Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/23

 Henry C. Carey 435 Calvin Colton's Public Economy for the United States (1848). Much the same is true of the ^fties, with the appearance of G. Opdyke's A Treatise on Political Economy (1851) ; Professor Francis Bowen's The Principles of Political Economy (1856); and Professor John Bascom's Political Economy (1859). Most of these were textbooks exerting comparatively little influence outside the colleges. More widely read were the Elements of Political Economy (1865) by Professor A. L. Perry, of Williams College, which ran through many editions, and The Science of Wealth; a Manual of Political Economy (1866) by Professor Amasa Walker, of Amherst. Less important were E. Lawton's Lectures on Science, Politics, Morals, and Society (1862) and President J. T. Champlin's Lessons on Political Economy (1868). All of these were cast into the shade by the one American author who soon acquired an international reputation. Henry C. Carey (1793-1879), the son of Mathew Carey, was well in the forties before he commenced to write. Beginning in 1835 with his Essay on the Rate of Wages he published in rapid suc- cession a flood of pamphlets as well as a series of volumes. Chief among the latter are the Principles of Political Economy (3 vols., 1837-40) ; The Past, the Present, the Future (1848) ; The Harmony of Interests (1850); The Slave Trade (1853); Principles of Social Science (3 vols., 1858-59); and The Unity of Law (1872). Carey started out as a free trader, but soon became an ardent protectionist and took issue at almost every point with the doctrines of the classical school. He opposed Adam Smith on the theory of productive labour; he objected to the Ricardian theories of rent and wages ; he criticized the Malthusian theory of population ; he laid stress on his own law of value and utility ; and he elaborated, on original but none the less insecure foun- dations, a whole structure of economic thought. At a time when the field was occupied by the American imitators of British classical political economy and by the widely read translations of Bastiat, the French free trader, Carey heartened all those both at home and abroad who were seeking some economic basis for the newer nationalism with its policy of protection. Great as was the influence that he exercised at the time, later generations have found but little of enduring value in his con- tributions to economic science; and toward the end of his career he weakened his influence by espousing the inflationist currency