Born, in England, 19 April 1772. Early education in England; in Holland, 1783–85. Began to assist his father in business on Stock Exchange, 1786. Married Priscilla Anne Wilkinson, 20 Dec. 1793. Mem. of newly founded Geological Soc., 1807. Bought the estate of Gatcombe Park, Gloucestershire, 1813. Retired from business, 1814. Sheriff, 1818. M.P. for Portarlington, Ireland, 1819–23. Visit to Continent, 1822. Died, at Gatcombe Park, 11 Sept. 1823. Works: “The High Price of Bullion a proof of the depreciation of Bank Notes,” 1810 (3rd edn., same year); “Observations on some passages in … the Edinburgh Review,” 1811; “Reply to Mr. Bosanquet’s Practical Observations,” 1811; “Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock,” 1815 (2nd edn., same year); “Proposals for an Economical and Secure Currency,” 1816 (2nd edn., same year); “On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation,” 1817; “On Protection to Agriculture,” 1822 (4th edn., same year); “Plan for the Establishment of a National Bank,” 1824. Posthumous: Letters to T. R. Malthus, 1887. Collected Works: ed. by McCulloch, 2nd edn., 1852.

Personal

  I do not remember that any public event of our own times has touched me so nearly, or so much with the feelings belonging to a private affliction, as the death of Mr. Ricardo. To me in some sense it was a private affliction, and no doubt to all others who knew and honoured his extraordinary talents. For great intellectual merit, wherever it has been steadily contemplated, cannot but conciliate some personal regard; and, for my part, I acknowledge that, abstracting altogether from the use to which a man of splendid endowments may apply them—or even supposing the case that he should deliberately apply them to a bad one—I could no more on that account withhold my good wishes and affection from his person, than, under any consideration of their terrific attributes, I could forbear to admire the power and the beauty of the serpent or the panther…. Mr. Ricardo, however, stood in no need of a partial or indulgent privilege; his privilege of intellect had a comprehensive sanction from all the purposes to which he applied it in the course of his public life; in or out of Parliament, as a senator, or as an author, he was known and honoured as a public benefactor. Though connected myself by private friendship with persons of the political party hostile to his, I heard amongst them all but one language of respect for his public conduct.

  His speaking, his conduct, his manner, were all exceptionable and all suited to the man,—his high station among philosophers, his known opinions on political affairs, his kindly nature, and his genuine modesty. There was something about him, chiefly a want of all affectation as well as pretention in everything he said or did, that won the respect of each party. His matter was ever of high value. Whether you agreed or differed with him, you were well pleased to have it brought out and made to bear upon the question, if indeed the pursuit of right and truth was your object. His views were often, indeed, abundantly theoretical, sometimes too refined for his audience, occasionally extravagant, from his propensity to follow a right principle into all its consequences, without duly taking into account in practice the condition of things to which he was applying it, as if a mechanician were to construct an engine without taking into consideration the resistance of the air in which it was to work, or the strength and the weight and the friction of the parts of which it was to be made…. But while such were his errors, and those of a kind to excite very strong feelings in certain large and important classes in the House of Commons, he was uniformly and universally respected for the sterling qualities of his capacity and his character, which were acknowledged by all.

  His benignity of character and simple but earnest manner in argument often made converts where his books had failed to do so.

  During this first period of my life, the habitual frequenters of my father’s house were limited to a very few persons, most of them little known to the world, but whom personal worth, and more or less of congeniality with at least his political opinions (not so frequently to be met with then as since) inclined him to cultivate; and his conversations with them I listened to with interest and instruction. My being an habitual inmate of my father’s study made me acquainted with the dearest of his friends, David Ricardo, who by his benevolent countenance, and kindliness of manner, was very attractive to young persons, and who, after I became a student of political economy, invited me to his house and to walk with him in order to converse on the subject.

  Miss Edgeworth visited the Ricardos at Gatcombe in 1821, and gives an account of his family and “delightfully pleasant house.” She says that he was charming in conversation; perpetually starting new game, and never arguing for victory. He took part in charades, and represented a coxcomb very drolly. Altogether she thought him one of the most agreeable and least formal persons she ever met…. His family held, it appears, that any child “could impose upon him.”

General

  Consolidating his views in one work, he gave to the world his excellent treatise on his favourite science, which, with Mr. Malthus’s “Essay on the Principle of Population,” divides the claim to a second place after the “Wealth of Nations,” among the books which this country has produced upon the important science of economics.

  This is a most able, original, and profound work. Its appearance formed a new era in the history of the science. Exclusive of many valuable correlative discussions, Mr. Ricardo has traced the source and limiting principle of exchangeable value, and has exhibited the laws which determine the distribution of the various products of art and industry among the various ranks and orders of society…. Mr. Ricardo was the first to perceive the error into which Smith had fallen, in supposing that the effects consequent upon an increase or diminution of the wages paid for the labour employed in the production of commodities were the same with those consequent upon an increase or diminution of the quantity of such labour.

