Price

Price, Richard (1723-91), was a native of Glamorganshire. He had been for some years a Nonconformist minister in London, when a volume of his sermons gained for him the acquaintance of Lord Shelburne. who, when he became Prime Minister, made him his private secretary. In 1771 Price wrote An Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the National Bebt, from which Pitt probably derived his idea of a sinking fund. He had previously attracted attention by papers on actuarial and statistical questions. Price, however, made his name still more widely known by his pamphlets directed against the war with America, and in 1778 he was invited to become a citizen of the United States. He also welcomed the French Revolution, and was warmly denounced by Burke in his Reflections.