, Add. Mss. 36456-36483.
 CHAPTER VII

The Stock Exchange

The cash payments crisis had a less damaging effect than the
King had feared on the "public credit", at least as it was represented
in the stock market. Stocks fell; but what mattered more in the
market was the amount of business, and because loans were in-
creasing in size, business was increasing in volume. It was in-
creasing fast for David Ricardo. The ledgers of the Bank of Eng-
land l show that by 1798 he had overtaken his father in business;
and by 1800 he was a member of the Committee of Proprietors
that managed the affairs of the Stock Exchange. 2 Then in 180 I the
cash payments crisis was succeeded by a convulsion within the
Stock Exchange itself.
This was the transition from a public to a private Stock Exchange.
I t was made in three stages. On January 7th the Proprietors of the
Stock Exchange resolved that on February 27th it should be closed
to the public; on March 3rd it reopened as a Stock Subscription
Room; and on March 4th the Proprietors of the Stock Subscription
Room resolved that a new building should be erected on a new
site, the new building to be renamed "The Stock Exchange". The
first stage was the most important. It was the logical end to the
process of organization; and it transformed the character of the
Stock Exchange. Henceforward membership was to be by ballot,
and a ballot of course can exclude. Membership was to cost the
considerable sum of ten guineas, or ten pounds ten shillings of the
new currency. And membership was to require acceptance of a
code of conduct, both personal and professional.
That the transition was by no means smooth is suggested by
more than one contemporary account. The Times reported, "The
object of the scrutiny is to keep out a number of very improper per-
sons who have gained admission into that Society, whose credit is
extremely suspicious, and whose behaviour has been still worse ... "
 The Stock Exchange

and the object was not at once arrived at. "A violent democracy
revolted at the imposition," one of the democracy wrote; and on
the opening day, March 3rd, battle between the Proprietors and the
democracy was joined. There was a brawl: the Proprietors had to
send for a Constable, while the democracy appealed to the Lord
Mayor "to decide whether the Subscription Room might be con-
sidered as a private property or a public market; but his Lordship
would not take any cognizance of the affair ... " However at the
end of the day victory went to the Proprietors, who were able to
meet, the next day, to elect the first Chairman of the Stock Ex-
change; while what the victory meant was explained in The Times
on March 4th. "There have been new rules and regulations made
and introduced on the opening of the new Subscription Room,
which if adhered to will certainly put it on a more respectable
footing. There is a penalty of two guineas to be levied on any sub-
scriber who throws off another's hat, which was paid yesterday by
one of the Committee, though it was suspected to have been done
intentionally, in order that none may afterwards attempt to excuse
themselves ... "
The part that David Ricardo took in the transition can be
followed in the minutes of several of the committees. He was, first,
on the Committee of Proprietors that on January 7th 1801 "re-
solved to carry the plan ... into immediate execution." Then on
March 4th 1801, when the first stage of the plan had been carried
into execution, he was elected to the General Purposes Committee,
which was to implement the second stage of the plan, the building
of the new Stock Exchange. He attended four meetings of this
committee within the next month. Then, when the building was
nearing completion, he was again elected to the General Purposes
Committee on February 8th 1802; he attended a further seven
meetings within the next month; his name appears on the Deed of
Settlement - "Whereas the Stock Exchange in Threadneedle Street
where the stockbrokers and stockjobbers meet for the transaction
of their business has been found to be inconvenient... " - and on
March 6th 1802, the minutes record, "Mr. David Ricardo, who
was present, stated his reasons for withdrawing from the Com-
mittee." But by March 6th 1802 the new Stock Exchange was open
for business.
A "centrical situation" had been found for it in Capel Court,
 The Stock Exchange 43
which was just across Threadneedle Street from the old building.
The cost was estimated at fifteen thousand pounds, and then,
inevitably, at twenty thousand pounds; the rateable value was
£ 620, which may be compared with £ 550 for the old building;
and the architect was James Peacock, Assistant Clerk of Works to
the City of London. Once started, progress was rapid. "On Monday,
as workmen were unflooring an old house in Capel Court, the spot
where the new Stock Exchange is to be erected, they discovered a
small box, containing upwards of two hundred and ninety guineas,
half-guineas, half-crowns, and shillings, wrapped in pieces of old
rags and tied in the feet of old stockings, supposed to have been
accumulated by an old man who died about two years ago on the
premises, and who for some years before his death lived in the most
abject state of human wretchedness," The Times reported on March
I9th; on May I8th the Foundation Stone was laid by the Chairman
in the presence of the Proprietors, with an inscription recording
that the Public Funded Debt on that day stood at five hundred and
fifty-two million, seven hundred and thirty thousand, nine hundred
and twenty-four pounds; on December 30th a statue of Mercury,
the Roman God of Trade, was set over the front door, "which a
wag has interpreted," The Times said, "as the God of Thieves";
incised on the classical portico was the name THE STOCK EXCHANGE;
and by the end of February it was in use.
What the newspapers called the "schism" between the old order
and the new in the Stock Exchange was never repaired. As late as
July I802, "We are informed," The Times told its readers, "that
the Committee of Proprietors of the present Stock Exchange,
erected in the year I773, have resolved to open the House next
Monday, as an open market for transacting business in the public
funds. Each person is to pay 6d. per day, as formerly." But that
from the old order was the final flourish. In I803 the lease of the old
building was sold by the trustees, and all that remained to it, for a
few more years, was the name and function of the Stock Exchange
Coffee House.
Meanwhile in I802 the General Purposes Committee had
approved a printed form, whereby an applicant was admitted
"under such conditions and regulations as they shall adopt for the
future management of that House"; and in I8I2 the first Rule Book
of the Stock Exchange was agreed. Four years later, at the General
44 The Stock Exchange

Purposes Committee, "A letter was received from Mr. Moses

Fernandez complaining of a Mr. Ben Ricardo having thrown a hat
at him while he was reading a newspaper. Mr. Benjamin Ricardo
was called, and said that he had knocked off'Mr. Barber's hat, and
that it had fallen accidentally on Mr. Fernandez. Mr. Ricardo was
admonished ... " His elder brother had been one of the foremost in
pressing the need for rules; and though he had never mentioned
rules of behaviour, he had often suggested rules of procedure. The
point of rules of procedure was the prevention of fraud, and a
typical example of fraud was the Daniels Case of 1806.
Joseph Elkin Daniels, "a conspicuous character in the Alley,"
according to the Morning Chronicle, had been one of the old order in
the Stock Exchange, and was thus familiar with its practices. He
knew that when a loan was issued dealings were made in its com-
ponent stocks, collectively called Omnium; and he knew that most
of the dealings in Omnium were made for time. That was enough.
He bought large quantities of Omnium, ostensibly for time, and
sold all that he had bought, for cash. Then he disappeared. He was
eventually traced to the Isle of Man, arrested and searched, and
more than ten thousand pounds was found in his possession. Brought
to the Mansion House in London he pleaded ill-health - "a temp-
orary mental derangement" - and proceedings were postponed. At
length he was tried on charges of fraud and felony; and by this
time the full extent of his defalcation was known to be more than
thirty thousand pounds. But because so much of the business of the
Stock Exchange was done by word of mouth, because so much
depended upon trust, and because of course time-bargains were
still outside the law, nothing could be proved against him, and he
was discharged. A few days later it was observed that "Mr. Daniels
was yesterday morning at 1 1 o'clock walking about the Royal
Exchange in perfect composure... " The verdict of David Ricardo
was less kind. Writing in 1808, he referred to one of the victims of
thefraudasamanruined "by the arts ofthat notorious villain Daniels."
Daniels was operating in the spring of 1806, the contracts for the
loan having been signed in March; and the names of the unsuccess-
ful bidders for the loan were given in the Morning Chronicle as
"Messrs John Barnes, D. Ricardo, and Jas. Steers." They were
the representatives of the Stock Exchange, and the last of a series of
representatives of the Stock Exchange who had been unsuccessful.
 The Stock Exchange 45
One reason for their lack of success had been the "schism", since
the old order and the new had competed against one another in the
loan of 1800. But from 1801 to 1804 the "Gentlemen of the Stock
Exchange" had competed every year, and every year unsuccess-
fully. In 1805 there had been no Stock Exchange representation;
but in 1806 "Messrs John Barnes, D. Ricardo, and Jas. Steers."
It was the earliest appearance before the public of the name of
David Ricardo.
The loan of 1807 was almost the last act of the celebrated Ministry
of All the Talents. It opened negotiations for the loan at the end of
February, and it expired at the end of March. The negotiations were
conducted by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer in person; and the Prime Minister in the Ministry of All
the Talents was Lord Grenville. Though he was not generally
liked for his coldness of demeanour, Lord Grenville was an intel-
lectual man, and in David Ricardo he was meeting another
intellectual man. They were to find each other congenial. "For
Lord Grenville's judgment on matters of Political Economy I have
always had the highest respect," David Ricardo wrote of him
later; while Lord Grenville was to conclude a letter to the econo-
mist, "Excuse my defending myself against my master in this
science." But on February 27th 1807 there cannot have been much
opportunity for sympathetic acquaintance. The candidates for the
loan went in a body to Downing Street, among them the represent-
atives of the Stock Exchange, now named as "Messrs Barnes, C.
and J. Steers, Ricardo & Co.", and at Downing Street were told
the amount of the loan and the terms on which it was to be issued.
The amount was more than fourteen million pounds: and the
terms, for every hundred pounds subscribed, were seventy pounds
of Consols, seventy pounds of 3% Reduced, and an unspecified
quantity of a stock known as Navy Fives. The quantity was un-
specified, because the bidding for the loan was to be in Navy Fives.
February 27th 1807 was a Friday. On hearing the terms the
candidates withdrew from Downing Street; from the prices of
stocks on the following Monday they made their final calculations;
late on Monday afternoon they signed and sealed their bids; and
on Tuesday March 3rd, at ten o'clock in the morning, they returned
to Downing Street. In the presence of the Prime Minister and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer the seals were broken and the bids
 The Stock Exchange

were read. The bid by the Stock Exchange syndicate was for £ 10.
12S. of Navy Fives; it was substantially the lowest, the nearest
competitor being at £ 11. 3s.; and the Stock Exchange syndicate
consequently secured the loan. It meant that each subscriber on
their list, for his hundred pounds in cash, received stock worth on
the day £ 100. 18s.; "a bargain most truly advantageous to the
public," said the Morning Chronicle, "a grand and consoling proof of
the high credit of the country... "
The contractors, since they were responsible at law, could keep
in their own hands as much or as little as they chose of any loan.
In 1807 David Ricardo kept relatively little. He liked his profits,
and his losses, he said, to be small. Nobody made a fortune out of
the loan of 1807, in fact, because it never was hugely profitable.
Omnium opened at 2%, and fell to 1%, both premium. What gave
so much satisfaction was the prestige attached to success, and the
fair distribution of stock among the subscribers. Members of the
Stock Exchange had been on other lists in other loans, and it seems
that a fair distribution had never happened before, or never hap-
pened to the same degree before. Doubly gratified, the two hundred
and twenty-five subscribers on the Stock Exchange list expressed
their feelings by honouring the four contractors with a vote of
thanks, and presenting to each of them a silver vase.
The vases were made by R. and S. Hennell, variously described
as "Working Goldsmiths" and "Working Silversmiths" in the
directories of 1807; and one of the vases still survives. It weighs 233
ounces, and stands nearly 18 inches high. One side is covered with
a pattern of acanthus leaves, and on the other is an inscription
sixty-seven words long. It seems now a superb example of the art
of the "Working Silversmiths", and it is the vase presented to
David Ricardo. In his letter of acknowledgement to the subscribers
he called it "elegant".
NOTES
1. No documents give a better idea of the scope and scale of the business
career of David Ricardo, above all comparatively, than the Stock Ledgers. I am
grateful to the Bank of England for permission to study them, and to the staff at
the Record Office for their knowledge and helpfulness.
2. Its records slightly antedate its establishment in its modern form in 1801:
but the most important of them, the minutes of committees, especially the Gen-
eral Purposes Committee, and the admission books, begin then. I am much in-
debted to the Council of the Stock Exchange for allowing me to consult them,
and to quote from them.
 CHAPTER VIII

Bromley St. Leonard

In 1801 the first census of England was taken. It recorded 260

houses and 1684 inhabitants of the parish of Bromley St. Leonard;
and had it been taken in the autumn, it would have recorded the
names of David and Priscilla Ricardo. That autumn, they moved
to a house in the parish. Its name was New Grove, Mile End.
The complete history of New Grove can be followed through the
Bromley St. Leonard ratebooks. In 1765 it is described as "un-
finished", and thereafter as in continuous occupation. It was a
house of some size, as its rateable value was£ 86: and its site sub-
sequently became four houses, then the City Union Workhouse,
and now St. Clement's Hospital. David and Priscilla Ricardo lived
in it from 1801 to 1812.
Bromley St. Leonard lay on the south side of the Great Essex
Road, to the east of the parish of Stepney, and to the west of the
parish of Bow. That was its chief attraction. It was accessible to the
City of London; but it was adjacent to the village of Bow. The
Wilkinson family still lived at Bow.
And, it must be said, not an attraction, but a qualification, of
Bromley St. Leonard in 1801, the Ricardo family did not still live
at Bow. Abraham and Abigail Ricardo had moved two years earlier
from Bow to Stoke Newington. It was at Stoke Newington, in
October 1801, that Abigail Ricardo died, at the age of forty-eight.
She was buried at the new Sephardic burying-ground, Mile End.
The new Sephardic burying-ground was less than half a mile away
from New Grove, Mile End.
From New Grove, in September 1803, David Ricardo addressed
a letter to his father-in-law, a carefully drafted, and then copied
and recopied letter. It was important to him, and it is important to
us, because it is a controversial letter, and in it for the first time the
controversialist of the future can be seen. Both object and method
 Bromley St. Leonard

were to be invariable. The object is to establish the truth: and

then from the truth to draw a conclusion, which by then seems
obvious. The method is succinctly set out in the opening paragraph
of the letter. "Dear Sir," it reads, "As a spectator of the scene now
before me, and as a friend to all parties, allow me, without dis-
guise, to offer my sentiments to you: and if in the course of so
doing, you should observe anything bordering on severity, attri-
bute it to a sincere desire on my part of producing harmony and
peace to a divided family. Let me begin, by laying before you a
history of the system which you have followed, and to which may
be attributed the unfortunate result which you now experience ... "
When he received this letter Edward Wilkinson was an old man.
There can be no doubt that he was a very difficult old man. He
had been too difficult for his son Josiah,1 who had left home long
before. He had been too difficult for his daughter Fanny, who had
left home now. Hence the letter, in which David Ricardo compared
him with an "eastern monarch". He was a poet, and perhaps he
had the irritability associated with the race of poets. On the
evidence of his published work it seems that he possessed a true
poetic strain, which was inherited by his son Josiah.
It might be said of Josiah Wilkinson that he introduced David
Ricardo to poetry: or at least, to poetry as it is made with words. He
knew what is meant by literary craftsmanship. Of the letters re-
maining, written to him by David Ricardo, about half can be
called, precisely, literary exercises. There is a letter written in
French, and good grammatical French, when they were contemp-
lating a visit to Paris together at the time of the Peace of Amiens;
there are humorous letters, purporting to come from "The Philo-
matheans", and written from Bromley St. Leonard; there is a
"witty and facetious" letter, written as late as 1822. These are all
literary exercises: and "Philomathean" for David Ricardo is
exact. He always learned; and in his friendship with Josiah Wil-
kinson he learned the use of words.
Nearly ten years were to pass, however, between the first awak-
ening of his economic interest, and the first expression of his econ-
omic opinions. For the most part, were to pass at Bromley St.
Leonard; and it was while he was living at Bromley St. Leonard
that there occurred an event that was to be directly helpful to the
 Bromley St. Leonard 49
emergence of the economist. This was the founding, in May 1805,
of the London Institution.
The aim of the London Institution was "to promote the diffusion
of science, literature, and the arts". It was intended to do for the
City of London what the Royal Institution was already doing for
the City of Westminster. It was to have a reading-room, a library,
a lecture-theatre; the most eminent men of the day were to be
engaged to give lectures; and ladies were to be admitted to attend
their lectures. It was at once serious-minded and well-endowed.
A thousand Proprietors paid a hundred guineas each to found the
London Institution, and David Ricardo was one of the original
Proprietors.
The great neo-classic building in Moorfields that housed the
London Institution is now gone. But from the prints and writings
of the period, something can be distilled of an atmosphere that
clearly appealed to David Ricardo, since he rose steadily in its
hierarchy, becoming a Visitor in 1815, and a Manager in 1823. He
seems to have enjoyed its peculiar mixture of the educational and
the social: for there were social opportunities to be enjoyed at the
London Institution. Another of the original Proprietors, and one
whose acquaintance with David Ricardo dates from the earliest
years of the London Institution, was James Perry.
Perry 2 owned and edited the Morning Chronicle newspaper. He
bought it in 1790 for three hundred and sixty pounds; it was sold
after his death in 1821 for forty thousand pounds. He made it into
the great Whig newspaper. Except for the fleeting glories of the
Ministry of All the Talents, it was always an Oppositionist news-
paper; and it became the principal Oppositionist newspaper.
Though in its financial reporting it was inferior to The Times,
which was the pioneer in that department, as an Oppositionist
newspaper it would have been read by David Ricardo.
Perry was a Scot. He was typically a Scot, in that he made the
most of a good education. He was a bibliophile: and when his
library was sold, as it was, in four parts, in 1822, for eight thousand
pounds, he had collected a first folio of Shakespeare, even then
"very rare", and then sold for£ 28. lOS. His employment of Hazlitt
as Parliamentary reporter, dramatic critic, and essayist, gives some
measure of the intellectual quality he imparted to the Morning
Chronicle. And he was typically a Scot, in that he had taken the
50 Bromley St. Leonard

high road that leads to England, and more particularly, to London.

This was the age of the Scottish Ascendancy in London, brought
about by men who were themselves manifestations of the Scottish
Enlightenment. David Ricardo was to meet many of them, and to
like many of them. The first he ever met was Perry.
It may have been Perry who was responsible for the appointment
of Richard Porson, the Greek scholar, as the first Librarian of the
London Institution, since they were brothers-in-law. It was not in
all respects the right appointment; but it inspired an unforgettable
picture, taken from the life, of the London Institution and its
Librarian, in the time of David Ricardo. "I never saw the Greek
professor but once," says Hazlitt, "at the library of the London
Institution, when he was dressed in an old rusty black coat, with
cobwebs hanging to the skirts of it, and with a large patch of coarse
brown paper covering the whole length of his nose, looking for all
the world like a drunken carpenter, and talking to one of the Pro-
prietors with an air of suavity, approaching to condescension... "
The first President of the London Institution was Sir Francis
Baring. In the City of London, Sir Francis Baring in 1805 occupied
very much the same pt>sition as Sir John Barnard, in a previous
generation. When he died, indeed, the Gentleman's Magazine linked
their names together, as "Worthies" of the City of London. He was
a financial authority, he was a Member of Parliament, he was a
merchant, and he personified what was then known as the com-
mercial interest in the City of London. It was the commercial
interest in the City of London that was to be at the forefront of
the now developing economic war.
The immediate cause of the economic war was the battle of
Trafalgar. Thereafter, if England could do nothing on land, France
could do nothing at sea. And the immediate result of the battle of
Trafalgar was the Continental System, initiated by Napoleon in
November 1806. The Continental System had the threefold aim of
increasing French trade, reducing British trade, and bringing com-
mercial distress to England. It was thus a trade rather than a true
economic war; but it was thought of at the time as an economic war,
and not least by Napoleon himself. Napoleon had high hopes of his
economic war. So high, that he seems not to have considered where
it might lead him, or that it might lead him to Portugal. He ob-
served Portugal, he observed that Portugal had a long coastline,
 Bromley St. Leonard

and he observed that Portugal was outside the Continental System.

He therefore delivered an ultimatum to Portugal. No satisfactory
reply being received, he ordered in the winter of 1807 the assem-
bling of the Army of Portugal.
At the time of Trafalgar David Ricardo was again serving in the
Volunteers. They had been reconstituted when the war was re-
sumed; and they had again been reviewed by the King in Hyde
Park. On the first occasion it had rained for two hours; and though
on the second the sky was "lowering", the weather then improved,
and a most complicated series of manoeuvres were carried out to
the sound of cannon. As the Order of Review put it, "At the eighth
cannon, three English cheers will be given, hats and hands waving
in the air; drums beating and music playing God Save the King.
At the ninth cannon the corps will march past; officers saluting,
and colours dropping, as they pass ... " The Order of Review lists
the Tower Hamlets Volunteers, Bromley St. Leonard Regiment.
He was now a Captain in the corps; and the Surgeon to the corps
was his younger brother, Moses Ricardo. He was younger by four
years, and of all his brothers most resembled David Ricardo.
Though a surgeon by profession, he was a scientist by inclination:
and at the age of seventy was to be awarded the Gold Medal of the
Society of Arts, "For his Invention for Registering the Speed of
Railway Trains". He practised at Bow for more than twenty years;
he acted as family doctor to David and Priscilla Ricardo; he be-
came the Surgeon to the Poor of Bromley St. Leonard at a salary of
fifty guineas. In September 1806 he married Fanny Wilkinson:
and the ties, of affinity and affection, that bound him to David and
Priscilla Ricardo were never broken.
It is in his family that David Ricardo is most faithfully to be
depicted at Bromley St. Leonard. He was always a family man,
and New Grove was very much a family home. There, the last four
of his eight children were born: David in 1803, Mary in 1805,
Mortimer in 1807, Birtha in 1810. And there, the family circle
widened, to include first Moses, and then his remaining brothers
and sisters.
Four years younger, again, was Jacob Ricardo, known to the
family as Jack, and in public as J. or John Ricardo. He succeeded
his brother as clerk to their father on the Stock Exchange, and all
his life followed a financial career, though a much more adventurous
52 Bromley St. Leonard

financial career. This meant that there were recurrent crises; but
notwithstanding, he was to be elected Chairman of the Stock Ex-
change, and when he died he was able to leave legacies of two
thousand pounds to each of his eight children. He may have been
unlucky; he seems to have thought that he was, for there is in his
letters a persisting note of disenchantment. But whatever the case
with his life, he was not unlucky in his children. Since his death
several bearers of the name Ricard0 3 have been distinguished: and
prominent among them, his descendants. His eldest son was John
Lewis Ricardo, the "Seamen's Friend" ; and it is after the "Seamen's
Friend", not after the economist, that Ricardo Street in Poplar is
named.
Poplar was the parish to the south of Bromley St. Leonard; and
in the parish of Bromley St. Leonard David Ricardo was a civic as
well as a military officer. He began, "scratched for, according to
ancient custom," as Commissioner of the Court of Requests of the
Tower Hamlets, a position that was less grand than its title, since
it was concerned with the recovery of small debts; but at a Vestry
Meeting in 1807 he was made Overseer, in charge of Poor Relief,
and declared to be "a fit and proper person to be entered His
Majesty's Justice of the Peace"; and in 1808, and again in 1809, he
was elected Churchwarden. The parish was then the administrative
unit of the country, and the Churchwarden4 was the administrative
officer of the parish. In his years as Churchwarden, on the financial
side alone, he had to manage a budget, income and expenditure
of more than a thousand pounds, and for that he had to make a
rate, and to get the rate accepted. It was a demanding office. But it
was an invaluable preparation for public life.
InJuly 1809 David Ricardo advanced to his brother Jacob, then
about to marry, the money to buy a house in Walthamstow. This
very private action, in retrospect, has a significance which cannot
have been apparent at the time. It was almost his last action as a
wholly private man. For in July 1809 he had been thinking about
what was to become the great economic question of the day, and he
had set down what he had been thinking on paper. He had then
shown the paper to Perry; and Perry had been enthusiastic, and
insistent. It must be published, and it must be published in the
Morning Chronicle. It appeared as an unsigned article, entitled The
Price of Gold, on August 29th.
 Bromley St. Leonard 53
NOTES
I. Josiah Wilkinson practised as a surgeon at Abchurch Lane in the City of
London 1788-1815; at Aldermanbury 1815-1820; at Peckham and New Bond
Street 1821-1823; at Peckham and Regent Street 1823-1836. That part of the
Wilkinson family papers relating to David Ricardo has been presented to Cam-
bridge University Library: and I am indebted to my cousin Miss Naomi Wilkin-
son for great generosity in connexion with these papers.
2. In the course of preparation for this book I read through the files of the
Morning Chronicle from 1801 to 1823, and found it consistently lively and amusing.
That seems to be the stamp of his personality.
3. "Bearers of the name Ricardo": perhaps the two most distinguished have
been Halsey Ricardo the architect, and Sir Harry Ricardo the engineer.
4. The Vestry Minutes like the ratebooks for the parish of Bromley St. Leo-
nard are in the Local History Collection of the Tower Hamlets Central Library,
Bancroft Road, London EI 4DQ, and extracts are quoted by permission of the
London Borough of the Tower Hamlets Amenities Committee.
 CHAPTER IX

The Bullion Controversy

The great economic question of the day, on August 2gth I80g,

was the currency: and what had happened to the currency since
the Order in Council "TO RESTRAIN THE MONEY PAYMENTS OF THE
BANK OF ENGLAND." With the Order in Council the argument
about the currency began. It led to what was to be known to
David Ricardo as the Bullion Controversy, and to the public as
"Paper Against Gold".
"Paper Against Gold" was the name given it by the man who
over the years was to write more about David Ricardo than any
other among his contemporaries, William Cobbett. After his rural
childhood and military youth Cobbett was now the journalist; and
nothing could better show the capacity of the journalist than his
invention of the name. "Paper Against Gold" summed up exactly
what was felt by the public, throughout the long years of argument
about the currency.
A mistrust was felt by the public for banknotes, and understand-
ably. As well as by the Bank of England, banknotes were issued by
the country banks; occasionally the country banks, which were
required by law to be small, were too small, and failed; while even
the banknotes issued by the Bank of England were not above sus-
picion. Forgery was then punishable by death: during the twenty-
four years of the paper currency more than three hundred persons
were to be sentenced to death: of one half-year The Times reported
in 1802, "The solicitors of the Bank have at this time not less than 45
commitments for trial at the different Assizes ... " and though even
the idea of a coloured banknote was canvassed by the engravers,
it seemed that nothing could be done to prevent forgery. Thus the
public, which suffered equally from the failures of country banks
and from forgeries, was always quite sure which side it was on, in
the argument of "Paper Against Gold".
 The Bullion Controversy

For there were always two sides to the argument. One side could
claim that a paper currency allowed industrial expansion, and that
without industrial expansion it would be impossible to win the war;
the other side could claim that a paper currency would inevitably
become depreciated, as the paper currency in France had already
become depreciated. It was an argument that was both political
and financial. But the event of most importance in the history of
the argument was neither political nor financial. It was literary:
and it took place in Edinburgh. There, in October 1802, three
clever young men started a new magazine.
They called it "The Edinburgh Review and Critical Journal";
and true to its name it consisted of a series of reviews of new books.
But the reviews were long, in themselves essays, and in themselves
contributions to the subjects of the books. One of the newest sub-
jects for any new book was the currency; and the first number of
the Edinburgh Review contained an essay, or a review of a book,
about the currency, and written by one of the clever young men.
His name was Francis Horner. l
Thought to be the most promising of the second generation of
the Scottish Enlightenment, Horner had been educated at Edin-
burgh University, where he had been the pupil of Dugald Stewart,
the friend, the editor, and the biographer of Adam Smith; and
from Dugald Stewart he had learned the economic philosophy of
Adam Smith. He applied what he had learned in the Edinburgh
Review. Having made his name in it, and while continuing to write
for it, he came to London to practise as a barrister; and in 1806 he
was elected to Parliament. He was elected as a Whig, and even
more as the nominee of one of the greatest of the Whigs, Lord
Lansdowne. But he was not elected for the borough of CaIne, as
might have been expected of a nominee of Lord Lansdowne.
"Such was the repugnance felt at that time for doctrines now
universally approved," Lord Holland, the historian of the Whig
party, wrote later, "that I was assurcd by Lord Lansdowne that
the Borough of CaIne would hardly have chosen the future Chair-
man of the Bullion Committee for their representative, even if he
had been supported by that recommendation to which on all other
occasions they uniformly deferred ... " Fortunately Lord Lansdowne
had other interests elsewhere; and the future Chairman of the Bullion
Committee was safely returned for the Cornish borough of St. I ves.
 The Bullion Controversy 57
When Horner entered Parliament in the winter of 1806, eleven
months after the death of Pitt, there was no commanding speaker
on economic affairs in either party in the House of Commons. Nor
was there any conflict on economic principle to separate the two
parties. The Order in Council of February 1797 had suspended
cash payments "until the sense of Parliament can be taken," and
when the "sense of Parliament" was taken in the following Novem-
ber it was to the effect that there should be no resumption of cash
payments until after the war. The Peace of Amiens was signed in
March 1802; but it was generally recognized that the moment was
not propitious for any change, and decision was deferred. The
reopening of the war in May 1803 meant that it was further defer-
red. In the winter of 1806 it was still deferred; and still deferred in
the winter of 1809. But by the winter of 1809 three things had
happened. Horner had established himself as an economic author-
ity in the House of Commons. The Continental System had been in
operation for three years. David Ricardo had published the first of
his economic writings. This threefold concatenation precipitated
the Bullion Controversy.
In The Price of Gold David Ricardo was making a point based on
what must have seemed to him a relatively simple calculation. He
knew that the Bank of England coined 44l guineas from one pound
of gold, and that consequently the mint price of gold was 77s. IOld.
an ounce. He knew that the market price of gold had been rising
continuously, and in the summer of 1809 had reached 93S. an
ounce. There was thus a difference of about one-fifth between the
mint and market prices of gold; and it was this difference of about
one-fifth that concerned him. What caused the difference of about
one-fifth? The market price of gold in the summer of 1809 was
payable in banknotes, and he concluded that the difference of
about one-fifth was the measure of the depreciation of banknotes,
and that it was caused by the excessive issue of banknotes. The
relatively simple remedy, and the remedy he proposed, was to re-
duce the issue of bank notes, by about one-fifth.
This was the point made in his first article in the Morning Chronicle.
Occupying just over two columns, and in a position of some pro-
minence, it attracted attention, and evoked a response, not only in
the Morning Chronicle. For the most interesting response it evoked
was in the pages of the journal called the Weekry Political Register.
58 The Bullion Controversy

The WeekV' Political Register was the creation of Cobbett. As

nearly as the written word can be, it was the voice of Cobbett. It
expressed his personality, and it expressed his prejudices. Most of
all, perhaps, his prejudices: for his prejudices were very strong.
They were never stronger than when he came to write about stock-
brokers or Jews: stockbrokers were always Muckworms, metaphor-
ically, in the WeekV' Political Register; while Jews strained the re-
sources of a remarkable vocabulary of abuse. To him, of course,
impatient of fact, David Ricardo was always both a Muckworm
and aJew. But when he first took notice of The Price of Gold, he did
not know that its author was David Ricardo. He therefore referred
to him, ironically, as "the philosopher who writes in the 'Chron-
icle' ... "
One of the conventions of the Bullion Controversy was the style
in which it was carried on. When they wrote to the newspapers,
contributors signed themselves with a pseudonym; when they
wrote books, they published the books under their own names. The
convention was observed by David Ricardo. In the winter of 1809
he wrote two letters to the Morning Chronicle, signed with the letter
R; but in the same winter he wrote his first book, and he published
the book under his own name. It was entitled The High Price of
Bullion. A Proof of the Depreciation of Banknotes, and it appear~d at the
beginning ofJanuary 1810.
He thought well enough of the book to send it to the Prime
Minister, who in a note through a secretary returned his "best
thanks". There is no evidence that he sent it to Horner, but it was
certainly read by Horner, and it seems to have influenced Horner.
Four weeks after its publication, on February 1st 1810, in the
House of Commons, Horner moved the appointment of a Select
Committee; and the Select Committee became famous as the
Bullion Committee.
The Report of the Bullion Committee was published in August
1810, and debated in May 181 I; and it was in the period between
the publication of the Report and the debate on the Report that
the Bullion Controversy was at its most intense. And during this
period David Ricardo wrote what is considered now to be the finest
of all his controversial works, and what was considered at the time
to be the finest controversial work ever written on an economic
subject. It was his second book; and its title was A RepV' to Mr.
 The Bullion Controverv 59
Bosanquet's Practical Observations on the Report of the Bullion Com-
mittee.
"To Mr. Bosanquet, then, I feel considerably obliged. If, as I
trust, I shall be able to obviate his objections; to prove them wholly
untenable; to convince him that his statements are at variance with
fact; that for his supposed proofs he is indebted to the wrong
application of a principle, and not to any deficiency in the principle
itself: - I shall confidently expect that he will abjure his errors,
and become the foremost of our defenders ... "
This is the controversialist at his best; and what had raised him
to his best was undoubtedly the claim made by "Mr. Bosanquet" -
Charles Bosanquet, son of the Samuel Bosanquet who in 1793 had
been a partner in the bank of Forster, Lubbock, Bosanquet - to be a
practical man. There, he had touched a nerve. It was the practical
man who had called David Ricardo a theorist; and had indeed
been the first ever to call David Ricardo a theorist. For the rest of
his life, he was to hear himself called, and even to call himself, a
theorist. It was the truth, but not the whole truth, about the
economist.
The debate on the Bullion Report was opened by Horner. "May
we be permitted to hope," David Ricardo had asked, "that what
an enlightened Committee has so happily begun, is a pledge of
what will be accomplished by the wisdom of Parliament?" But
the "wisdom of Parliament" in 181 I turned out to be precisely
the same as the "sense of Parliament" in 1797. In 18 II, as in 1797,
the resumption of cash payments was felt to be highly desirable;
in 181 I, as in 1797, the resumption of cash payments was postponed,
until the end of the war. And after the debate of 181 I, as after the
debate of I 797, the argument continued.
A month before the debate the fourth edition of The High Price
of Bullion was published. It had been selling steadily since it first
came out in January 18 I 0; and when in the spring of 181 I the
fourth edition was called for, David Ricardo added to it an Appen-
dix. This Appendix held the key to the future of the argument
about the currency. For in the last three or four pages he presented
in outline what was to become known, to Parliament and to the
public, as "Mr. Ricardo's Plan".
In the spring of 181 I Cobbett was in Newgate Gaol. He had been
tried, the previous summer, before a Special Jury, on charges of
60 The Bullion Controversy

Treasonable Libel; convicted, and sentenced to a fine of a thousand

pounds and two years imprisonment. He had begun his series of
twenty-nine letters on the Bullion Controversy in Newgate Gaol.
He had even given it the name, "Paper Against Gold", in Newgate
Gaol. When the fourth edition of The High Price of Bullion was
published, he read it, or at any rate read the descriptive announce-
ment of it in the Morning Chronicle - "The Fourth Edition ... Also a
Suggestion for Securing to the Public a Currency as Invariable as
Gold, with a very Moderate Supply of that Metal" - in Newgate
Gaol. "Then there is Mr. Ricardo," he wrote in the Week(y Political
Register of August 6th 181 I, "who is puffing off a plan of his for
raising the value of paper money to that of gold, with a very
moderate proportion of that metal. One thing I will say to this
Mr. Ricardo, that if he ever does see the New Jerusalem, he will
see it before this paper be restored to its sterling value ... " He
wrote in prophetic vein; and what he wrote was characteristically
offensive and characteristically wrong. Yet he had seized on the
essential point. The essential point was the plan. Much more was to
be heard in the future of "Mr. Ricardo's Plan".

