Richard Price

Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty (Dodo Press) Richard Price

Richard Price (1723-1791) was a Welsh moral and political philosopher. In 1744, he published a volume of sermons, which gained him the acquaintance of Lord Shelburne; this raised his reputation and helped determine the direction of his career. It was, however, as a writer on financial and political questions that Price became widely known. In May 1770 he presented to the Royal Society a paper on the proper method of calculating the values of contingent reversions. In 1771, he published his Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the National Debt. Price then turned his attention to the question of the American colonies. He had from the first been strongly opposed to the war, and in 1776 he published a pamphlet entitled Observations on Civil Liberty. A second pamphlet on the war with America, the debts of Great Britain, and kindred topics followed in the spring of 1777. Much of Price's most important philosophical work was in the region of ethics. The Review of the Principal Questions in Morals (1757) contains his whole theory.