Showing 23 results

E. I. Coll. - Thanks WW for sending him a copy of his paper on the application of mathematics to political economy ['Mathematical Exposition of Some Doctrines of Political Economy', 1829]: 'I have looked over it with great interest; but I am ashamed to say that, never having been very familiar with the present algebraic notation, and for a great many years having been quite unaccustomed to it, I cannot follow you as I could wish, without more attention and application than I can give to the subject in the midst of our College examinations'. Nevertheless TRM thinks WW's conclusions are fairly just, and believes in certain cases mathematical calculations could be applied with advantage to Political Economy - 'particularly with a view to determine the different degrees in which certain objects are affected, under different hypotheses. The grand difficulty however, with a view to practicability, is the getting data to work upon, sufficiently near the truth; and such as can be stated distinctly in mathematical language. In many cases where one should wish to come to definite conclusions I should fear this was quite impracticable. I have long thought that these are many of the results in political economy which have some resemblance to the problems de maximes et minimes, such as the most favourable division of landed property, neither too great nor too small; and the most advantageous proportions, (with a view to the permanent increase of wealth) in which the whole produce of capital should be divided between the capitalists and labourers. But I do not see how such propositions could be put into proper language for a fluxional solution, varying as the result must do with the fertility of soils and the productiveness of capitals'. TRM thinks that the points WW discusses in his paper are more manageable - 'though perhaps all your axioms may not be sufficiently general. Does your third include cases of the saving of labour, where new land may be cultivated without an increase in the value of the produce? And does your fourth include the case of an increased demand with the same supply? I think it might have been difficult to proceed without the supposition of a limiting soil on which the cost of production is determined. And yet this, and all the conclusions in the latter part of Mr P. Thompson's essay belong entirely to the New theory of Rent ['An Exposition of Fallacies on Rent, Tithes,etc...Being in the Form of a Review of the Third Edition of Mr Mill's Elements of Political Economy', 1826], and not to what he calls the True Theory which he at first proposes to substitute for it, namely the kind of monopoly from which the price of Tokay arises. This had indeed been the usual view of the subject; and the particular object of my original pamphlet on R[ent] to which Mr Ricardo refers, was to shew the doctrine [of] ordinary rent, and the rent arising from a common street monopoly, such as a Tokay vineyard. I quite agree with Mr P. Thompson that the productions of soil are not necessary to the exactness of rent, as I repeatedly expressed in print long before he wrote. But as productions of soil do actually take place in all countries, all the practical questions relating to places and tithes must be essentially modified by them. Mr Thompson states most correctly, as I have often stated to Mr Ricardo that taxes on raw produce, or tithes, throw lands of a certain quality out of cultivation, or prevent their being cultivated, and in this way fall on rent, on the other hand if the supply were unaffected by the tax it would, as you partly observe fall on the consumer. But these questions do not apply at all to a Tokay vineyard: The actual value of corn is necessary to its actual supply in the exacting quantity (newly), but the same quantity of Tokay would continue to be supplied at a much lower value. The permanent rise in the value of corn is strictly limited by the circumstance of its being the necessary food of the demanders. The rise in the value of Tokay has no limit but the wealth and caprice of a few consumers. I cannot but think therefore that it was an unfortunate comparison and the essay would have been totally inapplicable to real state of things if he had adhered to it. Can we suppose that the capital employed on good land is 2[,] 3 or 4 times that which is employed on the same quantity of any poor land? Sometimes the revenue is the fact. By the bye, you have inadvertently said that Mr Ricardo maintains that a tax on wages must fall on the labourers. He says it must full on profits. But the error does not affect your illustration of the use of mathematics in Pol. Economy which is a very good one'.

Trinity College - If RJ is applying to the University press syndicate he should do so this term. There is a movement at large which wants to establish a professorship in political economy 'on nearly the same conditions as that at Oxford. It is to be established in honour of Huskisson [William Huskisson], by some friends of his - there are two difficulties: one to fix the mode of election the other to get rid of Payne [George Payne]. They wanted to put Malthus in as the first professor'. WW has sent another review of RJ's book to the British Critic ['Review of An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and Sources of Taxation by the Revd Richard Jones', The British Critic, Quarterly Theological Review and Ecclesiastical Record, 10, 1831].

Cambridge - WW returned to Cambridge via John Herschel 'who is busy grinding specula for the southern hemisphere' [JH's trip to the Cape in South Africa]. WW has been working on his Bridgewater treatise ['Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology', 1833]. How is RJ's work on wages going? WW also saw Malthus [Thomas Malthus] who 'is much pleased with some Political Economy' by 'a certain Harriet Martineau'.

East India College, Hertford - 'Malthus [Thomas Malthus] will be here tomorrow, and I am here - and when will you and Jones be here?'

Asks Sraffa to post him an obituary of Malthus.