NOTE
I. Horner was born in I 778. A memoir was published in two volumes in 1843;
and eight volumes of his papers have been presented to the Library of the London
School of Economics. I am grateful for permission to quote from them. He died
in 1817; and though the Protestant cemetery at Livorno is generally well kept
up, the "basso rilievo, very like him" on his Memorial has disappeared since David
Ricardo saw it there.
 CHAPTER X

The Unitarian1

On December 29th 1809 the Reverend Robert Aspland, minister

of the Gravel Pit Chapel, Hackney, wrote in his diary: "I was in-
troduced at Mr. Forster's, Bromley Hall, to my new hearer, Mr.
David Ricardo and his lady. He is sensible, and she is pleasant ... "
The Reverend Robert Aspland was a Unitarian minister, and the
Gravel Pit Chapel, Hackney, was a Unitarian chapel.
Unitarian was in the first instance a technical term of theology.
It meant a belief in a God in one person, as opposed to the God in
three persons of the Trinity. By extension it came to be applied to
the people who held the belief; and as the people formed themselves
into a movement, to the movement as a whole. But it had to be
applied with caution, for it was against the law to hold Unitarian
beliefs. An Act of 1698 made it an offence either "by writing or
advised speech" to deny the divinity of Christ; and Unitarians
accordingly tended to call themselves Protestant Dissenters or
English Presbyterians. It was not until 1774 that a chapel was
publicly named Unitarian; and not until 1791 that a Unitarian
Society, for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, was formed.
But by 1791 the Unitarian movement was strongly and securely
established; most strongly, in its twin centres in Lancashire and
London; most securely, through the efforts of one man, the bes t
known of all the Unitarians, Dr. Joseph Priestley.
Priestley is remembered now as a scientist. That was not how he
was thought of at the time, nor how he thought of himself. He was a
minister before he was a scientist, he was a minister while he was a
scientist, he was a minister after he was a scientist. But it was when
he was both a minister and a scientist that he was most typically a
Unitarian.
For the language of science is the language of rational argument;
and rational argument was very important to the Unitarians. It was
 The Unitarian

particularly important to Priestley. Hazlitt called him "the Voltaire

of the Unitarians - certainly the best controversialist of his day";
and the hundred odd works listed under his name in the catalogue
of the British Museum are eloquent witness of how much he hoped
to achieve by it. And not only was it rational argument about reli-
gion. Quite as much, it was rational argument about politics.
The Unitarians were the most extreme form of religious dissent,
and because religious dissent had always been met by political
repression, had become the most vigorous supporters of political
reform. They were the first radicals. In his Essay on Government
Priestley was the originator of the radical phrase, "the greatest
happiness of the greatest number", and he was considered at the
time as the first of the Philosophical Radicals. But it was difficult
to be philosophical, and dangerous to be radical, in the age of the
French Revolution.
The early effects of the French Revolution were damaging to the
Unitarians, and especially to their belief in rational argument. The
assaults on the Gallican church seemed to show what it could do in
religion. The violence of the passions everywhere aroused seemed to
show what it could not do in politics. Priestley himself suffered
from the violence. It was a sermon by a Unitarian divine that
had caused Burke to write his Reflections on the Revolution in France:
and Priestley had answered Burke. His house in Birmingham was
burned by the mob on the second anniversary of the storming of
the Bastille. He had to leave Birmingham, and come to London.
He was appointed minister of the Gravel Pit Chapel, Hackney. He
was there when he heard of the inauguration of the Terror, accom-
panied by the enthronement of the Goddess of Reason in Notre
Dame cathedral. The next year he abandoned Europe, and went
to America.
Nonetheless it was Priestley who had stamped the Unitarian
movement with his character, and Priestley who had opened to it
what can now be seen as its golden age. For revolution in France
called from religion in England its most vital forces; and it was soon
apparent that these were, in dissent and in the church, the Unit-
arians and the Evangelicals. Each had an association with a famous
name. What Priestley was to the Unitarians, Wilberforce was to
the Evangelicals. Intellectual curiosity led Priestley to the dis-
covery of oxygen; moral conviction led Wilberforce to the fight for
 The Unitarian

the abolition of the slave trade. Priestley wrote his Letters to the
Jews, Inviting Them to an Amicable Discussion; Wilberforce wrote his
Practical View of Christianity.
Between the Unitarians and the Jews there had long been a
relationship: a relationship recognized at least by the Unitarians.
The parallels in doctrine are obvious; though like parallel lines
they could never meet, because the Unitarians acknowledged Jesus
to be the Christ, the Messiah. But the Unitarians thought of the
Jews as a sort of spiritual cousins; and Aspland, who became minis-
ter of the Gravel Pit Chapel in 1805, went so far as to refer humor-
ously in his diary to a friend buying clothes for a funeral "at a
brother Unitarian's, alias aJew ... " That David Ricardo had been
born a Jew would have been known to the Unitarians. That the
Unitarians were the most progressive and reasonable of religious
movements would have been known to David Ricardo. There
were thus grounds for a mutual interest: but the lines on which the
Unitarians and David Ricardo approached each other came from
very different directions. They felt an emotional sympathy; he
felt an intellectual sympathy. They felt that they were rather like
the Jews. He felt that they were altogether unlike, and most unlike
in their belief in rational argument.
But there was one likeness that was real. It was with Priestley;
and it was first noticed by the man who could and should have
written a biography of David Ricardo, John Lewis Mallet. 2 He
knew him, he liked him, he understood him: and when he died he
wrote a long appreciation of him in his diary. "What was said of
Priestley," he wrote, "is not altogether inapplicable to Ricardo:
that he followed truth, as a man who hawks follows his sport, at
full speed, straight forward, looking only upward, and regardless
of the difficulties into which the chase might lead him ... " This
explains much in his nature. It explains as much as can be explained
of why he became a Unitarian.
The Unitarian movement received as it were official recognition in
1813, with the passing of an Act, "To Relieve Persons who Impugn the
Doctrines of the Holy Trinity from Certain Penalties", which put them
on the same religious and political footing as the other nonconfor-
mists. But here again, David Ricardo and the Unitarians viewed the
Act of 1 8 1 3 in rather different lights. They regarded it as permission
to proselytize. He regarded it as a promise of religious toleration.
 The Unitarian

Had he ever been asked to define his creed, he would probably

have answered, religious toleration. The promise of religious toler-
ation meant a great deal to him. It was one that he did his utmost
to see fulfilled, and it was one that he kept in his own life. There can
be occasions when toleration slides into indifference. But it was not
indifference that made him a Unitarian, and it was not indifference
that caused him to depart so signally from the opinions cherished
by his wife.
Priscilla Ricardo did not follow her husband into the Unitarian
movement. At the time he became a Unitarian, she was still going
to the Quaker meetings at Ratcliff; and there is a notable descrip-
tion, by a Quaker lady, of "how she was admired as she swept
grandly and proudly up to the Meeting, followed by her fine and
elegant daughters ... " But she was not then a Quaker herself; and
it seems that she did not want to return to the Quakers. She wanted
something else, in religion; and what she wanted, or at any rate
what she wanted most, it seems, was a church: the church, by law
established. She wanted the social respectability of the established
church; and that, not so much for herself, as for her children. The
nearer her children came to marriage and being given in marriage,
the more she was drawn to the established church. And the more
she was drawn, the more she wanted to draw her husband to the
established church.
It was through the circumstances of his life in Gloucestershire
that he came nearest to the established church. In 1814 he bought
a country house in Gloucestershire, and thereafter spent six months
of every year at his country house. He owned a large part of the
parish of Minchinhampton, and necessarily had much to do with
the Rector of Minchinhampton. He made improvements: he built
almshouses, he endowed schools, he provided an Infirmary, he
started a Savings Bank: and in all these activities he worked closely
and cordially with the Rector of Minchinhampton. But there were
limits to how far he was willing to go. When he was nominated to
be High Sheriff of Gloucestershire, he found that it was customary
for the High Sheriff to take corporate Communion; and he felt
obliged to obtain Counsel's Opinion, to the effect that he was
covered by the Indemnity Acts, before he could accept the nomin-
ation. He was not willing to come too near.
And if the Unitarian felt reservations about the established order,
 The Unitarian

the established order felt reservations about the Unitarian. The

seat of the established order was Parliament: and the Member of
Parliament had to take no fewer than three oaths, of Allegiance, of
Abjuration, of Association: all three, "on the true faith of a Chris-
tian". Only by the Act of 1813 were the Unitarians admitted to be
Christians; not then by everyone; not, particularly, by Wilber-
force. David Ricardo was to encounter him several times in the
House of Commons, usually in the cause of religious toleration;
and after one debate Wilberforce, who in his speech said "he
trusted the House would forgive him if he was warm, for he felt
warmly on this most important subject," expressed his particular
reservation when he wrote in his diary, "I had hoped that (Ricardo)
had become a Christian: I see now that he has only ceased to be a
Jew ... "
But he was mistaken in thinking that he had "only ceased to be
a Jew". He had become a Unitarian, and he had remained a
Unitarian. The picture of the Unitarian can only be put together
piece by piece, like a mosaic, but the pieces are there. It was the
Unitarian who was invited to the public dinner, the first response
of the Unitarian Society to the Act of 1813, and who accepted the
invitation. It was the Unitarian who in 1816 wrote a letter of con-
dolence to a friend, using terms like "an all-wise disposer" and "a
chain of events of which no one but omnipotence can have control",
terms which roused the friend to remonstrate, "I often hear similar
allusions made by everyday people, to which I rarely give reply, but
when somebody of your sane mind and superior reflection... " It
was the Unitarian who, when he was in Amsterdam in 1822, took
his family one Sunday to what he called the "English Church",
where they heard a "tolerably good sermon"; and the Engelse
Kerk in Amsterdam was not the Anglican church, but the church of
the English Presbyterians. It was the Unitarian who in 1823 went
to hear Edward Irving preach at the Caledonian Chapel; the same
Edward Irving who was soon to be dismissed from his benefice for
the heresy of denying the divinity of Christ. And finally it was the
Unitarian, who as a Member of Parliament in 1823 made his
last speech in the House of Commons in support of a "Petition for
Free Discussion", organized by the Reverend Robert Aspland.
None of the chapels in which David Ricardo worshipped as a
Unitarian now remain. The New Gravel Pit at Hackney, which he
66 The Unitarian

saw completed in 1810, and towards the cost of which he contri-

buted, survived the second world war, but has not survived redeve-
lopment. It was in the Gothic style, dark, with a steep slate roof.
Monkwell Street Chapel, in the City of London, perished even
earlier. It was the smallest and oldest dissenting chapel in London,
and was pulled down in 1825. Essex Street in the Strand, the most
fashionable of the Unitarian chapels, which he attended occasion-
ally in later years, migrated westwards with its congregation in
1883. But the religious building that perhaps meant most to him is
still the same. It is the Sephardic Synagogue.

NOTES
I. I am very much obliged to Mr. Alan Ruston for what I know ofthe history
of the Unitarians. There is a large literature, in which the most important single
work, for David Ricardo, is the Memoir of Robert Aspland, by his son, 1850. The
Unitarians were strong in Gloucestershire, and there was, and is, a Unitarian
burying-ground at Cirencester, not ten miles from Gatcombe. It is where Thomas
Smith of Easton Grey is buried.
2. Mallet was the son of Jacques Mallet du Pan, accurately described by
Cobbett as "editor and political agent". He edited the moderate Mercure de
France in the early days of the Revolution, and was the political associate of Mira-
beau. John Lewis Mallet became a Denizen in 1806, and was all his public life
in the Audit Office, being named in 1805 as one of the "Foreign Translators and
Computers", and in 18IO and again in 1820 as "Secretary". He married a mem-
ber of the great Baring family. His diary survives, in the possession of a descen-
dant, who has kindly allowed me to read it, and to quote from it.
 CHAPTER XI

The Loan Contractor

When he competed for the loan of 1806 David Ricardo was

taking, as usual with him, the next logical step. It introduced him
to the world of high finance. The two most glittering figures in that
world, its aristocrats in 1806, were the brothers Goldsmid. 1 They
were themselves Jewish, and they belonged in the tradition of the
great Court Jews, born to high finance. The opportunities that
were provided for the Court Jews by enlightened princes were
provided for the brothers Goldsmid by the economic developments
of thirteen years of war.
Credit was the most important of these developments, and credit
took more than one form. At the start of the war the brothers Gold-
smid were bill-brokers. "The fact is," the Gentleman's Magazine
observed, "no merchant or banker in London could appreciate,
primafacie, the respectability of the names on a bill of exchange with
more just discrimination than Mr. Benjamin Goldsmid ... " Then
from credit in the form of bill-broking they went on to credit in the
form of loan-contracting; and in loan-contracting they showed the
same "just discrimination". They were junior partners to the firm
of Boyd, Benfield for the loan of I 795, and again for the loan of
I 796, when, The Times remarked, "It is almost unnecessary to say
that Mr. Boyd and his partners are the contractors. They have a
lease of the loan-market of England ... " And even when Boyd,
Benfield, attempting to be "something like the cashier of Europe",
attempted too much, failed, and were declared bankrupt, the
brothers Goldsmid were able to continue. They were said to have
"the command of millions of money", and they were to be the most
consistently successful loan contractors for a further ten years.
But the success of the brothers Goldsmid was never as solid as it
seemed. If they had very great assets, they had very great liabilities;
these were, to a large extent, personal assets and personal liabilities ;
68 The Loan Contractor

and consequently, they were always under a very great personal

strain. The economic war in 1806 necessarily affected credit, and
necessarily increased the personal strain. In 1808 it became too
great for Benjamin Goldsmid, and he hanged himself. The end
came for Abraham Goldsmid in the months that followed the loan
of 1810.
Omnium best tells the story of the loan of 1810. Although The
Times reported that the terms were "the lowest ever known", it
opened at a premium on May I 8th, and was still at a premium at
the end ofJune. So far it had been sustained by credit. But July 21st
was a settling-day in the stock market; feeling in the stock market
was clearly and strongly against credit; and on July 21st Omnium
fell to 3 discount. It could now be seen that a crisis was approaching,
and in September the crisis came. Abraham Goldsmid was joint
contractor for the loan with Sir Francis Baring; Sir Francis Baring
was an old man, in the fullness of years three score and ten; and on
September 11th Sir Francis Baring died. Rumour at once seized
upon his death; rumour further affected credit; and it was rumour
that at the last overcame Abraham Goldsmid. Omnium fell to 4
discount on September 13th; and then to 6, to 7, to 8. That was on
Thursday September 25th; and on Friday September 26th Abraham
Goldsmid, recognizing that he could no longer meet his commit-
ments, went out into the grounds of his country house in Surrey,
and shot himself. It was not quite the end of the story: which was
the reaction to the news next day on the stock market. The next
day Omnium fell to 10 discount.
The Stock Exchange syndicate had been third in the bidding for
the loan of 18 IO; but it was the Stock Exchange syndicate that was
henceforward to take the place of the brothers Goldsmid in "the
loan-market of England". They were now to share in every loan
until the end of the war. And the dominating figure in the Stock
Exchange syndicate, now, was to be David Ricardo.
Between the years 181 I and 1815, therefore, he was at the peak
of his financial career. It was not a career that he had chosen for
himself, and perhaps not the career that he would have chosen.
Though in it, as he said, he had been "one of Fortune's chief favour-
ites", he would not have wanted to continue it, for its own sake.
What seems to have decided him to continue it was the war: and
there can be no doubt that he decided rightly. Financial skills
 The Loan Contractor 69
were never to be more needed than in the last five years of the war.
Ifa graph were to be drawn of the whole twenty-two years of the
war, the lowest point would be marked in about the autumn of the
year 181 I. It was then that the British economy was under the
most severe pressure. Industrial strength seemed ineffective, be-
cause of the Continental System; financial strength seemed ineffec-
tive, after the failure of the Third Coalition. And it was then that
the French Empire was in its most impressive appearance. On the
map of Europe, with its dependencies and subordinates, it stretched
from Spain to the borders of Russia. Russia must have seemed very
far away. In the autumn of 181 I it must have seemed of small
significance that Russia had recently rejected the Continental
System.
The loan of 181 I was shared by the Stock Exchange syndicate;
and it was the last loan for which competition was offered. In 1812
the principle was abandoned, and the contractors combined to
make a single bid. This was to be the way for the rest of the war,
and perhaps the only way that could have met the ever increasing
cost of the war. Loans climbed from twelve millions in 181 I to
twenty-two and a half millions in 18 I 2 to nearly fifty millions,
from two in one year, in 1813. But if the loans were climbing, the
graph of the war was climbing with them, and by 1813 climbing
faster. Part of the second loan of 1813 was spent on subsidies to
allied armies; and it was still not fully paid up when the allied
armies entered Paris, and as it seemed brought the war to an end.
By 1814 the stock market was showing itself near saturation.
The Budget was in June; and during the debate on the Budget
alarm was expressed in the House of Commons at the accumulation
ofloans that together formed the National Debt. It was accordingly
suggested in the debate that half of the proposed loan of 1814
should be taken from the Sinking Fund, which itself existed to
redeem the National Debt; the suggestion meant at least a start to
checking the growth of the National Debt; and the Chancellor of
the Exchequer undertook to put the suggestion to the intending
contractors. "All," he reported, "with the exception of one gentle-
man, were averse to the proceeding... " That "one gentleman" -
he was named in the debate - was David Ricardo. It was the
economist speaking; speaking in the national and against his own
interest; and as so often when the economist was speaking, speaking
70 The Loan Contractor

in vain. His advice was not taken. The loan of 1814 went forward
"on the old principle", and went forward, later, to a heavy loss.
It put a further twenty-four millions of stock on to the market.
The market was thus considerably depressed in the autumn of
1814; and in the spring of 1815 was to be depressed still more. On
February 26th Napoleon sailed in the brig Inconstant from Elba;
and on March 1st set foot again on French soil, landing near
Antibes. "Mr. Rosschild received the first intimation of this im-
portant event by a clerk who came post from Paris," the Morning
Chronicle informed its readers on March 11th. By then Napoleon
was well on his way up the road that is commemorated now as the
Route Napoleon; and on March 20th he arrived in Paris. Shortly
after, the news reached London. "No political event which I re-
collect ever occasioned so great a gloom as the late lamentable
reverse," David Ricardo wrote on March 27th. "At present we
have the most dismal forebodings of war, and its consequences on
our finances ... "
The war had in fact been formally resumed on March I 3th,
when Napoleon was declared an Outlaw by the Congress of Vienna;
and the organization of the resumed war occupied the attention
of the British Government for the next three months. A British
army was concentrated in Belgium; a subsidy offive million pounds
was promised to the allied powers; and calculations were completed
for the loan now needed to pay for the resumed war. The terms of
the loan were announced on June 10th.
It was for thirty-six million pounds; and it was felt in the stock
market that all that could be said for it was that its timing might
have been less inconvenient. The price of stock had been low in the
spring; the prospective contractors, as usual when a loan was
imminent, had made it lower by selective selling; the uncertainty
of the situation, and the sheer size of the loan, frightened many
holders of stock, and made it lower yet. But it was the timing that
was crucial for the loan of 18 I 5, and the timing was to be less
inconvenient than anyone knew. The contracts for the loan were
signed on Wednesday June 14th.
By Wednesday June 14th Napoleon had joined his Army of
Belgium; and the battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday June
18th. Unofficial accounts of the battle reached London early on
the 20th; and the official dispatches, brought by an aide-de-camp
 The Loan Contractor 71
to the Duke of Wellington, arrived at noon on the 21St. Their com-
bined effect on the loan was explosive. In less than two weeks from
the day of issue Omnium rose from 3 to 13 premium.
We have his own words for what befell David Ricardo during
those tumultuous two weeks. "As for myself," he wrote on June
27th, when the price had risen more than five points, "I have all my
stock, by which I mean I have all my money invested in stock, and
this is as great an advantage as ever I expect or wish to make by a
rise. I have been a considerable gainer by the loan; in the first
place by replacing the stock which I had sold before the contract
with the minister at a much lower price, and secondly by a moderate
gain on such part of the loan as I ventured to take over and above
my stock. This portion I sold at a premium of 3 to 5 per cent, and I
have every reason to be well contented ... "
The loan of 1815 is celebrated as the Waterloo Loan; and the
battle of Waterloo thus made the financial fortunes of David
Ricardo. But the surrender of Paris, the year before, was more
important to him, both personally and professionally. It was then
that he began the process of his withdrawal from what his friend
Hutches Trower, 2 the closest of all his friends on the Stock Exchan-
ge, called "the anxieties and vexations of business"; and then that
he determined on his departure from the commanding position he
held in the world of high finance. His successor was to be the "Mr.
Rosschild" of the Morning Chronicle report, or Nathan Mayer
Rothschild.
Nathan Mayer Rothschild was described in 1818 as "the real
Chancellor of the Exchequer". He might more justly have been
described as "a real financier". Third of the five sons of the last
Court Jew of eighteenth century Europe, the adviser to the Land-
grave of Hesse, he came to London in 1798, and made London,
with Frankfort, Paris, Naples, and Vienna, one of the five capitals
of the greatest financial empire ever known. In the scope and scale
of his ambitions he was more akin to the brothers Goldsmid than to
David Ricardo; and he was the inspiration for Disraeli, when in
1826 Disraeli invented the word "millionaire". It was there that
he was most akin to the brothers Goldsmid. They, none better,
would have seen the point of the word "millionaire".
 The Loan Contractor

NOTES
I. The best source of information on them is the newspapers, as they were
celebrities of the first rank: best represented perhaps in their friendship with
Nelson. He was their neighbour at "dear, dear Merton"; when his effects were
"put under the hammer" in August 1806 they bought the "principal part"; and
they later tried to straighten out the financial affairs of Lady Hamilton, a task
that proved to be beyond even their powers.
2. Hutches Trower was born in 1 777, and in 1 792 was entered a Clerk in the
India House Accounts Office; but left to go into partnership with his brother
John on the Stock Exchange. He retired in 1812, and became a country gentle-
man in Surrey. With David Ricardo his friendship dates from the turn of the
century, and he was to have visited Gatcombe in September 1823.
 CHAPTER XII

Mill and Malthus

The pleasantest result of the Bullion Controversy for David

Ricardo was the making of two friendships. Both were to be life-
long; and both were with men who were distinguished personalities
in their own right. Their names were James Milll and Thomas
Robert Malthus.
The famous father of a more famous son, James Mill has suffered
from the accident that John Stuart Mill wrote his Autobiography.
The likeness of the domestic tyrant drawn there is the likeness by
which he has been known ever since. And in his own home, he
certainly was a tyrant. But it is possible to believe that outside his
own home he was not always a tyrant; and the best reason for that
beliefis his friendship with David Ricardo.
By temperament and training Mill was a philosopher. But by the
time he met David Ricardo he had become a philosopher of a very
particular kind. That was of the kind associated with the name of
Jeremy Bentham,2 and since it was based on the principle of
utility, called Utilitarian. Mill was the most complete of the
Utilitarians. It was the principle of utility that was asserted in his
own home; the principle of utility that was promulgated in all his
important writings; and the principle of utility that sanctioned his
friendship with David Ricardo.
One of the characteristics of Mill was to admire extremely, if he
admired at all; and the first man he admired extremely was the
man from whom he first learned philosophy, the Professor of
Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University, Dugald Stewart. "I
used as often as I possibly could to steal into his class to hear a
lecture, which was always a treat," he wrote later. "I have heard
Pitt and Fox deliver some of their most admired speeches, but I
have never heard anything so eloquent as the lectures of Mr.
Stewart. The taste for the studies which have formed my favourite
74 Mill and Malthus

pursuits, and will be so to the end of my life, lowe to Mr. Stewart ... "
But there was always to be a disharmony in his life; and the
disharmony was already apparent, while he was learning philo-
sophy from Dugald Stewart. For he was the son of a poor Scottish
family, and like many another before him had been sent to Edin-
burgh University to be prepared for the Presbyterian church. He
soon found that his devotion to philosophy clashed with his dedic-
ation to the Presbyterian church. He had to choose between them;
and since he had few resources but youth, it was with some courage
that he chose philosophy. He determined to write a book, and to
make a name by a book. In 1802 he came to London; to support
himself he turned to periodical writing, and to very skilful periodical
writing; and in 1806 he began the book.
If ever a man put all of himself into a book, that man was Mill,
and the book The History of British India. It seems at first an incon-
gruous subject for him. He felt nothing of the romance of the east,
and nothing of the glory of conquest. He disliked equally the
priestly cult of the Hindus, and the aristocratic temper of the
British. History as instruction meant much more to him than
history as literature; and on this point, in a footnote, he had the
temerity to challenge Gibbon. All the same, The History of British
India is conceived on the same scale as The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire; and like The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
The History of British India has a point of view. It is the point of
view of the Utilitarian philosopher, and it is put with all the energy
of intellect, all the power of industry, all the severity of judgment,
that were characteristic of the Utilitarian philosopher. The prin-
ciple of utility had not indeed inspired the book, but it had in-
spired the author while he was writing. For by the time he began
writing, Mill had met Bentham.
It has to be said of Bentham that he was that rare being, a man
of genius. He had the simplifying power, he had the clarifying
power, of genius. Very early in his life he directed his genius to an
examination of the law; and his work on the law was the foundation
of the whole Utilitarian system. Yet with all his genius Bentham
had a peculiar incapacity in expression. He could set down his
thoughts as they came to him, and he could set down his thoughts
in the most arresting language, but he could not set down his
thoughts in a form that could be generally understood. He needed
 Mill and Malthus 75
an interpreter; and he found his first interpreter in the person of
Etienne Dumont. A Swiss, like Rousseau a Citoyen de Geneve,
though unlike Rousseau one of the sanest men who ever lived,
Dumont came to England in 179 I, and for twenty years worked
with Bentham on his manuscripts, editing them and translating
them into French; and it was in French, during those twenty years,
that the greater part of the legal work was first published. He then
returned to Geneva, and was succeeded as interpreter by Mill.
Mill was of course an interpreter of a very different kind. Where
Dumont interpreted the thought of Bentham to others, Mill
interpreted the thought of Bentham, to Bentham himself. He was
as much collaborator as interpreter. From the question, What use
is it? Bentham had extracted the principle of utility. From the
collaboration with Mill the principle was raised into a philosophy.
Bentham had been shocked by the suspension of cash payments
in 1797. He had felt moved to write about it; he had set down his
thoughts as they came to him; he had handed over his thoughts to
Dumont. Dumont then gave them the title of Sur les Prix, and
translated them into French. But the most striking quality of the
genius of Bentham was its originality; and the originality of Sur les
Prix seems to have been too much, even for Dumont. He doubted
whether it could be published, and even when the Bullion Contro-
versy made it most topical, still doubted whether it could be
published. When he was shown it, David Ricardo doubted whether
it could be published. But it was when he was shown it, in December
1810, that his friendship with Mill began. By his observations upon
it he proved that he could be of utility. Friendship for its own sake
might have been denied by Mill as mere self-indulgence. Friend-
ship for the sake of utility was a different matter.
At a deeper level, there was admiration. Mill could appreciate
the economist, and could admire the economist. As always, he
admired extremely. When Francis Place, the "Radical Tailor of
Charing Cross", but the Philosophical Radical, was starting his
economic work, and thinking of starting by correcting David
Ricardo, Mill wrote to him, in 1816: "Don't meddle with Ricardo-
it is not easy to find him in the wrong I can assure you - I have
often thought I have found him in the wrong, but I have always
eventually come over to his opinion ... "
And at the deepest level there was something more. "The element
 Mill and Malthus

which was chiefly deficient in his moral relations with his children
was that of tenderness," John Stuart Mill wrote of his father in the
Autobiography; and yet, when David Ricardo died, "Mill was
terribly affected," it was noted by a perceptive woman, the wife
of the historian George Grote," - far more than you would have
supposed it likely. The heart of him was touched, and his nature
revealed more tenderness than I had believed to reside within his
philosophic frame ... "
Tenderness implies affection; and there can be no doubt of the
affection felt for David Ricardo by Mill. The same can be said,
and has been said, by himself, of the affection felt for David Ricardo
by Malthus. 3
The epitaph to Malthus is displayed on a tablet in the west porch
of Bath Abbey. "Long known to the lettered world/ By his admir-
able writings on the social branches of political economy / Particul-
arly his Essay on Population/ One of the best and truest philoso-
phers/ Of any age or country/ Raised by native dignity of mind/
Above the misrepresentations of the ignorant/ And the neglect of
the great... " it is probably more faithful to its original than are
most lapidary inscriptions. It is faithful in fact, and it is faithful in
feeling. Strong feelings have always been aroused by the name of
Malthus. They were first aroused in 1798, when he published the
first edition of the Essay on Population.
In the beginning, he owed much to his father. The elder Malthus
had met Rousseau, who held that man is made by his environ-
ment; he had read Godwin, who believed that man could be made
perfect. There were discussions at home between father and son,
on the teachings of Rousseau and Godwin; and it was during those
discussions that the young Malthus first thought of the principle of
population.
He had proceeded 9th Wrangler at Cambridge University before
becoming a clergyman, and he put his principle in mathematical
terms. "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical
ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio." These
two ratios were what made him famous. The strong feelings were
aroused by the way he applied the two ratios to the problems of
the poor. For it was the poor who suffered most from that check to
population which he called "misery and vice"; it was the poor who
were to be asked to exercise the celebrated "moral restraint"; and
 Mill and Malthus 77
it was the poor for whom "subsistence" was already most inade-
quate. The only relief that could be given to the poor was money:
and he pointed out that monetary relief, in terms of the principle,
was bound to be ineffective. The logic seemed unassailable, the
case seemed unanswerable; and the principle was immediately
accepted as intellectual dogma. It was accepted throughout the
lifetime of David Ricardo, and it was accepted by David Ricardo.
There was of course a response to it, a response emotional rather
than intellectual, and not the less vehement for being emotional.
Cobbett in an "Open Letter" wrote: "Parson, I have detested
many men in my life, but none so much as you ... " And even
Hazlitt: "Mr. Malthus's reputation may I fear prove fatal to the
poor of the country. His name hangs suspended over their heads,
in terrorem, like some baleful meteor... "
The first edition of the Essay on Population is not strictly speaking
the work of an economist. It does not do more than enunciate the
great principle. But five years later, in 1803, Malthus published a
second edition, "applying the principle directly and exclusively to
the existing state of society, and endeavouring to illustrate the power
and universality of its operation from the best authenticated
accounts that we have of the state of other countries ... " and with
this second edition established himself as the foremost economist
of the age. He was to remain the foremost economist of the age
until he was displaced by David Ricardo.
They began their correspondence in the summer of 18 1 1: and
there is a remarkable coincidence of phrase, in the first letter written
by Malthus, and in the draft being written by David Ricardo,
when he received that first letter. The phrase is "amicable discus-
sion in private"; and it is a tribute to the personal qualities of both
men that they were able to continue their "amicable discussion in
private" however much they differed, and differed in public. They
had differed in detail during the Bullion Controversy; and after the
Bullion Controversy they found that they differed more and more.
Essentially, the cause of the difference was a definition. What was
the nature of the new science of political economy? Was it a pure
science, with the invariable laws of a pure science? Or was it a
social science, to be adapted as social conditions changed? The
difference was never resolved. It sustained an economic corre-
spondence of unique importance, the best part of a hundred letters
 Mill and Malthus

on either side, written over a period of twelve years. The last letter
from David Ricardo was dated August 31st 1823, less than a
fortnight before his death. "And now my dear Malthus I have
done. Like other disputants, after much discussion we each retain
our own opinions. These discussions however never influence our
friendship; I should not like you more than I do if you agreed in
opinion with me ... "
How much he liked Malthus, and how much he liked Mill,
comparatively, can only be inferred; but what can be inferred is
that he liked Mill better than he liked Malthus. And he liked Mill
better, because Mill liked him better. Why Mill liked him better,
again, can only be inferred. But David Ricardo was always a
reasonable man. And though character and circumstances were
against him, Mill always wanted to be a reasonable man.

NOTES
I. Mill was born in 1773, and there is a good factual life of him by A. Bain,
which gives full details of his publications, and a sympathetic exposition of his
ideas. References to him in contemporary writings are numerous. His British
India led to his appointment as Assistant Examiner in the East India Company in
1819; he rose to be Chief Examiner in 1832; and died in 1836.
2. The Bentham Papers are contained in 176 boxes at the Library of University
College, London, and are now in course of publication by the Athlone Press.
Parts of them are to be found in Sir John Bowring, Works, With a Memoir of
Jeremy Bentham, eleven volumes, 1843; one copy of the Memoir at the British
Museum is interleaved, and includes autograph letters and newspaper cuttings.
3. Malthus was born in 1766, and as he became the first ever Professor of
Political Economy in 1805, may be considered the first ever professional econo-
mist. Apart from the Essay on Population, his most important writings were
pamphlets on the Corn Laws and Rent and Value. He published his Principles of
Political Economy in 1820, on which David Ricardo made many notes, since
published; but he did not have the same success with his Principles as with his
Essay, and a second edition only came out in 1836, after his death.
 CHAPTER XIII

Upper Brook Street

Priscilla Ricardo had a taste for a certain magnificence. When

she saw her husband at the peak of his financial career, she thought
of a move to a new house: and it was to be a magnificent new
house. The decision to move was made in the autumn of 181 I;
and what it was, and how it was reached, were communicated to
Mill in a letter dated September 26th.
"Mrs. Ricardo has lately, on account of the increasing age of our
girls, and to be nearer to their masters, expressed a wish to go to
town: - this wish every hour acquired new force and in a short time
became absolutely irresistible. Search was made after a house, and
as ill-fortune would have it, one was found, to be disposed of, in
Upper Brook Street, Grosvenor Square - the very thing to suit us -
brimful of every convenience, and containing precisely the number
of rooms which our large family required. There was however one
obstacle to its purchase, and that a most serious one, the price was
enormous, and I would not listen to it. Difficulties however only
stimulate the brave, and when familiarly contemplated at every
view appear less formidable. I soon found that my opposition
abated as the wishes of those about me increased, and in a few
days I was completely vanquished. In short, the house is mine ... "
The house was 56, Upper Brook Street,l in the parish of St.
George's, Hanover Square. It had been built in 1729, when Lord
Richard Grosvenor was developing the Grosvenor Estate, as the
end house on the south side of Upper Brook Street, where Upper
Brook Street led into Grosvenor Square; and its position was
important to its subsequent history. For it was so placed that in the
two end houses in Grosvenor Square it had two large and imposing
neighbours; and 21 and 22, Grosvenor Square came gradually to
absorb 56, Upper Brook Street, until by the end of the eighteenth
century it had become no more than an appendage to 22, Grosvenor
80 Upper Brook Street

Square, bought and sold with it. Only in 1806 was it bought again
separately, and then by Lord Henniker, of 21, Grosvenor Square.
But in 1810 Lord Henniker transferred the lease that he had bought
separately to a speculative builder named Charles Mayor.
A good deal is known about Mayor, not all of it to his credit. He
had for many years been engaged on the Foundling Hospital
Estate in Bloomsbury, and his relations with the Building Committee
had been troubled. There had been criticism in particular of the
quality of his workmanship. But whatever his shortcomings tech-
nically, he was at least a man of large ideas. He made 56, Upper
Brook Street into the fine house it was when it was lived in by
David Ricardo. The "Intended Plan" and "Intended Elevation"
that were "to be built by Mr. Mayor" still exist, and show what he
did. He gave it a dignified classical portico. He enlarged it by
building new kitchens and sculleries at the back. Since it is shown
on the plans, it is likely that he gave it the oval staircase which was
to be its most distinctive architectural feature. And when he had
got thus far in the preparation and execution of his plans, he put it
up for sale.
As soon as David Ricardo had been persuaded to buy it he
employed an architect to examine it. The architect was Samuel
Pepys Cockerell, who was probably suggested by Mayor himself,
as he had been for twenty years Surveyor to the Governors of the
Foundling Hospital, and so his immediate superior. He was un-
doubtedly a gifted architect, his gifts best displayed now perhaps at
Sezincote in Gloucestershire, where he made a surprisingly success-
ful attempt to build an English country house in the style of a
Mogul mausoleum; and as he had an eye for detail as well as for
the orient, it may have been he who embellished the principal
rooms at 56, Upper Brook Street, the drawing-room, the dining-
room, the library, with their Adam chimney-pieces. On his advice,
in February 1812, David Ricardo completed the purchase.
Exactly what he meant when he said "the price was enormous"
may be found from the lease, which was for 59! years running
from January 18 I 0, and which cost him eleven thousand five
hundred pounds, a figure that can be compared with the three
thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds paid by Lord Henniker
in 1806, and a figure that was promptly complemented by the rate
assessed by the City ofW'estminster. This was at a rateable value of
 Upper Brook Street 81

