THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH - A DEFENCE OF FREE TRADE

RICARDO, DAVID.

Om Nationaloeconomiens og Beskatningens Grundsætninger. Oversat efter Originalens tredie Udgave af Sophus Fallesen. (On The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Translated from the third edition of the original by Sophus Fallesen).

Kjøbenhavn, Bianco Luno, 1839. 8vo. Nice comtemporary half calf with gilt lettering and ornamentation to spine. Minor wear to capitals and corners bumped. Light brownspotting to first and last leaves. A very fine and clean copy. (8), 470 pp.

Rare first Danish edition of the monumental main work by one of the absolutely most influential classical economists, David Ricardo, the systematizer of economics. The Danish translation is translated from the third edition, which appeared in 1821.

David Ricardo (1772-1823) was born in London as the son of a Dutch Jew. Initially Ricardo was primarily interested in science and mathematics, but after having read Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" in 1799, he devoted himself entirely to political economy, and in 1817 he could publish his seminal work "The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation" (see PMM 277). Two years later, in 1819, Ricardo was elected to the Parliament, and became the House's acknowledged expert on economic affairs, -also as such he considerably influenced the opinion towards free trade.

There are three classical economists, who must be said to have fundamentally changed political economy, and they are Adam Smith, Thomas Robert Malthus, and David Ricardo, -the three main founders of "modern economic analysis". On the basis of "The Wealth of Nations", classical political economy could be founded by Malthus and Ricardo, -in his "Principles". Ricardo was in doubt as to whether he should publish his later so exceedingly famous work, but was persuaded to do so by his friend James Mill, chief Apostle of the Utalitarians, and so he did in 1817, when the work presented the population of Great Britain with some very unexpected conclusions. Enlarging on the Physiocrats, Ricardo places the interest of the landlord and that of the community in the most violent opposition, -he states: "the interest of the landlord is necessarily opposed to the interest of every other class in the community." On the grounds of this theory, he gathered quite a number of opponents, who considered this the embodiment of injustice and strongly opposed of his theories. "Ricardo, in his paradox to arrest attention, outlined the case for class war. It is one of the issues which John Stuart Mill will be forced to confront, and upon which Marx built his theory and makes his observations." (Catlin, A History of the Political Philosophers, Ldn., 1950, p. 374).

In opposition to Smith, Ricardo was not interested in the value as the principle for the equal exchange between differentiated individuals, but in it as the means of building up theories of the relation between wages, profits and rents and their distribution to landlords, capitalists and labourers, -thus developing the famous theory of "labour as measure".
Against Malthus he opposes the interest of the agriculturalist as against that of the free-trading manufacturer, -one of his distinctive contributions to economics lies in expounding the monopoly theory of rent.

"Ricardo was, in a sense, the first "scientific" economist. Lacking Smith's warmth and sympathy for humanity and for the labourer in particular, Ricardo saw the study of economics as a pure science whose abstractions were capable of quasi-mathematical proof. Although his theorems remain hypothetical, his deductive methods have proved a great use in the elementary analysis of economic problems, currency and banking, it has proved a lasting value." (Printing and the Mind of Man 277).

The work is groundbreaking in numerous respects, one of them being that Ricardo here also sets out to establish paper-money, -he actualized this as well as the theory that the banks should convert its stock of gold into standardized gold bars, -this is the reason why the very first gold bars, as we know them, were called "Ricardos"; the first was issued in 1820.

The work has been immensely influential throughout Europe, and has had a strong effect on Danish liberal thought and politics.

Order-nr.: 51107