Brasted - WW can send or show this letter to Thomas Malthus: 'I was gratified of course by his letter [Malthus] but merciful powers or what sort of a dreamy land of speculation does he urge me to enter. Rents in America!...If one must guess what they are to come to there, why then I guess that with their democratic institutions and territorial resources they will keep multiplying a race of peasant proprietors till their territory and probable conquests (to Sierra del Fuego perhaps) are full'. Then the land of these peasant proprietors will gradually sink till they become poor, and from their discontentment will come political convulsion which may produce another state. Out of which 'tenantry rents may spring but these periods look to me more like geological than political ones'. However much RJ admires and esteems Malthus 'he shall involve me into no balloon excursions. I think too he underrates peasant rents - what I value most in my book is the revelation (for it is one) of the intimate connection between the subsistence of the body of the people, and the rents they pay, over almost the whole of the old world - By this fact and its reaction on government, and society, the past history, the present condition, the future progress, of a vast majority of human communities have been, are, and will be in ages, influenced. I half flatter myself, that no sound thinker will hereafter speculate on such subjects, without having the principles and results I have brought to light, distinctly present to him, and therefore, as a citizen of the world...I cannot admit that the farmers rents, because they happen to be over and yet less, the urban rents of America and Australia, can compete with my peasant rents in interest and importance'.

Proposing to read extracts from his biography of Malthus to 'the [Moral Sciences] Club'

Penwick, near Edinburgh - WW to return the enclosed letter from [Thomas] Malthus. Very disappointed not to be well enough to attend the [BAAS] Edinburgh meeting, especially since he wanted to 'introduce a plan for statistics'. Hopes this department is well attended. Gives his regards to WW.

Brasted - RJ no longer has an appetite for Aristotle: 'His notions of the mode in which the mind gets the idea of the lowest species appear to me absurd enough but very decided' [see RJ to WW, 15 March 1831]. What does WW 'think of my crotchet that Bacon took up the word induction from the logicians and in the narrow sense to which they had reduced it and then finding it came nearest to his wants rendered it with its pristine generality and majesty of purpose without being aware of the sense in which Aristotle had previously used it - curious if true and I strongly incline to think it so'. RJ hopes WW reads the Bolingbroke he pointed out - 'it is I think the perfection of philosophical style'. He hopes WW does not let the opportunity to review his book for the British Critic pass ['Review of An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and the Sources of Taxation by the Revd Richard Jones', The British Critic, Quarterly Theological Review and Ecclesiastical Record, 1831]. RJ is worried that his book will get 'into the hands of the Hertford College people [East India College] and I hardly know whether to consider Papa [Thomas Malthus] neutral or inclined to shew fight - by the bye you have not told me what you think of my defence that is about the relative importance of the different rents'.

Rosenbaum coming after all; enquires if they should do something to celebrate the centenary of Malthus' death; asks Sraffa to sell some shares for him.

Includes correspondence with McCullough, Malthus, Mill and Trower, 'The High Price of Bullion', 'Proposals for an Economic and Secure Currency', 'Essay on Profits', 'Sinking fund' and 'Protection to Agriculture'.

RJ is at work on his first lecture as Professor of Political Economy at King's College, and should have a copy to show WW in ten days time: 'In the mean time I find I cannot limit my subject without a definition of wealth, which however I shall declare to be merely arbitrary and meant to convey no knowledge but a knowledge of what wealth I meant to treat of and what to neglect or exclude . Malthus's is The material objects necessary, useful or agreeable to man, which have required some portion of human exertion to appropriate or produce. MacCulloch's [J.R. McCulloch] those articles or products which have exchangeable value, and are either necessary, useful or agreeable to man'. McCulloch 'takes in immaterial wealth[,] skill[,] wisdom etc. service of menials etc. and limits, by the phrase exchangeable value. If he had kept the word material I would not have quarrelled with his exchangeable value which Malthus admits in the Quarterly'. However, 'it has misled Mac. himself to call Political economy the science of values and Whately [Richard Whately] into arguing that Political economists have nought to do with wealth save so far forth as it has exchangeable value'. RJ would like 'to stick wherever I can to Malthus but he has abandoned his own definition and it is clear exchangeable value is a dangerous attribute to define from where logicians or Scotch systematizers are to be found'. RJ proposes: 'The material objects which are appropriated by man previous to being used by him (I like used best) to their consumption. This shuts out light, air, water, (not appropriated) and skill[,] menial services etc. avoids the necessity of the words necessary[,] useful or agreeable because no one takes the trouble to appropriate what is none of these - includes the idea of exchangeable value since whatever is appropriated may be exchanged and shuts out all temptation to talk nonsense about the science being a science of values - confined to exchanges etc'. RJ re-phrases his definition of wealth - 'The material objects which man appropriates, before he uses them avoiding both the participles on which are appropriated by man before he uses them I like the last best'.

Trinity College - WW is fairly certain he sails from London by the Ostend packet on Saturday, and hopes RJ can meet him there. Can RJ tell him where he can find some information about the history of Flanders. The civic architecture of Belgium has been much admired but WW knows of nobody who 'has attempted to characterize it in detail'. He has heard from Lubbock [John W. Lubbock] who will be glad to help RJ with any calculations. Lubbock has sent WW a table showing 'the difference of the increase of population upon the number of marriages and the number of births per marriage, and vice versa. Of course it shews also how any alteration in one portion of these elements of the law of population would affect the others' [the table is attached]: 'Tables should be accurate and extensive to justify their expressing so formal a shape and your general reasoning would be much more persuasive. The mathematics of population viz the construction of such tables as the above with regard to all the elements on which population depends should be gone through completely from one capable of doing it'. Malthus and others would have benefited from abbreviating and annotating their statistical details.