HKB
course of things, as a high price of corn attends a state of progression, wages of labour will be really high, and profits cannot rise because of wages being low.
I am decidedly of opinion that Torrens[98] has treated you unjustly in his remarks in the preface of his book. If I recollect, you acknowledged an alteration in your opinion respecting the corn laws, since you wrote your essay on population, in your 'Observations on the Corn Laws.' I think too that you have always held the opinion you now do that the difference between the value of gold and paper was partly owing to the rise of the value of gold. Is not his criticism very much strained as to the use of the word depreciation? But, if he be right in all, the instances are much too few to justify his severe observation. At the Geological Club[99] his book was spoken of the other day with great approbation. Mr. Blake[100] and Mr. Greenough[101] think that he has exhausted the subject, and that his arguments cannot be controverted. I should think that he is very generally read. 'If I would lay a tax on foreign corn,' you ask, 'on account of a tax on our own, does not the same principle apply to the indirect taxes that raise the price of labour?' I think not, because a tax on corn will raise the price of corn twice, once on account of the tax, and a second time on account of the rise of wages; but, as this second rise is common to all things in which labour enters, and will be corrected by a new value of money, it will not be of long duration. The indirect taxes which only raise the wages of labour produce, I think, the same effects as the second rise in the price of corn, of which I have just been speaking. Whenever a tax bore with unequal effect on the land, when it did not affect labour bestowed in other employments, a countervailing duty on importation should, I think, be also imposed. I fear I cannot be with you on Saturday. If you do not hear from me by Wednesday's post, conclude that I cannot leave home....
Ever yours, DAVID RICARDO.
NOTE.--Robert Torrens, the soldier economist, began his literary career with 'The Economist Refuted' (1808), in answer to William Spence, who in 1807 tried to persuade his countrymen that Napoleon's blockade mattered little to them, Britain being 'independent of commerce.' In the winter of 1810-11, Torrens was Major Commandant of the Royal Marines, doing garrison duty on the island of Anholt in the Kattegat. The frost gave him time to re-read his Adam Smith and write his 'Essay on Money and Paper Currency' (publ. 1812). In his 'Essay on the External Corn Trade' (see above, page 65), Torrens characterizes the writings of Malthus as suggestive and candid and full of 'facts,' but ill-reasoned and inconsistent. Mr. Malthus, he says, scarcely ever embraced a principle which he did not subsequently abandon; his Essay on Population was a plagiarism from Wallace; and he refuted it himself by introducing the influence of Moral Restraint; in regard to Corn Bounties and in regard to the Currency, his later writings have contradicted his earlier. (Pref. pp. viii. to xii.) Torrens compared the Political Economy of Malthus with that of Ricardo, greatly to the advantage of the latter, in his 'Production of Wealth' (1821). See 'Malthus and his Work,' pp. 265-6. Compare also Note to Letter XLIV.
XXX.
LONDON, 4 April, 1815.
MY DEAR SIR,