  His book is the true manual of the demagogue,—seeking power by means of agrarianism, war, and plunder. Its lessons being inconsistent with those afforded by the study of all well-observed facts, and inconsistent even with themselves, the sooner they shall come to be discarded the better will it be, for the interests of landlord and tenant, manufacturer and mechanic, and mankind at large.

  He was an economist only, not at all a social philosopher in the wider sense, like Adam Smith or John Mill. He had great acuteness, but little breadth. For any large treatment of moral and political questions he seems to have been alike by nature and preparation unfitted; and there is no evidence of his having had any but the most ordinary and narrow views of the great social problems. His whole conception of human society is material and mechanical, the selfish principle being regarded, after the manner of the Benthamites, as omnipotent, not merely in practical economy, but, as appears from his speech on the ballot and his tract on reform, in the whole extent of the social field. Roscher calls him “ein tiefer Menschenkenner;” it would be difficult to characterize him more inaptly. The same writer remarks on his “capitalistic” tone, which, he says, becomes “mammonistic” in some of his followers; but the latter spirit is already felt as the pervading atmosphere of Ricardo’s works. He shows no trace of that hearty sympathy with the working classes which breaks out in several passages of the “Wealth of Nations;” we ought, perhaps, with Held, to regard it as a merit in Ricardo that he does not cover with fine phrases his deficiency in warmth of social sentiment.

  There are few writers so open to misunderstanding, and few indeed whose real merits have been so completely thrust out of sight by other merits fancifully attributed to them. “The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation” has been invested with the portentiously solemn character of a complete scientific handbook, while its author has been praised alike by friend and foe for rigid logic, careful method, and an exactitude of definition, almost mathematical in its nature. To such an extent has this attitude been assumed that till some few years ago hardly any critic, however unfriendly, hesitated to give his assent to the proposition that Ricardo’s conclusions, his premises once granted, were irrefutable. And yet it is hardly possible to doubt that the eulogies thus lavishly if carelessly bestowed are not those to which Ricardo is best entitled. It is doubtful, perhaps, whether he is entitled to some of them at all. So far is the work under consideration from being a perfect work that it is disfigured by blemishes and defects of very many kinds. Not only is it remarkable for infelicity of language, with all its fatal consequences of exaggeration and obscurity, but the grammar itself is halting and the accuracy often apparent, fallaciously apparent, rather than real.

  English economists can hardly fail to be proud of Ricardo; and whether their pride takes the form of treating him as an Angel of Light or as the Prince of Darkness, they will probably all assign to him much greater influence than foreign economists would allow. Besides, if, as we are told, it is a pleasure to the young and vehement to be heterodox and to scoff at great names, it is a comfort to the staid and academic “stare super antiquas vias,” to feel that they are building on the foundations that were laid by the fathers of their church.

  With Ricardo’s name is associated a progress in our science far more considerable than can be credited to Say. Ricardo is in fact by general consent recognised as the greatest economist of the nineteenth century. Like Malthus, he suffered much from the misconceptions of his too enthusiastic friends, but he had a still larger number of adversaries who attacked him when he wrote, and his recent adversaries have not been few. Among them it is grievous that we must mention two writers of such conspicuous merit as Jevons and Ferrara…. But after all, Ricardo’s chief title to fame rests upon the “Principles of Political Economy” (1817), a work of originality and profundity so remarkable that it marks an epoch in the history of our science, though, to be sure, its good points are overstated by such enthusiastic partisans as MacCulloch and De Quincey. That it has defects is obvious to any conscientious and critical reader, but these are not often the ones which trivial-minded or incompetent critics have stretched its words and twisted its thoughts to fasten upon it. Ricardo certainly never dreamt of writing an exhaustive treatise, because, as is definitely recorded by him again and again in his letters, he was painfully aware of his disqualifications as a writer, indeed his modesty has overstated them.

  Ever since the death of Ricardo there has been an increasing interest in him and his writings. For all deductive economists his theories have had a charm which those of no later writer possess. There are many whose reasoning is more perfect, many whose ideas are more clearly expressed; but few have attained the commanding position of Ricardo in economic theory. On the other hand, among a large class of economists with inductive and historical tendencies, any doctrine to which Ricardo’s name is attached is discredited, and often treated with contempt. I have no desire to enter this controversy, which must rest as it is until a new spirit causes men to interpret the history of economic theory from a new standpoint. I only desire to discuss the interpretation of Ricardo’s writings which has grown up among his followers and disciples, and from a position friendly to him and them. Few writers have a greater interest in deductive economics than I, and no one would be less willing to say anything that would reflect any discredit or lower in any way the high esteem in which Ricardo is held. Yet it seems to me that his friends in defending him have placed him in a false light, and have distorted the history of economic theory. Ricardo is too great a man to need any false praise; his merits will only be magnified if he is placed in his true historical position as an economist.