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Notes

1 It is not clear why about half of Ricardo's active life as an ‘empirical economist’, which started in 1809, is not similarly covered.

2 Ricardo himself said in Parliament he was aware that ‘by many’ the proposal ‘would be considered extravagant’ (see Sraffa, 1951 – 73, V: 34; this will henceforth be quoted as Works, followed by volume and page number).

3 see Political Economy Club (1921: 208).

4 These were Sir Francis Baring's words in Parliament, in response to Ricardo's proposal (see Works, VII: 270).

5 It was often said at the time that Britain had won the war and lost the peace. It is a widely held opinion that ‘the major cause of popular disorder in Regency England was undoubtedly distress … It was almost normal in England during the entire reign of George III … for periods of poor trade, accompanied by want of employment and famine prices, to be characterized by popular disorders of some kind’ (Darvall,1934: 198 – 9).

6 Of this march Harriet Martineau in her History of the Peace wrote that it was ‘evidence of the agitated condition of the distressed multitudes in the manufacturing districts’ (Martineau 1858: 54). See also Smart (1910 – 7, I: 552-3).

7 It was doubtless preoccupation for the Luddite movement that prompted McCulloch's strong reaction against Ricardo's ‘new opinion’ that the introduction of machinery may be harmful to labourers.

8 See Porter (1836: 53).

9 1817 and 1819 were particularly disastrous. In 1821 – 2 there was a bland recovery, which gained momentum in 1823, and ended with the crash of mid-1825.

10 Porter (one of the founders of the Royal Statistical Society) was the first superintendent of the statistical department of the Board of Trade. He was Ricardo's brother-in-law, having married his sister Sarah.

11 See Porter (1836: 127 – 8). He states that the number of persons who emigrated from Great Britain in 1820 according to official estimates was about 20,000, a figure that, according to him, greatly underestimated the real phenomenon. Emigration (which enormously increased in the 1830s) was ‘the last resort of despair’, as Smart wrote (1910 – 17, II: 545).

12 See Smart (1910 – 17, II: 557).

13 On Ricardo's qualifications and concessions, see Viner's masterly account (1937, in particular pp. 138 – 41). See also de Vivo (1987: 186).

14 In this work, Cobbett wrote that ‘the Paper-Money System … has mainly contributed towards our present miseries; and, indeed, without that System those miseries never could have existed in any thing approaching towards their present degree’ (Cobbett, 1817, col.1). Davis's confusion probably arises from the fact that Cobbett was a harsh critic of the actual course adopted to resume payments, for which he poured much scorn on Ricardo.

1 Recktenwald, Horst Claus a. os., Über Schumpeters, ‘Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung’. Vademecum zu einem genialen Klassiker, Düsseldorf 1988: Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen, p. 9.

2 The order of the two words flies in the face of what is meant to be expressed by this notion. It would be more correct to speak of ‘destructive creation’, because creation is the cause of the phenomenon under discussion and destruction one of its consequences.

3 Goodwin in his lecture ‘Joseph A. Schumpeter. The man I knew’ at the University of Münster, Germany in 1990.