Item 48 - Richard Jones to William Whewell

Brasted - RJ has been very ill and has taken to severe exercise (he weighs 16 stone). John Herschel is to visit RJ for a couple of days: 'His wife writes word that he has something to talk to me about - I earnestly hope it may not be his scheme of expatriation which I can neither relish nor find fault with'. RJ has received Charles Babbage's book or paper - 'An Essay on the General Principles which Regulate the Application of Machinery to Manufactures etc ['The Economy of Machinery and Manufactures', 1832]. It is a characteristic thing - full of ingenuity, precision and acuteness, and a strange collection of facts taken from his common place book - some striking and valuable - some trivial and uninteresting but all apparently of equal value in his estimation very loosely connected and forming a whole as little like an Essay on General Principles of any kind as can well be coupled with his former sketch to which it is inferior in method and I think in merit, it is to form a little book like Herschel's but unless he adds much prose and rearrangement it will when measured by its title be counted superficial I should think - all this of course entre nous - he sends it me that I may remark on the political economy - I see little or none except an explanation of the manner in which the division of labor saves skilled labor which is striking and true though not I think of first rate importance which I know he imagines it is - I shall shuffle in my answer to him for I know full well that my very deep conviction of his genius and power would be a poor atonement for letting him see that I think this a bagatelle - the matter would have told well mixed up with lectures'. RJ wants to write a book 'On the economic conditions of the existence of different political institutions starting with the radical (i.e. liberal) proposition that those forms of government are best which secure persons and property at the least expense and with the least sacrifice of individual free agency and then shewing that no forms or modification of one form can do this under all circumstances using some facts as to the generation of classes, revenues, and bands of connections which you have seen...tracing their influence as the possible combinations of executive - legislative and judicial powers in nations - appealing of course to history and the world as it is and stabbing the metaphysical and abstract constitution mongers home with facts and details and induction - voila'.