Some additions and corrections for Sraffa on Ricardo in Business

Abstract

Sraffa’s Ricardo edition gained a well-deserved authoritative status and numerous authors have studied its first nine volumes. I concentrate on ‘Ricardo in Business’ in Volume 10, and I present some additions and corrections, with respect to, for example, Ricardo’s activities at the Stock Exchange, the 1811 incident about Wetenhall’s price lists and the 1814 Berenger fraud, the huge British Loan contracts of the Barnes-Steers-Ricardo consortium and the identity of its unknown fourth member, the timing and the effects of the news from the Battle of Waterloo, the financial hierarchy in the two (not four) consortia that contracted for the Waterloo Loan and earlier Loans. Silberling (1924) accused Ricardo of dishonest strategies against Goldsmid’s consortium. Sraffa destroyed Silberling’s arguments in 1955, 24 years after informing Cannan about his ‘ammunition’. Using newly discovered letters from Barnes, I suggest that Silberling even confused victims and perpetrators. I also examine the quality of quotations by Sraffa, Dobb and a few others.