EICCIAEDI
EICHAEDSON
one of the first members of the Geological
Society. In 1799 he read Adam Smith s
Wealth of Nations, and was stimulated to
make a serious study of economics. By
1817, when he published his famous Prin
ciples of Political Economy and Taxation,
he was regarded as one of the leading
British economic authorities. From 1819
until he died he sat in Parliament, and he
supported the Eadicals in their demands
for parliamentary and general reform. He
denounced all religious persecution, particu
larly the many prosecutions of Eichard
Carlile, and he gave strong support to
Eobert Owen and to the Utilitarians. He
married a Quaker, and never rejoined the
Jewish faith or accepted any other (D. E.
Lee s Diary, 1797, p. 25). Eicardo was a
most generous donor to London charities.
He maintained an almshouse and two
schools near his own house. D. Sep. 11,
1823.
RICCIARDI, Count Giuseppe Napo-
leone, Italian writer and politician. B. July 19, 1808. Ed. by his mother, who taught him republican and advanced ideas. Eicciardi abandoned I eligion, and threw himself into the struggle for the liberation of Italy before he was twenty. Noble and endowed by birth, he founded a rebellious review (// Progresso) in 1832, and was com pelled to leave his country. He returned in 1834, and was thrown into prison for his renewed efforts. For some years he then supported himself by literary and journalistic work at Paris. He returned to Italy at the Eevolution of 1848, and was elected to the Neapolitan Parliament. When reaction triumphed, he organized a rebellion in Calabria. It failed, and he fled again to Paris ; and he was in his absence sentenced to death and the loss of his property. In 1859 he was able to return to Italy, and he sat in the first Italian Parliament. When the Pope con voked the Vatican Council in 1869, Eicciardi convoked a congress of Eationalists at Naples. His contempt of the Church may be read in any of his works, especially in
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Les Papes et I ltalie (1862) and his drama
Torquemade, ou I Inquisition Espagnole
(1865). He was a strong idealist, advo
cating every kind of humanitarian reform.
His life of struggle and sacrifice is recorded
by himself in his Memorie autografe d un
ribelle, 1857, and Memoires d un vieillard,
1874. D. June 3, 1885.
RICHARDSON, Sir Benjamin Ward,
M.A., M.D., LL.D., F.E.S., physician. B. Oct. 31, 1828. Ed. Barrow Hill School and Anderson s University, Glasgow. In 1850 Eichardson was admitted as a licen tiate of the Glasgow Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons. He migrated to London in 1854, and was appointed physician to the Blenheim Street Dispensary and lecturer at the Grosvenor Place School of Medicine. In the same year he won the Fothergillian Gold Medal of the London Medical Society. In 1856 he won the Astley Cooper Prize (three hundred guineas) for another medical work, was admitted to the Eoyal College of Physicians, and was appointed physician to the Eoyal Infirmary for Diseases of the Chest, and the Metropolitan, the Maryle- bone, and the Margaret Street Dispensaries. He was President of the London Medical Society in 1868, and was several times President of the Health Section of the Social Science Association. He was ad mitted to the Eoyal Society in 1867, delivered the Croonian Lecture in 1873 r and was knighted in 1893 ; and he was an honorary member of the American Philo sophical Society and the Imperial Leopold Carolina Academy of Sciences. Sir Ben jamin was Vice-President for many years of the London Sunday Lecture Society, which gave many drastically Eationalist lectures. In his autobiography (Vita. Medica, 1897) he rejects the idea of personal immortality. He thinks that the vital spirit which animates the universe is eternal, but the individual is "no more immortal than the thing on which he has written his learning" (p. 390). He was as zealous a humanitarian (especially in the work of temperance) as he was distin- 660
