Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/555

R I C R I G 535 beneficial to a country a view curiously opposed to that held by Child and others in the 17th century. "Profits and interest," he says, "cannot be too high. Nothing contributes so much to the prosperity and happiness of a country as high profits." It seems to follow that, the pro- ductiveness of labour being given, wages cannot be too low, which can only be true on the supposition, 1 tacitly assumed by Bicardo in many places, that wages coincide with the cost of the labourer's maintenance. The proposition, too, appears to lead to economic pessimism, for, according to his own doctrines, the rate of profits must inevitably decline in the course of the history of any society. In his Plan for the Establishment of a National Bank, published posthumously in 1824, he proposes that the issue of the paper currency should be taken out of the hands of the Bank of England, and vested in commissioners appointed by the Government, but not removable except on an address from one or both Houses of Parliament. These functionaries should in no case lend money to the ministers of the crown, who, when they wanted it, should raise it by taxation or have recourse to the general market. The commissioners would act as bankers to all the public departments, but would be precluded from fulfilling the same office for any corporation or individual whatever. Their great business would be to regulate the issue of paper by the price of bullion, so as to keep the value of the former equal to that of the coins it would represent. The tract describes in detail the measures to be adopted for the introduction and working of the new system. A certain step towards realizing the objects of this scheme, though on different lines from Ricardo's, was taken in Sir Robert Peel's Act of 1844, by which the discount business of the bank was separated from the issue department. Ricardo died on the llth September 1823, at his seat (Gatcomb Park) in Gloucestershire. He was only fifty- one years of age, and there had been nothing in his general health to give rise to apprehension ; the cause of death was a cerebral affection resulting from disease of the ear. He was much regretted, as he had been highly esteemed, both in public and private life. His character is represented in very favourable colours by those who knew him best. He is described as modest, candid, and ever open to conviction, as affectionate in his family, steady in his friendships, and generous and kind in his wider per- sonal relations. James Mill, who was intimately acquainted with him, says (in a letter to Napier of November 1818) that he knew not a better man, and on the occasion of his death published a highly eulogistic notice of him in the Morning Chronicle. A lectureship on political economy, to exist for ten years, was founded in commemoration of him, M'Culloch being chosen to fill it. In forming a general judgment respecting Ricardo, we must have in view not so much the minor writings, to which this article has been in great part devoted, as the Principles, in which his economic system is expounded as a whole. By a study of this work we are led to the conclusion that he was an economist only, not at all a social philosopher in the wider sense, like Adam Smith or John Mill. He had great acuteness, but little breadth. For any large treatment of moral and political questions he seems to have been alike by nature and preparation unfitted ; and there is no evidence of his having had any but the most ordinary and narrow views of the great social problems. His whole conception of human society is material and mechanical, the selfish principle being regarded, after the manner of the Benthamites, as omnipotent, not merely in practical economy, but, as appears from his speech on the ballot and his tract on reform, in the whole extent of the social field. Koscher calls him "ein tiefer Menschenkenner "; it would be diffi- cult to characterize him more inaptly. The same writer remarks on his " capitalistic " tone, which, he says, becomes " mammonistic " 1 The same assumption had been previously made by the Physio- crats. Turgot says, " En tout genre de travail, il doit arriver et il arrive que le salaire de 1'ouvrier se borne a ce qui est necessaire pour se procurer sa subsistance." in some of his followers ; but the latter spirit is already felt as the pervading atmosphere of Ricardo's works. He shows no trace of that hearty sympathy with the working classes which breaks out in several passages of the Wealth of Nations ; we ought, perhaps, with Held, to regard it as a merit in Ricardo that he does not cover with fine phrases his deficiency in warmth of social sentiment. The idea of the active capitalist having any duties towards his employes never seems to occur to him ; the labourer