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Principles of political economy considered with a view to their practical application.

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First edition. The Principles were developed through controversy with Ricardo, especially with regard to the theory of value, but the origins of the essay are in the Essay, which constituted Malthus’s earliest writings on prices, income and savings. The difference that emerges between Malthus and Ricardo with regard to Say’s Law, from which this book is an early departure, has not been fully understood because of Ricardo’s unwillingness to follow through on concessions he was forced to make. Malthus argued that increased incomes did not lead to increased consumerism, but that consumers faced with unfamiliarly high salaries would save. Some of this misunderstanding of Malthus derives from Keynes’s positive assessment of Malthus, which has led to the latter being viewed as an early Keynesian because of his theories on prices and wage rates (New Palgrave). Keynes declared: ‘If only Malthus, instead of Ricardo, had been the parent stem from which nineteenth-century economics preceded, what a much wiser place the world would be today!’.

Goldsmiths’ 22767; Einaudi 3680; Sraffa 3693.

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