language of Europe, and Mr. Mill on several occasions pays him the distinguished tribute of singling him out in an especial manner from a throng of opponents. Nor can it be said that he has won his place by following others, for his system aims at nothing less than revolution in the leading doctrines of political economy, and he certainly bids fair to stand next to Malthus and Ricardo as a provoker of controversy. This exceptional position has been attained as the result of a long and laborious career as a writer. Mr. Carey's first publication, in which he appears as an advocate of free-trade, with an economic theory based on a new doctrine of value, dates from 1835. His denial of Ricardo's doctrine as to the law of production from land and his conversion to the theory of protection followed a dozen years later. The final elaboration of his system in opposition to what he is fond of calling the British school appeared ten years later still, in 1858; and hardly a year has passed since without some addition to the long line of his works on this class of subjects. This series of publications has had a distinct and not inconsiderable effect. Bastiat not only borrowed Carey's law of value and presented it in a brilliant paraphrase, but seems to show Carey's influence throughout his eager search for harmonies in the economic world. In Germany, where the way was no doubt prepared for him by the labors of Frederic List, Mr. Carey has found a large class of readers, whose numbers are explained by Dr. Dühring of Berlin, the most active German writer of this school, by pointing to the American author's early sympathy with the Germans and his prediction of their intellectual leadership of the world; although a more substantial ground of explanation might be found perhaps in his more than German readiness to refer to the co-ordinating power of the state, as a specific for social or economic discords.

But while we may admit that the system elaborated by our countryman is likely to be, as Dühring says, "a ferment of the strongest kind" in the discussions of this generation, we must not forget that to lead a school is not necessarily making a contribution to the science. Not much of Mr. Carey's work, we are confident, will be found wrought into the political economy of the future. His doctrine of value gives epigrammatic

form to some important general truths, but does not supersede the usual conception of value as the ratio of exchange or purchasing power of commodities, or enable us to dispense with the use of that conception in dealing with a wide range of questions, both theoretical and practical. His doctrine as to the law of production from land, which is presented in fundamental contradiction of the English school, is chiefly a statement as to historical development, which does not touch the essential point of Ricardo's theory; and while he denies the whole of that theory and the law of Malthus as to increase of population, his reliance upon a conjectured physiological law as an ultimate limit to the increase of numbers, shows the difficulty which he has found in avoiding as a logical conclusion the tendency to increasing pressure upon the means of subsistence pointed out by those writers. And it is upon his speculations as to value, production from land, and population that, as we apprehend, his claims to be regarded as a permanent contributor to the science would be rested, not upon his later discussions of protection, the major part of which follows from the three lines of speculation just named, nor upon his theorizing as to money, in which his priority might be disputed by a series of writers, from John Law down. That Mr. Carey, by his ardent attack, compels a wholesome revision of positions and arguments there is no question; that he has checked some incautious generalizing we have no doubt; but that he has overturned any previously accepted principle of leading importance, still more that he has established any new and valuable principle originated by himself, is a claim which, in our judgment, cannot be made good.

In thus recognizing Mr. Carey's position as a writer of exceptional importance, we are confirmed by observing that he is the only American author noticed by Dr. Roscher in his exhaustive History of National Economy in Germany. But it must be admitted, we think, that Mr. Carey's following, in our own country, has had a more local character than might have been expected from his wide reputation. The work of E. Peshine Smith (1868), Dr. William Elder's "Questions of the Day" (1871), and Professor Thompson's "Social Science" (1875), are representative, not only of the views of his school,

but almost of its geographical limits in the United States. The conclusion at which we have arrived, however, as to Mr. Carey's own position with respect to the development of economic science, frees us from the necessity of considering more particularly those writers who have followed but have not advanced beyond him.*

The general result then to which, as we believe, a sober examination of the case must lead any candid inquirer, is, that the United States have, thus far, done nothing towards developing the theory of political economy, notwithstanding their vast and immediate interest in its practical applications. It is not an agreeable duty to declare a conclusion so little flattering to patriotic sentiment; but to arrive at it as a truth forced upon the mind by the history of economic science is still less agreeable. And what explanation, it will be asked, is to be given for a failure apparently so much at variance with what our material condition, the general intelligence of our people, and the growth of intellectual activity among us, might lead the inquirer to expect? The answer to this question will be easier, if we briefly consider the circumstances under which one of the leading public questions having an economic bearing has been discussed and acted upon in this country.

