RICARDO, David (1803-1864), of Gatcombe Park, Glos. of 59 Harley Street, London, Mdx.

Ricardo was born at Mile End, London, one of eight children of the influential political economist and member for Portarlington, 1819-24.1HP Commons, 1820-32, vi. 930-41. Taken out of Charterhouse because of illness, he was privately tutored before attending Oxford, where, his father observed, he was ‘obliging but not so studious as I could wish him to be’.2P. Sraffa (ed.), The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo (1952), vi. 239-40, 243, 255; ix. 44. In 1824, having recently inherited his father’s estates at Gatcombe Park, Minchinhampton, Avening and the manor of Brinsop Court, Ricardo married the daughter of a Yorkshire landowner.3Sraffa, Correspondence of David Ricardo (1955), x. 105; Morning Post, 3 June 1824. Like his father, he is reputed to have been a Unitarian, although no evidence for this has been found, and by 1832 he was firmly committed to the established church.4D.W. Bebbington, ‘Unitarian members of Parliament in the nineteenth century. A catalogue’, suppl. to Trans. of the Unitarian Historical Society, 24:3 (2009), unpaginated. In May 1835 he began building an Episcopal chapel for the residents of Hampton Common: Blackburn Standard, 13 May 1835. His estate being within a few miles of Stroud, he came forward for the newly enfranchised borough at the 1832 general election.5Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 14 June 1832. Of Whig principles, he was in favour of free trade and the ballot, but considered ‘the property of the Church a vested right’, and strenuously opposed the appropriation of its revenues for ‘other than Church purposes’.6Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1833), 153; Morning Post, 20 May 1835. In spite of losing the show of hands, he was returned in second place by a narrow margin, defeating the political economist George Poulett Scrope.7Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 13 Dec. 1832.

A silent member, Ricardo opposed Daniel O’Connell’s amendment to the address, 8 Feb. 1833, and was inclined to support the Radicals, voting for Hume’s motions to abolish military and naval sinecures, 14 Feb., and reduce the pay of certain officers of the Royal Marines, 25 Mar., and dividing in favour of Harvey’s motion for the publication of division lists, 21 Feb. On Ireland, however, he firmly backed the Whig ministry, voting for the first and second readings of the Irish coercion bill, 5, 11 Mar., and dividing in favour of the clause which made certain offences subject to courts martial, 19 Mar. Suspicious of currency reform, he opposed Thomas Attwood’s motion for a committee on distress, 21 Mar., and supported George Robinson’s motion for a select committee on taxation, 26 Mar. That month he was appointed to the Southampton election committee, and joined a deputation of Gloucestershire MPs which pressed for a commission to investigate the state of manufactures in the west of England.8CJ, lxxxviii. 216; Standard, 3 Apr. 1833. Concerned by the social and economic condition of his constituency, he published Emigration considered as a means of Relief in the present distressed Condition of the Poor in this Neighbourhood, and was in the minority that supported Lennard’s proposal to restore to the game bill a clause empowering tenants to kill game on the land they occupied, 17 Apr.9Sraffa, Correspondence of David Ricardo, x. 63; Morning Chronicle, 19 Apr. 1833. Sharing his late father’s commitment to bullionism, he divided against opposed Matthias Attwood’s motion for currency reform, 24 Apr., and supported George Grote’s ballot motion, 25 Apr. The following month he moved for a return of the establishment of each county jail and house of correction in England and Wales, and divided in favour of Whitmore’s motion for a low fixed duty on corn, 17 May.10PP 1833 (493) xxviii. 391.

Ricardo had been granted a fortnight’s leave of absence ‘on account of a domestic affliction’ in February 1833 and was subsequently prevented by ill-health in his family from ‘paying that attention to his parliamentary duties’ which he believed his constituents had ‘a right to expect’.11CJ, lxxxviii. 124; The Times, 22 May 1833. He therefore took the Chiltern Hundreds on 20 May.12CJ, lxxxviii. 415. His conduct ‘both public and private’ were praised at the subsequent nomination of Scrope, and he remained active in Liberal politics, paying tribute to Lord Grey as ‘the Father of Reform’ at a public dinner at Stroud in November 1834.13The Times, 31 May 1833, 24 Nov. 1834.

By the 1835 general election, however, Ricardo had turned against the Whigs. When Lord John Russell came forward for his former seat, he issued an address to the electors of Stroud in which he argued that the government’s policy towards the Irish Church was ‘violating a great moral principle’ and establishing a precedent that would lead to its destruction, and declared his preference for ‘the liberal measures which Sir Robert Peel has lately brought forward’ rather than ‘the destructive policy of Lord John Russell’.14Morning Post, 20 May 1835. Notwithstanding this address, Russell was returned unopposed and, in spite of his name becoming the toast of the Stroud Conservative Association, Ricardo was not tempted back into politics.15Morning Chronicle, 21 May 1835; Morning Post, 3 Oct. 1835.

Ricardo served for many years as chairman of his local board of guardians, publishing Rebecca at Stroud; or, a few Words about Turnpike Trusts (1847) and publicising his observations on the plan of medical relief laid before the union in 1849.16D. Ricardo, Medical Relief; A Plan of Medical Relief, laid before the Board of Guardians of the Stroud Union, on Friday, 1st of June, 1849, with some observations thereon (1849). He continued to reside at Gatcombe Park, where he added to his father’s collection of minerals, and died at Cheltenham in May 1864, his will being proved under £35,000.17Sraffa, Correspondence of David Ricardo, x. 50; Bristol Mercury, 21 May 1864. His first son having died in infancy, he devised his estates to his only surviving son, Henry David (1833-73), whose eldest son, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry George Ricardo (1860-1940), was the last proprietor of Gatcombe.18Birmingham Daily Post, 13 Aug. 1864; Sraffa, Correspondence of David Ricardo, x. 63.