£ 480, more than for any other house in Upper Brook Street, and
more in fact than for either 21 or 22, Grosvenor Square. It was
therefore a house of a considerable magnificence: as much magnifi-
cence as had been desired by Priscilla Ricardo, as much magnifi-
cence as had been feared by Mill. The move to 56, Upper Brook
Street was made in the spring of 1812.
On the first day of spring, March 21st 1812, Abraham Ricardo
died at his house in Islington. The death of his father cannot
however have been so painful for David Ricardo as the death of his
mother must have been, soon after the move to Bromley St.
Leonard. His father was in his 74th year; and happily, they had
been reconciled for several years before he died. The date of their
reconciliation was at some time prior to March 1807; for in March
1807 Abraham Ricardo added a codicil to his will, making him one
of his executors. As executor, he had to carry out the touching
direction in the will, that the "diamonds, jewellery, and parapher-
nalia of my late dear wife" now be sold; then to negotiate the sale
of the house at Islington; and then as trustee for his unmarried
sisters and brother Abraham, to invest their money for them in the
funds. His father was a rich man when he died, leaving an estate
valued at forty-five thousand pounds; except for himself, it was to
be divided equally among the children; for himself, apart from a
token of esteem, David Ricardo inherited only his share in what
was called a Tontine, a form of Government lottery, in which the
prize was won by the longest-lived owner of a share. Abraham
Ricardo had bought four hundred-pound shares in the Irish
Tontine of 1775 for his four oldest children: of them, David
Ricardo was the shortest-lived, while the longest-lived was to be
his sister Hannah.
With her, as with all his sisters, he enjoyed relations that were
warm but erratic. They were always subject to the variations in
mood of each particular sister, and there were six sisters in all. His
sisters wanted, in their own words, at once to feel their "ancient
attachment" and to exercise their "independent spirit", and this
proved to be difficult. They were all younger than he was, and
they watched his progress lovingly, proudly, and not uncritically.
It can be taken as certain that they were not uncritical of the move
to Upper Brook Street.
The cause of all the criticism of the move to Upper Brook Street
 Upper Brook Street

was the belief that the magnificent new house would somehow
lead to a magnificent new way of life. The belief was mistaken.
David Ricardo lived at Upper Brook Street almost entirely as he
had lived at Bromley St. Leonard. The only real innovation was
the beginning of the series of "economic breakfasts", adaptations
of a social custom of the time, made possible by the convenience
of the place; and the "economic breakfasts", gatherings usually of
three or four men, were altogether unmagnificent. "Plain living
and high thinking are no more," Wordsworth had written in 1802:
but plain living and high thinking exactly characterized the
"economic breakfasts", which were often followed by equally
unmagnificent walks in the Park. More frequent than the "economic
breakfasts" were the visits of family and friends; new friends some,
but among them the man who David Ricardo himself described
as his oldest friend, George Basevi.
It has been the fate of George Basevi to be remembered more
for the sake of his connexions than for himsel£ His uncle was the
musician who brought the cello to England; his son was the success-
ful architect of Belgrave Square and the Fitzwilliam Museum;
his nephew was the future Prime Minister. Of the young Disraeli,
who more than once tried to borrow money from him, he by no
means approved, and was the first to call an "adventurer": and
David Ricardo would probably have found so exotic a figure un-
sympathetic. But with George Basevi he had much in common.
They had the same commercial background, and the same intel-
lectual interests; they were much of an age, and their children
were much of an age. The second son of George Basevi was the
architect of that name, and his letters show that the friendship of
the fathers extended to the children. It long outlasted David
Ricardo. It outlasted even the architect. Five years after his
spectacular death, falling from the western tower of Ely cathedral,
his father made his will at Brighton, and his signature to the will
was witnessed by Moses Ricardo, the brother of his oldest friend. 2
The intellectual interests of the young George Basevi were
primarily aesthetic; and he has much to say about that side of
life during the early years at Upper Brook Street. For it was at
Upper Brook Street that David Ricardo began to support the arts.
He became a patron of the theatre. London had then a sort of
double distinction in the theatre, with acting in the old classical
 Upper Brook Street

manner of the Kembles at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, and

in the new romantic manner of Kean at the Theatre Royal, Drury
Lane. He had for several years been stockbroker to the great John
Philip Kemble, and had become a friend; he was a contributor of
funds to Drury Lane, and later one of its Vice-Presidents. Between
classical Covent Garden and romantic Drury Lane he might have
been expected to prefer Covent Garden; and certainly it was
Covent Garden that was to come, and to be assisted by him to
come, to Gloucester. In 18 I 8 an advertisement was prominently
displayed in the Gloucester Journal: "THEATRE, GLOUCESTER/ Mr.
Sinclair's/ First Appearance on This Stage/ By Desire, and under
the Patronage, of DAVID RICARDO, Esq., High Sheriff of the County
of Gloucestershire / On Wednesday Evening, August loth 18 I 8/
Will be Presented the Favourite Opera/ THE CABINET/The Part
of Orlando (with the Original Songs) by Mr. Sinclair from the
Theatre Royal, Covent Garden/ The Character of Floretta by
Miss Green (from the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden) her First
Appearance here/ To which will be added, the Farce of LOVE,
LAW, AND PHYSIC ... "
Even before Upper Brook Street he had begun to collect books,
for soon after the move he wrote to his Aunt Lowry that some of
his volumes of the Philosophical Magazine, which were illustrated
with technical drawings by her husband, had been lost in the
move; but it was at Upper Brook Street that he formed his first
library. He had three libraries in all, at the end of his life: the
economic library, which came to number several hundred volumes;
the more general library at his country house in Gloucestershire,
mostly standard editions of the standard authors, in French and
English; and the collection at Upper Brook Street, which perhaps
more truly represented his own taste. Part of this collection was
ordered from a firm of booksellers in the City, and the list shows a
large preponderance of books of travel, with history in second
place. Poetry is represented slightly, and novels not at all; though
novels were certainly read at Upper Brook Street, and especially
the Waverley Novels as they came out. He very seldom mentioned
novels in his letters; but in 1819 he mentioned the new Ivanhoe.
Writing of Scott to a friend in Edinburgh he said, "His last novel is
just published, but there is so great a demand for the work at
present in my house that I have not yet seen it - I shall be content
 Upper Brook Street

to waive my claim to its perusal till I get into the country... " and
then, six months later, "I have been much entertained by reading
Ivanhoe, though not in an equal degree as reading some of the other
novels by the same author ... " a judgment on this first successor to
the great "Scotch Novels" that has been endorsed by posterity. He
had his copy bound, in three volumes, at a cost of lOS. 6d.; but it
must be doubted whether it ever found a place in his library. To
David Ricardo novels belonged in the drawing-room, not the
library. The drawing-room was on the first floor, at 56, Upper
Brook Street.
It was in the drawing-room, when they had been in the house
for just over two years, that David and Priscilla Ricardo made an
alarming discovery. "I hear strange tidings," the candid Hutches
Trower wrote to him, "of your house in Brook Street tumbling
about your ears," and David Ricardo, in February 1816, replied,
"Report has spoken truth concerning my house in Brook Street.
We observed a large crack in the ceiling of the drawing-room last
winter. I sent for Mr. Cockerell, he said it must be looked to when
we left it for the summer, but that it was perfectly safe then. We
have since found that we were in the utmost hazard - that May.or,
of whom I bought the house, was a complete knave, and from the
holes in the chimnies, and the communications between them and
the beams, he perhaps intended that it should be destroyed by fire,
so that no one should ever find out the total insufficiency of the
materials to support the house. What must I think of Mr. Cockerell
whom I paid to examine it? What compensation can he make me
for his shameful neglect? I have not seen him since the discovery.
The workmen have been in it ever since July, and it will cost me
several thousand pounds. We go into it on Tuesday next, but are
obliged to be satisfied with newly plastered walls, unpapered and
unpainted, or we must not have gone into it this season... "
And that he was not alarming himself without reason is suggested
by Southey in his Letters from England, which were published in
1807. These purport to be the letters of a Portuguese gentleman,
visiting England, observing England, reporting England; and the
Portuguese gentleman has something to report on the subject of
fire, and the risk of fire. "For the houses in London," he says, "and
indeed in all the large towns, are built for sale, and the builder will
not incur the expense of making them fireproof, because if they are
 Upper Brook Street

burnt he is not the person who is to be burnt in them ... "

The last of the expenses to be incurred by David Ricardo at
Upper Brook Street was the acquisition of a coach-house and
stables. In 1818 he bought the lease of a part of a mews on the
opposite side of the street for seven hundred pounds; and by 1822
had rebuilt his part of the mews for a further five hundred pounds.
This completed the elevation of 56, Upper Brook Street to the
first rank of London houses, and to its fullest magnificence. But by
I 822 he had already made his will, and in his will had given direc-
tions that immediately upon his death it was to be sold. Mter his
death Priscilla Ricardo accordingly sold it, in the spring of 1824, to
the Earl of Wick low.
A hundred years later it was lived in by a financier of a very
different kind, Clarence Hatry, the company promoter. He was
there at the height of his dazzling career, and when he fell, in 1929,
it almost seems as if 56, Upper Brook Street fell with him. At any
rate, thereafter, its magnificence was dimmed. In 1934, when
it was empty, it was broken into and the Adam chimneypieces
stolen. Then at ten minutes past ten on the night of April 19th 1941
a high explosive bomb was dropped at exactly the junction of
Upper Brook Street and Grosvenor Square; what was once 21,
Grosvenor Square, the corner house, suffered "major damage";
and while 56, Upper Brook Street is marked in the London County
Council colour code as "blast damage, not structural", it was not
occupied again during the war. After the war, in 1949, it was
converted into five flats. But by then a new American Embassy was
projected; by 1952 the American government had acquired all the
houses on the west side of Grosvenor Square; and by I 956 the plans
for the new building had been completed. These plans incorporated
not only the sites of 2 I and 22, Grosvenor Square, but for the
northern wing the site of 56, Upper Brook Street. The old associa-
tion between the three houses was thus briefly renewed, when they
were demolished, together.

NOTES
I. For the history of the house I am indebted to his Grace the Duke of West-
minster for permission to consult the archives at the offices of the Grosvenor
Estate, and to Mr. Guy Ac10que of those offices for much information. Some
memorials, or enrolled deeds, in the records of the Middlesex Deeds Registry,
86 Upper Brook Street
now at the Greater London Record Office (Middlesex Records), reference MDR
18ro/7jI26, refer to the house, and are quoted by permission of the Controller
of H.M. Stationery Office. For its later history, plans prepared by the London
County Council recording the degree of war damage by means of a colour code
are in the possession of the Greater London Record Office, reference GLRO.LCCj
ARjWar Damage Plans. The Westminster ratebooks are in the City of West-
minster Reference Library.
2. Copies of the letters written home by the young George Basevi when he was
studying in Italy and Greece are preserved in Sir John Soane's Museum. I am
grateful to the Trustees for allowing me to read them and to quote from them.
Basevi later became almost the architect to the family, his private prac1ice in-
cluding work for Jacob, Frank, and SaIllSon Ricardo, and for Osman Ricardo
at his London house in Park Lane. It is tempting to think that David Ricardo
may have discussed with him the improvements he was making at Gatcombe and
Bromesberrow, and that he may have designed the AIIllShouses at Minchin-
hampton, rebuilt in 1832 by David Ricardo the younger. I am indebted to Mr.
H. M. Colvin, Reader in Architectural History in the University of Oxford, and
to Mr. EdwardJamilly, RIBA, for information on his life and work.
 CHAPTER XIV

A Holiday at Ramsgate

Hardly had they all moved in to Upper Brook Street in 1812, in

the spring, than they all moved out again, in the autumn. For in
the autumn the family went for a prolonged holiday to the fashion-
able watering-place of Rams gate.
Ramsgate had become a watering-place in the general enthusiasm
for sea air and sea bathing in the second half of the eighteenth
century. But it had become more recently a watering-place with a
difference; and what made the difference was the war, and its
nearness to the war. An advertisement in the Morning Chronicle
expresses with concision the attractions of Ramsgate in 1801:
"PANORAMA, LEICESTER SQ.UARE. Now open, a new and beautiful
view of RAMS GATE, taken from the pier, near the lighthouse, showing
a correct representation of an embarkation of troops, both horse and
foot; likewise Deal, Dover Castle, and a Fleet at the Downs, with a
distant view of France; the whole appears as large as reality ... "
And as the war still continued, this was still the reality, in Rams-
gate in 1812. It was important for Ramsgate, as a Guide of the time
put it, that "the bathing is excellent, upwards of twenty machines
are employed every morning; several convenient waiting-rooms
have been built, where the company resort, to take in their turn
the invigorating bath. A lady taking a machine, guide included,
IS. 3d."; it was important for Ramsgate that in the evenings there
was an "elegant and spacious Assembly Room with C. Ie Bas, our
polite Master of the Ceremonies"; but it was more important for
Ramsgate that the King's German Legion and the Glamorganshire
Regiment were stationed in the town, and that the American decla-
ration of war in June 1812 meant that once again much might
depend upon the navy. The war was still felt to be patriotic;
fashionable people were patriotic; and fashionable people came to
Ramsgate. That very fashionable young man, Thomas Bertram of
88 A Holiday at Ramsgate

Mansfield Park, itself written in 1812, spent a week at Ramsgate in

September. While there, he called on fashionable friends; and the
address at which he called was Albion Place.
Albion Place stands on the cliff in the centre of the town, and is
built along two sides of a rectangle, so that all the houses in it have
a view of the sea. The end house in it, and the house nearest the
sea, is Albion House: typical of the marine architecture of the
period, with a first-floor verandah on both of its seaward sides,
overlooking on one side the harbour, and on the other side Rams-
gate Sands. It was Albion House that was taken by the Duchess of
Kent in the summer of 1830 for the eleven year old Princess Victoria.
It was Albion House that was taken by David and Priscilla Ricardo
in the autumn of 1812. It had been built in 1789, and was owned
in 1812, as his "favourite residence", by Lord Edward Bentinck.
Despite the presence of the second son of the second Duke of
Portland, however, the tone of Ramsgate in 1812 was not altogether
aristocratic, for the tone of Ramsgate was set by a man who by no
effort of the imagination could be called an aristocrat, the genial,
the extravagant, the shrewd Sir William Curtis. As usual, Hazlitt
has left the best description of him. "Callipash and Callippee are
written in his face; he rolls about his unwieldy bulk in a sea of turtle
soup. How many haunches of venison does he carryon his back!
He is larded with jobs and contracts; he is stuffed and swelled out
with layers of bank notes and invitations to dinner ... " The son ofa
manufacturer of sea-biscuits in Wapping, Sir William Curtis for
thirty-three years represented the City of London in Parliament,
and was Lord Mayor in 1795. In both these offices he was a
successor to Sir John Barnard; and like Sir John Barnard he was
suspicious of stockjobbers, and after it had come into being, of the
Stock Exchange. When there was an organized attack on the
existence of a private Stock Exchange in 1810, he moved the
attacking Bill in the House of Commons, which was defeated at its
second appearance; and he was thus a familiar figure to David
Ricardo, though it seems they only met socially at Ramsgate. At
Ramsgate he was much esteemed; and when he died, every shop
in the town closed for his funeral. But at Ramsgate Sir William
Curtis lived at Cliff House. He did not live in fashionable Albion
Place.
It was from Albion Place that David Ricardo received an inter-
 A Holiday at Ramsgate 89

esting letter. It was one of many letters written from Albion Place
that autumn, and it is interesting because he received it and kept
it. It was written to her father by his eldest daughter Henrietta;!
and was headed, Albion House, October 15th 1812.
"Every day as it arrives brings with it its engagements, and
every night when I go to bed I still find myself the same naughty
neglectful girl, to the best, the most indulgent of fathers. Do not
blame me too severely, or think that the pleasures and gaiety of
Ramsgate make me forget one so much beloved, and so worthy of
everybody's esteem. Indeed, my dear father, we are all constantly
thinking of you, talking of you, and fancying you in each different
employment. I know not of any excuse to make, for not having
written to you before, indeed I wish to make none - for I have been
very faulty. 'Procrastination is the thief of time', and I am sure in
this case it has proved so to me.
The house is in high bustle for this evening's entertainment, and
I am afraid we shall tire ourselves with running up and down stairs
before night comes: Priscilla, who is ever on the wing when any-
thing is wanted, tells me she cannot count the jaunts she has had.
Our party, we expect to be about eighty-five in number, which,
you know, is rather small in comparison with those given about
here, but quite large enough for comfort. I daresay you have
already heard that Mr. Solicitor is to be here, he is a dancer, I
understand, and if so will open the ball with Lady Mary Sheppard.
Lady Madelina is very unwell, therefore she will be spectator only.
How much I wish that we could have you with us, my dear father!
it would add many degrees of pleasure to the evening: for though
not a very noisy or bustling master of the ceremonies, yet I think you
never fail of pleasing when you try. We expect five of the German
officers, and one of the Glamorganshire, the rest of them are too
high to dance, therefore they are of no use here. Mr. Cremar and
Baron Hugo are gone to Hythe, consequently we are disappointed
of them; but notwithstanding, we shall have as many or perhaps
more gentlemen than ladies, so that they will be on their best
behaviour.
Mr. Melville leaves Ramsgate for London on Monday, and
after staying a few days there, will go on to Cambridge. I intend
sending Osman a long letter by him, if I have time to write it,
though he has not, as yet, answered my last. I should like very much
go A Holiday at Ramsgate

to be going with you tomorrow week, and would willingly give up

tonight's dance, and all the amusements of Ramsgate, to see that
dear boy. I commission you to give him a hundred kisses for me,
and many more, if neither ofyou are tired, which of course, you will
not be, after so long an absence. We are all very sorry to hear, by
your letter today, of Uncle Moses' cold; Aunt Fanny has been quite
unhappy about him, and cannot be persuaded but that it is some-
thing worse. She is now writing to him; while my mother is em-
ployed, like me, in doing the same to you ... "
Henrietta, who concludes, "God bless you, my dear father,
believe me with sincere affection to be yours truly," and who signs
herself H. Ricardo, was sixteen when she wrote this letter. In
character she seems to have taken after her mother, and was sub-
ject to moods of what her sisters called "despondency"; but in
looks she belonged to her father, and to the race of her father. She
was beautiful. There is a portrait of her, painted at some time
after she was married, which brings out the Sephardic quality of
her looks, and which explains why several of her acquaintances
thought her a "beautiful Jewess". Or as one of her sisters put it,
writing in 1825, "Netty has got a most becoming turban, which
with her yellow crape gown, makes her look quite Eastern ... "
At sixteen she must have been charming: and she was a careful
and conscientious sixteen, who took as much pains in sealing as she
had in composing her letter: the impression is perfect still, and
reads Henrietta in a microscopic italic script. Her handwriting is as
easily legible as print, and her spelling is impeccable.
Apart from a fortnight at the beginning of September, and
another fortnight at the end of October, David Ricardo was not
with his family during their long holiday at Ramsgate. He was in
London, staying with his brother Moses at Bow, since, as he said,
"Mrs. Ricardo will not consent to let me remain at home by my-
self". But he left London on Friday October 23rd for Cambridge,
to visit his eldest son Osman, who had just gone up; and having
already missed what Henrietta called "tonight's dance", then
further missed the notice of "tonight's dance", headed "Mrs.
Ricardo's Grand Ball at Ramsgate", which was published in The
Globe, a London evening newspaper, in its issue of Friday October
23rd. The notice gave a list of the principal persons attending the
Ball, and at the top of the list, as anticipated by Henrietta, were
 A Holiday at Ramsgate

the names of Lady Madelina Palmer and Lady Mary Shepherd.

Lady Madelina Palmer was one of the five daughters of the
Duchess of Gordon, described as "successful beyond all precedent
in matchmaking", three of the five daughters having married
Dukes, and a fourth a Marquess. The fifth was Lady Madelina,
and Lady Madelina married Charles Fysshe Palmer, who was to
have more than one connexion with David Ricardo. There was
already a Unitarian connexion, for Charles Fysshe Palmer was the
nephew of the famous "Unitarian Martyr", Thomas Fysshe
Palmer, who died while serving a sentence of transportation, as a
"Friend of Reform", and who had been converted to the Unitarian
faith by Priestley himself. And there was soon to be a political
connexion, for David Ricardo entered Parliament within six
months of Charles Fysshe Palmer, and in Parliament both men
spoke from the same political standpoint, which might be called a
rational radicalism. These connexions would have been appreciated
by Lady Madelina, who was intellectually as well as socially
distinguished. She had been the friend and correspondent of Dr.
Parr, the "Whig Dr. Johnson", and had been considered "a clever
girl". But she was not a bluestocking.
Lady Mary Shepherd, on the other hand, was the best known of
all the bluestockings at this, the halfway point in the hundred
years history of the bluestockings. She was the author of an ad-
mired Essay on the Relations of Cause and Effect. But something slightly
absurd always attached to the title of bluestocking, and it was
generally admitted that there was something slightly absurd about
Lady Mary Shepherd. Harriet Martineau, who had the literary
but not the social qualifications to the title, tells 'a story against
her that when in a country house one fine day, she took her seat in a
window, saying (to David Ricardo, if I remember rightly), 'Come
now; let us have a little discussion about space ... '" and David
Ricardo himself writes in a letter in September 1819 of how on
returning home "we found Lady Mary, and you know that in her
company there can be no time for work of any description... "
Fortunately in 1812 work was not in question, for when he met
Lady Mary it was at a Ball: a grander Ball even than "Mrs.
Ricardo's", for it was the Ball given by Sir William and Lady
Curtis.
It took place on Friday October 30th, and was described in
92 A Holiday at Ramsgate

detail by the Ramsgate correspondent of The Globe. " ... Soon after
10 o'clock the dancing commenced, and an officer of the King's
German Legion had the honour of opening the Ball with Miss
Curtis. The dancing continued with great spirit until 1.30, when
the supper-room was thrown open and disclosed to view a most
luxurious table, well covered with every delicacy of the season,
game, fruit, and confectionery in abundance; choice wines,
champagne, burgundy, all beautifully arranged to invite and
fascinate. Upwards of 100 persons sat down and partook of this
repast. After supper 'God Save the King' was sung in good style,
followed by other loyal songs. On the lady hostess's health being
given (with three times three) the worthy Baronet rose, and in a
most appropriate speech returned thanks to the guests for the
honour they conferred upon Lady Curtis, proceeding in a vein of
pleasantry peculiar to himself that added greatly to the mirth and
good humour of all around him. Retiring from the supper-room
dancing recommenced, and they continued tripping on the light
fantastic toe until 6 o'clock, when the company began to depart,
highly pleased ... " Among the company were noted Lady Mary
Shepherd and Mr. and Mrs. David Ricardo.
That was almost the end of the holiday at Ramsgate. It had
been enjoyed; at least enjoyed enough for the family to go again
next year. The next year was 1813, the last full year of the war.
After the war, inevitably, Ramsgate changed. From being fashion-
able it became popular. It was already popular in 1853, when Frith
painted his crowded canvas. Yet even by 1853 it had pot changed
so very much. Ramsgate Sands can be felt to be a true likeness; and
immediately in the background of Ramsgate Sandi can be seen
Albion House.

NOTE
I. Another letter to her father bears the interesting date of February 12th
1815, and begins, "As I hear that you are now gentleman at large, and that you
have all your time at your own disposal ... "
 CHAPTER XV

Gatcombe 1

At sixteen, Henrietta was charming; at seventeen, Henrietta was

courting. Her future husband was a young man named Thomas
Clutterbuck; and her future father-in-law was the principal mort-
gagee of an estate in Gloucestershire called Gatcombe Park.
Thomas Clutterbuck came from a family which had risen in the
usual Gloucestershire way, from owning mills to owning land. His
father was a wealthy man; and as became the son of a wealthy
man, he had been commissioned in the Royal Regiment of Horse
Guards in the Household Cavalry. Fortunately for Henrietta, his
squadron had not been among those sent to Spain in the winter of
1812; he had been able to prosecute his courtship while on "the
King's Duty in London"; and as the courtship progressed, his
father had met her father. His father had then been in a position
to tell her father what he knew about Gatcombe, and he knew a
good deal about Gatcombe. For he was not only the principal mort-
gagee. Again in the usual Gloucestershire way, he was related to
the Philip Sheppard who was the owner of Gatcombe.
The property had been in the possession of the Sheppard family
since 1656. It was originally known as Hazelwood, and occupied
the whole area between the small towns of Minchinhampton and
Avening, distant about two miles; while the Sheppard family lived
at the old Manor House in Minchinhampton. Not until 1770 did
Edward Sheppard, the father of Philip Sheppard, think of building:
and when he did, he chose for a site a field of one acre, more or less
in the middle of the property, which was called Gatcombe Field.
There, at considerable expense, indeed at too considerable an
expense, he began to build. He seems to have been his own architect
and surveyor: and most successful as surveyor, for the site of the
house was to be his greatest achievement. Though it is high,
standing exactly on the 500-foot contour line, it faces due south,
94 Gatcombe

and at the back is sheltered by the rising hillside; while because it

is high it has a view, a view of valley and park and woodland. It is
the view that has always been most remembered at Gatcombe. It
was the view that first attracted David Ricardo.
If Edward Sheppard was less happy in his plans for the house, it
was because he committed himself to no one single style in his
plans. There is rather a variety of styles. The main part of the
house is solid, square, unpretentious. But he then added on each
wing an extra room, aspiring to the manner that would already
have been identified as Gothic, round with a high pointed roof, as in
a medieval castle. And the orangery and stables, placed on either
side of the house, show the same eclectic spirit. It may have been
noted by David Ricardo, when he first saw it, for future reference.
Gatcombe was not the first country house he had looked at, nor
was it his first choice, as a country house. There was a property in
Hertfordshire; and on August loth 1813 he wrote to Malthus, who
as Professor of Political Economy at the East India College at
Haileybury would have been a Hertfordshire neighbour: "On my
return to London after a short excursion to Tunbridge Wells I
found your obliging letter. The information which it contains
respecting the distinction between the town of Berkhamsted and
the village Berkhamstead has again made me wish to get over the
remaining obstacles to my possessing the house with which I was
so much pleased - particularly as I have seen nothing on my short
tour, which I undertook chiefly for the purpose of looking after a
house, likely to suit me. I have had a civil letter from Mr. Talbot;
he wishes Mrs. Ricardo to see his house, as he thinks he could
suggest a mode of increasing the number of chambers at a moderate
expense ... " But Mrs. Ricardo, who always saw things in a larger
light than her husband, clearly differed from Mr. Talbot; and a
week later he wrote again, "I believe I must not think of Mr.
Talbot's house ... " It was then that he began to think, or think
harder, of Gatcombe, for the Deed of Covenant drawn up in June
1814 opens, "Whereas sometime in the year 1813 the said Philip
Sheppard agreed with the said David Ricardo ... "
What they agreed was that Philip Sheppard "doth bargain and
sell all that Manor or Lordship or reputed Manor or Lordship of
Hampton, otherwise Minchinhampton, otherwise Hampton Road,
and all the rights, royalties, members, appurtenances thereof in the
 Gatcombe 95
County of Gloucester ... all that building containing several rooms
in Minchinhampton, and the benefits from the tolls paid and
arising for wool and yarn brought to the Yarn Market in Minchin-
hampton ... all that warren called Amberley, and the free warren
for all conies which are or shall be at any time hereafter be planted
started or kept in or upon Amberley Green or Amberley Coppice ...
all that capital messuage or Mansion House situated in the Parish
of Minchinhampton, erected and built by Edward Sheppard
deceased, together with the stables, coach-house, outhouses,
offices, buildings, pleasure-gardens, shrubberies, grounds, planta-
tions, fishponds, gardens, orchards, adjacent ... all that piece or
parcel of pasture-land adjoining the Mansion House, called or
known by the name of Gatcombe Park ... all that wood, coppice,
or wood-ground, commonly called Gatcombe Wood ... all that
lake, pond, or piece of water, or ground covered with water, ad-
joining to the said Gatcombe Wood, and called Gatcombe Water ... "
All that, amounting to more than five thousand acres, to be sold
for the sum of sixty thousand pounds.
All that, and something more. When David Ricardo acquired
Gatcombe, he acquired the right to bear arms. In March 1814 he
presented a petition for arms to the Earl Marshal of England, and
in May 1814 the petition was granted, "to be borne by him and
his descendants, and the descendants of his said late father re-
spectively, according to the laws of arms ... " The coat of arms,
with its device of a chessrook, two bezants, or flat gold coins of
Byzantium, and three wheatsheafs, was original to him; but the
crest he adopted from the family of his wife, Wilkinson of Kent. He
made however one alteration to it. The Cornish chough in the
crest was holding a staff and pennant, and on the pennant was a
red cross. He substituted a pattern of blue and white chequers for
the red cross.
The grant of arms officially enrolled him among what would
have been called at the time "the gentlemen of England". The
"gentlemen of England" had certain obligations. They were ex-
pected to live about half of each year in the country; to engage to
some degree in country pursuits; to perform public duties in that
part of the country; and in their particular parts of the country to
accept responsibility for the welfare of the poor and the old. All
these obligations had now to be undertaken by David Ricardo.
96 Gatcombe

Country pursuits in Gloucestershire were of the traditional order,

and sometimes of a traditional cruelty. The last bull-baiting to be
held at the Cross in Minchinhampton was in 1817. It could not be
expected that he would enter into them, to more than a limited
degree. He did not hunt. He did not shoot. "I employ a skilful
man," he wrote, "who brings (partridges and pheasants) down
with the least sum of pain ... " He rode: "I cannot often resist the
solicitations of my two little girls to accompany them on their
morning rides, and we are often to be met with in full canter on
our respective ponies ... " He drove his gig, up and down the
Cotswold Hills. He boated, on Gatcombe Water. Within these
limits, country pursuits were much to his taste.
The social obligations were of two kinds, the formal and the
informal: typically of the time, the informal were the more im-
portant, and yet more typically, the informal were what David
Ricardo did best. Minchinhampton then was a town of some three
thousand inhabitants: and he instituted a Dispensary, which was
open twice a week, and in one year treated two hundred and
twenty-five patients; he rebuilt and maintained the Almshouses
"for eight poor persons"; he established a school for boys and girls
in his Market House, which was attended by two hundred and
fifty children. All this he did during his early years at Gatcombe.
The formal obligations came later. Much the most impressive of
them was his appointment as High Sheriff of Gloucestershire for
the year 1818.
The High Sheriff, in a contemporary definition, "is the chief
officer of the King in every shire or county"; and the duties of the
High Sheriff, in consequence, were chiefly ceremonial. But the
duties could vary, from year to year, and it happened, unluckily
for David Ricardo, that 1818 was for the High Sheriff an unusually
strenuous year. His first duty, once he had been sworn, and once
he had provided himself with his uniform, was with the Assizes.
He had to meet the Judges, coming in on circuit, escort them into
the city, preside at a dinner given for them, and accompany them
the next morning to Divine Service at the cathedral. There were
normally two Assizes each year, but in 1818 there had to be three,
owing to the technicality of the Judges on one occasion arriving at
Gloucester after midnight - "an occasion without precedent,"
said the Gloucester Journal, "and productive of infinite disappoint-
 Gatcombe 97
ment and inconvenience to a large portion of the inhabitants of
this extensive county... " And then in 1818 there was a general
election. The High Sheriff had to issue the Proclamation: "I,
David Ricardo, Esquire, having received His Majesty's Writ
under the Great Seal of Great Britain... " However, the election of
1818 was not as taxing as it might have been for the High Sheriff.
"As there was no contest," he wrote, "my task was easy, and we
have, with our usual consistency, sent one member to vote with
ministers and another to vote with the opposition, both I believe
disposed implicitly to follow their leaders ... " Then finally, in
December I 8 I 8, Queen Charlotte died, and the High Sheriff
was requested to convene a County Meeting, "to consider of an
appropriate Address to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent".
The County Meeting was held at the new Shire Hall in Gloucester
on December 23rd; and though it was, according to the Gloucester
Journal, "more respectably than numerously attended", it brought
to an end the performance of David Ricardo in the office of which
he had said, "I am annoyed, at the prospect of being High She-
riff... "
But there was one appointment which he might have accepted
with more enthusiasm, if it had been offered to him; and which he
never could accept, because it never was offered to him. This was
to become a Gloucestershire magistrate. Gloucestershire has been
described as "an admirably organized county"; and the key to the
organization was the magistrate. Anyone who wished to be of
service to the county, as David Ricardo certainly wished, must
have known that he could be of most service as a magistrate. But
nominations for magistrates had to be approved by the Lord-
Lieutenant; the Lord-Lieutenant then was the Duke of Beaufort,
assessed in political terms in the Morning Chronicle as "one of the
most staunch supporters of ministers"; and though he met him
several times the Duke of Beaufort never quite approved of David
Ricardo. If this was prejudice, it must be added that the prejudice
was merely political. It was not racial, against the Jew. Young
Osman Ricardo was made a magistrate in 1821. It was not reli-
gious, against the Unitarian. The most congenial to David Ricardo
of all his country neighbours, Thomas Smith of Easton Grey, was
both a Unitarian and a Gloucestershire magistrate. But Thomas
Smith in politics was a Whig.
98 Gatcombe

Though Easton Grey was just over the border, in Wiltshire,

Thomas Smith came from a Gloucestershire family, and always
regarded himself as a Gloucestershire man. An impediment in his
speech prevented him from taking a full part in public life, but he
was intelligent, generous - "the Maecenas of his neighbourhood",
the Gentleman's Magazine said of him when he died - and generous
above all in his friendship. He had many friends. One, who intro-
duced him to David Ricardo in May 1814, was Malthus. Another,
whom he introduced to David Ricardo in December 1820, was
Maria Edgeworth.
Maria Edgeworth came to stay in November 1821: and her
first impression of Gatcombe was vivid. "At the gate the first
operation was to lock the wheel. We went down, down, down a hill
- not knowing how it was to end or when or where the house would
appear - that it was a beautiful place was clear however by moon-
light. We passed a kind of embattled circular wall very romantic at
first view (but it was only a wall that masked the stables or kennel).
A dog began to bark loud and incessantly but we came within
view of an excellent house - Hall with lamp and lights very cheer-
ful- servants all ready on the steps - Mr. Ricardo happy to see us-
beautiful hall - pillars - flowers but just seen in passing - into a
most comfortable sitting room - family party - books open on the
table ... "
The Gatcombe approached by Maria Edgeworth that November
night was not altogether the same as the Gatcombe bought by
David Ricardo seven years earlier. Improvements had been made:
and the most important of them to the room on the eastern wing of
the house that was to become the library. "The only room in the
house which is not finished is the library," he wrote in August
1814, "owing to the tedious time they have taken to fix my book-
cases ... " As at Upper Brook Street the bookcases at Gatcombe
were specially made; and despite the marble and brass at Upper
Brook Street, the bookcases at Gatcombe, which are of inlaid
mahogany, much decorated, are the more splendid. A certain
splendour in this area seems to be common to all the great econo-
mists. Adam Smith described himself as "a beau in his books."
David Ricardo could truly be described as "a beau in his libraries."
Improvements made inside the house were strictly the province
of Priscilla Ricardo. Improvements made outside the house were
 Gatcombe 99
the province of her husband; and as was generally the rule with
country houses at this period, he seems to have designed most of
them himself. The largest was the conservatory, which was "new"
at the time that Maria Edgeworth made her visit. Extending
from the west wing of the house to the orangery, it was conceived
in the style then so fashionable, and made fashionable at Malmaison,
of the Napoleonic campaign-tent: and it transformed the face of
Gatcombe. When the Storers, father and son, were in the county
for their Delineations of 1825, mainly a collection of plates of Glou-
cestershire country houses, pride of place in the centre of their
print of Gateom be was taken by the conservatory.
There was another observer of Gatcombe in the year 1825, an
observer with a rougher eye and a rougher pen than the Storers.
Between 1820 and 1830 Cobbett was making the series of tours of
England, which were reported in the Week(y Political Register and
later published in the best of all his books, Rural Rides; and in
September 1825 the tour took him to Gloucestershire and to the
small town of Avening. There were then two drives to Gatcombe,
one down the hill from Minchinhampton, one up the hill from
Avening. Cobbett reined in his horse at the entrance to the drive
up the hill, and looked up at the wood, the park, the house. Then
- " ... a man coming along, 'Whose beautiful place is that?' said I.
'One Squire Ricardo, I think they call him, but -' You might have
knocked me down with a feather, as the old women say. '- but,'
continued the man, 'the old gentleman's dead now.' 'God - the
old gentleman, and the young gentleman too!' said I; and giving
my horse a blow instead of a word, went on down the hill ... "
Cobbett was wrong, of course: as wrong about the landlord as
about the economist. When the "young gentleman" inherited
Gatcombe he proved to be a very good landlord: in fact, too good a
landlord. He did too much, and he spent too much. The Alms-
houses rebuilt by his father a generation earlier were demolished
and rebuilt again, on a much larger scale. A church was built at
Amberley, at his "sole charge". The advowson of Minchinhamp-
ton, which had been sold by Philip Sheppard in 1812, was bought
for more than ten thousand pounds. It was altogether too much.
Gatcombe had to pay for the beneficent landlord; and though the
final payment was deferred until 1940, payment in part had been
many times made. The estate had diminished to less than five
100 Gatcombe

hundred acres. The value of the estate had been reduced to twenty-
two thousand five hundred pounds.
But in July 1814 at Gatcombe the prospect was fair. Towards the
end of July Malthus received a letter, the first he ever received
from Gatcombe, and the letter had a postscript. It read, "I believe
that in this sweet place I shall not sigh after the Stock Exchange and
its enjoyments ... "

NOTE
I. Some Sheppard family papers are in the possession of a descendant, who
has kindly allowed me to see them. Eight boxes of Gatcombe Papers are deposited
at the County Records Office at Gloucester, reference D. 1812, and I am grateful
for permission to quote from them. There are extensive Gloucestershire collec-
tions at Gloucester Reference Library, among them the files of the Gloucester
Journal. The documents regarding the grant of arms are on one side at the
College of Arms, and on the other in the possession of Mrs. Anthony Polglase,
who was the wife of the late David Ricardo and is the mother of the latest genera-
tion of the family, and who very kindly showed them to me.
2. The Stock Exchange, from a pnnt by T.R. Shepherd, 182 9
(Gmdhall LIbrary).
3· Henrietta, eldest daughter of David Ricardo, from a portrat
probably by Sir William Beechey.
5. The Memorial to David Ricardo at Hardenhuish.
4. The desk used by David Ricardo.
 CHAPTER XVI

