Price, Richard (1723–1791)

Price, Richard(1723–1791)

Richard Price, a Welsh dissenting preacher, moral philosopher, and actuary, was born at Tynton, Llangeinor, Glamorganshire. His father, Rees, was a dissenting minister with extreme Calvinist opinions. Richard Price was educated at a number of different academies, finally entering Coward's Academy in London, where he remained for the years 1740–1744. He was ordained at the age of twenty-one and began his ministerial career as a domestic chaplain. He later served a number of London congregations, notably those at Stoke Newington, where he lived, and at the Gravel-Pit Meeting House in Hackney. Price was buried in the cemetery at Bunhill Fields; his friend Joseph Priestley preached the funeral oration.

In addition to his writings on moral philosophy, Price wrote with considerable influence on financial and political questions. His papers on life expectancy and on calculating the values of reversionary payments were instrumental in reforming the actuarial basis of the insurance and benefit societies of the time. His paper on the public debt is said to have led William Pitt, the prime minister, to reestablish the sinking fund to extinguish England's national debt. In his pamphlet Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America (London, February 8, 1776), Price defended the American cause.

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