David Ricardo’s An Essay on the Effects of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock

This paper is concerned with Ricardo’s 1815 Essay on Profits, putting the ideas thereby formulated into the context of the heated debates of 1814-15 about the Corn Bill, which was to be passed by the British Parliament in March 1815. The arguments of the protectionists and the free traders are briefly considered, and it is argued that Ricardo’s position had a much firmer (and original) basis than the positions until then put forward by both sides of the debate. Indeed, the paper argues that Ricardo’s Essay moved the debate onto a completely different, higher, analytical plane. Although the pamphlet contained virtually nothing of the elements of the general theory of international trade which Ricardo himself was to give to the world in his Principles two years later, the arguments in favour of free trade made in the Essay were nonetheless of much greater analytical quality than any which had been developed up to that time.