Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/553

Rh R I B K I C 533 vogue for a long while among Spanish and French painters and students. Besides the work of Dominici already referred to (1840-46), the Diccionario Jfistorico of Ccan Bermudez is a principal authority regarding Ribera and his works. (W. M. R.) RIBES. See CURRANT and GOOSEBERRY. RICARDO, DAVID (1772-1823), a celebrated political economist, was born at London 19th April 1772. He was the third son of his father, a Jewish gentleman of Dutch birth, whose family, it is said, had formerly resided in Portugal. The elder Ricardo bore an honourable character, and was a successful member of the Stock Exchange. The son was placed for two years at a com- mercial school in Holland, and at the age of fourteen entered his father's office, where he showed much aptitude for business. About the time when he attained his majority he abandoned the Hebrew faith, and conformed to the Anglican Church, a change which seems to have been connected with his marriage to Miss Wilkinson, which took place in 1793. In consequence of the step thus taken he was separated from his family and thrown on his own resources. His ability and uprightness were known, and he at once entered on such a successful career in the profession to which he had been brought up that at the age of twenty-five, we are told, he was already rich. He now began to occupy himself with scientific pursuits, and gave some attention to mathematics as well as to chemistry and mineralogy ; but, having met with Adam Smith's great work in 1799 at Bath, whither he had gone for his wife's health, he threw himself with ardour into the study of political economy. His first publication (1809) was The High Price of Bullion a, Proof of the Depreciation of Bank Notes. This tract was an expansion of a series of articles which the author had contributed to the Morning Chronicle. It gave a fresh stimulus to the controversy, which had for some time been discontinued, respecting the resumption of cash payments. Ricardo argued that the premium on bul- lion and the unfavourable state of the exchanges could only be explained by the depreciation of the inconvertible paper money then in circulation, which had fallen 25 per cent, below the value of specie in consequence of its over-issue. A committee to consider the whole question, commonly known as the Bullion Committee, was nominated by the House of Commons in February 1810. Amongst the members were Francis Horner, who was appointed chair- man, Alexander Baring (afterwards Lord Ashburton), William Huskisson, and Henry Thornton, author of the well known Inquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain (1802). The report, which was presented to parliament in June of the same year, was the joint production of Horner, Huskisson, and Thornton. It asserted the same views which Ricardo had put forward, and recommended the repeal of the Bank Restriction Act. Notwithstanding this, the House of Commons of the fol- lowing year, on the motion of Mr Vansittart (afterwards Lord Bexley), declared in the teeth of the facts that paper had undergone no depreciation, and negatived Homer's resolutions founded on the report of the committee. One of the strongest opponents of Ricardo's opinions was Mr Bosanquet ; he published in 1811 a pamphlet entitled Practical Observations on the Report of the Bullion Committee, and this drew forth from Ricardo an elaborate reply. Both this tract and its predecessor attracted much attention. They propound no new economic principles, but are based on the doctrines of Smith. They do not give such a systematic and complete view of the subject as Huskisson's well-known tract (The Question respecting the Depreciation of the Currency Stated and Examined, 1810), but they are well reasoned, and, as to their main conclusions, convincing. It has, however, been maintained that there were features of the case which Ricardo did not sufficiently take into account, especially the demand for bullion created by the necessity of meeting the foreign payments of England, which, in consequence of the Con- tinental system, could not be otherwise discharged. In 1811 he made the acquaintance of James Mill, whose introduction to him arose out of the publication of Mill's tract entitled Commerce Defended. The conversation of Ricardo's new - friend seems to have largely influenced his views ; Bentham indeed declared him to be Mill's intel- lectual child ; but, whilst Mill doubtless largely affected his political ideas, he was, on his side, under obligations to Ricardo in the purely economic field ; Mill said in 1823 that he himself and J. R. M'Culloch were Ricardo's disciples, and, he added, his only genuine ones. In 1815, when the Corn Laws were under discussion, he published his Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock. This was directed against a recent tract by Malthus entitled Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of Restraining the Free Importation of Foreign Corn. The reasonings of the essay are based on the theory of rent which has often been called by the name of Ricardo ; but the author distinctly states that it was not due to him. "In all that I have said concerning the origin and progress of rent I have briefly repeated, and endeavoured to elucidate, the principles which Malthus has so ably laid down on the same subject in his Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent. " We now know that the theory had been fully stated, before the time of Malthus, by Anderson ; it is in any case clear that it was no discovery of Ricardo. Even the conception of the soils of a country as comparable to a series of machines of different original powers, though capable of improvement by the application of capital, is quoted from Malthus. Ricardo states in this essay a set of propositions, most of them deductions from the theory of rent, which are in substance the same as those afterwards embodied in the Principles, and regarded as characteristic of his system, such as that increase of wages does not raise prices ; that profits can be raised only by a fall in wages and diminished only by a rise in wages ; and that profits, in the whole progress of society, are determined by the cost of the pro- duction of the food which is raised at the greatest expense. It does not appear that, excepting the theory of foreign trade, anything of the nature of fundamental doctrine, as distinct from the special subjects of banking and taxation, is laid down in the Principles which does not already appear in this tract. We find in it, too, the same exclu- sive regard to the interest of the capitalist class, and the same identification of their interest with that of the whole nation, which are generally characteristic of his writings. " Rent," he says, " is in all cases a portion of the profits previously obtained on the land," a proposition by which, for the sake, it is to be feared, of creating a political prejudice, he obscures his own doctrine that true rent can never be a part of profit ; and he alleges what is in a sense true, but has a most invidious effect, that "the interest of the landlord is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the community," though the existence of a distinct landlord class is by no means a necessity, and the owner of rent, which somebody must own, could not, even by entirely remitting it, alter the price of food, or increase the profits of the capitalist, except by presenting him with a gift to which he has no economic claim. At the close of the tract he endeavours to show in opposition to Malthus that the danger of dependence on foreign supply for a large part of our food, and the losses on invested capital which would result from a legislative change, could not be so serious as to counter- balance the advantages arising from a free importation.