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PRICE, RICHARD (1723-1791)

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Originally appearing in Volume V22, Page 315 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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PRICE, See also:RICHARD (1723-1791) , See also:English moral and See also:political philosopher, son of a dissenting See also:minister, was See also:born on the 23rd of See also:February 1723, at Tynton, See also:Glamorganshire. He was educated privately and at a dissenting See also:academy in See also:London, and became See also:chaplain and See also:companion to a Mr Streatfield at Stoke Newington. By the See also:death of Mr Streatfield and of an See also:uncle in 1756 his circumstances were considerably improved, and in 1757 he married a See also:Miss Sarah Blundell, originally of Belgrave in See also:Leicestershire. In 1767 he published a See also:volume of sermons, which gained him the acquaintance of See also:Lord Shelburne, an event which had much See also:influence in raising his reputation and determining the See also:character of his subsequent pursuits. It was, however, as a writer on See also:financial and political questions that Price became widely known. In 1769, in a See also:letter to Dr See also:Franklin, he wrote some observations on the expectation of lives, the increase of mankind, and the See also:population of London, which were published in the Philosophical Transactions of that See also:year; in May 1770 he communicated to the Royal Society a See also:paper on the proper method of calculating the values of contingent reversions. The publication of these papers is said to have exercised a beneficial influence in See also:drawing See also:attention to the inadequate calculations on which many See also:insurance and benefit See also:societies had recently been formed. In 1769 Price received the degree of D.D. from the university of See also:Glasgow. In 1771 he published his See also:Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the See also:National See also:Debt (ed. 1772 and 1774). This pamphlet excited considerable controversy, and is supposed to have influenced See also:Pitt in re-establishing the sinking fund for the extinction of the national debt, which had been created by See also:Walpole in 1716 and abolished in 1733. The means, however, which Price proposed for the extinction of the debt are described by Lord See also:Overstone as " a sort of See also:hocus-pocus machinery," sup-posed to See also:work " without loss to any one," and consequently unsound.

1 Lord Overstone reprinted in 1857, for private circulation, Price's and other rare tracts on the national debt and the sinking fund. nothing to See also:

Butler. III. Happiness he regards as the only end, conceivable by us, of divine See also:Providence, but it is a happiness wholly dependent upon rectitude. Virtue tends always to happiness, and in the end must produce it in its perfect See also:form. See also:Works.—Besides the above-mentioned, Price wrote an See also:Essay on the Population of See also:England (2nd ed., 178o) ; two Fast-See also:day Sermons, published respectively in 1779 and 178i; and Observations on the importance of the See also:American Revolution and the means of rendering it a benefit to the See also:World (1784). A See also:complete See also:list of his works is given as an appendix to Dr See also:Priestley's Funeral See also:Sermon. His views on the See also:French Revolution are denounced by See also:Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in See also:France. Notices of Price's ethical See also:system occur in See also:Mackintosh's Progress of Ethical See also:Philosophy, See also:Jouffroy's Introduction to See also:Ethics, See also:Whewell's See also:History of Moral Philosophy in England; See also:Bain's See also:Mental and Moral Sciences. See also ETHICS, and T. See also:Fowler's monograph on See also:Shaftesbury and See also:Hutcheson. For Price's See also:life see memoir by his See also:nephew, See also:William See also:Morgan.

(J. M.

End of Article: PRICE, RICHARD (1723-1791)

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