Cliff Cottage, Lowestoft - WW has been reading Twiss's Lectures on the History of Political Economy [Travers Twiss, 'View of the Progress of Political Economy in Europe Since the Sixteenth Century', 1847] and hoping RJ would write a review of it for Empson [William Empson, editor of the Edinburgh Review]: 'You might find in that way, an easy opportunity of giving your opinion on the leading points of the subject...he has, so far as I can judge, taken hold of the main points of the history very well; - though I think in some cases he has let the points slip too easily. For instance, he appears to me to have muddled away Adam Smith's great distinction of productive and unproductive labour, and to have given his assent too easily to some of Say's extreme opinions'. WW gives his opinion on the difficulties of deciding what mans desires are.
Albany. - Sends 15 volumes of Documenti della Santa Guerra d'Italia, the pages not yet cut; would like them back eventually.
Thanks WW for a copy of Grotius ['Hugonis Grotii De jure belli et pacis; accompanied by an abridged translation by WW with the notes of the author, Barbeyrac and others', 3 vols., 1853]: 'I am very happy that such a work should have appeared from the Cambridge University Press under your auspices. I cannot but think that the study of the Law of Nations, I use the term in its popular sense, should find a place in the 'curriculum' of a liberal education - more especially as the tendency of municipal institutions is to one or other extreme of absolute monarchy, or absolute ochlocracy - and in either case, witness the Principality in the one hemisphere, and [lubu?] in the other, certain principles of international morality run risk of being overlooked'.