The Corn Laws Controversy

In July 1814 "Mr. Ricardo's Plan" had been slumbering for

nearly three years. It was sent to the Prime Minister in July 1811,
and to George Tierney, one of the leading members of the Opposi-
tion, in December 181 I; but the Prime Minister told David Ricardo
that he was "not disposed to adopt the remedies which appear to
you to be desirable", and Tierney could do no more than undertake
to convey "what may occur to my mind on the subject in question".
Nothing did; and there the plan rested. During the next three years
the economic energies of David Ricardo were to be confined to the
correspondence with Malthus.
The correspondence with Malthus, however, was growing
and changing. It soon left the limited area of the currency, and
the more limited area of their agreement on the currency, far
behind. It became a general correspondence on economic theory;
and it arrived at a general disagreement, which was then made
particular by the events of March 1814. In March 1814 apparently,
the war ended. It seemed clear that in the new situation economic
theory would have to be applied to new problems, and that the most
urgent of the problems would be the continuation of the Corn Laws.
There had been Corn Laws in England ever since the reign of
King Edward IV in the fourteenth century; but by the end of the
eighteenth century Corn Laws had come to mean protection, and
protection of the landlord. Protection as a policy was felt to be
vindicated during the last years of the war, when the country had
as far as possible to be self-sufficient in corn. But after the war two
facts were plain: that protection was still the policy, and that under
protection corn tended to be at a high price. The connexion be-
tween these two facts now became the theme of a Corn Laws
Controversy, which for David Ricardo was to be equal in importance
to the Bullion Controversy.
102 The Corn Laws Controversy

The Corn Laws were to be debated in Parliament in February

1815, and as in the Bullion Controversy a number of pamphlets
were being written for the occasion. Two were written by Malthus.
David Ricardo had copies of both - one inscribed, "From the
Author" - and carefully collated them, because he meant to reply
to them. "You are avowedly for restrictions on importation," he
told him, on February 13th; "of that I do not complain. It is not
easy to estimate justly the dangers to which we may be exposed.
Those who are for an open trade in corn may underrate them, and
it is possible that you may overrate them. It is a most difficult
point to calculate these dangers at a fair value, but in an economical
view... " This was the "economical view" taken in his forthcoming
work. Entitled, "An Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn
on the Profits of Stock", and known now as the Essay on Profits, it
was published on February 23rd.
In his pamphlets, Malthus had successively explained and justi-
fied the existence of the Corn Laws. In the Essay on Profits David
Ricardo reached a different conclusion, which was memorably ex-
pressed. "It follows then, that the interest of the landlord is always
opposed to the interest of every other class in the community."
Historically important, because it was to be read by a student of
economics named Karl Marx, it was for David Ricardo even more
important for the premise on which it was based. His thinking
about the new science had suggested to him that it was a pure
science, with the laws that must be associated with a pure science.
He believed that they could be identified and formulated; and this
was what he was attempting, for the first time, in the Essay on
Profits. How far he was right in his belief has been much discussed.
He was thought right throughout the nineteenth century: in the
famous phrase of Lord Keynes, "Ricardo conquered England as
completely as the Holy Inquisition conquered Spain ... " And he
thought that he was right. It was a law first formulated in the
Essay on Profits that became the starting-point for The Principles of
Political Economy.
Perhaps because it appeared so late, several days after the
debate opened, the Essay on Profits had no discernible effect on the
proceedings in Parliament in 1815. During the debate Malthus
was mentioned several times - "the learned Mr. Malthus" - and
Horner advocated "the great radical principle of a free trade",
 The Corn Laws Controversy 10 3

and once again, a little wearily now, refuted the charges ofthe practi-
calmen against the theorists. But the "economical view" had to wait
to be fully developed in the House of Commons until David Ricardo
was himself a Member of Parliament. Then it was. As a Member of
Parliament he spoke only less about the Corn Laws than about
the currency. On the principle, it must be admitted, spoke in vain.
"My acquaintance lies so little among political economists," he
wrote to Malthus on March 9th 1815, some ten days after the
Essay on Profits was published, "that I have very few opportunities
of knowing whether what you call my peculiar opinions have any
supporters, or indeed whether they are read or attended to ... "
He was always modest in his personal pretensions; but here he
was being really too modest. He was addressing the man accepted
as the greatest living English economist, and three months earlier
he had met the man accepted as the greatest living French econo-
mist,Jean-Baptiste Say.
The economic background of David Ricardo and Jean-Baptiste
Say was in one respect the same. There was the first reading of
Adam Smith, and the effect of the first reading of Adam Smith.
Then came the French Revolution. Say was active in the bright
morning, and at any rate survived the lurid afternoon. In 1794 he
became editor of the weekly journal named from the revolutionary
calendar, La Decade; and for six years expounded his economic
ideas in its pages. He had now advanced them to the point where
he could put them in a book, and he published his Traite d' Economie
Politique in 1803. But by 1803 the French Republic had declined
into the Napoleonic Consulate. He was compiling his Epitome, an
economic vocabulary to be added to a second edition of the Traite,
when he came into collision with Napoleon. Napoleon disliked
economists. "If an empire were built of granite," he declared, "the
political economists would grind it to powder."! And by 1803
Napoleon disliked republicans. Say was a republican member of
the Tribunat. Napoleon had him ejected from his seat on the
Tribunat, and forbade him to publish the second edition of the
Traite. For the next eleven years Say languished as a minor in-
dustrialist in the provinces. He returned from the provinces to
Paris in 1814, when Napoleon was exiled to Elba; and in November
18 I 4 the Government in Paris dispatched him to England, to
report on the economy.
 104 The Corn Laws Controversy

Though his book was not translated until 1821 it was well
known in England, and his coming caused some excitement among
the English economists. Extensive arrangements were made for
him. He was first directed to Edinburgh, to meet Dugald Stewart.
Next he was directed towards Gatcombe. "If he will pay Mr.
Ricardo a visit - who will treat him like a lord - " Mill wrote to
Place; and a few days later Place wrote, "M. Say has consented to
leave London by the Stage at 4 p.m .... " From Gatcombe he
went on to meet Bentham. "He intends seeing you before he quits
the country," David Ricardo told Malthus; adding, "He does not
appear to me to be ready in conversation on the subject on which
he has so ably written - and indeed in his book there are many
points which I think are very far from satisfactorily established -
yet he is an unaffected agreable man, and I found him an instructive
companion ... "
Their meeting led to a correspondence. But the correspondence
with Say never attained, either in quality or quantity, the level of
the correspondence with Malthus. He seemed as reluctant in
writing as in talking; and the only time he was willing to write, or
at least to write often, was when he was offering the opportunity to
finance a speculation in a form of potato flour. The offer was
refused; and though David Ricardo persevered in the correspon-
dence, it was never with much reward. Nor did he have much re-
ward from further conversation. The last time he met Say was in
Paris in 1822. "I saw M. Say several times," he wrote, "but I
never found him much inclined to talk on the points of difference
between us ... "
One of the institutions visited by Say in 1814 was the Bank of
England, which he described as "a private company of capitalists" .
A capitalist who owned five hundred shares became a Proprietor,
eligible to attend meetings of the Bank Court. But the Bank Court
did not control the affairs of the Bank. Control was exercised
by the Government, and depended upon arrangements made
between the Bank and the Government. In the summer of 1815
these arrangements formed the subject, first of a conversation, then
of a correspondence, between two of the Proprietors. One was
David Ricardo. The other was a Member of Parliament named
Pascoe Grenfell.
Pascoe Grenfell had known David Ricardo since the time of the
 The Corn Laws Controversy

Bullion Controversy. He had been a member of the Bullion Com-

mittee, and a signatory to the Bullion Report. In the debate on the
Budget of 18 I 4 he had been the first ever to pronounce the name of
David Ricardo in the House of Commons. He now asked him to
write a "Short Pamphlet" that might influence opinion in the
House of Commons, prior to a debate on the affairs of the Bank;
and accordingly David Ricardo drafted his "Proposals for an
Economical and Secure Currency, with Observations on the
Profits of the Bank of England as they Regard the Public and the
Proprietors of Bank Stock", or the Economical and Secure Currency. It
was then sent to Pascoe Grenfell, but it was not altogether the
"Short Pamphlet" that Pascoe Grenfell had expected. "Your idea
of making paper convertible into bullion, and not into coin, is
quite new to me, and as it now presents itself to me, is admir-
able ... " he replied, on receiving the draft.
Before the Economical and Secure Currency was published there was a
meeting of the Bank Court, in December 1815, which was attended
by David Ricardo. "I had no intention whatever of speaking," he
told Malthus, "but some very bad reasoning on the other side, and
a total deviation from the question, called me up, and I spoke for
5 or 10 minutes, with considerable inward trepidation, but without
committing any glaring blunders ... " And a little later, in February
1816, there was the debate on the affairs of the Bank, and he listened
to the debate in the gallery of the House of Commons. These ex-
periences were to have a resonance in the future; as was the recep-
tion given to the Economical and Secure Currency. When a second edi-
tion was called for within three weeks, he was both pleased and
perplexed. "I had no idea that the subject was of much interest to
the public," he wrote, "but it seems that they are curious about the
amount of the Bank treasure ... "
In his formulation of the laws of the new science, however,
David Ricardo was assisted indirectly rather than directly by the
Economical and Secure Currency; and indirectly, first of all, from a
coincidence. The Economical and Secure Currency was divided into
seven sections; in Section IV he had surprised Pascoe Grenfell
with the appearance of "Mr. Ricardo's Plan"; and in Section V
he had discussed the management by the Bank of England of the
National Debt. It happened that in February 1816 a young Scottish
economist was writing a treatise on the National Debt, and the
106 The Corn Laws Controversy

coincidence prompted him to send a copy of his work to David

Ricardo. That was in June 1816, and was the beginning of another
correspondence, which was to have results very different from the
correspondence with Malthus or with Say. For the name of the
young Scottish economist was John Ramsay McCulloch. 2
McCulloch was another manifestation of the Scottish Enlighten-
ment, and was to be another figure in the Scottish Ascendancy.
He was educated at Edinburgh University, and while there became
interested in political economy. When he began to write, he began
to write about political economy. In 1817 he began to write for
The Scotsman newspaper, and in 1818 for the Edinburgh Review:
always about political economy, and always about political economy
as the new science. More than anyone else, he was the propagator
of the new science. He was the first of the next generation of econo-
mists to be influenced by David Ricardo; and in time he was to be
the first editor of The Works of David Ricardo. It was about this time
that he met Disraeli. In his younger days, Disraeli had been satirical
about the new science; but in 1849 he called McCulloch "the
great political economist". Certainly he had one of the charac-
teristics. "It is impossible," Disraeli wrote to his sister, "to convey
to you an idea of the beauty of his library: I never saw books in
such condition or in such exquisite bindings, surpassing all my
experience or conception ... "
And of course it was Disraeli who in 1846 had made his political
reputation in the debates that at last brought to an end the Corn
Laws Controversy.

NOTES
I. The quotation was used in a debate in the House of Commons in which
David Ricardo took part; and again in 1826 by Nassau Senior in his Introductory
Lecture as first Professor of Political Economy in the University of Oxford.
2. McCulloch was born in 1789, and had a distinguished public life. He was
the first Professor of Political Economy at the newly established University of
London in 1828, and Comptroller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office in 1838.
Many of the Macvey Napier papers at the British Museum, Add. Mss. 34611-
34631, are from or about him.
 CHAPTER XVII

"Mr. Bentham's Garden"

The nineteenth century was the age of causes. Some were good,
some were bad, some were lost. David Ricardo contributed to
many: the list of his charities! is long: and he gave more than
money. The cause to which he gave most, in time and trouble and
money, was educational reform. It was for him a lost cause; and
most largely lost, in the beautiful but baffling area of "Mr. Bent-
ham's Garden" .
Educational reform in the first years of the nineteenth century
was dominated by the ideas of Joseph Lancaster: or perhaps by
the idea, for Lancaster can be called a man of one idea. In 1798,
at the age of twenty, he started a school for boys in the Borough
Road, Southwark; and in his school made the discovery that much
of the teaching could be done by the boys themselves. That gave
him the idea. Then in 180 I he became a Quaker; he looked to the
Quakers for support in promoting the idea into a system; and the
Quakers gave him their support. For ten years they were his only
support. But during those ten years his fame spread; through a
chance meeting with the King in 1805, spread to society; and
through their usual intellectual curiosity, spread to the Unitarians.
The Unitarian minister at Hackney, Robert Aspland, noted in his
diary in August 1809: "This evening I attended a lecture of the
celebrated Joseph Lancaster on Popular Education. Began at 6,
lasted till near 9. Lancaster is a philosopher without learning, or
what is called knowledge. He has anatomized the human heart... "
The enthusiasm generated by Lancaster was at its height between
1810 and 18 I 4. David Ricardo became a contributor to the System
in 1810, and a subscriber in I8Il. But if Lancaster could under-
stand the human heart, he could not understand money, and the
proper handling of money. The money disappeared; for his "finan-
cial irregularities" he was disowned by the Society of Friends,
108 "Mr. Bentham's Garden"

and then dismissed by the committee which bore his name. In 1818
he decided to go to America; and in February of that year he had
his last communication with David Ricardo. He wrote to him, in
the third person, but "in the openness of his heart", asking for "a
little pecuniary aid". Whether or not the aid was forthcoming he
reached America, where in 1838, in New York, he died, "as a
consequence," it was reported, "of being run over by a waggon."
But the idea had not died. In the form of moral leadership by the
boys themselves, it had been taken up by Dr. Arnold at Rugby.
David Ricardo was always conscious of what he called his
"neglected education", and knew from experience the limits to
self-education. Thus while he sympathized with what was being
done by Lancaster, his real concern was with quality in education.
I t was this that he gave to his children. And it was this that led
him into the most ambitious of all contemporary attempts at
educational reform, the ill-starred and ill-fated Chrestomathia.
Chrestomathia signified, or at any rate signified to its inventor,
Conducive to Useful Learning. For its inventor was Bentham. He
had long foreseen the need for educational reform; and when the
name of Lancaster was lost to the cause, he was at once ready with
a scheme of his own. The scheme contained two propositions: the
first, that this was a scientific age, and a scientific age required
a new kind of education; the second, that a new kind of education
required a new kind of school. The success of the Chrestomathia
was to depend upon the balance maintained in his mind between
these two propositions.
More than twenty-five years earlier he had thought of a plan
for a prison, to be called Panopticon, or the Inspection-House.
Panopticon was as much a principle as a plan: there could have
been a Panopticon-Prison, there could have been a Panopticon-
Poorhouse: and round the principle much argument had revolved.
To Bentham it was commonsense itself; but to its critics it was more
like the principle of the spider in its web. The chief of the critics
was the King; and it was the opposition of the King that confirmed
the Government in its rejection of the Panopticon-principle. This
was a fact acknowledged, and resented, by Bentham. "But for
George III all the prisoners in England would, long ago, have come
under my management. But for George III, all the paupers in the
country would, long ago, have come under my management," he
 "Mr. Bentham's Garden" 109
wrote, looking back on the twenty-five years. Now, it seemed, new
possibilities were opening for the Panopticon-principle. Now, it
seemed, there might be a Panopticon-School, or Chrestomathia.
David Ricardo had not met Bentham when the scheme of the
Chrestomathia was taking shape. How dear the Panopticon-prin-
ciple was to him, how necessary the Panopticon-principle was to
the new school, he did not yet know. He first heard about it from
Mill: and Mill at this time was regarded as an authority on educa-
tion. He had been the most active of the propagandists for the
Lancasterian System, writing a tract with the title, Schools for All,
which at once became a catch-phrase; he had been conducting the
education ofJohn Stuart Mill, now eight years old, with the utmost
rigour for the past five years; and through his association with
Bentham he was the most likely candidate for the mastership of the
new school. Accordingly it was to Bentham and Mill jointly that
David Ricardo addressed the first of his letters about the Chresto-
mathia. "Mr. D. Ricardo is much obliged," he wrote on July
15th 1814, "both to Mr. Bentham and Mr. Mill for the perusal of
the MS. on the subject of the proposed school. He will be happy to
give his assistance, as far as a subscription in money will promote
the object desired ... "
The "MS." was the draft plan of the Chrestomathia, and was
the work of Francis Place, 2 who was the third member of the direc-
ting triumvirate. Place was both practical and thorough. He was
practical when he wrote early in March 1814, "Mill dines today
with Ricardo, and makes sure of his 100 pounds"; and he was
thorough when he included in the draft plan a sketch of the buil-
ding that was to house the new school. It was to be twelvesided,
like a geometrical figure, ninety-two feet across, from point to
point, with the scholars to be arranged in six groups, up to thirty-
five scholars in each group, between the points. The master was to
be at the centre; and no scholar, it was to be observed, was to be
more than thirty-five feet from the eye of the master. Never had
the Panopticon-principle been better demonstrated than in his
sketch. And the draft plan was just as precise, in its details of
location. The school was to be built, it stated, at a cost of three
thousand pounds; and it was to be built, in "Mr. Bentham's
Garden."
"Mr. Bentham's Garden" was by any standards a fine garden,
110 "Mr. Bentham's Garden"

and by London standards a large garden. Though not quite a full

rectangle, it measured some sixty by forty yards, and was at the
back of his house, 2, Queen Square Place, near on one side Queen
Anne's Gate, and on the other St. James's Park. Bentham valued
his privacy, and loved his garden, and it was a mark of his zeal for
the Chrestomathia that he should even have contemplated giving
up either on its behalf. But there was one supreme advantage to the
use of the garden. Whether or not he became master, a school in
the garden would be under the eye of Mill. For early in 1814
Bentham had bought the house next door, I, Queen Square, ex-
pressly for Mill; and I, Queen Square overlooked the garden. It
was lent to Hazlitt for a few weeks, before Mill moved in; and
while he was there Hazlitt was visited by his friend the painter
Benjamin Robert Haydon. Haydon has left a graphic account of
Bentham in his garden. "We often used to see him," he wrote in
his Autobiography, "bustling away, in his sort of half-running walk, in
the garden. Both Hazlitt and I often looked with a longing eye
from the windows of the room at the white-haired philosopher in
his leafy shelter, his head the most venerable ever set on human
shoulders ... "
For two years Bentham continued to contemplate the project of
the Panopticon-School, and the kind of education to be given in
the Panopticon-School; and it was during those two years that he
set down his thoughts on education in the book that he called,
Chrestomathia. But nothing more was done about building the
school: and at the end of the two years Mill and Place persuaded
him to agree that a Committee of Managers should be formed, with
Place as its Secretary, and that the Committee should have executive
powers. Prominent persons were invited to be members of the
Committee, and though Lord Lansdowne refused - "I prefer our
existing public schools, and the system pursued there" - the Duke
of Bedford was more accommodating, while the Royal Dukes of
Kent and Sussex allowed the advertisement of their names as
Patrons. And Bentham had been persuaded, at least to the point
where he could write of himself, with his characteristically quaint
humour, " ... the relation I bear to the institution is, as the paper
will shew, of Literary Drudge ... "
It was in April 1816 that David Ricardo was asked to become
one of the Managers; and when he was asked, he accepted. He
 "Mr. Bentham's Garden" I I I

went to the meetings of the Committee, several times taking the

chair; and he seems soon to have become its most positive member.
It had its difficulties to encounter. One was money: more money
had to be raised, because the cost of the scheme was exceeding the
original estimate; and he was able to guarantee, from subscriptions
from friends on the Stock Exchange, a further thousand pounds.
But money was always the lesser difficulty. The greater difficulty
was the getting of an unequivocal answer from Bentham, on the
question of the siting of the school in his garden.
As Secretary of the Committee Place kept the minutes of meetings,
and with the minutes summaries of all correspondence that seemed
to him important. In October 1817 he paraphrased a letter that he
had received from Mill. The letter informed him " ... that Bent-
ham's eagerness to have the school in his garden was originally very
great, he was still quite keen, yet it was becoming evident that there
are a multitude of disagreables connected with it, of which at
present he will not allow himself to think, but will swell into great
objections hereafter. .. " This warning was in fact by several
months belated. The Committee already knew about the "multitude
of disagreables", and their knowledge had already led them to
consider the possibilities of an alternative site. Negotiations for its
purchase had been entrusted to David Ricardo.
The alternative site was at Leicester Square in the West End of
London, since it had been reported to the Committee in March
18 I 7 that "the central part of Leicester Square is to be let or
sold ... " It would have been a superb site. It was then more than
halfway through its evolution from an area lived in by the aristo-
cracy to an area devoted to popular entertainment; Leicester
House on the north side was gone, and the last authentic aristocrat
had left; but the "central part" was still a garden, now a public
garden, but still the lawns and paths and trees laid out by successive
Earls of Leicester. David Ricardo was to attempt to buy this
"central part" for the sum of four thousand pounds. Perhaps
fortunately for him the attempt was frustrated. "I have just heard
from my attornies," he wrote to Place on September 18th 1817,
"that the shopkeepers in the Square are resolved by every means in
their power to prevent the ground from being built on." The
shopkeepers had in 1814 discouraged the President of the Royal
Academy from erecting a picture gallery there, by threat of litiga-
 112 "Mr. Bentham's Garden"

tion; and their threat of litigation now discouraged David Ricardo.

"I am not disposed," he wrote, "to buy first and contend after-
wards." Thus the "central part" of Leicester Square was not built
on; eventually, in 1874, it was bought by one of the most colourful
of contemporary financiers, Albert Grant; and by Albert Grant,
shortly before he went bankrupt, presented as a gift to the City of
Westminster. The Committee meanwhile had admitted defeat in
March 1818, when it accepted "that therefore the school be built
on the ground offered by Mr. Bentham ... "
There was a strain of tenacity in David Ricardo, and after the
check in Leicester Square he continued to strive for the Chresto-
mathia, though increasingly he strived alone. Mill had come to
think that infant schools might be more socially useful. Place was
starting to think of adult education. Bentham was benevolent, but
baffling. This was the situation when the Chrestomathia entered
the year 1820; and 1820 was to be its last year. InJune the Com-
mittee held three meetings: at the first Place submitted "two notes
from Mr. Bentham (I) in which he says he cannot understand the
Managers' letter (2) in which he says he throws himself on their
mercy"; at the second, that he had received "a letter from Mr.
Bentham of great length - 27 folio pages"; and at the third, that
the Committee should agree "that the school be abandoned." It
was a sad moment, and saddest perhaps for Bentham. His fluctu-
ations in feeling over the garden had been exacerbated by personal
differences with Place. But he had the last word in his quarrel with
Place. "When, in your library, I tended my land and labour and
you accepted it," he wrote, on July 16th 1820, "little did I think
that if the matter ended without fruit, it would end in any such
manner as this!"
Several of the bills for the Chrestomathia were paid by David
Ricardo. They were not particularly large in terms of money:
£ 132. I I. IOd. interest for the subscriptions from his friends on the
Stock Exchange,£ 26. 8s. for the legal business of Leicester Square.
They were not particularly large, in terms of time wasted. Indeed
it might be said in retrospect that neither the time nor the money
was wasted. It might be said that of all the reforms of the early
nineteenth century, one of the most deserving of success was the
unsuccessful Chrestomathia.
 "Mr. Bentham's Garden" 113

NOTES
1. A random sample taken from the lists published in the newspapers includes
Persons Confined for Small Debts, the Marine Society, the Jews Hospital, the
Waterloo Subscription, Extreme Distress at Spitalfields, the Poor of the Parish of
St. George's Hanover Square, the Gloucester Magdalen Asylum, a Statue to the
Duke of Kent.
2. Place was born in 1771, and opened the famous shop at 16, Charing Cross
in 1801. He retired from business in 18 I 7, to devote himself to reform. History
has good reason to be grateful to him, because of the mass of papers that he pre-
served, now at the British Museum: 180 volumes of the Place Collection of News-
paper Cuttings and Pamphlets, and (correspondence) Add. Mss. 27789-27859
35142-35154,37949-37950, (miscellaneous) 36623-36628.
 CHAPTER XVIII

Reason and Sentiment

As much in private as in public life David Ricardo was a reason-

able man. But the reasonable man could be swayed by sentiment;
and David Ricardo could be provoked into a quarrel. He was
provoked into his most violent quarrel in January 1816, by one of
the noblest of human sentiments.
His quarrel was with the Cumberland family. At its head was
George Cumberland,l a prosperous merchant, once in London,
now in Bristol. It was a well-connected family, with influential
friends; and through his influential friends George Cumberland
was able to place both his sons in official positions in the Army Pay
Office. The younger was entered, in May 1810, at the age of
fifteen, as an Extra Clerk at a salary of£ 2. 12. 6d. a week. This
younger son was Sydney Cumberland.
In his official position Sydney Cumberland was required to live
in London; and from the first he was in trouble in London. Letters
tell of drink, debts, women: to such an extent that his father had
again to use his influence to have him transferred to the Field
Office in Portugal. But after a few months the war ended in Portugal,
and he returned again to London. From London he went to spend
the Christmas holiday of 1815 with his family.
With his family, but not with his family at home in Bristol. He
stayed instead with his uncle, who was celebrating his fortieth year
as Vicar of Driffield, not far from Cirencester, and not far from
Gatcombe. On New Year's Eve the holiday ended, and on New
Year's Day 1816 Sydney Cumberland was driven from Driffield to
the main road, there to take the coach for London. It was noticed,
when the coach came, that while the inside was empty, he preferred
to travel, cold though the evening was, on the outside. On the
outside there were two people. One was the guard. The other was a
young woman.
116 Reason and Sentiment

The young woman was Catherine Harrison, aged about twenty,

who for some months had been employed as a housemaid at Gat-
combe, and who had just been dismissed by Priscilla Ricardo. On
New Year's Day 1816 she had been put on the coach at Minchin-
hampton to go as far as Lechlade, thence to make her way to Bur-
ford, where her parents lived. What happened on the coach on the
eighteen miles to Lechlade was never in dispute. Sydney Cumber-
land observed that she allowed the guard "freedoms with her
person"; she remarked to Sydney Cumberland that she had always
wanted to go to London. When the coach reached Lechlade, he
paid her fare to London; when the coach stopped for supper, he
paid for her supper; when the coach arrived at Piccadilly, he
installed her at a brothel he knew of in Spring Garden, at the
eastern end of the Mall. There he enjoyed with her what his elder
brother called a "connection": and there she remained for the
next three weeks. Sydney Cumberland, meanwhile, reported to
his father on January 18th, "My journey was very pleasant ... "
The first that David Ricardo knew of the "very pleasant" jour-
ney was when the father of the girl came from Burford to Gatcombe
to tell him that she was missing. He took immediate action. He
made enquiries at the Coach Office, traced the guard, traced the
unknown young man to Driffield, and himself called on the Vicar
of Driffield. From him he obtained the name and address of the
young man. Next he wrote to Sydney Cumberland, and at the
same time wrote to one of his brothers in London, asking him to
call on Sydney Cumberland. He received replies to both letters
on January 23rd.
It was then that he was swayed by sentiment. The sentiment was
chivalrous. He felt that here was an innocent girl; that as she had
been at Gatcombe she was still under his protection; and that her
innocence had been abused by Sydney Cumberland. He seems not
to have considered that chivalry might be misplaced, or that the
girl might not be so innocent. He therefore wrote in what he later
conceded was "strong language" to Sydney Cumberland.
By this time his first object had already been achieved. Catherine
Harrison had been rescued from the brothel at Spring Garden and
returned to her parents. But by this time everyone was too angry
to think much about Catherine Harrison. David Ricardo was angry
because Sydney Cumberland had written him an insulting letter,
 Reason and Sentiment

and was now threatening to challenge him to a duel. Sydney

Cumberland was angry because he had been accused, and justly
accused, of hypocrisy and perfidy. George Cumberland was angry
because of all the scandal attaching to the family name. Only the
exercise of reason could resolve the situation: and typically, the
exercise of reason came from David Ricardo. Having considered,
he wrote a letter in reasonable terms to George Cumberland: and
reason prevailed. Indeed George Cumberland anticipated that
his son would apologize to David Ricardo for his intemperate
behaviour. But he never did. Instead he slandered him. In a letter
to his father on February 2nd he wrote, "I should not be wrong I
think was I to suspect that either he or his brother have been the
first seducers of the girl from the warmth with which they wish to
saddle it on me... "
Nothing is known of the part played by Priscilla Ricardo in what
her husband called "this unpleasant business". That she played
some part is likely; that it was an extreme part is more likely. She
would have been strongly on the side of sentiment. It had always
ruled, within her own family; and still ruled, in her relations with
her family. It thus ruled, in her relations with her nephew William
Wilkinson.
William Wilkinson was the eldest son of Josiah Wilkinson, and
had started a financial career as clerk to his uncle on the Stock
Exchange. This was the usual way to start: two of the younger
brothers of David Ricardo, Frank and Ralph, had preceded him
as clerk, and had become members of the Stock Exchange. But
when David Ricardo began to withdraw from the Stock Exchange
William Wilkinson was not yet of age. Assistance of some kind had
to be given him; and David Ricardo suggested that it should take
the form of occasional commissions from his brother Frank. It was
a very reasonable suggestion. It was too reasonable for Priscilla
Ricardo. Because the commissions were to be small, she felt that her
nephew, and her husband, were being imposed on. She always felt
that her husband was too easily imposed on. She always said so.
"Much as I am sometimes surprised at Priscilla's warmth and
energy on trifling occasions," he wrote to his brother-in-law, "on
the present occasion I have been more than usually puzzled to
account for her thinking it necessary either to feel strongly or to
interfere in a business which I tell her is wholly out of her depart-
118 Reason and Sentiment

ment ... " However, once again, reason prevailed. William Wil-
kinson accepted the assistance offered him, and with that assistance
prospered. In 1817 he became a member of the Stock Exchange;
and in 1818 he was in a position to marry. He married first one,
and then another, of the young sisters of David Ricardo.
"The Ricardos were wealthy, and of such station in society that
they considered themselves superior to the family of Wilkinson,
and a droll story is related in connexion with the marriage," a
memoir written later records. "The two sisters were sitting together
one day when a note was brought in for one of them, which proved
to be an offer of marriage from William Wilkinson. She read it to
herself, but on enquiry from her sister as to its purport, informed
her of its contents. 'Well,' said the latter, 'that is soon answered,
for of course you will refuse him -' adding some terms of disparage-
ment. But the lady still sat quietly considering the letter, and
took no notice of the remark; on which her sister again spoke: 'Of
course it is soon answered; give me the paper and pen and I will
write it for you.' The young lady then said, 'Stop a bit: I am not so
sure about it.' 'What can you mean?' returned the other. 'You
surely do not mean to have him !' 'Yes, I do,' said her sister. And in
due time she became his wife. They lived together for a few years,
during which children were born to them; but their married life
was not of very long duration, and singularly enough, in course of
time, Mr. Wilkinson was accepted by his sister-in-law, such marri-
ages not being strongly prohibited then .. ."
The memoir was written by a Quaker lady, whose mother was
the friend and relation of Priscilla Ricardo. It was written for
other friends and relations; and it has in consequence a candour
seldom to be found elsewhere in reference to the two families. It
shows above all the sense of separation that had come to be felt
between them. That sense had come to be felt during the lifetime
of David Ricardo; felt least, fortunately, by William Wilkinson;
felt most, unfortunately, by Josiah Wilkinson.
Their friendship now went back for more than twenty-five years.
At its beginning, he was a surgeon and David Ricardo was a stock-
broker. He was a very successful surgeon, ending his career with a
town practice, in the West End of London, and a country practice,
in the village of Peckham, that together in the year 1823 brought
him an income of two thousand pounds. But he was still a surgeon;
 Reason and Sentiment 119

and David Ricardo was not still a stockbroker. This was the cause
of the sense of separation. It was felt by David Ricardo. "I regret
that very little communication now takes place between us," he
wrote in I8I9, "but that is the effect of circumstances ... " And it
was felt by Josiah Wilkinson. Indications are to be seen in his
letters; and perhaps most clearly in the superscriptions to his
letters. At the beginning they read, "Dear David ... " At the end
they read, "My dear Ricardo ... "
Josiah Wilkinson was not however without resources of his own.
The chief was a capacity for obsession: and in I8I2 he had acquired,
through a patient, an object that was to engage his capacity to the
full. The object was Cromwell's Head;2 and he became obsessed by
the history of Cromwell's Head.
When Oliver, Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland,
died on September 3rd I658 he was buried in Westminster Abbey;
but after the Restoration, on the twelfth anniversary of the execu-
tion of King Charles I, January 30th I66I, his body was dug up
and hanged at Tyburn. Taken down at sunset, the head was struck
off, placed on a pole by the Common Hangman, and set on the
top of Westminster Hall. So much was known to history. It would
then have been lost to history but for the exertions of Josiah
Wilkinson. He determined to discover all that had happened to it
in the ensuing hundred and fifty years; and in I 82 I he was able
to compose a narrative of its provenance, which was published in
I 9 I I. It is an extraordinary story, and most extraordinary in
that it is true. Modern scientific investigations have convinced
expert opinion that he had in his possession Cromwell's Head. It
was his most cherished possession for the last thirty years of his
life; and he became its impresario. To selected visitors he would
show it and explain it; and one day in I822, in Upper Brook
Street and in the presence of David and Priscilla Ricardo, he
showed it and explained it to Maria Edgeworth. Though he later
annoyed her very much by refusing to let her take a plaster cast of
it, she found a flashing phrase for Josiah Wilkinson and Cromwell's
Head. He went off, she says, " ... the happiest of connoisseurs ... "
A family resemblance might be expected between brother and
sister: and existed, between Priscilla Ricardo and Josiah Wilkinson.
Both were capable of obsessions; though they did not endure with
her as they did with him, and they did not make her happy. This
120 Reason and Sentiment

was because with Priscilla Ricardo the objects of her obsessions

were people; and the people, most often, were her children.
The young George Basevi knew most about her obsessions with
her children, since it was the children who told him about them.
In a long letter written from Venice to his sisters in May 1819,
dissecting the character of Priscilla Ricardo, he observed, "You
may remember Sylla being six months in disgrace, and Osman so
many more, for not perhaps saluting their mother in affectionate
tone enough, or the smallest trifle in the world. An incautious thing
done by a child unintentionally Mrs. Ricardo broods upon, and
makes a mountain out of a molehill. I used to think this when a
boy in England, and events have confirmed me in my opinion... "
The "events" were the marriages of two of the daughters of David
and Priscilla Ricardo, Priscilla the younger, known as Sylla in the
family, and Fanny, to two brothers, Anthony and Edward Austin.
The Austins were a Gloucestershire family, like the Sheppards
and the Clutterbucks; but a Gloucestershire family at the mill-
owning rather than the land-owning stage of their social develop-
ment. In matrimonial terms, they were not a very considerable
catch; and when Sylla married Anthony Austin in 1816 he was not
so substantial a husband as Priscilla Ricardo might have hoped
for her handsome daughter. Ill-feeling was engendered by the
marriage. It was not shared by David Ricardo; but between
mother and daughter tempers were strained, the mother using
words like "disappointment" and "mistake", and the daughter
resenting that such words should be used. Then, two years later,
in the summer of 1818, Sylla encouraged her younger sister Fanny,
now aged seventeen, to make the acquaintance of her brother-in-
law Edward Austin. It was perhaps no more than a gesture, a
further denial of "disappointment" and "mistake", but it brought
about the most serious crisis that ever occurred in the family of
David Ricardo, a crisis that reverberated round Gloucestershire,
and a crisis that was beyond the power of anyone to resolve by
reason.
The crisis was peculiarly concentrated in the small town of
Wootton-under Edge. This small town, picturesquely named and
picturesquely placed, was the home of Anthony and Sylla Austin;
it was the home of Edward Austin; and it had close connexions
with a certain Colonel Berkeley. To David and Priscilla Ricardo
 Reason and Sentiment 121

the most unpleasing aspect of Edward Austin was his friendship

with Colonel Berkeley; and Colonel Berkeley, who was a Colonel
in the South Gloucestershire Militia and was himself illegitimate,
not only lived at Berkeley Castle, near Wootton-under-Edge, but
was the son, by the 5th Earl, of a girl born and brought up at
Wootton-under-Edge. When Fanny declared her intention of
marrying Edward Austin, come what might, it was to be supposed
that she would live at Wootton-under-Edge - and perhaps die at
Wootton-under-Edge, for the crisis was aggravated by the fact
that she was known to be delicate. Both David and Priscilla Ricardo
deeply disapproved: and on November 23rd 1818 he set out the
reasons for his disapproval in a letter to Mill.
"My objection to her choice is not on account of the circumstances
of the party, they are I believe respectable and are of inferior con-
sideration, but Mr. Edward Austin, whom you know, is sixteen
years older than her - he is moreover in very bad health and has
been so for 2 or 3 years, the consequence in my opinion of a very
dissipated life, so that in constitution he is much older than in
years. Besides this, I abominate the companions with whom he
has constantly associated. He has long been the friend of Colonel
Berkeley, and a very frequent inmate of Berkeley Castle. In this
part of the country the fame of this latter gentleman is very notori-
ous. He appears to delight in ruining the peace of mind of young
women, as well single as married. . . In this circle I have little
fear that Fanny will be introduced, but a man who can countenance
such conduct by continuing an intimacy with the perpetrator of it,
and whose enjoyments consist chiefly in hunting, is not the protector
and companion that I would select or approve for my child. - To
do him justice however his temper is good, and I know of no stain
on his own moral character. He may make a good husband,
and all may be well, but the place where his business will require
him to reside is not to my mind. There is scarcely any society at
Wootton which can be called desirable; none which can give any
stimulus to the employment of the mind ... "
Fanny Ricardo was married to Edward Austin in January 181g.
Just over a year later she died, having given birth to a son. Although
he was christened William, the name of Colonel Berkeley, he grew
up to be a respected and reputable man. 8th Wrangler at Cambrid-
ge, he was a barrister, a financier, a Member of Parliament, who
122 Reason and Sentiment

when he died was worth more than a quarter of a million pounds.

