Abraham and Abigail had met in London shortly after Abraham's emigration from Amsterdam. Abraham's father, Joseph Israel Ricardo, was a Dutch businessman with substantial sums invested in British funds, and Abraham had moved to London to manage these investments for his father. By all accounts Abraham was a successful businessman. One measure of his success was his induction, in 1793, into a select group of "Jew Brokers," a rare privilege limited to a dozen Jewish businessmen in the City of London. Except for these select brokerships, the licensing of brokers was limited to "freemen," precluding Jews on the grounds that they lacked qualifications for citizenship. That David Ricardo's father was one of the rare exceptions to this rule reflected his reputation in the London business community.
David, it seems, was destined to follow in his father's footsteps. Maria Edgeworth, a writer and an acquaintance of David Ricardo, recalled a conversation in which Ricardo remarked: "We were fifteen children--my father gave me but little education--he thought reading and writing and arithmetic were sufficient because he doomed me to be nothing but a man of business...." By the age of fourteen, after a brief sojourn to Amsterdam to further his education, David was employed by his father in the family business.
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