My bad on not putting the quote up.
Quote:
That logic being that the Elves were unlikely to create Seven rings of power to give away to Dwarves so that the dwarves would get richer.
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I agree, given the history with the Silmarils, it was very unlikely the Dwarven Rings were made for the dwarves by the elves.
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I think that it is a point worthy of remembering that the Elves had been tricked into making the Great Rings in the first place. The true intent of the Rings was to provide Sauron a means of enslaving all the Free Peoples of Middle earth, that was not what the Elves thought the Rings were supposed to do. Thus, you would have to have Rings for all the Free Peoples in order for the scheme to work. Sauron had to get the Elves to make the Seven Rings for the Dwarves, otherwise there would have been a gaping hole in his evil plans. The difficulty of getting Elves to make Rings for Dwarves and Men may have been part of the reason that Sauron stayed and was more personally involved in their making. I think that it is quite likely that once the Mirdain were under Sauron's influence they would be open to any suggestions that he would make about how many and what kind of Rings to forge.
A note on how far under the influence of Sauron the Mirdain were; there is a tale that under Sauron's influence Celebrimbor overthrew Galadriel and Celeborn in Eregion, a very un-Elf thing to do (Even though this sort of thing seems to run in Celebrimbor's family). Although that story is from the UT, which is not strictly canon, it does give an indication into Tolkien's thinking about how susceptible the Mirdain were to the machinations of Sauron.
[ April 14, 2002: Message edited by: Kuruharan ]