It is an odd reflection, that of all his grandsons, William Austin
seems to have been the nearest in abilities and achievements to
David Ricardo.

NOTES
I. George Cumberland was the great-great-grandson of the Bishop, the great-
grandson of the scholar Richard Bentley, the grandson of the Admiral lost in the
first Victory, and the cousin of Richard Cumberland, author of The Jew, which
was first performed at Drury Lane in May 1793, and went through five editions
in a year. The Cumberland Papers are in the British Museum, Add. Mss. 36491-
36 52 2 •
2. "A Narrative of the Circumstances Concerning the Head of Oliver Crom-
well" was printed in the "Proceedings of the Royal Archaeological Institute,
before whom the Head was Exhibited" in 19II. The scientific evidence is as-
sessed in Biometrika, 1934. The head is now interred in the Chapel of Sidney
Sussex College, Cambridge, where Cromwell was an undergraduate.
 CHAPTER XIX

The Principles of Political Economy

"In this state of imbecility, I had, for amusement, turned my

attention to political economy. My understanding, which formerly
had been as active and restless as a panther, could not, I suppose
(so long as I lived at all) sink into utter lethargy; and political
economy offers this advantage to a person in my state, in that,
though it is eminently an organic science (no part, that is to say,
but what acts on the whole, as the whole again reacts on and through
each part) yet still the several parts may be detached and con-
templated singly. Great as was the prostration of my powers at
this time, yet I could not forget my knowledge: and my under-
standing had for too many years been intimate with severe thinkers,
with logic, and the great masters of knowledge, not to be aware of a
great call made by political economy at this crisis for a new law
and a transcendent legislator. Suddenly, in 1818, a friend in
Edinburgh sent me Mr. Ricardo's book: and recurring to my
own prophetic anticipation of some coming legislator for this
science, I said, before I had finished the first chapter, 'Thou art
the man!' "
This is the English Opium-Eater;! and it is the response of the
English Opium-Eater to his first reading of The Principles of Political
Economy. De Quincey asserts that his reason was saved by reading
The Principles of Political Economy; and the assertion may well be
true. For a process of reasoning is the best literary description that
can be given of The Principles of Political Economy: a continued
process of reasoning. There are nearly six hundred pages in the
first edition, and the reasoning continues from the first page to the
last.
It is the quality of the reasoning that has made The Principles
of Political Economy a classic. But in the beginning, David Ricardo
owed much, both to Malthus and to Mill: and what he owed was
124 The Principles oj Political Economy

stimulation, provided equally, by the correspondence with Malthus,

and by the encouragement of Mill.
Mill believed in the idea of the big book. He was himself writing
a big book, The History of British India; and he was sure that David
Ricardo could, and should, write a big book. He very early intro-
duced him to the idea. On August 23rd 1815 he told him, " ... my
friendship for you, for mankind, and for science, all prompt me to
give you no rest ... " and a few weeks later he was referring to an
"opus magnum".
A more modest assessment of his undertaking was then being
made by David Ricardo. "Mr. Malthus and I continue to differ
in our views of the principles of rent, profits, and wages," he wrote
to Trower on October 29th 1815. "These principles are so linked
and connected with everything belonging to the science of Political
Economy that I consider the just view of them as of the first im-
portance. It is on this subject, where my opinions differ from the
great authority of Adam Smith, Malthus&c that I should wish
to concentrate all the talent that I possess, not only for the purpose
of establishing what I think correct principles, but of drawing im-
portant deductions from them. For my own satisfaction I shall
certainly make the attempt, and perhaps with repeated revisions
during a year or two I shall at last produce something that may be
understood ... "
As the book was written it was sent to Mill; and by December
1816 Mill was able to see most of a big book, and perhaps a bigger
book than he had first seen. On December 16th he wrote to David
Ricardo, " ... the question for you to determine is whether you
will choose to include in it a view of the whole science; so as you
would lay it down to a person whom you were teaching, and who
knew nothing about it; so as you would state the whole from be-
ginning to end to Miss Fanny, for example, if she should entreat
you, as I hope she will, to teach her the science of political economy.
Or, whether you will content yourself with those parts of the
science which you yourself have improved. In the first way, you
would be most useful; but I rather think you will get most reputa-
tion in the last. You might, too, if you saw advantage in it, give
a view of the whole science, as modelled upon your own principles,
and taught to Miss Fanny (I beg her pardon, Miss Ricardo) here-
after. In that case, which title would you give to the present work?
 The Principles of Political Economy I25

And how would you arrange it in Chapters and Sections?" Not

the least interesting point in this interesting letter is that it shows
that all of the book was to be written, before it was divided into
"Chapters and Sections".
In fairness to Mill, it must be said that the experiment he pro-
posed on a daughter was an experiment he carried out on a son;
and that the kind of book he thought David Ricardo might write
was the kind of book he was himself to write four years later. John
Stuart Mill has recorded how, when he was thirteen, he was first
acquainted with political economy. "My father ... commenced
instructing me in a sort of lectures, which he delivered to me in our
walks. He expounded each day a portion of the subject, and I gave
him next day a written account of it, which he made me rewrite
over and over again until it was clear, precise, and tolerably
complete. In this manner I went through the whole extent of the
science ... " and the result was Elements of Political Economy, written
by his father, and published in 1821. Two copies were duly sent to
two young ladies at Gatcombe; and the two young ladies were
duly appreciative. But there is no evidence that Fanny Ricardo
ever wanted her father to teach her, or that her father ever wanted
to teach her; and David Ricardo well knew that it was the other
kind of book that he had written. "It will, I think," he replied on
December 20th, "be easier for me to publish only those parts of
the science which have particularly engaged my attention ... "
The writing of The Principles of Political Economy thus took little
more than a year. But it was not easy writing. The way of thinking
of the economist, at once theoretical and logical, can be compared
with the way of thinking in mathematics; and just as it would be
very difficult to describe a mathematical formula without the
use of special symbols, so David Ricardo found it very difficult to
express his way of thinking in words. Again and again he refers to
"the very difficult art of composition". Nor was it easy thinking.
If Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations was asking the question,
What constitutes wealth? David Ricardo in The Principles of
Political Economy was asking the question, What laws regulate the
distribution of wealth? and by asking the question was giving to
economic science a new meaning. However, if he was dissatisfied
with his writing, he was at any rate less dissatisfied with his thinking.
"As yet I have no misgivings about the doctrines themselves, all
 The Principles oj Political Economy

my fears are for the language and arrangement, and above all
that I may not have succeeded in clearly showing what the opi-
nions are which I am desirous of submitting to fair investigation,"
he told Malthus on March 9th 1817. Six weeks later, on April 19th
1817, ON THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY AND TAXATION was
published.
For the first sixteen months after publication he knew very little
about the fate of his book. He knew that it was selling rather slowly.
He knew that Malthus felt doubts. He knew that Say felt that he
made "demands too great on the continued exercise of thought"2
from his reader. But beyond that, he knew nothing certain. And
then, in August 1818, he saw the June number of the Edinburgh
Review, and saw that Article II dealt with The Principles of Political
Economy, at a length of twenty-eight pages; and a day or two later
he received a letter from the author of the article. "I take the
liberty," McCulloch wrote, "to send you a copy of a critique on
your work, 'On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation',
which I have written for the next number of the Edinburgh Review.
It will I hope meet with your approbation ... "
In 1818 the authority of the Edinburgh Review was still supreme
in literary judgments; and it was the judgment of McCulloch in
the Edinburgh Review that was responsible for the first success of
The Principles of Political Economy. Success led to the demand for a
second edition; and it was McCulloch again who suggested the
most important change to be made in the second edition, the
insertion in the chapter "On Currency and Banks" of the details of
"Mr. Ricardo's Plan", in the form of a long extract from the
Economical and Secure Currency. And it was McCulloch again who
noticed and reported that there was evidence that the success was
to be permanent. "You will be glad to hear," he wrote on September
25th 1819, "that the University of St. Andrews has, with a zeal for
the advancement of sound knowledge which reflects the highest
honour on that ancient seminary, adopted your great work as the
textbook of the science with which it treats ... "
A textbook is a stage in the recognition of a classic; and the
elevation of The Principles rif Political Economy to the rank of classic
followed very soon. It was first claimed for it, in public, by the
Proprietor of the Morning Chronicle; and no sooner claimed, than
denied for it, in public, by the Conductor of the Weekry Political
 The Principles oj Political Economy 12 7

Register. The denial was made, with a violence unusual even for
the Weekb Political Register, in the issue of May 18th 1820, and in a
welter of underlinings, capitals, and exclamation marks. "That
great ass Perry observed the other day, that the Inquisition being
at an end in Spain, science would take a spread in that country;
for that a man might have 'a Blackstone or a Ricardo in his library'!
A Ricardo indeed!. .. But this Perry is at once the most conceited
coxcomb and the greatest fool in the whole kingdom ... 'A Ricardo'!
The empty pompous fool, when it has taken but a few months to
show that 'a Ricardo' is a heap of senseless change-alley jargon,
put upon paper, and bound up into a book. .. A Ricardo indeed!"
One of the acts of the Inquisition had been to condemn The
Wealth of Nations for its economic philosophy. In 1820 therefore
it became possible for The Wealth of Nations to be read in Spain,
just as it was in contemplation for The Principles of Political Economy
to be read in Spain; yet by coincidence it was in I 820 that David
Ricardo was formulating the thought that more than any other
departed from the economic philosophy of The Wealth of Nations.
The thought found its most cogent expression in the Third Con-
clusion in the chapter "On Machinery", which he added to the
third edition of The Principles of Political Economy; and the Third
Conclusion states, "That the opinion entertained by the labouring
class, that the employment of machinery is detrimental to their
interests, is not founded upon prejudice or error, but is conformable
to the correct principles of political economy... "
The Third Conclusion is certainly the most controversial state-
ment in The Principles of Political Economy. It has always been contro-
versial; and it seemed particularly controversial at the time when
it was written. This was the time of the Luddites; there had been
machine-breaking in 181 I; there had been machine-breaking in
1816; and the Third Conclusion seemed almost to give sanction to
machine-breaking. Even McCulloch was moved to protest. "If
your reasoning ... be well founded," he wrote, "the laws against
the Luddites are a disgrace to the Statute Book -" But to David
Ricardo the laws against the Luddites were a temporary condition,
and as a temporary condition, irrelevant. The Third Conclusion
had been reached by a process of economic reasoning. "I confess
that these truths appear to me as demonstrable as any of the truths
of geometry," he replied," and I am only astonished that I should
 The Principles oj Political Economy

so long have failed to see them." The Third Conclusion therefore

must stand. It remains to this day a part of the text of The Principles
of Political Economy.
For Perry was right, and Cobbett was wrong. The Principles of
Political Economy has held its place with the Commentaries on the
Laws of England. Both are classics: and David Ricardo had the
satisfaction of seeing his work become a classic during his own life-
time. He amended it and improved it, in successive editions,
making it what he designed it to be, and what it is, the concentra-
tion of all his economic thought; and in his lifetime were published
three English editions, an American edition, a translation into
French, a translation into German. He died, it is said, confident of
leaving "some little fame" in the world. His fame rests on The
Principles oj Political Economy.

NOTE
I. De Quincey continues, "I drew up therefore my Prolegomena to all future
systems of Political Economy. But I had a preface to write, and a dedication,
which I wished to make impressive, to Mr. Ricardo. I found myself quite unable
to accomplish all this ... " He did however manage to write his Logic qf Political
Economy, 1841, of which McCulloch says, "A very clever work ... It would have
been more popular and successful if it had been less scholastic... "
2. "Demands too great on the continued exercise of thought" These are almost
exactly the words by the great David Hume of The Wealth of Nations, on its first
appearance.
 CHAPTER XX

Making Money and Keeping Money

There is an art in making money, and there is an art in keeping

money: and these two arts are different and distinct. David Ricardo
believed that the art of keeping money consists in wise investment.
He invested his money in four separate areas, which in chronol-
ogical order, though not in order of importance, were the funds,
land, rentes, and mortgages.
When all the business of the Waterloo Loan was completed in
the winter of 18 I 5, he was possessed of a capital which can be
approximately estimated at half a million pounds. Nearly all of it
was in the funds; and during the next four years, nearly all of it was
taken out of the funds. What was left was managed by his brothers
Frank and Ralph, who were in partnership on the Stock Exchange;
and while that was quite substantial, "80,000 Consols and 7,000
Reduced" in 1821, it was not regarded as productive capital by
David Ricardo. The productive capital was in the wise investments:
and the wisest of the investments, in his own opinion, were in land.
By the year 1817 he had made three investments in land. There
was Gatcombe itself, the Gloucestershire estate; there were some
Kent estates; and largest of all, there was the Herefordshire estate.
The Herefordshire estate came to mean a great deal to David
Ricardo; yet in the first instance it was acquired entirely as an in-
vestment, and as an investment was principally the creation of his
land-agent. This land-agent was a man named Edward Wakefield.
Wakefield had learned his business in Ireland, then the land of
large estates, and had made a special study of the problems of the
landowner. His conclusion was that an estate should be formed
round a nucleus; and that round a nucleus an estate could grow.
The problem was to find the nucleus. In 1816 he found a nucleus
for David Ricardo at Bromesberrow Place in Herefordshire.
Bromesberrow in time was to become as dear to David Ricardo
 Making Money and Keeping Money

as Gatcombe. It is a house of about the same size, and about the

same date; but perhaps from the tranquillity of its situation, it
seems softer, somehow less imposing. It has its Gothic touch, a
bell-turret on the roof, but it is a softer Gothic. Like Gatcombe,
however, it owes its chief architectural feature to David Ricardo,
the verandah built on to it in 1820; and like Gatcombe it has a view,
a view of the southern slopes of the Malvern Hills. But when he first
bought it, David Ricardo was not very much concerned with either
the house or the view. It was to be the nucleus of an estate; and
round it, during the next two years, were gathered the properties of
Pauntley, of Berrow, of Brinsop, all adjoining, until the estate had
cost a total of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. During those
two years nothing was done with the house. In July 1818 Wakefield
told David Ricardo that he had advertised Bromesberrow Place,
To Let. And then, events at Bromesberrow Place suddenly took a
different turn.
"I always thought him a determined marrying man," the young
George Basevi wrote of Osman Ricardo from Rome in April 1817;
and in May 1817, at the age of twenty-one, Osman Ricardo
married. He married the sweet-natured and well-educated Harriet
Mallory; and the young couple went to live at Hyde House, which
was within walking distance of Gatcombe, and which belonged to
an uncle of their brother-in-law Thomas Clutterbuck. But Hyde
House was an unlucky choice for them. At Hyde House their only
child, a daughter, was born and died; and Hyde House offered
little scope for Osman to fulfil the only ambition his father ever
seems to have entertained for him: to be a country gentleman, with
all the responsibilities of a country gentleman, and as a country
gentleman to be a magistrate. A country gentleman and a magistrate
required a larger setting than Hyde House, and in 1819 it was
decided that the larger setting should be Bromesberrow Place.
"The repairs to the Place will certainly come to the 1000 pounds
we have lately talked of," Wakefield wrote to David Ricardo in
July 1820, one of the repairs being to "the Cupola", where "the
water comes in at various parts"; and the repairs were to take two
years to carry out; but by 1821 Osman was established there, and
there he lived for the next sixty years. The estate extended over the
three counties of Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, and Worcester-
shire; and he became a magistrate in all three counties; further,
 Making Money and Keeping Money 13 1

Member of Parliament for Worcester for twenty years, and Deputy-

Lieutenant for the County of Worcester. "Attending magisterial
duties to the last," as reported in the Gloucester Journal, there he
died; and there, on the rural ride of I825, he was observed by
Cobbett. Cobbett was certainly a familiar name, almost a familiar
presence, to Osman Ricardo. His father had for years read the
Week{y Political Register - "If you continue to take in that blackguard
Cobbett," a friend wrote to him in I82I - and for years his father
had been abused in the Week{y Political Register. His death had made
little difference to Cobbett. He was able to transfer the animus he
felt from father to son, and indeed from brother to brother. "On
our road we passed the estate and park of another Ricardo!" he
wrote in September I825, soon after he had passed Gatcombe.
"This is Osmond: the other is David. This Osmond Ricardo has
a park at one of his estates called Bromesberrow, and that park has
a porter's lodge upon which there is a span-new cross as large as
life. Aye, big enough and long enough to crucify a man upon!"
No rent of course was charged for Bromesberrow Place to
Osman; but the other parts of the Herefordshire estate were let at
the standard rate of 3 % to tenants. The first tenant of Brinsop, at
Brinsop Court, was Thomas Hutchinson, the brother-in-law of
Wordsworth, who visited him there. By I822 Wordsworth himself
had made some money; and like David Ricardo was looking for
ways of keeping his money. Both looked towards France: and both
invested some of their money in the French Government stocks
known as rentes.
Rentes had two attractions for the British investor. The first was
the high rate of interest they paid, higher than the British Govern-
ment stocks; and the second was their relatively low price. David
Ricardo had seen the attractions in I8I7. Shortly after the publica-
tion of The Principles of Political Economy he went on a six-weeks
tour of the continent with his brother Ralph, and after a strenuous
six weeks - "We are not inactive travellers," he told Mill, "we rise
generally at 6, and are never in bed till I I. We take very little time
at our meals ... " - the tour ended at Paris. Staying at the Hotel
de Rivoli, Rue de Rivoli, he then called on two Paris bankers, and
through the two Paris bankers made arrangements for his invest-
ment in rentes.
Rentes were always to some extent a risk capital, and were always
 Making Money and Keeping Money

regarded by David Ricardo as working capital. For the first four

years he managed them himself, instructing his bankers in Paris to
sell as prices rose, and to buy as prices fell; and then in the summer
of 1821 he entrusted them to his brothers Jacob and Samson. Like
Frank and Ralph, Jacob and Samson were in partnership on the
Stock Exchange: though a partnership of an altogether more
venturesome kind. They were contractors for an English lottery in
1822; they were unsuccessful bidders for the French loan of 1823;
and to their subsequent chagrin, they were the successful contrac-
tors for the disastrous Greek loan of 1825, "this confounded unlucky
loan," as they called it. But despite a dramatic moment when their
agent de change defaulted, they managed the rentes with advantage
both to themselves and to David Ricardo. His French investment
prospered. When Maria Edgeworth asked his advice about invest-
ment, as she several times did, his advice consistently was that a
wise investment might be made in rentes.
Like the rentes, mortgages paid interest at 5%. And a mortgage,
then as now, was a socially useful form of investment. David Ricardo
made what turned out to be the largest of all his investments in a
mortgage. It was for what he himself called "a large sum", and it
was made to a man named Francis Dukinfield Astley.l
Francis Dukinfield Astley was a landowner at Dukinfield in
Cheshire, and Francis Dukinfield Astley was in debt. The debt was
in the main due to a passion for pictures. He had a particular fond-
ness for Old Masters; and though it appeared later that his Old
Masters were not all of them genuine Old Masters, he paid for all
of them the prices of genuine Old Masters. In 1812, when David
Ricardo was meeting Lady Madelina and Charles Fysshe Palmer
at Ramsgate, he had married Susan, the cousin of Charles Fysshe
Palmer. He was then expected to settle down; but his debts had to
be settled first. Early in 181 7 his collection of pictures was sold,
advertised in the local newspaper as "Paintings, Leonardos,
Rubens, Rembrandts, &c"; and later in 1817 he acknowledged
that a mortgage would have to be raised. It was obvious that the
mortgage would have to be raised with a wise investor. The pro-
perty was small, little more than two thousand acres. It was the
position of the property that was to appeal to the wise investor;
and in its position it was quite exceptional. No part of it was more
than ten miles from the middle of Manchester. And all of it lay
 Making Money and Keeping Money 133
over the richest seam in the South Lancashire Coalfield.
Negotiations for the mortgage began in August 1817, and were
conducted exclusively through attornies. When David Ricardo
wished to write, "I am sorry to hear that the business of the mort-
gage is of an intricate nature," he wrote to his attornies, who copied
his letter, and sent a copy to the attornies of Francis Dukinfield
Astley; and when Francis Dukinfield Astley wished to write,
"Although I am not Chancellor of the Exchequer you can depend
on the numerical statements being correct," he wrote to his attor-
nies, who copied his letter, and sent a copy to the attornies of
David Ricardo. Thus the negotiations went slowly. They went
through the stage of Counsel's Opinion; they went through the
stage of a Surveyor's Report; they went through the stage of the
hundred thousand pounds originally envisaged by David Ricardo
rising to a hundred and twenty thousand and then to a hundred
and sixty-five thousand: until at last in June 1819 his attornies re-
ported to him that he had advanced to Francis Dukinfield Astley a
totalof£ 166,433. 8. 4d. The history of what was done with the
£ 166,433. 8. 4d. now becomes part of the history of the Industrial
Revolution.
Francis Dukinfield Astley had always been aware that his estate
was capable of "rapid improvements". He was now able to proceed
with them, and he proceeded with what may almost be called
passion. He delayed paying his debts, he even delayed paying the
interest on the mortgage, for the sake of the "rapid improve-
ments". Coal mines multiplied, roads were laid down, brickworks
were established, mills were built, an iron-foundry was planned.
Of all this, through their attornies, he informed David Ricardo;
and in all this, through their attornies, he invited the assistance of
David Ricardo. The last letter that David Ricardo ever received
from his attornies, dated August 28th 1823, was on the subject of
more of the "rapid improvements."
It was either the beginning or the end, at Dukinfield. The
manufacturing town of Stalybridge arose on what was once the
park; the Victoria Coalpit was sunk, to be followed by the great
Astley Coal pit, within yards of the old Dukinfield Hall. Whichever
it was, Francis Dukinfield Astley seems to have been satisfied by it.
And he died a rich man. Whether he would have died a rich man
if he had not died relatively young, is another question.
134 Making Money and Keeping Money

For it has never been easy to keep money. Five of the brothers of
David Ricardo made money, the three sons of David Ricardo
inherited money: yet few of them managed to keep their money.
Of his brothers only Samson, of his sons only Mortimer, managed
to leave what can be called fortunes. And apart from being re-
spectively the youngest brother and the youngest son, there seems
to be nothing connective in the lives of Samson and Mortimer
Ricardo to elucidate the art of keeping money. Samson was a
stockbroker, a writer in 1838 of a pamphlet on the currency,
briefly a Member of Parliament. Mortimer was commissioned in
the Life Guards in 1826, observed from the trenches the siege of
Antwerp during the Belgian Revolution of 1832, and then retired
from the army. All that links them is the amount of money they
left. Defining a fortune as a sum in six figures, both of them left
fortunes.
David Ricardo made, and kept, and left, a larger fortune. But if
he had been asked the value of his fortune, he would probably have
answered, freedom. Freedom was what he wanted, and freedom
was what he got. The first freedom was for the economist. The
second freedom was for Parliament, and Parliament now was near.
In December 1817 he received a letter from Wakefield. It was about
another application for a mortgage, and it contained the words,
" ... the security comprises a Borough ... " The name of the
borough was Portarlington.

NOTE
I. There is a collection of Astley Papers at Cheshire County Records Office,
reference DDX. 29, and I am grateful for permission to quote from them. The
diary he kept for the first six months of 1825 has been shown to me by its owner;
and materials on the industrial development of his property are in the Manchester
Central Reference Library, including microfilm of the Manchester Courier, and in
Stockport County Library, including large scale maps of the area.
 CHAPTER XXI

Parliament

The borough of Portarlington, in Queens County in Ireland,

came into existence with the Act of Settlement of 1662. It made an
immediate contribution to the political vocabulary, since the dis-
possessed Irish of 1662 were the original Tories. In the ensuing
Irish Parliament in Dublin it returned two members; and then,
after the Act of Union of 1800, one member to the Parliament at
Westminster. At this moment in its history it came to the notice of
Wakefield. He wrote a book, the result of his years in Ireland, which
he called An Account of Ireland, Political and Statistical: and in his
book observed, first, "The mountains belonging to Lord Portar-
lington bring in very little rent ... " and second, "Portarlington
borough has twelve self-elected burgesses. Lord Port arlington is
the patron."
Lord Port arlington was the second Earl, who succeeded to the
title in I 798. He was then in the army, and he served in the army
throughout the war. Few people made money while in the army,
and Lord Portarlington had often found himself short of money.
But money could be raised on the borough. According to Daniel
O'Connell, the Liberator of Ireland, or at least of Catholic Ireland,
the borough was "brought into the stock market, and regularly
sold there" for years; and for ten of the years to the great political
family of Lamb, of William Lamb, the future Lord Melbourne.
The Lamb connexion ended in 1816, when a new member for
Port arlington appeared. His name was Richard Sharp.
"Conversation Sharp", as he was widely known, seems to have
been the embodiment of the England of Jane Austen. He had both
sense and sensibility. He was an enthusiast for travel, he was an
enthusiast for poetry; he was the close friend of Wordsworth, who
called him "a demigod among tourists"; yet he was at the same
time a merchant in the City of London, who could advise Words-
13 6 Parliament

worth on his rentes, and a Whig politician. But his career in politics
was always intermittent. He first sat for the Parliament of 1806;
he made his name by a speech denouncing the second British
attack on Copenhagen in 1807; he was on the Bullion Committee
in 1810. Then for four years he was out of Parliament, until he
returned in 18 I 6, the member for Portarlington.
David Ricardo had known him since about the year 1805,
when both were founder-members of the London Institution. Their
friendship had evidently ripened, for in 18 I 8 Sharp performed for
him a singular service. David Ricardo was then High Sheriff of
Gloucestershire, and as High Sheriff one of his subordinates was
the Governor of Gloucester Gaol. It had happened, after the sus-
pension of Habeas Corpus in 1817, on the protest march from Man-
chester to London, when the protestors carried their blankets with
them and were called "Blanketeers", that one of the "Blanketeers"
was arrested and sent to Gloucester Gaol as a "State Prisoner",
and complained of his treatment in Gloucester Gaol. The complaint
reached Parliament; David Ricardo satisfied himself that the
complaint was not justified; but the Governor of Gloucester Gaol
had to be vindicated in Parliament, and in the proceedings in
Parliament Sharp was active on behalf of David Ricardo. "I do
not wonder that you should be desirous to defend a calumniated
person under your office," he wrote, reporting the vindication. He
wrote, as member for Portarlington; and he wrote at a time when
David Ricardo was already considering the possibility of himself
becoming member for Portarlington.
It was the economist who was to enter Parliament. He knew
that he would be an economic authority in Parliament; and be-
cause Horner was dead, that there was need for an economic
authority in Parliament. He knew that his public life was at the
point where it could only be completed in Parliament. His letters
in 1818 are full of references to Parliament: always the "Philo-
mathean", he was writing, for Mill, what can be called, precisely,
political exercises: and one of them was a draft of a speech, as it
might be delivered in Parliament.
Events were now moving in what must have seemed like a
logical sequence. In the summer there was the general election;
in the autumn Sharp was indicating his willingness to resign in his
favour; in the winter the arrangements with Lord Portarlington
 Parliament 137
were being concluded. He was to pay four thousand pounds for the
seat, and to lend twenty-five thousand pounds on mortgage; in
return, he was to hold the seat for a minimum period of four years,
and to have "perfect freedom" in the use of his vote. The new
Parliament was opened by the Prince Regent on January 21st
1819; on February 8th 1819 the old member for Portarlington
applied for the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds; and on
February 26th 1819 the new member for Portarlington took his
place. "My introduction there was nowise disagreable," he told
Trower two days later, "the ceremony of taking the oaths is not
very formidable, and the kind expressions of welcome given me by
my friends set me quite at my ease ... "
The House of Commons that he entered on February 26th 1819
was essentially the House of Commons formed by the Franchise
Act of Henry VI in I 429. The number of "Knights and Burgesses"
had risen to six hundred and fifty-eight; but the constituencies
electing the "Knights and Burgesses" were for the most part the
counties and boroughs as they had been then; and the franchise
was in fact more restricted than it had been then. Boroughs formed
the majority of the constituencies; and most of the votes in most of
the boroughs were controlled, in one way or another. Thus, in the
matter of the franchise, Portarlington was the rule rather than the
exception. It was at any rate a rule that allowed David Ricardo to
avoid what he once described as "the disgusting spectacle of the
lowest blackguards in every town assembling round the hustings ... "1
The Prime Minister when he entered Parliament was Lord
Liverpool. Disraeli, who had a liking for superlatives, called Lord
Liverpool the "Arch-Mediocrity", just as he later called Mr.
Gladstone the "Arch-Villain". But there was more to Lord Liver-
pool than the "Arch-Mediocrity", just as there was more to Mr.
Gladstone than the "Arch-Villain". Lord Liverpool inspired con-
fidence. He inspired the confidence of the Prince Regent; he
inspired the confidence of both Houses of Parliament. He was Prime
Minister throughout the Parliamentary career of David Ricardo:
and from the point of view of economic policy, sometimes inspired
the confidence of David Ricardo.
Lord Liverpool was the head of the Government. But he was
not the head of an organized political party. Parliament was
divided into Ministerialists and Oppositionists, and there were
 Parliament

factions among the Ministerialists, and factions among the Opposi-

tionists. The title of Leader of the Opposition was held by Tierney,
who in 18 I 5 had assessed Port arlington as too expensive at three
thousand pounds; but from the moment that he became Leader,
in 1817, Tierney was overshadowed in the House of Commons. He
was overshadowed by the huge figure of Henry Brougham. For
twenty years Brougham dominated the Opposition in the House of
Commons; but he never led the Opposition, for a reason noted in
1818 by David Ricardo. "Brougham is a very clever man," he
wrote, "but he will never rank very high as a politician, for there is
no steadiness in his opinions, and he seems to me to sacrifice too
much to his immediate objects ... " Yet if he was erratic in his
judgment, his first judgment in the case of David Ricardo had
been discerning. For it was Brougham who had put the truer value
for him on the borough of Portarlington.
David Ricardo would have said of himself in 1819 that he was
an Oppositionist. Of that he would have been certain, though even
the names of the political factions within the Opposition were still
uncertain. The giants of the previous generation, Pitt and Fox,
had both to their dying day thought themselves Whigs; and
Liberal, which was to come from the Liberates in Spain, had yet to
receive its capital letter in England. Radical was a name to which
several shades of meaning could be attached. But there was by
1819 a small group of Radicals in the House of Commons: and
though David Ricardo wanted above all to be independent in
Parliament, he may have felt, in 1819, that his political sympathies
would lie, less with the Whigs, and more with the Radicals.
He made his first speech in the House of Commons on March
25th, on the subject of the Poor Laws, and probably chose the sub-
ject because on March 1st he had been appointed to the Select
Committee then sitting on the Poor Laws. To him, that first speech
must have been an occasion; but it was not otherwise marked as an
occasion, or at least not marked by the Parliamentary reporters.
"Mr. Ricardo thought ... " according to the reporter for The
Times; and what "Mr. Ricardo thought ... " occupied fifteen lines
in one column of The Times. It cannot be claimed that in his speech
he made much of a contribution to the progress of the Poor Laws.
Equally, neither did the Select Committee on which he was sitting,
and which was unable to make any positive recommendations:
 Parliament 139
and the Poor Laws, like other reforms, had to wait until the reform
of Parliament itself. But those fifteen lines on what "Mr. Ricardo
thought ... " had one feature that was to recur again and again in
the life of the economist in Parliament. What he thought on the
Poor Laws he had written with the utmost lucidity in The Principles
of Political Economy. What he said, in his maiden speech, may well
have been less lucid. What the Parliamentary reporters thought
that he said was less lucid still.
The reporting of Parliament had advanced since the days when
the future Dr. Johnson was elaborating his accounts of "The
Senate of Lilliputia", but had advanced very slowly. Parliament
never liked being reported, and provided as few facilities as possible
for its reporters. Not until 1834 was there a Reporters Gallery; all
through the Parliamentary career of David Ricardo the reporters
were confined to the back rows of the Strangers Gallery, where
they had to try to register what they could see and hear, and where
they could neither see nor hear distinctly. They complained re-
peatedly: and sometimes they complained of "Mr. Ricardo".
And even when they could see and hear, they could not always
understand. They were least likely, always, to understand argu-
ments that were new to them, such as arguments drawn from the
new science of political economy; and the speaker who after 1819
most often used these new arguments was David Ricardo. "It is a
great disadvantage to me," he told Trower in 1822, "that the
reporters not understanding the subject cannot readily follow me -
they often represent me as uttering perfect nonsense ... "
Any m~mber who wished to have his name recorded in a Parlia-
mentary division had to tell a reporter, both that he had voted,
and how he had voted. David Ricardo did this for the first time,
when he voted in support of a motion for reducing the number of
offences liable to capital punishment. There were then more than
a hundred such offences: and when he was serving on the Grand
Jury at Gloucester in 1819 and 1820, he was to witness men con-
demned to death for the offence of sheep-stealing. With his support
the motion was passed, and helped by the publicity given by the
names of the supporters, the laws on capital punishment were
eventually to be changed. But the change came too late to save the
Gloucestershire sheep-stealer, who after his conviction by the
Grand Jury in September 1820 was hanged at Gloucester Gaol.
 Parliament

It was in the Morning Chronicle that his first vote was recorded;
and in the Morning Chronicle, again, that the news appeared that he
had presented his first Petition in the House of Commons. The
Petition was from the Town and Neighbourhood of Minchin-
hampton, and was against the Insolvent Debtors Act, which made
imprisonment for debt statutory. A Petition was a way of exerting
pressure on Parliament, because the member presenting it had
the right to demand a debate. Unluckily for David Ricardo, another
Select Committee was already considering the Insolvency Acts;
and the Petition from the Town and Neighbourhood of Minchin-
hampton was merely referred to the Select Committee. There, it
disappeared. Nothing was done to mitigate the Insolvent Debtors
Act; David Ricardo and the Town and Neighbourhood of Min-
chinhampton petitioned in vain; but at least they petitioned in
good company. For it is about this time that the most famous of all
insolvent debtors, the creation of the most famous of all Parlia-
mentary reporters, must be imagined drafting his Petition, in the
King's Bench Prison, "to the people's representatives in Parliament
assembled", and signing it, with a flourish, Wilkins Micawber.
David Ricardo was very much dissatisfied with his early perfor-
mances in the House of Commons. "I have twice attempted to
speak," he wrote on April 7th, "but I have proceeded in the most
embarrassed manner... " The second of his speeches was delivered
on April 5th; and though it seemed so unpromising, it was to lead
directly to the first success of the economist in Parliament. For it
was on the subject that had so often occupied the columns of
Hansard, under the short title of "Bank Restrictions".
On January 25th Lord Liverpool had informed the House of
Lords that "a communication had been received from the com-
mittee of gentlemen with whom His Majesty's Government were
in the habit of officially communicating, he meant the Committee
of Bank Directors, which had induced him to bring forward a
motion for a Committee of Enquiry... " and on February 4th
Secret Committees of both Houses had been elected. In the Com-
mons, elected not without difficulty, as Hansard records. "The
Clerk then read over the names of the members, and lists of names
for the proposed Committee were thrown into the glass on the
table. No member of the Opposition put in a list ... " But in the
end the Committee was chosen; for two months carried out the
 Parliament

enquiry; and after two months presented their first report.

