the policy of the radical party of the period. He spoke and voted for parliamentary reform and the ballot. Mr. Cannan points out that the speech upon the ballot printed at the end of his works is erroneously identified by McCulloch with that of 24 April 1823, and, if made, is not reported in ‘Hansard.’ He voted steadily against the ‘Six Acts’ and the Foreign Enlistment and Alien Acts. He denounced vigorously all religious prosecutions, especially that of Richard Carlile [q. v.] His authority was naturally of most weight in financial matters. He wrote to McCulloch that he was so frightened by the sound of his own voice that he should probably think it wisest to give silent votes. He gradually overcame the difficulty, and was received with the respect due to a specialist in his own department. His first conspicuous appearance, according to McCulloch, was on 24 May 1819, when he rose, after being ‘loudly called upon from all sides of the house,’ to support Peel's measure for the resumption of cash payments. He attacked the corn laws, though he admitted that a moderate duty might be required to counteract special burdens upon agriculture. He attacked the usury laws, supported Huskisson's repeal of the Spitalfields Acts, and generally opposed every kind of bounty and restriction. He was added, upon his election, to a select committee upon the poor laws, upon which he appears, from his letters to McCulloch, to have had great influence. In the same year he was a member of a committee appointed by a public meeting (26 June 1819) to examine Owen's schemes [see under Owen, Robert]. Ricardo, however, carefully explained that he did not agree with Owen's socialism and objections to the use of machinery. He supported a scheme, suggested at this time by a Mr. Woodson, for enabling the poor to buy annuities. An elaborate plan for this purpose had been prepared by Bentham in 1797 (Bentham, Works, viii. 409 &c.). Ricardo also supported the utilitarians and Joseph Hume in their demands for retrenchment. He declared, on 3 April 1822, that he had voted for every reduction of taxes that had been proposed during the session. All taxes were bad, and, except to avoid a deficit, he would vote for none, considering that a surplus would be an insuperable temptation to increased expenditure. His most remarkable plan was to pay off the national debt at once by an assessment upon all the property of the country. He finally convinced himself that this operation might be carried out in a year (11 March 1823) (for some characteristic remarks upon this scheme see Cobbett, Political Works, vi. 7, 193, 325). In all these matters Ricardo represented the favourite views of the utilitarians. He was a member of the Political Economy Club, founded in April 1821, of which the nucleus, according to Professor Bain (James Mill, p. 198), was a small knot of economists who had been in the habit of meeting at Ricardo's house. Ricardo was a frequent attendant during the following two years. The only subject which he appears to have introduced was the effect of machinery upon wages (4 Feb. 1822; Minutes of Political Economy Club, privately printed, 1882; cf. art. Tooke, Thomas).
Ricardo wrote a few occasional pieces after the ‘Principles.’ He contributed in 1820 to the supplement of the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ in which Mill was also writing an essay ‘upon the Funding System,’ and in 1882 published a pamphlet upon protection, which McCulloch considers to be his masterpiece in this kind. He also put together some notes upon his differences with Malthus, which McCulloch considered to be of too little interest for publication.
Miss Edgeworth visited the Ricardos at Gatcombe in 1821, and gives an account of his family and ‘delightfully pleasant house.’ She says that he was charming in conversation; perpetually starting new game, and never arguing for victory. He took part in charades, and represented a coxcomb very drolly. Altogether she thought him one of the most agreeable and least formal persons she had ever met (Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, ii. 379). In July 1822 he travelled to the continent with a family party, visited Holland, where he saw some of his Dutch relations, including a well-known Dutch poet, T. da Costa (1798–1860), went by the Rhine to Switzerland, where he was warmly received by Dumont at Geneva, and discussed economic questions with Sismondi, and, after visiting the north of Italy, returned through France in November. His letters describing this tour to children in England were privately printed in 1891, and give a very pleasant impression of amiability and good temper. His family held, it appears, that any child ‘could impose upon him.’ At this time he was in apparently good health, and able to take long walks. He had been, he adds, in the habit of taking walks nearly as long, ‘with Mr. Mill.’ In the following autumn he was at Gatcombe, and preparing a pamphlet upon a scheme for establishing a national bank, when a trouble in the ear to which he had been subject took a serious form. He died on 11 Sept. 1823. The news, as Mrs. Grote says, affected James Mill so deeply as to reveal a previously unsuspected tenderness of heart, and she had never seen