is, in fact, merely an instru- ment in the hands of the capitalist, a pawn in the game he plays. His principal work is the ultimate expression of what Comte calls "1'ignoble metaphysique qui pretend etudier les lois generales de 1'ordre materiel en 1'isolant de tout autre." Against such a picture of industrial life as a mere sordid struggle of conflicting interests contemporary socialism is the necessary, though formidable, pro- test ; and the leaders of that movement have eagerly seized his one- sided doctrines and used them for their own ends. He first introduced into economics on a great scale the method of deduction from a priori assumptions. The conclusions so arrived at have often been treated as if they were directly applicable to real life, and indeed to the economic phenomena of all times and places. But the trxith of Ricardo's theorems is now by his warmest admirers admitted to be hypothetical only, and they are stated as applying, at most, to the existing highly-developed condition of European, and especially of English, commerce. Bagehot, however, seems right in believing that Ricardo himself had no consciousness of the limitations to which his doctrines are subject. Be this as it may, we now see that the only basis on which these doctrines could be allowed to stand as a permanent part of economic science is that on which they are placed by Reseller, namely, as a stage in the preparatory work of the economist, who, beginning with such abstractions, afterwards turns from them, not in practice merely, but in the completed theory, to real life and men as they actually are or have been. But it may well be doubted whether it is not tetter to discard them altogether, and begin, as we end, with an historical method, which, it may be added, will of necessity lead to the introduction of those moral and social considerations which would otherwise be almost certainly overlooked. The criticisms to which Ricardo's general economic scheme is open do not hold with respect to his treatment of the subjects of cur- rency and banking. These form precisely that branch of economics into which moral ideas (beyond the plain prescriptions of honesty) can scarcely be said to enter, and where the operation of purely mer- cantile principles is most immediate and invariable. They were, besides, the departments of the study to which Ricardo's early train- ing and practical habits led him to give special attention ; and they have a lasting value independent of his systematic construction. Ricardo's collected works were published, with a notice of his life and writings, by J. R. M'Culloch in 1846. A French translation of the Principles by Constancio, with notes by Say, appeared in 1818; the whole works, translated by.Constancio and Fonteyraud, form vol. xiii.(1847) of the Collection des Principaux Economises, where they are accompanied by the notes of Say, Malthus, Sismondi, Rossi, Ac. The Principles was first "naturalized" in Germany, says Roscher (though another version by Von Schmid had previously appeared), by Edward Banmstaik in his David Ricardo's Grundgesetze der Volkswirthschaft und der Besteuerung iibersetzt und erliiutert(l837), which Roscher highly commends, not only for the excellence of the rendering, but for the value of the explanations and criticisms which are added. (J. K. I.) RICCATI, JAMES, COUNT (1676-1754), a celebrated Italian mathematician, was born at Venice, May 8, 1676, and died at Treviso, April 15, 1754. He studied at the university of Padua, where he graduated in 1696. RiccatL was deeply read in history, belles lettres, architecture, and poetry in fact, was a highly cultivated man ; his favourite pursuits, however, were scientific, and his authority on all questions of practical science was referred to by the senate of Venice. He corresponded with many of the European savants of his day, and contributed largely to the Ada Eruditorum of Leipsic. He was offered the pre- sidency of the academy of science of St Petersburg ; but this high distinction he declined, preferring the leisure and independence of life in Italy. Riccati's name is best known and will be preserved by mathematicians in con- nexion with his celebrated problem called Riccati's equa- tion, published in the Ada Eruditorum, September 1724. A very valuable and complete account of this equation and its various transformations has been recently given by Mr J. "W. L. Glaisher, F.R.S., in the Transactions of the Royal Society (1881, pp. 759-829). After Riccati's death his works were collected by his sons and published in four volumes. His sons, Vincenzo (1707-1775) and Giordano (1709-1790), inherited his talents. The former was professor of mathematics at Bologna, and published, among other works, a large treatise on the calculus. Giordano was distinguished both as a mathematician and an architect.