It was this first report of the Secret Committee of the House of
Commons that was being briefly debated on April 5th. In the
debate the Chairman presented the report, and asked leave to
bring in a Bill. Leave was granted; and on May 24th 1819 he
brought in his Bill. Several speakers followed him: and then, as
the reporter for The Times put it, "Mr Ricardo rose, amid loud
invitations ... "

NOTE
I. Twelve self-elected burgesses seem to have been the norm for the Irish
borough of the period. There were sixty-nine Irish constituencies returning mem-
bers to Westminster, listed by Wakefield; and fourteen, Belfast, Armagh City,
Carlow, Ennis, Brandon Bridge, Kinsale, Enniskillen, Tralee, Sligo, Cashel City,
Dungannon, Athlone, New Ross, Wexford, are of the kind, beside Portarlington.
 CHAPTER XXII

"Mr. Ricardo's Plan"

The debate that opened on May 24th 1819 initiated the last
phase of the cash payments controversy. In the last as in the first,
the argument was about banknotes; and in the last as in the first,
more than one view was held of banknotes.
David Ricardo was a believer in banknotes. He thought that
they were the best and cheapest form of currency. But he thought
that they were a currency that must in the last resort be redeemable
in gold: and he had three times put before the public his view of
how they should be redeemable in gold. The gold was not to be
gold coin. It was to be gold bullion. Gold bullion was always an
essential element in "Mr. Ricardo's Plan".
Gold was the property of the Bank of England. It accumulated
the gold reserves; it minted the gold coin. It had indeed already
started to mint a new gold coin, which had been announced by
Royal Proclamation on July 1st 1817 as a "Twenty-shilling piece
or Sovereign"; and it liked the idea of the new gold coin for the
currency. But the decision to resume cash payments, and to issue
the sovereigns, could not be taken by the Bank of England. It
had to be taken by the Government.
The Government was not yet committed to the resumption of
cash payments. That was to depend on the outcome of the Parlia-
mentary Enquiry: and the terms of the Parliamentary Enquiry
were therefore twofold, how to resume cash payments, and when to
resume cash payments. Both how to resume cash payments and
when to resume cash payments had been fully set out in "Mr.
Ricardo's Plan".
The Chairman of the Secret Committee of the House of Commons
was Peel, not yet Sir Robert; and the choice of Chairman seemed to
augur hopefully for "Mr. Ricardo's Plan". Peel was then thirty
years old, the rising star of the Ministerialist party, already recog-
144 "Mr. Ricardo's Plan"

nized as a future Prime Minister, and already known as a reason-

able man. The characteristic of the reasonable man is that he can
change his mind. Peel could, and did, change his mind on the
currency. He changed his mind largely on what he had learned
about the currency from "Mr. Ricardo's Plan".
David Ricardo was examined at length by the Secret Committees
of both Houses. He was asked his first question in the Commons -
"Do you conceive that the paper currency of this country is now
excessive, and depreciated in comparison with gold, and that the
high price of bullion and low rate of exchange are the consequences,
as well as the sign of that depreciation?" "Yes, I do," - on March
4th; and his first question in the Lords - "What is your line of
business?" "I am in no business now, but I have been all my life in
the money market in the Stock Exchange," - on March 24th. His
examination lasted in all four days; and was followed by the examin-
ation of the man who only less than himself was the key witness
before the Committees, Alexander Baring. Indeed, if the number
of questions asked of a witness had been a guide, the evidence of
Alexander Baring would have weighed most heavily of all in the
working of the Committees. They asked him nearly double the
number of questions they asked David Ricardo; and he had what
might be called a double claim to their attention. He was at once
the successor to Sir Francis Baring, and a former Director of the
Bank of England. He had ended his connexion with the Bank of
England only in 1817; and his opinion of its policy in 18 I 9 was
thus of importance. And his opinion was not favourable. He had
rather, he said, "a very favourable opinion of the plan of currency
suggested by Mr. Ricardo."
The Committees were still sitting when at the beginning of April
they decided provisionally that a resumption of cash payments
might be made. That they had decided in principle was known;
and that the principle was in accordance with "Mr. Ricardo's
Plan" was expected. The details were to be disclosed a month later;
and the month was filled with speculation, more or less optimistic.
McCulloch certainly was optimistic. "The adoption of your plan
will be the greatest triumph ever obtained by the science of Political
Economy," he wrote on April 18th, "and you will have the un-
doubted merit of having been the means of conferring a greater
 "Mr. Ricardo's Plan" 145
direct benefit on the country than was ever conferred by any other
private individual. .. "
But as the month passed, optimism was dashed. On May 4th the
Morning Chronicle anticipated that "Mr. Ricardo's Plan" would
indeed be adopted, but with several "modifications": and one of
the "modifications" was to make it a temporary and not a per-
manent measure. From February 1st 1820 the Bank of England
was to be required "to pay its notes in gold bullion, of standard
fineness, duly assayed and stamped at His Majesty's Mint, if
demanded, in sums of not less than the value of sixty ounces ... "
but it was to be required to make such payment for only a limited
period. The precise limits of the period were not fixed until the
details were drafted as Parliamentary resolutions; and as soon as
they were, on May 24th 1819, in the House of Commons, Peel
moved the resolutions. Then, "Mr. Ricardo rose, amid loud invi-
tations ... "
A reputation in Parliament could be made in two ways, either as
orator or as debater. David Ricardo characteristically took the
second. In the debate he was the eighth speaker, following both the
Leader of the Opposition and the Chancellor of the Exchequer:
but it was his speech that attracted the attention of the House of
Commons. He answered no fewer than four of those who spoke
before him; while of those who spoke after him, seven referred to
him by name. Winding up for the Government, Lord Castlereagh
said that he had been "not less clear in his opinions than happy in
illustrating them ... ". And because it was made on a great Parlia-
mentary occasion, almost overnight, his speech made him famous.
The quality of the speech was quickly recognized by the editor
of Hansard. It was his function to detect a major speech, and for a
major speech to print a correct text: and now, for the first time, he
was to do this for David Ricardo. He sent him the report of the
speech in the Morning Chronicle, and invited him to provide a
correct text. But David Ricardo found it very difficult to provide a
correct text. His speech had throughout been a debating speech,
and he had no text to correct from. He therefore started to write
out in longhand what he thought he had said; and after writing in
longhand about a page and a half, or about an eighth of the speech,
then gave up, and contented himself with correcting the more
obvious mistakes in the report in the Morning Chronicle. This is the
 "Mr. Ricardo's Plan"

text printed in Hansard. But the report in the Morning Chronicle

gives the actuality of the speech far better than the corrected text
in Hansard. Fourteen times, from the opening words, "Mr. Ricardo
said, he was fully persuaded of the truth of the Hon: Director that
the Bank wished to resume cash payments, but he was just as
fully persuaded that they did not know how to set about it... "
the reporter noted applause, which he registered as "(Hear!)", and
four times "(A laugh!)"; at the end, "The Hon: Member sat
down, amidst loud and general cheering from all sides of the House" ;
and as a postscript, "Mr. Alderman Heygate then addressed the
Chair, but the impatience of the House produced a temporary
confusion, in the midst of which, after one or two observations, the
worthy Alderman sat down ... "
During the course of his speech David Ricardo issued a warning.
He explained that while any operation to redeem the currency
must be painful, there was a way of making the operation as little
painful as possible. That was the way of "Mr. Ricardo's Plan";
and he was resisting the amendments already being offered to
"Mr. Ricardo's Plan". His warning was received with loud ap-
plause, "(Hear! Hear!)". But though it was applauded, it was not
heeded. It was heeded least, perhaps, by his audience, by the
members of the House of Commons.
The Bill authorizing the resumption of cash payments had set
the date of May 1st 1823 as the limit for the period in which bank-
notes were to be redeemable in gold bullion. At first David Ricardo
was optimistic about the limit. "There is a disposition," he wrote
to McCulloch on June 22nd, "among many of the best informed of
the two committees, to adopt my plan as a permanent regulation,
but they think it will have more chance of finding supporters after
it has been tried for a few years. I am of the same opinion ... "
But before the Bill received the Royal Assent, on July 2nd, it was
to be given one more "modification", by the members of the House
of Commons. The limiting date was moved from May 1st 1823 to
May 1st 1822. This meant that the period of operation of "Mr.
Ricardo's Plan", or the period that was to justify "Mr. Ricardo's
Plan", was reduced, to exactly two years and three months.
By the summer of I 8 I 9 the plan was becoming known to the
general public. It soon excited the interest of the general public.
People learned that gold ingots were to be issued, with amazement;
 "Mr. Ricardo's Plan" 147
and though most people had never seen a gold ingot, and were in
fact never to see a gold ingot, the idea of the gold ingots captured
their imagination. "The ingots have already obtained a name," it
was reported. "They are called Ricardoes 1 from their inventor, as
the gold Napoleons were named after Buonaparte." Not altogether
to his taste, David Ricardo found himself a celebrity. In December
Brougham in a speech in the House of Commons pronounced him
an "oracle". Like many of the pronouncements made by Brougham,
it was untimely. The "oracle" had not been heeded in May. And
the "oracle" was not being heeded in December.
When Brougham called him an "oracle" he was speaking in a
debate on a Petition from the Merchants of London Respecting
Commercial Distress. It was followed by a Petition from the Agri-
culturists of Yorkshire; and by a Petition from the Manufacturers
of Birmingham. All these Petitions pointed to there being some-
thing very much amiss with the economy; and consequently, so it
seemed to Parliament, with the arguments of the economist.
There now began for David Ricardo the experience which he
later described as having "frequently to repel the attacks which
were made upon the science of political economy". All through
1 820 the attacks mounted.
And all through 1 820 the Bank of England was buying gold.
Gold was needed, to mint the Ricardoes. More gold was needed, if
it was to continue to mint the new sovereigns, much more gold;
and it was determined to continue to mint the new sovereigns.
Gold, and a return to a currency based on gold, was undoubtedly
a factor contributory to the economic distress. Then the economic
distress was further agitated by the return home of Cobbett.
Ever since the suspension of Habeas Corpus in 1817, which meant
that he might be imprisoned again, this time without trial, Cobbett
had been in America. He judged it safe to return in 1819, landing
at Liverpool in November; and shortly after he landed, he saw
that David Ricardo had been called an "oracle". It was just what
he wanted. Labels or libels, they were all the same to Cobbett;
and henceforward, with heavy sarcasm, David Ricardo was
labelled "The Oracle". All through 1820 Cobbett assailed "The
Oracle" in the Weekry Political Register; and by evading Stamp Duty
the Weekry Political Register was now read more than ever by the
general public. Parliament and the general public were thus united
 "Mr. Ricardo's Plan"

in a vague feeling that because there was something wrong, there

must be something wrong with "Mr. Ricardo's Plan".
The last hope of the permanent adoption of the plan vanished
in 1821. In February the Directors of the Bank of England came to
the conclusion that they had accumulated enough gold and minted
enough coin. They informed the Government accordingly; and
on March 19th 1821 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the
ninth time in the twenty-four year history of the cash payments
controversy, rose in the House of Commons to introduce a Bill.
The object of the Bill was to end as soon as possible the period in
which the Bank was required to pay its notes in gold bullion; and
so to remove the essential element in "Mr. Ricardo's Plan".
Three weeks later the Bill came to its third reading; and in the
debate on the third reading David Ricardo was the last speaker.
But he knew while he was speaking that it was too late. In practical
terms, too late; for the Bank had already bought the gold and
minted the coin: and David Ricardo was not always unpractical.
He submitted in one sentence. The new sovereigns then became the
legal currency; while the Ricardoes were melted down, to make more
sovereigns. It was the end of "Mr. Ricardo's Plan".
But it was not of course the end of its merits, either theoretically
or practically. Those merits became apparent again in 1914. At
the onset of the World War, the sovereign was displaced by the
one pound Treasury note; the new one pound note was called a
Bradbury, after the then Secretary of the Treasury; and the Bradbury
was in the last resort legally redeemable in gold. That is, and re-
mains, its ultimate justification.

NOTE
I. I am particularly indebted to Volume V of The Works and Correspondence of
David Ricardo for the history of the adoption of "Mr. Ricardo's Plan": including
full details of the Ricardoes.
 CHAPTER XXIII

Town and Country

"I do not know whether you know it," David Ricardo told
Maria Edgeworth, "but I am very shy, which I sometimes, perhaps
generally, hide under as bold an exterior as I can assume ... " It
may have been his shyness that made him enjoy most society in
London, and that society most peculiar to London, the Club.
Dr. Johnson defined a Club in his Dictionary as "an assembly of
good fellows"; but in the transition from the eighteenth to the
nineteenth century "an assembly of good fellows" had become
more "an assembly of like-minded men". That at least was the
Club as it was known to David Ricardo. He belonged to three,
beginning with the King of Clubs.
The King of Clubs 1 was founded in 1798 as a "Conversation
Club", and "Conversation Sharp" was one of its founders. But
through a connexion with Sydney Smith, and because Sydney
Smith was one of the original Edinburgh Reviewers, it was with
the Edinburgh Reviewers that the King of Clubs was always to be
associated. The greatest of the Edinburgh Reviewers was Horner:
and Horner first dined with the Club in 1802. "The conversation
was very pleasing," he wrote, "it consisted chiefly of literary re-
miniscence, anecdotes of authors, criticisms of books, &c. I had
been taught to expect a very different scene: a display of argument
and wit, and all the flourishes of intellectual gladiatorship. This
expectation was not answered ... " He then became a member,
and as he was the greatest of the Edinburgh Reviewers, became the
inspiration of the King of Clubs. His portrait was the only property
ever owned by the Club; a portrait that in words was painted by
Sydney Smith, when he said of him that he "had the Ten Command-
ments written in his face." But Horner was already too ill, ill with
the consumption that was to take him to die in Italy, to attend on
the first night that David Ricardo dined with the King of Clubs.
 Town and Country

Malthus had been an Edinburgh Reviewer, and it was as his

guest that David Ricardo dined on June 1st 1816. He was soon
elected, proposed by Malthus and seconded by Sydney Smith;
and four times in 1818, and four times in 1819, he dined with the
Club. But then came Parliament; and the member for Port arlington
found it less easy to be a member of the King of Clubs. He managed
to attend twice in 1820, twice in 1821, once in 1822, once in 1823:
and the bill for the dinner he attended on February 5th 1823 has
survived. "Dinner, dessert, tea, coffee, &c for 12 gentlemen,£ 12.
I 2S.; 2 bottles Madeira, £ 1. IS.; 2 bottles Port, I 4s.; 3 bottles
Sherry,£ 1. IS.; 5 bottles Claret,£ 3. 2S.; fires, 5s.; wax lights,£ I;
beer, 2S.; waiters, 14S ... " The bill was for the last dinner ever held
by the King of Clubs.
The King of Clubs when he joined had a membership restricted
to thirty, and an annual subscription of three pounds. Brooks's had
a membership of five hundred and fifty, an entrance fee of nine
guineas, and an annual subscription of twelve guineas. This was
the first of several differences between the two Clubs. But just as
the King of Clubs was dedicated to the spirit of Francis Horner,
Brooks's was dedicated to the spirit of Charles James Fox. From
Brooks's he had issued to mount the hustings at the Westminster
Elections, " ... the black animal ... blowing and sweltering and
scratching his black behind"; in the Subscription Room at Brooks's
he had held court, creating out of his followers the substance of a
new Whig party; and by 1818 Brooks's was established as the
first of the "Political Clubs". It was political because it was Whig;
and because it was Whig it was aristocratic. When David Ricardo
was elected on March I 3th I 8 I 8, he was proposed by Lord Essex
and Lord Holland; when his son Osman was elected, in I 829, he
was proposed by Lord Fitzwilliam and Lord Lansdowne; when his
son David was elected, in 1833, he was proposed by Lord Lans-
downe and Lord Essex; when his brother Samson was elected, in
1842, he was proposed by E. J. Stanley and Lord Duncannon.
David Ricardo, who always spelled the name "Brookes' " in his
letters, used the Club for reading the newspapers and hearing
political gossip; and so far acquired the aristocratic habit that in
1820 he neglected to pay his subscription. He then received a
printed form, "The Managers have to inform you that you have
omitted to pay your subscription for the current year... "
 Town and Country

If a Club in the nineteenth century was rightly "an assembly of

like-minded men", none ever met the description better than the
Political Economy Club, 2 which was first contemplated in 1820,
and founded in 1821. Its members were all economists; its ideals,
its historian has written, were "general agreement with The Wealth
of Nations"; and its object was to promote those ideals by general
discussion. It was therefore a "Discussion Club". Meetings were
held on the first Monday of each month, from January to June;
for each meeting there was a different Chairman; and at each
meeting each Chairman announced the subject for discussion at
the next meeting. The meetings were held in a private room at the
Freemasons Tavern in Holborn; David Ricardo attended the first
meeting on April 30th 1821; and at the third meeting, in June, he
took the chair. He was always, according to Mallet, "the chieflight
and ornament" of the Political Economy Club.
His Clubs made considerable demands upon his time; particularly
upon his evenings, which were at once the social and the political
time. Some of the demands he described in a letter that he wrote
to a friend in 1822. "When I reached home late yesterday evening I
found your card, and understood from my servant that you had
called about l past ten o'clock. I am quite sure that some mistake
has occurred, which I am desirous of clearing up as far as it is in
my power. When I had the pleasure of seeing you in Jermyn
Street, I asked you to favour me with your company at dinner on
the Saturday following, the 8th of June, and I understood you to
say you were engaged at dinner, but would, if you could, come in
the evening. I expected you that evening, and was disappointed
at not seeing you, but concluded that you had been detained at
some other place. On Friday 14th Mrs. Ricardo had a little Music
at home, and sent you a card of invitation - I again thought I
might have the pleasure of seeing you, but from some mistake,
probably of Mrs. Ricardo's, or of mine, you came on the following
day when I was out, and thus I have again been disappointed.
From my close attendance at the House of Commons I have only
2 days in the week at my disposal, and I regret to say that for 2 or
3 weeks to come I am engaged on those days. My only chance of
seeing you is at my breakfast hour, ten o'clock, and if you will
favour me with your company on any morning you will mention I
shall feel very much obliged to you ... "
 Town and Country

And some of the demands could be peremptory. In 1822 Broug-

ham received a note from Bentham, couched in terms which were
Benthamically boyish, but which were nonetheless peremptory -
and which included David Ricardo. "Get together a gang, and
bring them to the Hermitage, to devour such eatables and drink-
ables as are to be found in it. I. From Honourable House. 1.
Brougham, Henry. 2. Denman, Thomas. 3. Hume, Joseph. 4.
Mackintosh, James. 5. Ricardo, David. II. From Lincoln's Inn
Fields. 6. Whishaw, John. III. From India House. 7. Mill, Ja-
mes. Hour of attack, 6.30. Hour of commencement of plunderage,
7. Hour of expulsion, with aid of adjacent police office, a quarter
before I I. Day of attack, to be determined by universal suffrage.
N.B. To be performed with advantage, all plunderage must be
regulated. Witness, Matchless Constitution ... " The jokes were
good, the advice was good, the dinner was good, for about this
time, and perhaps about this dinner, Brougham recounted what
was provided: "Macaroni soup, excellent turbot, mutton, chicken,
jelly and tarts ... " though the company - which included a future
Lord ChiefJustice of England in Denman, and a future "Father of
the House" in Hume - was of course the great inducement. The
same could be said of almost all the dinners attended by David
Ricardo: particularly, perhaps, of the dinners given at Holland
House.
Holland House was the most successful of all the attempts to
recreate in London the Paris Salon of the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries, and in London as in Paris owed its success to the
personality of a woman, Elizabeth Lady Holland. Of the many
accounts of her, one of the shortest and one of the best was written
by Bentham. "Vixen I think legible in pretty prominent characters
on her fair countenance," he told his brother, when he met her in
1805. "She is said to rule him with a rod of iron ... "
Lord Holland was the nephew of Charles James Fox, and was
thus a Whig, pur sang; and the equation between David Ricardo
and Holland House 3 was always intellectual rather than political.
He was first invited at about the time of the publication of The
Principles of Political Economy; in succeeding years his name is to be
found in the dinner-books almost every year; and with Lord Hol-
land he was on cordial terms. With Lady Holland cordiality was
hardly to be expected. Common politeness was itself an achieve-
 Town and Country 153
ment. And even common politeness did not prevent her, in May
1819, from writing in a letter of "that little Jew Ricardo ... "
Priscilla Ricardo did not dine with her husband at Holland
House. Very few ladies did: partly perhaps because Lady Holland
was a divorced woman, with what the newspapers called crim:
con: 4 charges proved against her, and crim: con: charges were not
considered very ladylike; but mostly because very few ladies were
asked to Holland House, and fewer wives. The place for wives,
Lady Holland seems to have felt, was at home.
And at home, certainly, Priscilla Ricardo was most herself; and
perhaps most herself when at her home in the country. There was a
movement in her life in the country, the movement of the constant
round, of calls, of visitors, of excursions, of entertainments, that
was exactly suited to her temperament. It was less suited to the
temperament of her husband. David Ricardo often found it difficult
to work when he was in the country, and he was always most him-
self when he was working.
In 1820 a visitor was Mill, an excursion was made to the Wye
Valley, and on the excursion there occurred an adventure. It
happened at Newnham, on the river Severn. At Newnham the
river is tidal, and at low tide the sands are exposed. In the old
days there used to be a ford. A Gloucestershire Guide of the eigh-
teenth century says, "Here is a ford, over which waggons and
people on horseback, of more reputation than prudence, some-
times pass, for many have lost their lives in the attempt. .. "
Then early in the nineteenth century a ferry was established. It
was a large open boat, of low freeboard, carrying eight men and a
cow in a print made of it at the time. Now there is no ford and no
ferry, only the causeways built out into the treacherous sands. But
the causeways had not yet been built when David Ricardo, with
Mary and Birtha, his two youngest daughters, and Mill, appro-
ached the ferry one September day in 1820. What happened he
described in a letter to his friend Trower.
"We travelled in a low phaeton which I have lately bought, and
to save a few miles in our journey, and also to see some country
which we had not before visited, we resolved to cross the Severn
in a boat instead of going over the bridge at Gloucester. When we
arrived at the ferry, opposite Newnham, it was low water, and by
direction of the boatmen I drove first over the dry sand, and then
154 Town and Country

into the water alongside the boat which was ready to receive us. I
proceeded with perfect safety until I got within three or four feet of
the boat, when the carriage began to sink in the sand, and the
horses to plunge violently in their efforts to extricate themselves
from the place where they also were sinking. The men became
greatly alarmed at our awkward situation, in a moment half a
dozen of them, besides my servant, were in the water, and if they
had not united their strength to support us on the side which was
sinking fastest, Mr. Mill, two young ladies who were behind, and
myself, would all have been overturned into the water. The first
object was to disengage the horses from the carriage, the next to
carry us into the boat. The poor horses were so exhausted with
their struggles that they lay on the ground with their heads just
above the water without making any further effort to get out, and
for a short time I thought I should lose them both. At length how-
ever they got on their legs, and reached firmer ground, but it was
nearly an hour before the carriage was lifted up from the sand in
which it had sunk. By the aid of levers, and the united strength of
the men, this was at last effected. With the utmost difficulty the
horses were made to get into the boat. The carriage was put in
after them, and we all at length landed safely at Newnham, with the
very slightest damage to the harness, and the horses quite uninjured.
Our two young ladies behaved like heroines ... "
The next year, there were visitors and entertainments. In
November 1821 Gatcombe housed a party of thirteen: David and
Priscilla Ricardo; Mary and Birtha; Osman with his wife Harriet;
Sylla and her husband Anthony; Mr. and Mrs. Smith of Easton
Grey; Maria Edgeworth and her half-sisters Fanny and Harriet:
all staying in the house, and all described by Maria Edgeworth.
They made their own entertainments; and if the best was conver-
sation - "Mr. Ricardo and we had an excellent argument about
misers and spendthrifts - which was most advantageous to a nation.
I say spendthrift, he says miser - too long to write ... " - the most
popular was "acting words", or charades. During the several
evenings they played charades they acted the words Pillion,
Coxcomb, Sinecure, Monkey, Fortune-tellers, Lovesick, Fire-
eaters, Conundrum, Pilgrim, Spursheim,5 Falstaff, Psyche: and
besides noting, "You have no idea how easily grave Mr. Ricardo
is amused ... " Maria Edgeworth gave a lively account of each
 Town and Country 155
word. "Conundrum. Mr. Smith and Ricardo - partners - I came in
with a draft to be signed. Secondly Mrs. Osman Ricardo - a
beautiful nun in white and black beads and veil, Harriet in black
and veil, very pretty - Maria a drummer - white hat and feathers
and band box for drum - strangely beat and bungled, but creating
much mirth. Then re enter Cos - nuns - drum, and stood in a row
- thunders of applause ... "
And then there were the neighbours. As early as 1815 David
Ricardo had remarked that" ... all our Gloucestershire neighbours,
living within ten miles in all directions, are very much inclined to
be sociable ... " and one neighbour, living within three miles in a
westerly direction, was Lord Ducie. It was Lord Ducie who invited
David Ricardo to dinner with a Royal Duke. "Monday last," the
Gloucdster Journal reported on December 4th 1820, "His Royal
Highness the Duke of Gloucester passed through the city on his
route from Croome to Woodchester Park, the seat of Lord Ducie" ;
on Wednesday was the dinner; and dinner with a Royal Duke
caused some commotion and correspondence, Moses Ricardo
writing with amusement to his brother, and Mallet making an entry
in his diary. For the Royal Duke began, and sustained an economic
discussion with David Ricardo. "This is really very well," Mallet
wrote, "for a man who goes at Carlton House by the nickname of
Silly-Billy."
From meeting him in person the Duke of Gloucester went on to
seeing his portrait. In May 1821 the Royal Academy held its
annual exhibition. Three days before it was opened to the public it
was visited by the Duke of Gloucester; and when it was opened to
the public the critic of the Morning Chronicle observed, "Phillips has
a good portrait of Mr. Ricardo ... " Thomas Phillips was then at
the height of his fame: a fame derived from the Portrait of a Nobleman
and Portrait of a Nobleman in the Dress of an Albanian, exhibited in
1814, when the nobleman was Lord Byron. He painted his portrait
of David Ricard0 6 in 1820; and it is by his portrait that David
Ricardo has been known ever since. After exhibition at the Royal
Academy it was sent to Thomas Hodgetts to be engraved, and the
Hodgetts print was published in 1822. The proofs of the print
were given to members of the family; and the portrait itself was
copied, again for members of the family, in various sizes from the
original kitcat down to miniature. It must therefore have been
 Town and Country

considered a good likeness of David Ricardo. No doubt it seemed a

good likeness to the Duke of Gloucester in 1821. To the general
public in 182 I it was of course the likeness of a celebrity.
For in 1821 David Ricardo received explicit public acknowled-
gement of his celebrity. He was asked for his autograph; and his
reply was dated June 21st 1821. "Sir", he wrote, "In compliance
with your request I send you these few lines, although I am of
opinion that your collection of autographs will not be improved by
the admission into it of a letter from so insignificant an individual as
mysel£ .. "

NOTES
1. There is a good deal about The King of Club in the writings of, and on,
Sydney Smith. What remain of its papers are in the British Museum, Add. Mss.
37337·
2. The Political Economy Club still flourishes, as of course does Brooks's.
The Centenary Volume was published in 1921; its frontispiece is the portrait of
David Ricardo; and it incorporates part of the diary of John Lewis Mallet, who
was a founder-member.
3. Lord Holland's Memoirs of the Whig Party and Further Memoirs if the Whig
Party were published in 1852-4 and 1905; Lady Holland's Journals in 1908. The
Holland House Papers, including the dinner-books, are in the British Museum,
Add. Mss. 51563-51796.
4. "Crim: Con:" meant "criminal conversation", and was legal language for
adultery.
5. Spursheim was a famous phrenologist. This was the deduction of character
from the shape of the head, and in the nineteenth century boasted several
triumphs, notably the report by a later phrenologist than Spursheim on Charlotte
Bronte.
6. Three are known to me. 1. The Phillips, and the prints and copies taken
from it. 2. A miniature by Heaphy, companion to the miniature of Priscilla
Ricardo, and painted in 1822. 3. A drawing in pencil and colour-wash by
Abraham Wivell. It was one of a series intended for a set of engravings of
members of both Houses of Parliament, and others in the series mentioned in
this book are Canning, Pascoe Grenfell, Tierney, Sir Robert Wilson, and the
Duke of Gloucester. Wivell made his name with his painting of the Trial of
Queen Caroline in 1820; and did this series between 1821 and 1823. Both the
Heaphy and the Wivell show David Ricardo looking much older than in the
Phillips. All three are in private collections.
 CHAPTER XXIV

"Mr. Owen's Plan"

David Ricardo was not the only man to be known as the author
of a plan. A celebrity of the same rank, at the same time, and for
the same reason, was Robert Owen.! But while "Mr. Ricardo's
Plan" and "Mr. Owen's Plan" were both directly related to the
economic distress of the time, there was between them one im-
portant difference. The success or failure of "Mr. Ricardo's Plan"
was never much influenced by the adverse opinion of Robert
Owen. The success or failure of "Mr. Owen's Plan" was very con-
siderably influenced by the adverse opinion of David Ricardo.
Owen was a manager, perhaps the first great manager in the
history of the Industrial Revolution; certainly the first to show, in
his philosophy of management, that he understood all that was
meant by the Industrial Revolution. He was thus particularly well
qualified to guide its course, and to make pronouncements on its
progress. But this for Owen was not enough. He preferred to make
pronouncements on religion. As much as the patriarchs and pro-
phets of old, he was inspired by religion. But he was the patriarch
and prophet of a new religion.
At the age of twelve, or thereabouts, he formed his views on
religion; and those views never changed. In 1823, when he was
over fifty, he was in the most Catholic city of Limerick, in Ireland,
speaking on behalf of his plan, and there set out his views in a
letter to the Limerick Chronicle. "For nearly forty years," he wrote,
"I have studied the religious systems of the world, with the most
sincere desire to discover one that was void of error - one to which
my mind and soul could consent; but the more I have examined the
faiths and practices which they have produced, the more error in
each has been made manifest to me; and now I am prepared to
say that all, without a single exception, contain too much error to
be of any utility in the present advanced state of the human mind ... "
 "Mr. Owen's Plan"

Being a deeply religious man, and deeply dissatisfied with the

forms of organized religion, he had consequently organized a reli-
gion of his own. He called it "the practical religion of love and
charity to our race", and based it on the premise that "all the
evils of the world are owed to environment." With this inspiration,
and on this premise, he in I 8 I 4 formulated his plan.
By I8I4 he was already famous as a manager. Starting in cotton
in Manchester, he had built up a substantial business of his own in
little more than five years; and then, on business, he went to Glas-
gow. There he met the daughter of a Scottish industrialist, with
mills at New Lanark, on the Falls of the Clyde; there he married
her; and there he was made a partner in the mills. In I800 he was
promoted to take over the management; he at once introduced his
philosophy of management; and in I 8 I 3 he decided to take over
the sole management. For this he needed money; for the money he
came to London; and it was in London in I8I3 that he was first
encountered by David Ricardo.
The encounter came through Bentham. Bentham in I 8 I 3 was
meditating making an investment, and Bentham had heard of
Owen and New Lanark. Because of what Owen called his "nervous
temperament" he could not bring himself to meet him personally;
instead, it was arranged for Mill to meet him and report; and Mill
reported by letter. Bentham docketed the letter, as he always
docketed letters, and on the docket wrote, "J. Mill, Newington
Green, to J.B., Q.S.P. Disposal of £ 23,000. Ricardo's Advice."
"Ricardo's Advice" seems to have been favourable. Bentham
invested in the mills at New Lanark, and Owen returned to the
mills with his money. Then at New Lanark he wrote a book. He
called it A New View of Society; and A New View of Society was his
vision of the world as it might be ifit adopted his plan.
In detail, the plan became known to the public in I8I6. Its
object was "to relieve distress caused by the war", and it was to
obtain its object by multiplying the social experiments begun at
New Lanark on a national, or if need be, on an universal scale.
There were to be "Villages of Amity and Mutual Co-Operation";
each village was to comprise twelve hundred persons, and to cover
twelve hundred acres of land; for each village there was to be an
harmonious blending of industry and agriculture; and in each
village the houses were to be arranged in geometrical patterns,
 "Mr. Owen's Plan" 159

which Owen himself liked to call Parallelograms. These were what

caught the attention of the public. The Parallelograms won for
Owen the same popular celebrity that the gold ingots won for
David Ricardo. The new word was taken up by the public, which
rightly thought that the Parallelograms were an essential element in
"Mr. Owen's Plan".
For Owen had not neglected religion in the formulation of his
plan. It had occurred to him that there were as many religious
divisions in the world as political, if not more; and he had deter-
mined to take account of both religious and political divisions in
his Parallelograms. England was to be the exemplar. He drew up
and published in The Times a schematic diagram, showing no
fewer than a hundred and forty variants of the Parallelogram, each
classified in its religious and political sub-division, for England.
He recognized twenty religious sects, and seven political parties:
so that a Unitarian might be classified under the seven heads of
Moderate Whig, Violent Whig, Moderate Ministerialist, Violent
Ministerialist, Moderate Reformist, Violent Reformist, or Inde-
pendent of No Party. It must be said that David Ricardo would
have fitted very neatly into the sub-division of Unitarian and
Moderate Reformist.
A Committee in London had been organized to promote the
plan. The Committee was still digesting the "Tables, shewing the
various combinations of class, sect, and party", annexed to the
plan, when on August 21st 1817 Owen addressed a meeting at the
City of London Tavern. He was in Messianic mood, and when he
came to the peroration of his speech he was moved, in his own
words, to denounce "in the strongest terms, all the religions as
they were then taught in the world." The President of the Committee
was the Archbishop of Canterbury; it was too much for the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, and too much for the Committee. The
Committee resigned, and that seemed to be the end of "Mr.
Owen's Plan".
Up to this point David Ricardo had not been actively engaged
with the plan. He had read about the Parallelograms; he had been
amused by the Parallelograms; he had read about the Committee;
and he had assumed that with the resignation of the Committee
there was the end of the plan. But as Hazlitt said, "A man that
comes all the way from the banks of the Clyde acquires a projectile
160 "Mr. Owen's Plan"

force that renders him irresistible ... " and the end was not yet.
For in 1819 Owen was again in London, and in 1819 a second
Committee was being organized.
It was this second Committee that David Ricardo was invited
to join; and most reluctantly was persuaded to join. For six months
he served on the Committee, and for six months he explained to
the Committee that while he admired Owen, he could not admire
his plan. He explained the economic objections to the plan. He
explained the financial objections to the plan. He explained that he
could not contribute to the plan. At length the Committee was
convinced; the Committee then resigned; and for the second time
that seemed to be the end of "Mr. Owen's Plan".
But, "A man that comes all the way from the banks of the Clyde
acquires a projectile force that renders him irresistible ... " and the
plan was now to be carried to Parliament. On August 16th 1819
there took place the great Reform Meeting at St. Peter's Field in
Manchester, and its suppression by the Militia, known as Peterloo.
Peterloo caused the summoning of a special session of Parliament.
Owen was not himself a Member of Parliament. At a bye-
election early in 1819 he stood for the Royal Burghs of Lanark,
Selkirk, Peebles, and Linlithgow; and it was perhaps as well for
his place in history that he was defeated. In political temper, he
was an autocrat rather than a democrat. But he had his disciples
in both Houses of Parliament; and his disciples in the House of
Commons brought forward a proposal for a Parliamentary Enquiry
into the plan. The proposal was debated on December 16th 1819.
As much for his recent experience on the 1819 Committee as from
his reputation as the economist in Parliament, the most authorit-
ative speaker in the debate was David Ricardo; and David Ricardo,
though he could support the proposal for an Enquiry, still could not
support the plan. "They should separate such considerations," he
said of the case for the Enquiry, "from a division of the country
into Parallelograms, or the establishment of a community of
goods, or similar visionary schemes ... " and the proposal was
negatived. For the third time, that seemed to be the end of "Mr.
Owen's Plan".
Yet, "A man that comes all the way from the banks of the
Clyde acquires a projectile force that renders him irresistible ... "
and frustrated in England, Owen turned to Ireland, which was, he
 "Mr. Owen's Plan"

said truly, "in a state bordering on barbarism." After some years of

canvassing, a Petition was presented to the House of Commons in
June 1823, praying the House to consider how far "Mr. Owen's
Plan for the Employment of the Poor ... could be applied to the
employment of the peasantry in Ireland"; and the Petition was
answered by the appointment of a Select Committee, and to the
Select Committee of David Ricardo. "Among other schemes, we
have listened with great attention to Mr. Owen," he wrote, "who
assures us that if we give him eight millions of money, he will make
Ireland now and forever happy ... " and the Select Committee
duly reported that the plan was "not a fit subject for legislative
assistance." It was the fourth, and as far as David Ricardo was
concerned, the final appearance of "Mr. Owen's Plan"; but it had
a sequel, which was altogether unexpected, both by its author and
by David Ricardo.
Owen gave evidence on two occasions before the Select Com-
mittee, and it happened that the second of these occasions was the
morning of Tuesday July 1St. On the afternoon of Tuesday July
1st there was to be a debate in the House of Commons, and David
Ricardo was to speak. What was at issue in the debate was the
distinction between religion and morality; and what David Ricardo
wanted, when he was preparing his speech, was someone who in
his own life showed the distinction between religion and morality:
someone such as Owen. Meeting him in the morning, he had the
idea of naming him in his speech; and the idea of naming him was
not as extraordinary as it might seem. He had himself been named,
by Pascoe Grenfell, in the debate on the Budget of 1814. He there-
fore asked Owen if he would object to being named, and Owen
replied that he would not. As recorded by Mallet in his diary,
"Owen not only assented, but told Ricardo it would be particularly
gratifying to him ... "
David Ricardo thereupon made his speech. "For instance," he
said, "there was Mr. Owen of Lanark, a great benefactor to society,
and yet a man not believing (judging from some opinions of his)
in a future state. Would any man, with the demonstrating ex-
perience to the contrary before his eyes, say that Mr. Owen was less
susceptible of moral feeling, because he was incredulous upon
matters of religion? Would any man, pretending to honour or
candour, say that Mr. Owen, after a lifetime spent in improving
 "Mr. Owen's Plan"

the condition of others, had a mind less pure, a heart less sincere,
or a less conviction of the restraint and control of moral rectitude,
than if he were imbued with the precepts of religious obligation?"
Owen was in the Strangers Gallery for the debate. He heard
how his name was used, and he saw how his name was received.
He was dismayed. "(When) he saw the effect produced by Ricardo's
statement," Mallet noted, "his natural boldness forsook him, and a
desire for fair fame prevailed. He therefore wrote a few lines to
Ricardo in pencil, desiring him to explain away what he had
said ... "
For David Ricardo it was a testing moment. He had to deny,
it seemed, either the truth or his friend. He chose to deny his
friend. And when Owen put up one of his disciples to suggest, in
Parliamentary language, that "the hon: member had mistaken the
opinions of Mr. Owen," his reply was unflinching.
"Mr. Ricardo said that the last act he would commit was to
misrepresent the opinions of individuals. He had gathered Mr.
Owen's opinions from the works he had published. After reading
the speeches which Mr. Owen had delivered in Ireland and other
places, he had come to the conclusion that Mr. Owen did not
believe in a future state of rewards and punishments. It was one
of the doctrines of Mr. Owen that a man could not form his own
character, but that it was formed by the circumstances which
surrounded him - that when a man committed an act which the
world called vice, it ought to be considered his misfortune merely,
and that therefore no man could be a proper object for punishment.
This doctrine was interwoven in his system; and he who held it
could not impute to the Omnipotent Being a desire to punish
those who, in his view, could not be considered responsible for
their actions ... "
Mallet adds, "Ricardo told me that he was very near stating to
the House what had passed between him and Owen in the morning,
but his good nature prevailed. Owen would have deserved it
richly ... "
Among his papers David Ricardo preserved a cutting of the
letter written by Owen in January 1823 to the Limerick Chronicle.
Perhaps he kept it as proof of what he had said - or perhaps he
kept it as the most reasonable of the utterances of a sublimely
unreasonable man.
 "Mr. Owen's Plan"

