IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jhisec/v19y1997i01p93-113_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ricardo's Capital Levy Proposal: “By-Product of A Visionary†?

Author

Listed:
  • Churchman, Nancy

Abstract

The British public debt grew to unprecedented levels during the course of the Napoleonic Wars, and the debt service burden, aggravated by deflation, was reaching alarming heights in the postwar period, absorbing over half of all tax revenue. David Ricardo was prompted by economic analysis and existing circumstances to advocate the rapid redemption of existing public debt by means of a “capital levy,†a one-time tax on the nation's property. In print, he advocated the proposal in “The Funding System,†an entry in a supplementary volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica published in 1820, in which he wrote that “by one great effort, we should get rid of one of the most terrible scourges which was ever invented to afflict a nation†(Ricardo 1951–73, IV, p. 197).

Suggested Citation

  • Churchman, Nancy, 1997. "Ricardo's Capital Levy Proposal: “By-Product of A Visionary†?," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(1), pages 93-113, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jhisec:v:19:y:1997:i:01:p:93-113_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1053837200004697/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jhisec:v:19:y:1997:i:01:p:93-113_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/het .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.