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Dr. Richard Price, 1723-1791.
Anglo-Welsh dissenting preacher. moral and political philosopher, demographer and economist.
Originating from Tynton, Glamorganshire (Wales), Richard Price was educated at dissenting academies. He subsequently became a minister in Newington, Middlesex, and thereafter Hackney, and a lecturer at the Old Jewry meeting house in London. In 1764, Price received a doctorate from a Scottish university, was thereafter referred to commonly as "Dr. Price". He was picked up as an William Petty Fitzmaurice (Earl of Shelburne), leader of the powerful Pittite faction in parliament.
His main work on ethics (1758), Richard Price posits a Kant-style theory of dutiful ethics, against the hedonics of Shaftesbury, and the natural virtue of Hutcheson. Price was a close friend of the proto-utilitarian Joseph Priestley, together forming the core of the "Rational Dissenters". Nonetheless, Price and Priestley disagreed completely on ethical philosophy, and their debate via letters was published in 1778 tract. Price was allegedly the influence that led to the dismissal of Bentham's presentation of his utilitarian philosophy before Shelburne's circle.
Richard Price is popularly best known for his 1776 treatise on civil liberties and vigorously defending the colonial case in the American Revolution.
Almost as well known for his tracts on the mounting British national debt. Price proposals, first articulated in his 1769 Observations and separately detailed in his 1772 alarm, was to set up a "sinking fund" to retire public debt. Price persuaded the prime minister William Pitt the Younger to establish the "sinking fund" in 1786 reallocating government revenues for the paying off of the national debt (or rather, re-establish it - a sinking fund had also been operated by Richard Walpole until 1733). Pitt's sinking fund law set aside £1 million every year, in the hands of sinking-fund commissioners, who where to use it to purchase national debt, and then use the interest received from the treasury to expand its purchases of more debt. This was to continue until the interest on the purchased debt amounted to £4 million (which with the additional £1m appropriated annually, would set the size of the fund to retire £5 million per year). The use of interest to pay for debt, rather than rely entirely on appropriations, was Price's principal contribution.
Perhaps less well-known is Price's intimate involvement in debates over population, positing a significant decline in English population since 1688 Price's data would be later used by Malthus for his own essay.
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