ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates what English Quakerism was at the end of the eighteenth century and the moral and intellectual assets this vibrating community granted its members and ventures into conjectures about the kind of contacts he may have had with Quaker milieus.
It illustrates the circumstances of Ricardo’s marriage with a Quaker and the ensuing break with his religious community that left him in a religious no man’s land. The chapter suggests that he became for a time a fellow traveller of Quakerism, and how this was not an exceptional event in his time and place, when a significant percentage of the Sephardi youngest generation, including a few among Ricardo siblings, severed ties with their community primarily through mixed marriage.
It argues that his acquaintance with Quakerism had, arguably, some role in shaping his political commitments and his views on toleration and philanthropic enterprises. The chapter adds evidence to the effect that his Quaker acquaintances had a role in shaping his intellectual interests, particularly encouraging him in the study of some areas of natural science, namely geology, mineralogy and chemistry.