NOTE
I. His autobiography, The Life of Robert Owen, Written by Himself, 1857, must
be the start of any approach to him. The newspapers have much to say about
the plan, above all The Times, which as David Ricardo observed in 1817, "had
so ridiculously puffed him forward", and then "deserted him". Four Owenite
colonies were established eventually; all succumbed, sooner or later; but the
new religion that inspired them lived on. The name of the new religion, of course,
though not a name used in the lifetime of David Ricardo, was Socialism.
 CHAPTER XXV

The Moderate Reformist

When David Ricardo entered Parliament, there was one question

that was very largely ignored by Parliament. That was the question
of Reform. It was not a new question: Pitt had introduced a Reform
Bill in the House of Commons in 1785, and Bentham had set down
his thoughts on Reform in 180g. But it was not a question that was
often asked inside Parliament. When it was asked, it was asked,
outside Parliament; and it was to be asked, increasingly, by David
Ricardo.
His approach to the question of Reform was made in three
stages, which might be called the intellectual, the experimental,
and the sentimental. That is, his judgment was first formed, by
thinking about the subject; then tempered, by his experience; then
swayed, by sentiment. From these three stages there emerged the
Moderate Reformist.
The intellectual case for Reform was argued by him in his
correspondence with his friend Trower all through the year 1818.
He very seldom underlined words in his letters: but in these letters
there is one word that is underlined again and again, and under-
lined six times in the course of one single letter. It is the word
reasonable. "But let us suppose, or take for granted, which I do,
that the contrary opinion is well founded, and that a mixed govern-
ment such as ours, consisting of King, Lords, and Commons, is the
best form of Government, and let us examine the question of a re-
form in parliament on that supposition. You and I and all reasonable
persons . .. This being demonstrated, we must extend the elective
franchise to all reasonable men . .. " Then the intellectual stage was
supplemented by the experimental stage, which was shaped, for
him, by the recent history of the Westminster elections.
Westminster was thought, in a phrase he once used, to give "a
fair sample of the sense of the nation". It was one of the constituen-
166 The Moderate Reformist

cies that had ratepayer suffrage; it had as a result a very large

electorate, estimated in 1807 to number about ten thousand; and
in 1807 one of the electorate was Francis Place. Place considered
that the electorate was being manipulated rather than represented
by the Westminster elections. In the famous "room behind the
shop" at 16, Charing Cross he organized, for the election of 1807,
an Election Committee; the Election Committee chose as its
candidates two of the small group of Radicals, to stand upon a
platform of Violent Reform; and thanks to the efforts of the Election
Committee the Radicals were elected. They were elected again in
1812. And by 1812 David Ricardo at 56, Upper Brook Street was a
Westminster ratepayer.
Great exception was taken by both the established political
parties to the activities of the Election Committee; and the greatest
exception by the Whigs. They were the official Opposition; they
were theoretically in favour of Reform; and they had in the memory
of Fox peculiarly close ties with the constituency of Westminster.
In 1807 and 1812 they put up to succeed him the man they thought
was most like him, the sociable and convivial Sheridan; but Sheridan
had been too sociable and too convivial for too long, and was de-
feated in 1807 and 1812. Then for the election of 1818 they found a
far stronger candidate in the person of Sir Samuel Romilly. He was
already known for the reforms he had made in the law, when he
was Solicitor-General in the Ministry of All the Talents, and the
connexion between reform of the law and the reform of Parliament
was obvious. The election of 1818, and voting in the election of
1818, thereupon took on a new meaning: and that meaning was
the meaning of the word Reform.
Voting in Westminster at that time lasted for fifteen days, and
every vote was registered in the Poll Books every day. Poll Books
were regarded as public documents; and the Poll Books for 1818
were in fact printed and published the same year. Pressure could
thus be brought to bear on every voter; and pressure was certainly
brought to bear on David Ricardo. The pressure came from his
friends. Mill was in 1818 a member of the Election Committee,
and Bentham three months before the election wrote him a friendly
letter. And Sir Samuel Romilly though an acquaintance was not a
friend. He had indeed, in December 1817, declined to give his
professional opinion in the matter of the High Sheriff and Corporate
 The Moderate Reformist

Communion. But Reform was to David Ricardo the issue in the

election of 1818, and on Reform he had made up his mind. "I am
for Sir Samuel Romilly's system of reform," he told Trower on
June 27th. "His system is to extend the suffrage to householders
and to limit the duration of Parliament to three years - and to
vote by ballot. That is all the reform I desire ... " and accordingly,
differing from Mill and differing from Bentham, he voted for Sir
Samuel Romilly.
The cause of Moderate Reform came top of the poll in the elec-
tion of 1818, which was fought with a vivacity that was typical of
Westminster. But its triumph was unhappily brief. The result was
declared in July; in October Lady Romilly suddenly died; and in
November Sir Samuel, not wishing to live without her, killed him-
self. A second election had to be held early in 1819, and for the
second election both the Whigs and the Election Committee chose
new candidates. The Whigs chose George Lamb, of the Lamb
family of the Portarlington connexion, while the Election Com-
mittee chose the young and radical John Cam Hobhouse; and in
the candidacy of Hobhouse the pressures of friendship were again
to be felt by David Ricardo. For Hobhouse was rather more than a
friend. His father was Sir Benjamin Hobhouse; Sir Benjamin had
been a banker at Bath; and his partner in the bank at Bath had
been the father of Thomas Clutterbuck, and the father-in-law of
Henrietta. Moreover, while David Ricardo liked him as a man,
he did not altogether like his politics. "I cannot join so heartily as I
would wish to do in sympathy with Hobhouse," he wrote to Mill,
"because he advocates the cause of universal suffrage ... " But
though Lamb campaigned on the slogan, "Vote for Lamb, On
Romilly's Principles", David Ricardo voted for Hobhouse, and
voted, himself now a Member of Parliament.
Newgate Gaol cast its shadow over the next of the Westminster
elections, when in February 1820, on the death of the King, the
electors of Westminster were for the third time in three years sum-
moned to the polls. The candidates were the same as they had been
in 1819, when Lamb had been victorious, with the single difference
that in 1820 Hobhouse was in Newgate. He had been sent there for
publishing a pamphlet, humorously entitled A Trifling Mistake, in
December 1819; and there, David Ricardo had tried to visit him.
The visit was to sustain the friend rather than to support the
168 The Moderate Reformist

politician, and was not wholly a success, for when he asked to see
him he was told that he was "taking a walk on the top of the prison
and could not be seen"; but Newgate nonetheless had its political
compensations for Hobhouse. No address could have been better
calculated to appeal to a popular electorate, and the electorate
responded. With a triumphant majority, he was returned for
Westminster. David Ricardo was returned for Portarlington. They
were returned to a Parliament which for its first year was to be
almost entirely swayed by sentiment. The sentiment was aroused by
the trial of Queen Caroline.
The unlucky Princess of Wales of 1797 was now the unlucky
Queen Caroline. She was unlucky in 1797 in that she was the wife
of such a husband; and she was unlucky in 1820 in that such a
husband was now the King. Mter an absence abroad of six years
she returned to England on June 5th 1820; and on July 5th 1820,
at the insistence of the King, the Government brought in a Bill of
Pains and Penalties against her. She thus returned to face a husband
who was implacably determined on divorcing her; who had ample
evidence of the crim: con: kind to justify him legally in divorcing
her; and who did not scruple to put her on public trial as the
means of divorcing her. The trial had to be held in Parliament. It
at once became a political trial, and then, a trial of political strength.
There was first the strength of the Government. The Bill of
Pains and Penalties was introduced into the House of Lords; at
its third reading in the House of Lords the majority had fallen to
the figure of nine; and the figure of nine was a clear warning to the
Government. It had either to send the Bill on to the Commons, or
to abandon the Bill; it decided to abandon the Bill, and by aband-
oning the Bill, it remained the Government. Next there was the
strength of the Opposition. The Whigs were divided over the trial
of Queen Caroline; they were divided over what was policy and
what was politic; they were divided, even, on the point of whether
the name of the Queen should or should not be removed from the
liturgy of the Church of England. On that point, Tierney resigned
as Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, and left
the Oppositionists without a leader. Then there was the strength
of public opinion. Public opinion had been virtually unanimous on
the trial of the Queen; and public opinion undeniably had asserted
itself during the Parliamentary proceedings. "The joy that is felt
 The Moderate Reformist 16 9
in this neighbourhood cannot be described," David Ricardo wrote
from Gatcombe in November 1820, when the Bill was abandoned.
"At Wootton, Tetbury, Stroud, and Hampton, there has been an
incessant ringing of bells - in some of these places they have roasted
oxen whole, illuminated every house and cottage, and not a poor
person is seen without a label, a cockade, or a sprig of laurel in his
hat ... " But if public opinion had asserted itself, public opinion
was still not represented in Parliament. It was the difference
between public opinion and public opinion as it was represented in
Parliament that was most felt by David Ricardo at the trial of
Queen Caroline, and that most inclined his sentiments towards the
Reform of Parliament.
The invariable manifestation of public sympathy at this time
was a public dinner. David Ricardo attended more than one, in
the cause of reform, and spoke at more than one. The first was at
Gloucester in December 1820; but the best was in December 1821,
at what became known to readers of the Gloucester Journal as the
Great Hereford Dinner. 1 "The clear arrangement of Mr. Ricardo's
ideas on several of the most important subjects produced a most
attentive effect on his hearers," the Gloucester Journal reported of
the Great Hereford Dinner; and what is notable about the ideas is
the order in which they are placed, and the emphasis which is
placed on them. Neither the order nor the emphasis was usual with
speakers on the Reform of Parliament. For he placed first the secret
ballot. It was, he said, "the vital security for good government";
and in recognizing it as such he was far ahead of his audience, and
far ahead of his time. No provision for a secret ballot was made in
the Reform Bill of 1832. No provision for a secret ballot was made
in the Reform Bill of 1 867.
Yet there was always a paradox in the position of the Moderate
Reformist, a paradox that was apparent to others, and to himself.
To others it seemed strange that he should be the member for
Portarlington, and the member for Port arlington by choice. Three
times his name was associated with constituencies that might have
seemed more appropriate. The earliest was when he was invited
to stand for Worcester, the Worcester that was later to be repre-
sented by his eldest son, under the description of "Untitled com-
mercial gentleman of established worth and integrity, and of well
known constitutional principles", and declined. Then in 1 820
17 0 The Moderate Reformist

there were rumours that he was to stand for Gloucestershire. "You

may have seen something in the paper respecting Ricardo and
Gloucestershire," his friend Smith of Easton Grey told Hobhouse;
" - I presume that it has originated in Stroud, but it must be a
nice joke, to alarm the Beauforts, and this it certainly has done, as
Lord Edward has been writing to all his friends, and the whole
party. On the last hunting day he seemed very uneasy ... " but all
he said of the rumour was, "I do not soar so high," and had he been
asked he would certainly have declined. And in 1822 it was suggest-
ed that he stand for the popular constituency of Liverpool, and
again declined. He preferred Portarlington. "My late constituents
at Portarlington appear to be a very good-tempered set of gentle-
men," he wrote of the election of 1820, "and will I am assured
elect me without hesitation to the next Parliament... "
To himself, the paradox was of another kind. It was the distinc-
tion that he had to make between the politician and the economist.
"I am rather singularly circumstanced," he wrote, anticipating
the Parliament of 1823, "- agreeing as I do with the reformers on
the subject of Parliamentary reform, I cannot agree with them
that taxation and bad government has been the cause of our
present difficulties ... " and these two elements in the paradox he
could never resolve. But if it was a real distinction to him, it was
not a real distinction to the general public. The amazement felt
by the general public at the economist had been followed by the
approval felt by the general public of the politician. In May 1823
the Westminster electors held a dinner to celebrate the sixteenth
anniversary of the Election Committee; he was a Steward at the
dinner; according to the Morning Chronicle, "upwards of 400
persons" went to the dinner, and went to hear the Moderate
Reformist urge on them the importance of the secret ballot, as the
means to the end he proposed in the toast of "A full, fair, and free
Representation of the People in the Commons House of Parlia-
ment!"

NOTE
I. "Great Hereford Dinner". It was attended by 250 Freeholders, began at
three o'clock in the afternoon, and went on for six hours. David Ricardo wrote
of his speech, "1 was obliged to say a few words, and did not fail to say some-
thing of the importance of secret suffrage ... "
 CHAPTER XXVI

The Grand Tour

In July 1822 David Ricardo took his family on a tour of the

continent. They were away for exactly five months, and they
visited exactly seventy places. And while they were away, for the
first and only time in his life, he kept a journal. It took the form of
journal-letters, written for the entertainment of his children; and
it succeeded so well in its object that in 18g1 it was privately printed
for the entertainment of a later generation.
The tour had its origins in the six-weeks tour of 1817 which he
made with his brother Ralph. They had then followed the course
of the Rhine, as far as Karlsruhe; and it was now proposed that
the family should continue to follow the course of the Rhine, into
Switzerland. David Ricardo wanted to limit the tour to Switzer-
land; but there were in 1822 several considerations which were to
make this difficult, to the point of being impossible. The first was
the advice of Sharp, who had provided him with a "paper of
hints", and who was an enthusiast for Italy. The second was the
recent death of his friend Smith of Easton Grey: he took with him
the letters written when he had been on a tour of the continent,
and most of the letters had been written from Italy. The third,
and perhaps the most influential consideration in 1822, was the
presence on the tour of Priscilla Ricardo.
Priscilla Ricardo liked the idea of a Grand Tour. But she felt
that a Grand Tour should be grand. She was determined that they
should go to Italy. She was of course resisted by her husband, and
resisted effectually, until they reached Switzerland. From Lauter-
brunnen, on August 31st, he was able to write, "After our journey
of today I said we might as well pack up and return home, for
it was impossible that Switzerland could have any new beauty to
offer us, but I recollected we had not seen Mont Blanc, and I
agreed to proceed in our tour to see that prince of mountains
17 2 The Grand Tour

before our return." Resistance clearly was becoming more diffi-

cult; from Lauterbrunnen they went on to Thoun, at Thoun
Priscilla Ricardo was more determined than ever, and resistance
more difficult than ever; and from Thoun they went on to Geneva,
the proposed limit of the tour, where resistance finally became
impossible. At Geneva he acknowledged that further resistance was
impossible. "I have seen a great deal more of the continent than I
expected when we parted in London," he wrote to Maria Edge-
worth, describing events on his return home. "My companions and
I journeyed on very comfortably through Holland, by the Rhine,
through Switzerland, till we arrived at Geneva, when a grand
consultation took place whether we should return home or proceed
to Italy. If the question had been decided by ballot, or even by
open voting, the result would not have been a moment doubtful,
but as it depended on the fiat of an absolute monarch, some
pleadings were necessary. At Geneva we received letters from all
our dear children at home and they all conveyed good news - they
told us that Mrs. Clutterbuck was safely in bed with a little girl -
that she was going on well - and that all the rest were in perfect
health. These facts were strongly argued, and the absolute monarch
was graciously pleased to give directions for preparing for passing
the Alps ... "
The tour had started from the Tower steps on the river in
London. There, at six o'clock in the morning of Friday July 12th
the party embarked in the steam packet Talbot for the crossing to
Calais, which took them fourteen hours, and embarked with them
was their travelling-carriage. It was open, with a hood that could
be put up in bad weather, and that always failed to keep out the
bad weather; it was large, for they numbered six, David and
Priscilla Ricardo, Mary and Birtha, Miss Lancey the governess,
Mrs. Cleaver the maid; it was capacious, for it held no fewer
than seven trunks, besides boxes of books, a work-box, and a rose-
wood writing-desk; and it was robust, and needed to be, for it was
to negotiate both the Alps and the Apennines. Drawn by four
horses, with mounted postilions, and preceded by a courier in
uniform, the travelling-carriage moved off at eleven o'clock on
Saturday July 13th.
"At that hour we were all prepared for our journey," David
Ricardo wrote, "and none of us more fully prepared than our
 The Grand Tour

courier Shuman. He had entirely cast off the plain clothes in

which he had accompanied us from London, and appeared as if
he had been newly apparelled for the occasion. His dress I am told
cost him£ 30 - his blue jacket and red waistcoat were abundantly
garnished with gold lace - he had his jackboots with long spurs
on, and a clean pair ofleather breeches. Thus equipped, he mounted
his bidet . .. " and if bidet means no more than "nag", the courier
was a person of some importance. He conducted all the practical
business of the tour. He calculated the distances that could be
travelled in any day; he arranged the changes of horses; he rode
ahead to book rooms at the inns and order dinner; and sometimes
he did more. "Shuman the courier has been very active and useful,"
David Ricardo wrote on July I4th, "my only fear is that he puffs
me off as a man of consequence. I judge so by the treatment we
meet with. Amongst other attentions with which I could have
dispensed, I must mention the music which played at our door
immediately after dinner ... "
David Ricardo asserted on the tour that he had not "one grain
of romance" in his composition. But the tour had nonetheless its
moments of romantic inspiration. Sometimes it was literary,
Gibbon remembered at Lausanne, Rousseau remembered at
Meillerie, Shakespeare remembered at Verona; and sometimes it
was pictorial, as at Martigny, where they made an expedition at
the request of Priscilla Ricardo up the Grand St. Bernard, "the
convent at the top," he noted, "having made a great impression on
her imagination"; and next morning, " ... we saw the dogs, very
fine animals, and heard many stories of their sagacity in discovering
people who are overwhelmed with cold and fatigue, and incapable
of proceeding on their journey... " And despite his disclaimer,
when it was most romantic, the inspiration came from David
Ricardo himself. For a sense of the past is what most inspires the
romantic; and it was the sense of his own past that led him to
include in the tour first Amsterdam, and then Livorno, or as it
was known to him, Leghorn.
"Although I had not been in this town for more than 30 years I
had no difficulty in finding my way, alone, about the places which
had formerly been familiar to me ... " he wrote on his first evening
in Amsterdam. But after that first evening it was to be people rather
than places that were to recall the past to him in Amsterdam; and
174 The Grand Tour

it was more difficult to recall the past with people than with places.
The most important of the people was his cousin Rebecca, now
Mrs. da Costa. They had been children together in the old days,
and Jewish children. But the old days were gone, he was no longer
aJew, and his cousin Rebecca was now a widow. The recent rather
than the remote past necessarily occupied him with his cousin
Rebecca; and occupied him more fully than he had anticipated.
"To show Mrs. da Costa a small mark of attention," he wrote, "as
I was better known to her than to any other part of the family, I
took with me an English shawl to present to her. When I bought it,
I forgot that she had recently lost her husband, and this shawl was
so full of gay colours that I felt it would be improper to give it to
her. I then thought of presenting it to her daughter-in-law, but on
reflection I could not do this without making a present also to the
mother. My project therefore was to buy something in Holland
for that purpose, but on consultation with your mother, we thought
that would not be proper, as it would look like an acknowledge-
ment of her civility to us. Mter all then, the shawl is still in our
possession, and we have brought it back with us ... "
They were six days in Amsterdam; and their next stopping-place
was to be at Geneva, which they reached some six weeks later.
No nostalgic associations attached to Geneva. But it had for many
years been a place of intellectual resort, with Voltaire at Ferney,
and Madame de Stael at Coppet; and in 1822 it might have been
called the intellectual capital of Europe. Attracted to the capital
were many of the philosophers of Europe; and presiding over it
was an old friend, that most engaging of the philosophers of Europe,
Etienne Dumont.
Of Dumont at Geneva Maria Edgeworth wrote in 1820, " .•. he
seems to enjoy universal consideration here, and he loves Mont
Blanc, next to Bentham, above all created things ... " and what
he was in 1820, he was in 1822. At Geneva in 1822 he was still
interpreting the thought of Bentham, and about to publish the
Traite des Preuves Judiciaires the following year; he was still eager to
take up the text of Sur les Prix with David Ricardo, which according
to one witness was discussed between them for a whole day; and
though he was over sixty at the time, he was still young enough in
heart to accompany the family on their expedition to Mont Blanc.
"We left Geneva together on Thursday morning, and went through
 The Grand Tour

a beautiful country, too beautiful for any further commendation of

mine, to St. Martin. We alighted 2 or 3 times on the road to walk
through spots from which the views appear most lovely. At St.
Martin we slept at a very indifferent inn but the best in the neigh-
bourhood. Mont Blanc shows itself in great majesty to those who
view it from St. Martin ... " David Ricardo wrote of the expedition;
and, "Mr. Dumont was a great acquisition to us. We could not have
had a more agreable companion, nor one more cheerful and commu-
nicative." But it was at Geneva that he was at length persuaded of the
enchantments of Italy; and after ten days there, they set out.
"I now know what is meant by an Italian sky," he wrote from
Como. "It is one so clear, so totally free from clouds and fog, that
the outline of every mountain and hill is most perfectly defined -
they appear to touch and to make the same plane with the blue
vault which surrounds them ... " and Italy was to call from him
his best writing of the whole tour. Yet even amid the enchantments
of Italy a limit had to be fixed for the tour; and the furthest limit
was fixed as Florence.
The road to Florence took them through Verona; and at Verona
he composed the passage in his journal, that if any single passage
can be taken as characteristic, must be taken as most characteristic.
"Sausage shops are also very conspicuous and numerous in Italy,"
he noted. "I mentioned to Mr. Dumont that I thought I should like
Bologna sausages, when he told me they were made of the flesh of
asses - this very much diminished my appetite for them, which he
declared was a great reflection on me. What pretension, he asked,
had I to be ranked among philosophers if I disliked a thing merely
on account of its name, or of its being made of flesh which I had
not been accustomed to eat - was not the ass a clean feeding animal?
- did he not live wholly on vegetables? on what pretence then
would I refuse to eat his flesh ifit was good and relishing? He knew
the sausages were made of asses meat, and he liked them the better
for it. I could not answer his argument, but I am not yet reconciled
to eating asses flesh, though I suspect he knows nothing about the
matter, and that he was dealing in fiction. At Milan I tasted a bit
of sausage, and if it were made of beef or veal I should not wish to
eat it again, it was so little to my taste; but I suspect that the real
Bologna is something very different. I shall certainly try the real
Bologna when at Bologna ... "
 The Grand Tour

Via Bologna, Florence was reached on October 12th; and

Florence meant works of art. The Uffizi Gallery was visited several
times; and then as now on view at the Uffizi Gallery was the Venus
de Medici, or Medici Aphrodite. This most famous copy of the
most famous work of Praxiteles was what David and Priscilla
Ricardo liked best of all the works of art they saw on their tour. On
their last day in Florence he wrote, " ... we intended to go once
more to the gallery, but had the mortification to find, when we
were at the door, that it was shu~ on account of its being a holiday,
so that we could not take our leave of the Venus ... " and their
liking was shared by all the tourists in Florence in 1822. For to
the tourist in 1822 the Venus had a special appeal as a work of art.
Beautiful as she was in her own person, with her head turned to
show her classic profile, she made her special appeal because she
was made of marble.
It was the age of what has been called Marblemania. Following
the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles, the frieze that once decorated
the Parthenon, Marblemania was at its height in 1822. It was felt
by David Ricardo. It had indeed been felt by David Ricardo even
before he started on the tour, for in 1821 bookshelves were made
for his house in Upper Brook Street, and the bookshelves were
made of marble: but it was felt most strongly in Italy. In Italy he
began to collect marble. He bought twelve pieces of sculpture in
Florence, all of them in the classical tradition, and one of them a
copy of the Venus. But then he departed from the classical tradi-
tion. He recorded in his pocketbook that in Florence he bought a
Julian and a Rousseau; and in Leghorn, he told Mill, he bought a
Franklin and a Washington. Rousseau, Franklin, and Washington
would have been known to every tourist as makers of the modern
world. But the choice of the Emperor Julian was surely more
personal. For he is the Emperor known to history as Julian the
Apostate.
And there was one other manifestation of Marblemania that took
place in Florence. Florence was still a city of sculptors; and it was
the practice of the sculptors of Florence to call on the tourists
staying at the fashionable hotels, to offer their services. One of
these sculptors was Vincenzo Bonelli. Bonelli had a reputation for
taking a likeness, and for taking a likeness quickly. It was said that
he required only three sittings. Thus recommended, he called;
 The Grand Tour 177
and it seems that when he called, his offer was accepted. He made
two busts of David Ricardo, one large in marble, one small in
alabaster; for the busts he charged respectively twenty-five luigi
and six luigi, or louis d'or, the continental equivalent to the new
sovereigns, so his charges were reasonable; and the marble bust,
which has survived, and is in the Roman style and represents the
Senator, or Member of Parliament, as far as can be judged is a
good likeness. The energy and the humour are in keeping. But
even more in keeping, perhaps, was the way David Ricardo treated
the matter in his correspondence. Neither in his letters nor in his
journal is there a word about what he entered in his pocketbook as
"bust of myself". 1
To go to Leghorn from Florence was to go out of their way,
since the road to Leghorn in those days led only to Leghorn. It
must have seemed to David Ricardo that it would be worth their
while to go out of their way; and that, because Leghorn in 1822
could be expected to be very little changed from the Livorno known
to his ancestors. In 1822 there was still a Grand Duke of Tuscany;
still the great port; still a Jewish community; still the galleried
Synagogue; still the coral trade. Ancestors had worshipped at the
Synagogue, ancestors had been engaged in the coral trade; and he
went to see the Synagogue, and he went to see the coral being
worked. And he was disappointed. He registered his disappoint-
ment in the conclusive phrase, "There is not much to see in Leg-
horn ... "
But if it disappointed one romantic impulse, it gratified another.
This was the romantic feeling for death. A year earlier Shelley
had put all this feeling into Adonais, and into the Preface to Adonais.
There he had evoked the Protestant cemetery at Rome, adding,
"It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be
buried in so sweet a place ... " and the same feeling was inspired
in David Ricardo by the Protestant cemetery at Leghorn. "At
Leghorn there is a superb burying-ground," he wrote to Mill, "in
which there are a great number of very handsome monuments to
Englishmen who have died abroad and who have been buried in
this ground. I accidentally stumbled on poor Horner's - it is a
very handsome one, and there is a basso rilievo very like him upon
it ... " and in his journal he added, "I never saw a handsomer
burying-ground - one could almost wish to die near Leghorn to
178 The Grand Tour

get into so neat a place, and amongst so much good company... "
Yet death must have seemed very far away that October after-
noon in the English burying-ground at Leghorn. David Ricardo
was then fifty years old. He had succeeded in everything that he
had attempted. He was moderate in all his habits of life. His
health generally seemed to be good. But it was at Milan, on the
way to Leghorn, that he had mentioned that he was suffering from
earache.

NOTE
I. I am indebted to Mr. John Kenworthy-Browne for information. Other
spoils of the tour included "19 Coloured Prints, Continental Scenes and Cos-
tumes", which remained in the possession of the family until 1964. These took
so long to be sent to England that they were still detained in the Customs House
at Dover on July 29th 1823, and probably did not arrive at Gatcombe before
David Ricardo was dead.
 CHAPTER XXVII

The year began for David Ricardo at Gatcombe. "The house was
cold and dismantled," he wrote on January 14th, "and I was
incessantly employed during the time I was there in paying bills,
settling accounts, and talking to tenants. I was rejoiced when this
necessary but irksome business was at an end: it was the more
heavy from having been neglected; I had not been at Gatcombe
for nearly a twelvemonth. We were all I believe glad to turn our
backs on this our favourite residence ... " Then from Gatcombe
he went on to stay with family and friends; and while he was
staying with his daughter Henrietta he was taken to see the house
in Wiltshire that was soon to be her new home. He had felt he
would like it, even before he had seen it; and when he had seen it,
he called it a "delightful place". The name of the "delightful
place" was Hardenhuish.
On February 1st he returned to London, and Parliament opened
on February 4th. It was to be a Parliament notable for the per-
formance of a Parliamentary Alliance; a Parliamentary Alliance
formed between the member for Portarlington and the member for
Montrose: and the member for Montrose in 1823 was Joseph Hume. 1
Hume was a Scot, and that most agreable type of Scot, the
thrifty Scot. He was born in Montrose, and educated at Montrose
Academy; and at Montrose Academy was the schoolfellow of
J ames Mill. He then became a surgeon, and as an adventurous
young surgeon joined the East India Company. For two years he
was in the sea-service, on board the East Indiamen; and then he
transferred to the land-service, and spent seven years in the land
that might have been created for the exercise of a talent for thrift.
He seems to have exercised his talent to the full. In 1807, at the
age of thirty, he came home; and he came home a rich man. As a
rich man he devoted himself henceforward to public life.
180

For a future "Father of the House", his public life began inauspi-
ciously. The town of Weymouth at the time returned four members
to Parliament; and in 181 lone of the four died. The seat then
reverted to the care of trustees; they let it be known that it was
open to offers; and Hume made an offer. Early in 1812 he was
elected. But he failed to give satisfaction at Weymouth; and at
the general election later in 1812 the trustees withdrew their offer.
That rankled; but what rankled still more was that they refused to
refund him the money he had paid for the seat. He thereupon
threatened to sue; the matter went to arbitration; and he regained
part at least of his money. At about the same time he renewed his
acquaintance with Mill, and through Mill made the acquaintance
of David Ricardo.
Like David Ricardo, he was a Proprietor in the East India Com-
pany, and thus eligible to become a Director. It was not an office
that ever appealed to David Ricardo, even when he was urged
towards it by Mill; but it was an elective office, and to Hume in
1813 it seemed next best to Parliament; and all through the year
he was busy canvassing among the Proprietors. In January the
Morning Chronicle noted "Mr. Hume ... very active ... " at a
Court of the East India Company; in April it published an ad-
vertisement, "I rest my claims on many years of active employment
in your service, and a constant and laborious consideration of your
affairs in this country"; and in November he applied for assistance
to David Ricardo.
"Dear Sir," David Ricardo wrote in his reply, "I am so engaged
at the present time, and am so unused, indeed so unwilling, to
canvass on behalf of anyone, that I fear I cannot be of much service
to your cause - I have however, as you wished it, written to Hutches
Trower, and hope I shall succeed with him. Mr. Beardmore will
vote for you, and will promise one if not two more votes. Mr. de
Leon will give you his second vote, I have no doubt; so will Mr.
Geekie. Mr. Mackintosh will not promise. I have hopes of Mr.
Otter's vote, as well as of Mr. Hodges'. Mr. Perkins says he will
not vote for any candidate. Mr. Sutton does not promise, but does
not refuse. Your obedient servant ... " (Postscript) "Mr. Bury all
but promises ... "
Hume entered Parliament again in 1818, and soon established
his special position in Parliament. Though Place reported, when
 he was going to stay with Bentham at his summer retreat at Ford
Abbey in Devonshire that he was "packing up Smith's 'Wealth of
Nations' for study there," he was not an economist. He might
today be called a statistician; perhaps the first statistician in
Parliament. It was the statistician that impressed David Ricardo.
"The ministers have not a more formidable opponent," he wrote
of him in 1820. "He never speaks without a formidable array of
figures to back his assertions, and he pores over documents with
persevering zeal and attention, which most other men fly from with
disgust and terror. His manner of speaking is I think improved -
he is however generally too diffuse - speaks too often - and some-
times wastes his own strength, and his hearers patience, on matters
too trifling for notice. He justifies this indeed by saying that he
contends for sound principles, which are as much outraged by an
unjust expenditure of a few hundred pounds, as of a million. He is
I think a most useful member of Parliament, always at his post,
and governed I believe by an ardent desire to be useful to his
country... " The date of this letter, July 21st 1820, may be taken
as the beginning of the Parliamentary Alliance.
Hume was not yet a celebrity on July 21st 1820. He became a
celebrity when on June 27th 1821 he made the most statistical of
all his speeches in the House of Commons. It was immensely long,
occupying seventy-seven columns of Hansard; it was meticulously
detailed, being accompanied by forty-eight tables of figures; and
it substantially scrutinized every single item of the civil and military
expenditure. It did all this in the name of Retrenchment; and the
idea of Retrenchment was ever after to be associated with the name
ofHume. More immediately, this was a theme that was well under-
stood and much appreciated by the general public. Thus it was
Hume who was the principal speaker at the Great Hereford Dinner,
and who made "Retrenchment and Reform" the watchwords of
the Parliamentary Alliance.
A military metaphor cannot be avoided in any description of the
working of the Parliamentary Alliance. It was used at the time:
"Hume was no doubt the guerilla, but it was Ricardo who supplied
the materiel, and directed the master movements," as a contem-
porary wrote; and it was used by David Ricardo, when he described
the Parliament of 1823 as a "six months campaign". Their ob-
jectives were necessarily limited, in the "six months campaign".
But it is not too much to say that the most real opposition to the
Government in 1823 came from the Parliamentary Alliance.
Their greatest success came in March. On March 26th Hume
presented in the House of Commons a Petition from Mary Ann
Carlile; Mary Ann Carlile was the sister of Richard Carlile; and
Richard Carlile was the publisher of the works of Tom Paine. These
included The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason; The Rights of Man
offended political susceptibilities, The Age of Reason offended reli-
gious susceptibilities; and in 1823 it was still dangerous to offend
religious susceptibilities. First he, then his wife, then his sister, were
imprisoned for publishing and selling the works of Tom Paine; and
all were imprisoned at the suit of the Society for the Suppression
of Vice. The Parliamentary Alliance thus challenged the Society
for the Suppression of Vice, in taking up the case of Mary Ann
Carlile; and the Society for the Suppression of Vice was not lightly
to be challenged. It had been founded in 1802 by the highly re-
spected Evangelicals, and by the most highly respected of the
Evangelicals, Wilberforce; in 1823 it had two hundred and fifty
members, among them the "religious party" in the House of
Commons; and by 1823, as Wilberforce claimed in the debate, it
had initiated thirty-two prosecutions, all of them for blasphemous
libel, all of them upheld in the courts, and the latest of them against
Mary Ann Carlile. It had the support of the Government, and
particularly of Peel, now Home Secretary in the Government, who
pointed out that it was "a crime to attempt to deprive the lower
classes of the consolations of religion," and who added that he was
"satisfied with the law as it stood, and would not consent to change
it." But the full title of the Society for the Suppression of Vice was
The Society for the Suppression of Vice and the Encouragement of
Religion and Virtue; implicit in that title was a contradiction; and
the contradiction was perceived by David Ricardo. He used it to
make a telling comparison between the Society for the Suppression
of Vice and the Inquisition. He used it to make a speech that was a
plea for religious toleration. He used it to make the speech that in
the words of Hobhouse did him "immortal honour". The prosecu-
tion of Mary Ann Carlile was thereby turned into the prosecution
of the Society for the Suppression of Vice; and in fact ifnot in form
the prosecution led to a conviction. After 1823, not much more was
heard of the Society for the Suppression of Vice.
 The Inquisition had itself been suppressed in Spain by 1823. It
had been suppressed by the Liberales when they seized power in
1820; and in 1823 the Liberales still held power, though precariously.
For in January 1823 the French, simultaneously invoking the
Divine Right of Kings and ignoring the Pax Britannica, invaded
Spain. "The die appears to be cast, and war will immediately re-
commence in Europe," David Ricardo wrote on January 30th;
and he felt a strong sympathy for the cause of Spain. But the cause
was very confused. It was confused by the military weakness of the
Liberales; further, by the skilful policy of Canning, now Foreign
Secretary in the Government; and further, by the intervention of
Sir Robert Wilson. Major-General Sir Robert Wilson was a war
hero, who had proceeded from war to politics: he had been the
first champion of the cause of Spain, and in 1821 he had been on his
way to assist in person the cause of Spain. Then in 1821 there had
occurred the death of the unlucky Queen Caroline. Neither the
divorce nor the death of Queen Caroline had seemed to David
Ricardo to be an "affair of state"; but that was not the view of the
Government, nor was it the view of Sir Robert Wilson. He broke
off his journey to Spain to attend the funeral of Queen Caroline;
the funeral was followed by a riot; and for attending the funeral he
was summarily dismissed from the army. His long and distinguished
career was terminated in a letter that became famous as "the
letter of 2! lines"; and "the letter of 2! lines" led to a popular
confusion between the cause of Spain and the cause of Sir Robert
Wilson. The confusion was felt even within the Parliamentary
Alliance. David Ricardo felt most sympathy for the cause of Spain.
Hume felt most sympathy for the cause of Sir Robert Wilson. The
effect was put with characteristic felicity by Bentham, when in
June he was belatedly trying to organize a Committee for Spain.
"If we succeed with Mr. Ricardo," he told Mill, "we must not
despair of Mr. Hume ... "
By June the Parliament of 1823 was approaching its end; and
it was to be the last Parliament in the life of David Ricardo. He
made his last speech in the House of Commons on July 1st, when
he supported the Unitarian Petition for Free Discussion. He was
appointed to his last Select Committee on July 4th, after a debate
on the Engrossing of Bills in the House, whether they should be
in the old Black Letter or the new Italian Hand, when he said that
"it was hardly to be expected that the present character, now so
much used, would ever become illegible". He made his last contri-
bution to the Parliamentary Alliance on July 7th, when on a pro-
cedural motion "that the word now stand part of the question",
the Tellers for the motion were "Mr. Hume and Mr. Ricardo".
Then on July 14th he went home to Gatcombe.
David Ricardo at Gatcombe differed in one respect from David
Ricardo in Parliament. "As for improvements I attempt very few,
and am very much disposed to be satisfied with things as they are,"
he wrote from Gatcombe in August. But there were improvements
to be made to the estate, as an investment; and there were impro-
vements to be made to the estate, that were aesthetic. In 1820 he
had sold the Hazelwood Coppice, sixty acres of woodland, which
had originally given the property its name, and in 1823 he was
buying farmland to take its place; and in 1823 the quarry at the
back, from which the stone for the house had probably been taken,
was to be screened by a building, and he was making designs for
the building. He covered nine sheets of paper with measurements
and drawings, in pen and pencil; and on one of the sheets he had
begun to draft a letter to Malthus, which from its content must date
from July or August. This single sheet, with at the head the first
sentence of a letter to Malthus, and at the foot a sketch of a pro-
jected improvement, represents most completely David Ricardo
as he was at Gatcombe in the summer of 1823.
For the correspondence with Malthus, which had been so im-
portant to him at the beginning of his career, suddenly took on a
new importance at the end. The subject of the correspondence now
was value. Value, exchangeable value, absolute value, a measure of
value, a standard of value, had formed the first chapter of The
Principles of Political Economy; and the first chapter had been much
the longest and much the most theoretical in the whole book. Yet
he had never been satisfied with it, and had largely rewritten it
for both the later editions that were published in his lifetime. Then
in April 1823 Malthus wrote an Essay; as so often before he found
that he disagreed with Malthus in the Essay; and as so often before
their disagreement found expression in the economic correspon-
dence. In the summer of 1823 he was happy in the economic
correspondence. "I think I have shown you that your long letter
was acceptable," he wrote on August 3rd, "by doing that which is
 really a difficult task for me, wntmg a longer one myself. I am
however only labouring in my vocation, and trying to understand
the most difficult question in Political Economy... " But August
3rd 1823 was very late in the lifetime of David Ricardo.
He had drawn up his will in the spring of 1820. Perhaps the act
of drawing up his will prompted reflections on life and death that
spring; at any rate, in the summer he spoke of them to Mill, and
in the autumn he set them down in a letter to him. "You are mis-
taken," he wrote, "in supposing that because I consider life on the
whole as not a very desirable thing to retain after 60, that therefore
I am discontented with my situation, or have not objects of im-
mediate interest to employ me. The contrary is the case - I am very
comfortable and am never in want of objects of interest or amuse-
ment. I am led to set a light value on life when I consider the many
accidents and privations to which we are liable. - In my own case, I
have already lost the use of one ear, completely, and am daily
losing my teeth, that I have scarcely one that is useful to me. No
one bears these serious deprivations with a better temper than my-
self, yet I cannot help anticipating from certain notices which I
sometimes think I have, that many more await me. I have not I
assure you seriously quarrelled with life - I am on very good terms
with it, and mean while I have it to make the best of it, but my ob-
servation on the loss of esteem and interest which old people
generally sustain from their young relations, often indeed from their
own imperfections and misbehaviour, but sometimes from the
want of indulgence and consideration on the part of the young,
convinces me that general happiness would be best promoted if
death visited us on an average at an earlier period than he now
does."
That letter to Mill was written in September 1820; and his last
letter to Mill was written in September 1823. It was written on
September 5th, and by September 5th he was already ill. His
illness 2 began as earache. It seemed the same as the earache he
had suffered from before, and it received the same treatment as it
had received before. But it did not now respond to treatment as
quickly as it had responded before. In the first reference made to
the illness in a letter, Priscilla Ricardo wrote to her nephew David
Wilkinson on September 4th, "Your uncle is suffering a good deal
of pain in his ear, which seems to resist leeches and poultices and
186

