Hamish Riley-Smith

RICARDO, David The High Price of Bullion, A Proof of the Depreciation of Bank Notes. London John Murray 1810

Octavo, contemporary marbled boards, rebacked, ivpp + 48pp, title page and final leaf a little dust stained

Very rare. Sraffa, 1a. Kress B5728. Goldsmith 20107. Copac: of the first edition, 1 copy only at BL. Blaug, Great Economists before Keynes, p.201. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, p.473.FIRST EDITION OF DAVID RICARDO’S FIRST BOOK. A second and third edition were printed later in 1810 and a fourth edition, with an appendix, in 1811.Blaug writes “Ricardo’s interest in economics dated back to 1799, when by chance he came across a copy of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Ten years later he made his debut in print with a newspaper article on the bullion controversy, subsequently expanded into a vigorous pamphlet entitled The High Price of Bullion: A Proof of the Depreciation of Bank Notes. The Bullion Committee Report…agreed with Ricardo that the current inflation was due to the Bank of England’s failure to restrict the issue of bank notes.”Schumpeter writes of Ricardo “his reputation was made by his writings on the great economic issues of his time – in the first instance, by his writings on monetary policy, in the second instance, by his writings on free trade…Though others did the same, his advocacy was more brilliant, more arresting, than was theirs: there is no superfluous sentence in his pages; no qualification, however necessary, weakens his argument; and there is just enough genuine analysis about it to convince practically, and at the same time, to satisfy high intellectual standards but not enough to deter….He became the centre of a circle that looked to him for guidance and in turn defended his opinions. It is neither his advocacy of winning policies per se, nor his theory per se, that, to this day, makes of him, in the eyes of some, the first economist of all times, but a felicitous combination of both”.

£3650

This item is listed on Bibliopoly by Hamish Riley-Smith; click here for further details.