Experimental Farming and Ricardo’s Political Arithmetic of Distribution

The development of David Ricardo’s economic theory of distribution -the laws that determine the share of output between the economic classes -depended on specific connections at several levels between two practicalsciences of the early 19th century, namely experimental agriculture andpolitical economy. This paper shows how Ricardo, one of the foremostBritish economists of his day, combined his empirical knowledge of farmingand agricultural experiments to develop both the content and method ofClassical economics. The method of argument he developed dependedupon numerical experiments that mirrored, in form and experience, theexperimental accounts from agricultural science. The content of hisarguments, and his derivation of the laws of distribution, depended criticallyon the effect of increased labour input into agriculture. This apparentlyhypothetical case was in fact a real question of political economy addressedby farming experiments within the context of the contemporary “spadehusbandry”debate.[...]