ABSTRACT
My concern in this chapter is with the so-called ‘canonical’ classical growth model as it emerged in the 1815 pamphlet literature on the Corn Laws, with particular but not exclusive reference to the downward trend path of the returns to capital and to labour.1 I shall preface the discussion by reference to the common belief that the expositions in February 1815 of the diminishingreturns principle were all intimately related to recent wartime circumstances. I also take account of the positions of the protagonists before the appearance of their pamphlets. This exercise proves essential in Ricardo’s case since his Essay proceeds on the assumption of a constant (above-subsistence) real wage, though before (and after) he is clear about the shared incidence of increasing land scarcity. Both Malthus and West incorporate this feature in their versions of the model-the former probably influenced by Ricardo’s earlier correspondence. Torrens, by contrast, assumes throughout a given subsistence real wage, and in that respect comes closest to the ‘textbook’ view of classical growth theory.
