Item 102 - William Whewell to Richard Jones

4 pp.

Trinity College - WW sends RJ 'the first vol. of Wilks's India'. Coddington [Henry Coddington] 'who is a great admirer of yours was lamenting to me today that you had not invented names of your own for your various classes of rents instead of adopting names necessarily already laden with confusion and complexity'. WW thinks, however, that RJ should 'stick to historical names till it became inconvenient to keep them'. If RJ really wishes to begin printing immediately he will have to send WW some 'make-believe' manuscript of wages now: 'The Syndicate have got rules vey simple and reasonable and though they may not be of much real use it would be mere folly to incur spleen and perhaps rejection by asking them to violate their maxims for so assignable cause. The adoption of your second part will depend on the reputation of the first and not on what you send as a specimen'. WW is convinced that wages is more important than rent. His 'political economy paper is mighty swollen and I am rather pleased with it . In some parts Ricardo is wrong simply for want of a mathematical instrument of deduction'.