Item 59 - William Whewell to Richard Jones

3 pp.

Trinity College - WW has heard that RJ will be coming into this neighbourhood, and therefore wants to make sure he is around when RJ visits Cambridge. WW hopes RJ is getting his manuscript ready to show the University press syndicate ['An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, and on the Sources of Taxation: Part 1. - Rent', 1831]. Can RJ give WW the reference to the book in which he saw 'a short list of the alteration in prices of corn pushed by the increase or diminution of the supply in certain propositions. It was in some book of the age of Petty's [William Petty] Political arithmetic'. WW is 'thinking of putting some propositions of Political Economy for instance those in Thompson's [Thomas Perronet Thompson, 'The True Theory of Rent, in Opposition to Mr. Ricardo and Others', 1826] works in a mathematical form. The more I think of it the more likely this appears to be convenient to mathematicians. I expect nothing new from this but some avoidance of confusion. As to Thompson's book you are no doubt right that it takes the case of money rents only, but it pretends not to take more; and it appears to me that with regard to them he has demonstratively shewn the Ricardists to be wrong so clearly that I am persuaded they will soon be compelled, (that is as soon as they have any writers who are not muddleheaded,) to abandon this part of their theory'.