The Gloomy Presentiments

 "Ah," I say to myself "Why is this chapter called gloomy? Can this book go any darker? " Chuckling as I sip on my evening tea. 

In this chapter, I met both David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus, such distinguished gentlemen of their times. 

David Ricardo was the son of a successful Jewish stockbroker who, by the age of 26, became financially independent.

His book On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817) helped shift the economic picture from Smith's optimism to a widespread pessimism. - The book concludes that land rent grows as the population increases. The third edition of his book, the third and final revision, was published in 1821.

During the forty years following the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, the rivalry between the rising industrial capitalists and the conservative, complacently landed aristocracy dominated the English scene, particularly over the matter of food prices. 

Since capitalists had to pay at least a subsistence wage to workers, they were vitally interested in lowering grain prices. To this end, they welcomed cheap, imported wheat and corn. Landowners and landlords naturally resented imports because they depressed prices and profits from their own grains.

A little over twenty years after the death of David Ricardo, the Corn Laws were abolished (1846), and the industrial capitalists eventually broke the power of landlords and replaced them.

Reverend Thomas Malthus was the first professional economist, cleric, and scholar influential in the fields of political economy and demography. He wrote Principles of Political Economy Considered with a View to their Applications (1820) as a rebuttal to Ricardo’s book On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation

In his book An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the population, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. 

"ohh," I say in realization as I figure out that Gloomy describes not only the future described by Malthus and Ricardo but also the actual world of England in the 1820s.