disturbs his rest. I begin to be uncomfortable at its obstinacy... "

At the beginning of September a small family party was staying
at Gatcombe. Sylla Austin and her children were there, Moses and
Fanny Ricardo were there. It was on Moses Ricardo therefore that
the care of his brother chiefly devolved. Though he had recently
retired from practice, he had been a surgeon for more than twenty
years, and always highly regarded as a surgeon. Better than
anyone else he must have understood the constitution of his brother,
and he must have been familiar with the history of his earache. He
was precisely the kind of man who would have kept himself in-
formed of the advances of medical research. But while he would
have understood earache, he would not have understood, and
could not have understood, in September 1823, the complications
that could follow an earache.
Mastoid is a word that is nowhere used in any of the accounts of
the illness. But it seems certain that an infection in the ear led to
an infection of the mastoid; and while the existence of the mastoid
was known at the time, less was known of infection, and the process
of infection, and the progress of infection. Consequently it seemed
like "a frightful dream" when on September loth it became appa-
rent that David Ricardo was dying. Expresses were at once sent to
London to summon the absent members of the family. It was too
late. At about noon, on Thursday September 11th 1823, he died.

NOTES
I. Though his was a household name for thirty years, no biography of him
has yet been written. The characteristic letter from David Ricardo is in the
Bodleian Library at Oxford, reference Ms. Montagu d. 15 fol. 188; while the
project for a "bust and tablet" is mentioned in a letter by Mill, now in the
Library of the University of London, reference A.L. 187/25: I am grateful for
permission to quote from both. He paid a noble tribute to David Ricardo in the
House of Commons in February 1824.
2. I am most obliged to Dr. Yasha Rabinowitch for interpreting the symptoms
described in some detail in the accounts written at the time.
 CHAPTER XXVIII

Hardenhuish

The funeral was arranged for the Thursday of the following

week, September 18th. During that week much was done for the
permanent recollection of David Ricardo, and was done by the
newspapers. Most was done by two newspapers, the Morning
Chronicle and the Sunday Times.
The Morning Chronicle was no longer edited by Perry. His health
had begun to fail in 181 7; and he had then promoted John Black,
one of his reporters, to the post of editor. Like Perry, he was a
Scot; and like Perry, a well-educated Scot. It was indeed said of
Black that he was too "philosophical" to be a good editor. But it
was because he was "philosophical" that he was the friend of
Mill; and because he was "philosophical" that he was able to do
justice to David Ricardo. On September 15th he published in the
Morning Chronicle an appreciation of David Ricardo written by
Mill. It begins, "Permit me to pay a tribute, in the name of my
country, to the memory of one of the most valuable men whose
loss she has ever had to deplore ... " and it is the most moving, the
most dignified, and the most worthy, of all the appreciations written
about David Ricardo.
The only newspaper to attempt a full obituary notice of David
Ricardo was the Sunday Times. The attempt was made in a leading
article; and its success must have astonished most readers of the
Sunday Times. The news that David Ricardo was dead reached
London on Friday September 12th, and No. 48 of the Sunday Times
was due to be published on Sunday September 14th. There were
often in those days three separate editions of the paper, two of
them appearing on the Sunday, and the third, "Monday'S Edition",
on the Monday. This was the case with No. 48: and in the succes-
sive editions of No. 48 the evolution of the leading article can be
traced. About half of it appeared in the first edition; the whole of
188 Hardenhuish

it appeared in the second edition; and the whole of it was then

moved, to the top left-hand corner of the front page, for the third
edition. It was thus put together in little more than forty-eight
hours, and was a remarkable achievement, since it is in effect a
short biography of David Ricardo. But then it was the achievement
of a remarkable man. He was the chief proprietor of the Sunday
Times, and his name was Daniel Whittle Harvey.1
With David Ricardo he had associations that went back many
years. Though an Essex man, the son of a grocer in Colchester, and
three times Member of Parliament for Colchester, he came to
London early in life to be articled to an attorney; and in 180g
formed a connexion with the City of London, first by marrying the
daughter of a wealthy merchant of Bishopsgate, and then by be-
coming a member of the Common Council of the City of London
for the ward of Bishopsgate. In religion he was a Unitarian, and
his first known association with David Ricardo was at the Unitarian
dinner held in 1813. By 1813 he had already once contested the
seat of Colchester; and in the general election of 1818 he was re-
turned to Parliament. There he again met David Ricardo. He
made his maiden speech in the House of Commons exactly two
months before him; he took part in many of the same debates as
him; and he registered many a vote in the same "List of the
Minority" as him. And after his death he even took his place in
the Parliamentary Alliance: as a party eulogist later put it, " ...side
by side with Mr. Hume the fearless reformer toiled for twenty
years ... " But at the general election of 1820 there had been a set-
back to his political career. A legal technicality allowed the Govern-
ment to disqualify him; from 1820 to 1826 he was out of Parlia-
ment; and out of Parliament in January 1823 he bought his first
newspaper. It was the recently started Sunday Times.
As chief proprietor of the Sunday Times his practice was to write
the leading article himself; and the character of his writing is
strongly marked in the leading article headed DAVID RICARDO. An
Essex paper said of him that he was " ... an orator born. He had
the divine afflatus ... " and his writing was always the writing of
an orator. But as his public life proved, he was an orator who knew
his facts; and beyond the facts, the death of David Ricardo was an
occasion for oratory. The result is an impression of David Ricardo
that is unsurpassed. Perhaps it is most appropriate where it is most
 Hardenhuish 18g

simple; and nothing could be more simple than his evocation of

David Ricardo in the House of Commons. "In St. Stephen's we
shall miss the little plain man with the acute features and the keen
eye who sat by the pillar... "
No. 49 of the Sunday Times reported the funeral.2 David Ricardo
was to be buried at Hardenhuish; and the decision that he should
be buried at Hardenhuish must have been the first to be taken after
his death, and must have been taken by his widow. It may at first
have seemed a strange decision. He had lived and died at Gatcombe,
and there were within a mile of Gatcombe two churchyards, in
both of which later generations of the family were to be buried.
But Priscilla Ricardo had her reasons for preferring Hardenhuish.
"She has determined on leaving Gatcombe immediately, and it is
settled that she goes tomorrow with Mrs. Clutterbuck to Harden-
huish," her daughter-in-law Harriet wrote to Maria Edgeworth on
September 21st; "- her mind appears to rest with comfort on the
idea of settling near Hardenhuish ... "
Hardenhuish then was little more than the house, the park, the
lodge, the home farm, just outside Chippenham, but there had for
centuries been a church at Hardenhuish. And for centuries the
church at Hardenhuish had been badly sited. The land slopes from
north to south, and it had been sited at the southern end of the
park, on low ground, and subject to flooding. Then in about the
year that David Ricardo was born the owner of Hardenhuish re-
solved to build a new church on a new site. It is one of the most
beautiful small churches in England; and particularly beautiful in
its setting. In 1823 it stood on a knoll, facing a country lane, sur-
rounded by the grass and trees of the park. With the new church,
of course, came a new churchyard, and it was the churchyard that
now concerned Priscilla Ricardo. Because it was new, it was almost
empty; and because it was almost empty, there was room in it for a
Memorial.
The funeral itself was kept as private as possible. Since ladies in
those days did not go to funerals, the mourners were all men, and
nearly all the men were relations. The three sons of David Ricardo
were the principal mourners; then six of his brothers; then his
three brothers-in-law; then seven of his nephews. Only two persons
not of the family were present, the Rector of Minchinhampton and
Joseph Hume of the Parliamentary Alliance; those two, and the
 Hardenhuish

reporter who described the funeral for the newspapers. But the
best account of the funeral was written by a correspondent of the
Morning Chronicle, who lived in the market town of Tetbury, and
who watched the procession pass through at ten o'clock that
morning. "The hearse was preceded by a mourning chariot and
four, in which was the Rev. William Cockin, Rector of Minchin-
hampton, and followed by four mourning coaches and four, and
after came two private carriages of the deceased ... " The route
taken by the procession was thus from Gatcombe to Avening, to
Tetbury, and at last to Hardenhuish.
The will of David Ricardo was entered for probate at the Doctors
Commons in London on October 11th. The executors were his
widow, his eldest son, and his brother Frank. Most of the business
to do with the will fell to his brother, who had been left two hundred
pounds as a partial recompense; and the business was prolonged,
for as late as 1838 he was still corresponding with the Commis-
sioners of the Revenue on the duty still to be paid. The estate of
course was large. "Mr. Ricardo is supposed to have died worth
£ 700,000," was the comprehensive estimate of the Gentleman's
Magazine.
His will was a typically rational document. The main beneficia-
ries were his sons. Put approximately, each son was to receive a
landed estate, and the means of maintaining a landed estate. Thus
he left to Osman the Bromesberrow estate, to David the Gatcombe
estate, to Mortimer the Kent estates: and they were equally the
residuary legatees. Each daughter was to receive twenty thousand
pounds, which in the case of married daughters was to include
their marriage settlements. Priscilla Ricardo was to receive four
thousand pounds, and an annuity of four thousand pounds. And
there were more personal bequests. There were tokens of remem-
brance of one hundred pounds each to all his brothers and sisters,
to his brothers-in-law, and to three friends, George Basevi the elder,
Malthus, and Mill. There were annuities to the poorer members of
the family, in England and in Holland. There were possessions:
the contents of 56, Upper Brook Street to Priscilla Ricardo, "my
silver vase" to Osman, "my gold snuff-box" to David, "my diamond
shirt-pin" to Mortimer. And finally, there was one bequest, not
specified in the will, but made by his family. That was his watch,
presented to Mill.
 Hardenhuish

It was natural, after his death, that the friends of David Ricardo
should all of them have considered the best ways of perpetuating
his memory. In the autumn of 1823 there were in fact three pro-
jects being separately undertaken. The first was at Hardenhuish.
The second was a plan, initiated by Hume, for a "bust and tablet"
in Westminster Abbey. The third was the "Ricardo Memorial
Lectures", which was the "tribute to his genius" paid by the
Political Economy Club.
Perhaps the third, the "Ricardo Memorial Lectures", was the
project that David Ricardo himself would most have favoured.
They were to be delivered by McCulloch, whom he had regarded
as the soundest of the "modern political economists". It would
have pleased him that the public came to the lectures, in the April
and May of 1824, and came in considerable numbers. After the
third lecture the venue had to be moved to a larger hall; and at
various times during the course of the lectures the audience included
members of the Government, among them the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, members of the Opposition, members of the House of
Lords, and "several ladies". But Priscilla Ricardo was not one of
the "several ladies". As directed in the will, she had already sold
the lease of 56, Upper Brook Street, in March 1824, and she had
already taken a house in Wiltshire that was near Hardenhuish.
At the Royal Academy in 1823 a young sculptor had exhibited a
model of "Samson Killing the Lion". He was William Pitts: and he
was commissioned to design the Memorial to David Ricardo at
Hardenhuish. It cannot have been an easy commission for him.
The Memorial was to be very near to the church; its style had there-
fore to blend with the style of the church; and there is an extreme
but elegant simplicity in the style of the church. How far he suc-
ceeded can be judged by anyone who goes to Hardenhuish. He
was thought to have succeeded at the time. As a statuary, it was his
first commission, and it was followed by at least six others. And he
was thought to have succeeded by the family. For when in 1831
little George Ricardo, the grandson of David Ricardo, fell off his
pony at the age of five and was killed, he was again employed "to
erect a cenotaph ... in Gatcombe Park".
In October 1824 Mallet was on a visit to Mrs. Smith at Easton
Grey, and one day they drove over to Hardenhuish. There he
saw the Memorial for the first time. "It consists of a pedestal of
 Hardenhuish

grey marble," he wrote, "surmounted by a small column on which

stands a funeral urn with drapery partly thrown over it, and a
plain inscription ... " and it is evident that in 1824 the Memorial
was not yet finished. What now seems its most attractive feature,
the mourning maidens grouped round the central column, was not
yet in place. But of course there was not just the Memorial to be
constructed, at Hardenhuish. Under the Memorial there was to be
the family vault.
As soon as she could after the death of her husband, Priscilla
Ricardo tried to resume the life that they had lived together. In
1825 she took a house in London, in Clifford Street, not too far
from Upper Brook Street, and for three years the family divided
their time between Wiltshire and London, as before they had divided
their time between Gloucestershire and London. But they were
three years of an increasing unhappiness, and after three years
Priscilla Ricardo gave up the house in London. A letter she wrote
to Maria Edgeworth in 1828 conveys in unmistakable terms her
sense of an increasing unhappiness. "We have taken up our abode
in one of the sweetest vallies near Bath, the vicinity to which is the
only drawback to the satisfaction of the girls - though as we do not
visit in Bath, we have had but little interference from its gay inha-
bitants - and we are only 11 miles from our dear Henrietta... "
Henrietta was at Hardenhuish, and it was Henrietta who as far
as was possible had replaced her father at the heart of the family.
But time was always short for Henrietta. The consumption that at
some date unknown had entered the family had affected her; and
she had transmitted the consumption to her children. It was the
fate of Henrietta to watch two of her children die, before she herself
died, in March 1838. Henrietta was thus the second to be buried in
the family vault.
Courage was never a virtue lacking in Priscilla Ricardo. She
now had the courage to break with the past, and move away from
the past; she lived the last years of her life at Morden Park in
Surrey, and from Morden Park a last glimpse of her was given by
Harriet Ricardo to Maria Edgeworth. "We were for a day or two
at Morden lately with Mrs. Ricardo and Birtha, they are both
tolerably well - but you would think them both greatly altered,"
Harriet wrote, adding, "She still works beautifully to my eyes,
though not at all to her own satisfaction ... " Then, when she was
 Hardenhuish 193

in her 81st year, she went on a visit to her son Mortimer at Kidding-
ton, near Oxford; and at Kiddington, in October 1849, she died.
Though nothing was said about it in her will, it was understood
that she was to be buried at Hardenhuish.
The vault at Hardenhuish is directly below the Memorial. The
entrance is some distance away, under a yew tree, where two flag-
stones cover two hinged iron doors. The doors open to steps leading
down to an antechamber; and then, beyond the antechamber, to
the vault. In the vault there are five coffins, each enclosed in lead,
and then in leather; and on each coffin a little silver nameplate.
Their arrangement is logical. On the extreme right is Henrietta;
her mother next to her; in the centre Birtha; next to her Mary;
and on the extreme left, David Ricardo.

NOTES
I. There is a collection of materials on him in the County Library at Col-
chester, among them the files of the Essex Review, which include a memoir.
2. "Recollections of the impressive solemnity of the great funeral cortege
which wound over the Gloucestershire hills ... lingered for many years in the
vicinity," says Hollander. Jacob H. Hollander first came to England in I8g1,
at the start of what was to be a fifty years enthusiasm for David Ricardo. In IglO
he published his David Ricardo: A Centenary Estimate, a hundred years after the
first of the economic writings; and at other times he edited some of the works
and some of the correspondence. As a Jew, as an economist - he was Professor
of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and formed the
famous Hollander Library - and as a public man, he was uniquely qualified to
write the biography of David Ricardo. He worked on one for many years, but
died before it was completed.
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AIKIN, Lucy: Memoir of John Aikin, M. D., two volumes, London, 1823.
ASPINALL, A.: Politicians and the Press, London, 1949. Statistical Account of
London Newspapers I8oo-I830, English Historical Review, 65.
BAIN, A.: James Mill, London, 1882.
Lord Beaconsfield's Letters I830-I852, edited by his brother, London, 1887.
BONAR, J.: Malthus and His Work, London, 1924.
DE QUINCEY, THOMAS: Confessions if an English Opium-Eater, London,
1906.
The Later Correspondence if George III, edited by A. ASPINALL, five volumes,
Cambridge, 1962-70.
The Correspondence of George, Prince if Wales, edited by A. ASPINALL, eight
volumes, London, 1963-71.
The Letters of Edward Gibbon, edited by J. E. NORTON, three volumes,
London, 1956.
The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, edited by P. P. HOWE, twenty-one
volumes, London, 1930-34.
HILTON PRICE, F. G.: Handbook of London Bankers, London, 1890.
HYAMSON, A. M.: The Sephardim of England, London, 1951.
MARTINEAU, HARRIET: Autobiography, two volumes, London, 1877.
MORGAN, E. V. AND THOMAS, W. A.: The Stock Exchange, London, 1962.
MORTIMER, THOMAS: Every Man His Own Broker, 8th edition, London,
1775·
O'BRIEN, D. P.: J. R. McCulloch, A Study in Classic Economics, London,
197°·
RAE, J.: The Life of Adam Smith, London, 1895.
ROTH, CECIL: A History of the Marranos, Philadelphia, 1932. A History of
the Jews oj Italy, Philadelphia, 1946.
SEYMOUR, LADY (ELIZABETH): The Pope of Holland House, London, 1906.
SMITH, ADAM: The Wealth of Nations, edited by E. Cannan, two volumes,
London, 19°4.
196 Bibliography
STURGE, CHARLOTTE: Fami(y Records, privately printed, 1882.
WALLAS, G.: The Life ofFrancis Place, London, 1918.
WEBB, SIDNEY AND BEATRICE: English Local Government, five volumes,
London, 1906-13.
The Life of William Wilberforce, written by his sons, five volumes, London,
1838 .
WILSON, C. H.: Anglo-Dutch Commerce and Finance in the 18th Century,
Cambridge, 1941.
COCKAYNE, G. E.: The Complete Peerage, eight volumes, London, 1887-98.
COLVIN, H. M.: Dictionary of British Architects 1660-1840, London, 1954.
GRAVES, A.: Royal Academy of Arts, Exhibitions 1769-19°4, seven volumes,
London, 1905-6.
GUNNIS, R.: Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851, London, 1953.
Files of The Times, the Sunday Times, the New Times, the Morning Chro-
nicle, the Globe, the Globe and Traveller, the Week(y Political Register, the
Builder, at the British Library Newspaper Collections, Colindale.
Parliamentary Debates, Accounts and Papers, Reports and Committees,
in the State Paper Room at the British Museum.
The Economist. Individual studies: J. H. HOLLANDER, David Ricardo: A
Centenary Estimate, Baltimore, 19 10; M. BLAUG, Ricardian Economics, New
Haven, 1958. General works: W. BAGEHOT, Economic Studies, London,
1880; J. A. SCHUMPETER, History of Economic Ana(ysis, London 1955;
and the writings of MARX, particularly Marx-Engels Correspondence,
London, 1934, and Volume I of Capital, two volumes, London, 1930.
 Index
Aikin, John: diarist 13
Amsterdam: the Ricardo family in I,
condition of Jews in 5, DR at
school in I I, goes to church in 65,
revisited 173
Aspland, Robert: Unitarian minister
61, attends lecture 107, organizes
petition 65, 183, note 66
Astley, Francis Dukinfield: raises
mortgage 132, note 134
Austin, Edward and Anthony (sons-
in-law): marry 120
Austin, Fanny (daughter): born 31, is
not taught political economy by
her father 125, is married and dies
121
Austin, Priscilla (Sylla) (daughter):
born 3 I, married 120, at Gatcombe
in September 1823 186
Bank of England: in the 18th century
17, suspends cash payments 35, its
banknotes 55, DR writes on 17, 105,
and the resumption of cash payments
143, note 46
Baring, Alexander: financial authority
144
Baring, Sir Francis: merchant in 1805
50, loan contractor in 1810 68
Barnard, Sir John: promotes Act 20,
in the City 50, 88
Basevi, George, the elder: DR's oldest
friend 82
Basevi, George, the younger: architect
82, on the Ricardo family 120, note
86
Beaufort, Duke of: does not make DR
a magistrate 97, his political con-
nexions 170
Bentham, Jeremy: the principle of
utility 73, and the Chrestomathia
108, gives a dinner 152, and Owen
158, supports cause of Spain 183,
note 78
Berkeley, William: DR disapproves of
121
Bosanquet, Charles: practical man 59
Boyd, Benfield: financiers 33, 67
Bromesberrow: estate purchased 129
Brooks's Club: DR a member 150
Brougham, Henry: political giant 138,
calls DR an "oracle" 147
Capadoce, George: Godfather to DR
9, disinherits 28, subscribes to
Loyalty Loan 33, note 14
Carlile, Mary Ann: prosecution of 182
Caroline: Princess of Wales 32, Queen
168, funeral of 183
Clutterbuck, Henrietta (daughter):
born 31, letters to her father 89,92,
courting 93, after her father's death
192
Cobbett, William: the journalist 55,
first writes about DR 58, inspects
Gatcombe 99, on The Principles of
Political Economy I 27, inspects Bro-
mesberrow 131, nicknames DR 147
Cockerell, Samuel Pepys: architect 80,
84
Cumberland, family: DR's quarrel
with 114, note 122
Curtis, Sir William: at Ramsgate 88
Da Costa, Rebecca (first cousin): DR
meets again I 74
Daniels, Joseph Elkin: his fraud 44
Delvalle, family: in London 6
 Index
De Quincey, Thomas: reads The
Principles of Political Economy 123,
note 127
D'Israeli, Benjamin: subscribes to
Loyalty Loan 33
D'Israeli, Isaac: his education 13
Disraeli, Benjamin: invents word
"millionaire" 7 I, DR might not
have liked 82, on McCulloch 106,
on Lord Liverpool 137
Dumont, Etienne: interprets Bentham
75,atGeneva 174
Edgeworth, Maria: on DR's educa-
tion I I, describes Gatcombe 98,
DR advises on investment 132, her
visit to Gatcombe 154, shown Crom-
well's Head 119, note 14
Edinburgh Review: founded 56, re-
views The Principles if Political
Economy 126
Ferdinand of Brunswick: victor of
Rossbach 4, uncle of vanquished at
Valmy 29
Forster, Edward: banker in 1793 31,
on the crisis of 1797 36,
Fox, Charles james: inspiration of
Brooks's 150, member for West-
minster 166
Garroway's Coffee House: and the
stock market 15
Gatcombe: DR purchases 94, im-
proves 98, 184, note 100
George III: on the cash payments
crisis 35, reviews the Volunteers 51,
resists Panopticon 108
Gibbon, Edward: describes The Wealth
qf Nations 39
Gideon, Sampson: financier 18, note
21
Gloucester, Duke of: meets DR 155
Goldsmid brothers (Benjamin and
Abraham): financiers 67, note 72
Goldsmid, Isaac Lyon: his education
13, note 14
Grenfell, Pascoe: invites DR to write a
pamphlet 104
Grenville, Lord: sympathetic acquain-
tance with DR 45
Grote, Mrs. George: perceptive com-
ment 76
Hardenhuish: home in 1822 of Hen-
rietta 179, DR to be buried at 189
Harvey, Daniel Whittle: chief pro-
prietor of the Sunday Times 188, note
193
Hobhouse, Sir Benjamin: banker at
Bath 33, 167
Hobhouse, john Cam: Keeps a diary
39, 199, stands for Westminster 167,
note 40
Holland, Lord: on the invasion threat
in 179637, on economic opinion in
1806 56, at Holland House 152,
note 156
Horner, Francis: the Edinburgh Re-
viewer 56, at the King of Clubs 149,
and the Bullion Controversy 58,
and the Corn Laws Controversy 102,
his premature death 136, note 60
Hume,joseph: and the Parliamentary
Alliance I 79, note 186
Israel, David (great-grandfather): in
Amsterdam 2
Israel, Samuel (great-great-grandfa-
ther): in Livorno and Amsterdam
1,3
Kent, Duke of: daughter Princess
Victoria at Ramsgate 88, patron of
Chrestomathia 110
King of Clubs: DR a member of 150,
note 156
Lamb, family: and Portarlington 135,
and Westminster 167
Lancaster, joseph: educational refor-
mer 107
Lansdowne, Lord: Whig grandee 56,
declines to support Chrestomathia
110
Liverpool, Lord: Prime Minister in
181 9 137
Livorno: the Ricardo family in I, DR
disappointed by 177
Loans: the system in 1793 30, the
Loyalty Loan of 1796 32 the loan of
1807 45, of 1810 68, the Waterloo
Loan 71
 Index
London Institution: DR a founder-
member 49
Lowry, Rebecca (aunt): mineralogist
6,32,83
McCulloch, J. R.: economist 106,
reviews The Principles of Political
Economy 126, optimistic about "Mr.
Ricardo's Plan" 144, delivers Ri-
cardo Memorial Lectures 191, note
106
Mallet, John Lewis: keeps a diary 63,
extracts from the diary 127, 151,
161,191, note 66
Malthus, T. R.: on Population 76,
theoretical difference with DR 101,
184, and The Principles of Political
Economy 124, 126, bequest from DR
190, note 78
Marx, Karl: finds anticipation of the
class-struggle 102
Mill, James: philosopher 73, friend
closest to DR 78, and educational
reform 109, encourages DR to write
a big book 124, visits Gatcombe 153,
letter on life and death to 185,
writes worthy tribute to DR 187,
bequests from DR and family 190,
note 78
Mill, John Stuart: autobiographer 73,
76, learns political economy from
his father 125
Minchinhampton: DR Lord of the
Manor of 94, he presents petition
from 140
Napoleon: mltIates Continental Sys
tern 50, dislikes economists 103
Owen, Robert: philanthropist 157, note
16 3
Palmer, Lady Madelina: attends ball
at Ramsgate 91
Peel, Robert: Chairman of the Cash
Payments Committee 143
Perceval, Spencer: DR sends first book
to 58, sends his plan to 101
Perry,James: owner and editor of the
Morning Chronicle 49, published first
economic writings by DR 52, appre-
199
ciates The Principles of Political
Economy 127, note 53
Phillips, Thomas: his portrait of DR
155, note 156
Pitt, William: Prime Minister in 1793
29, and the Cash Payments crisis 35
Pitts, William: statuary 191
Place, Francis: philosophical radical
75, and the Chrestomathia 109, and
Westminster elections 166, note 113
Political Economy Club: DR a foun-
der-member 15 I, tribute by 19 I,
note 156
Portarlington: borough 135, 170, note
141
Portugal: and the Inquisition I, out-
side the Continental System 50
Priestley, Joseph: minister and scien-
tist 6 I
Ricardo, Abigail (mother): married at
sixteen 6, guardian of the faith 27,
her death in 1801 47
Ricardo, Abraham (brother): not
quite normal 27
Ricardo, Abraham Israel (father):
youngest son 5, marriage 6, Denizen
6, "Jew Broker" 10, trustee for the
new Stock Exchange 2 I, moves
family to Bow 23, reconciled even-
tually with DR 27, dies 81
Ricardo, Benjamin (brother): larking
in the Stock Exchange 44
Ricardo, Birtha (daughter): born 51,
behaves with decorum 153, goes on
Grand Tour 172, last glimpse of 192
Ricardo, David: Birth 7, education I I,
apprenticeship on the stock market
14, meets Priscilla Wilkinson 24,
breaks with his religion 27, marriage
28, independent in business 30,
scientific inclinations 32, the Volun-
teer 37, 51, reads The Wealth of
Nations 39, and the Stock Exchange
42, the "Philomathean" 48, civic
career at Bromley St. Leonard 52,
his part in the Bullion Controversy
57, first called a theorist 59, be-
comes a Unitarian 61, as loan-
contractor 45, 68, and Mill 73, and
Malthus 76, at Upper Brook Street
79, purchases Gatcombe 94, High
200
Sheriff of Gloucestershire 96, a beau
in his libraries 98, his part in the
Corn Laws Controversy 101, and
Say 103, and McCulloch 106, and
the Chrestomathia 108, swayed by
sentiment 116, 165, writes The
Principles qf Political Economy 124,
investments 129, enters Parliament
137, "Mr. Ricardo's Plan" 59, 101,
143, his clubs 149, portrait painted
155, asked for his autograph 156,
and Owen 157, and Reform 165,
advocates secret ballot 169, 170, on
the Grand Tour 171, forms Parlia-
mentary Alliance with Hume 179,
frustrates the Society for the Sup-
pression of Vice 182, supports cause
of Spain 183, last illness 185, funeral
189, will 190, the Ricardo Memorial
Lectures 191, the Memorial at
Hardenhuish 191
Ricardo, David (son): born 51, inhe-
rits Gatcombe 99, 190, bequest from
his father 190
Ricardo, Frank (brother): in business
129, executor to DR's will 190
Ricardo, jacob (brother): his career
51, 132, his descendants 52, note 53
Ricardo, john Lewis (nephew): his
public life 52
Ricardo, joseph (brother): seeks for-
tune in America 27
Ricardo, joseph Israel (grandfather):
his career 3
Ricardo, Mary (daughter): born 51,
behaves with decorum 153, goes on
Grand Tour 172
Ricardo, Mortimer (son): born 51,
leaves a fortune 134, bequest from
his father 190, his mother dies at his
house 193
Ricardo, Moses (brother): on DR's
education 12, his career 51, attends
DR in last illness 186
Ricardo, Osman (son): his romantic
name 25, at Cambridge go, his wife
Harriet 130, 186, 192, his public
life 130, 169, bequest from his
father 190
Ricardo, Priscilla (Mrs. David Ri-
cardo): at Bow 23, disowned by
Society of Friends 26, does not
Index
follow her husband into Unitarian
movement 64, initiates move to
Upper Brook Street 79, her capri-
cious temper 117, most at home in
the country 153, nurses her husband
185, arranges his funeral 189, after
his death 192
Ricardo, Ralph (brother): in business
129, tours Europe with DR 131
Ricardo, Samson (brother): in busi-
ness 132, leaves a fortune 134
Romilly, Sir Samuel: member for
Westminster 166
Rothschild, Nathan Mayer: financier
71
Samuda, Hannah (sister): marriage
27, share in Tontine 81
Say, jean-Baptiste: the economist 103,
on The Principles of Political Economy
126
Sharp, Richard: his career 135, and
the King of Clubs 149, assists DR in
Parliament 136
Shepherd, Lady Mary: a Bluestocking
91
Sheppard, family: and Gatcombe 93
Sheridan, R. B.: candidate for West-
minster 166
Smith, Adam: author of The Wealth qf
Nations 39, influences Homer 56,
influences Say 103, and The Prin-
ciples of Political Economy 125, the
Political Economy Club commemo-
rates 151
Smith, Sydney: and the King of
Clubs 149
Smith, Thomas (of Easton Grey):
friend and neighbour 97, staying at
Gatcombe 154, taking political
interest 170, death and memory 171
Southey, Robert: his Letters from
England 84
Spain: and the Marranos in I, the
Inquisition in 127, 183, and Liberal
138
Stewart, Dugald: Professor of Moral
Philosophy at Edinburgh University
56, Mill on 73, Say visits 104
Stock Exchange: early history 16,
transition from public to private 41,
 Index
syndicate as loan-contractors 44,
68,note46
Tierney, George: Leader of the Op-
position 101, 138, 168
Trower, Hutches: friend of DR 71, DR
discusses economics with 124 ,DR
discusses Reform with 165, note 72
Upper Brook Street: DR's London
home 79, sold in 1824 191, note 85
Wakefield, Edward: land-agent 129,
names borough of Portarlington 134
Wilberforce, William: subscribes to
Loyalty Loan 33, at Bath in 1799
201
38, does not approve of Unitarians
65, and the Society for the Suppres-
sion of Vice 182
Wilkinson, Edward (father-in-law):
at Bow 23, DR writes to 47, note 28
Wilkinson, Josiah (brother-in-law):
earliest letters to 3 I, his taste for
poetry 48, acquires Cromwell's
Head I 19, note 58
Wilkinson, William (nephew and
brother-in-law): early life I 17
Wilson, Sir Robert: and the cause of
Spain 183