The question of paper currency, when it first came before the people of the United States for settlement under the present Constitution, in 1790-91, was already complicated in a manner which made its thorough investigation doubtful. Whether such paper should be issued at all, whether it should be regulated by the general government or the States, and whether the proposed national bank should control the paper issues of the country, or should be content with simply pouring its own into the general mass, were questions the decision of which was in a manner forestalled by the existence of banks of issue established several years before under State

It is impossible to make any serious mention of Mr. Greeley as a writer on political economy, although his name is sometimes included in a full catalogue of Mr. Carey's school. And we have not included the name of Mr. Colwell, because, while he, no doubt, agreed with Mr. Carey in many points, we observe that in a note to the translation of List's "National System of Political Economy," p. 335, he more than intimated dissent from Mr. Carey's theory of rent; and Mr. Carey's system, with that theory struck out, would not be recognizable by its author.

authority, and not easily disturbed by the new government. And the approach to the fundamental question as to bank paper was still further embarrassed by the political turn which the discussion took in its early stages. The advocates of a liberal construction of the Constitution, and those of a strict construction, arrayed their forces for battle over this question as soon as it appeared. Nothing, indeed, could be more natural; but nothing could be more unfortunate for the proper settlement of an economic problem. All scientific questions were made subordinate to the political question at the outset. The party who dreaded to see the national government too strong were committed in advance in opposition to a measure which for them was part of a general political system, and in large sections of the country hostility to the bank became hostility to banking. And the division of opinion upon this line, rather than upon abstract principle, was promoted by the supposed opposition of interests between the commercial States and the agricultural. Of thirty-nine votes for the bill chartering the first Bank of the United States, all but six were from States north of the Maryland line; of the twenty votes against the bill, all but one were from States south of that line. How far the political side of the question of banking overshadowed the scientific is clear from the manner in which it was discussed by Mr. Jefferson, from whom one of the great parties took its tone for years. That statesman's treatment of the question of currency, and, indeed, of other economic questions of which the relations happened to be political, would to-day be universally recognized as beneath the level both of his intellect and his knowledge. His intense democracy, and his extreme dread of any proposition based on English models or English opinions, incapacitated him for any genuine discussion of this subject in its larger aspects. And to what length the ignorant bigotry of many of his followers carried the hostility to banks, which was instinctive with him, the political history of our first half-century amply testifies.

The prudence and good judgment with which the first Bank of the United States was conducted are now seldom questioned; and the real service which it rendered, in its twenty years of existence, towards giving a stable foundation for our

finances, at a time when the State banks and their issues were in actual chaos, is not more doubtful. But the Bank owed its existence to the Federal party, and with the downfall of that party the renewal of its charter became impossible. Late in the War of 1812, an empty treasury brought the government of the day to the support of a new bank charter, as an expedient of the moment. Banks, said Mr. Webster, in sober admonition, cannot give the means of supporting an expensive war. "They are useful to the state in their proper place and sphere, but they are not sources of national income. The streams of revenue must flow from deeper fountains." But so urgent was the demand for a bank, on grounds of merely temporary policy, that Mr. Madison, who had opposed the charter of the first Bank of the United States, vetoed, as dilatory, one bill chartering the new bank, because it required the institution to begin on the basis of specie payments! Happily, the return of peace settled this weighty question for us, and the second Bank of the United States was chartered, to begin as a specie-paying bank, on the first day of January, 1817.

But whatever influence the new Bank of the United States might have had in directing the public mind to broader views of the question of currency, had it been left to itself and had its management continued to be sound, its circumstances did not allow such influence to be exerted by it. Political hostility was excited against it, and, six years before the expiration of its charter, war was formally declared against it by President Jackson. We, of the present generation, are in some respects losers from the total and probably final disappearance of that personal loyalty to great leaders, which marked our politics forty years ago and gave to them a glow of generous enthusiasm; but in some respects we are also gainers. The overwhelming individuality of one man is not likely again to convert a high question of economic policy into a mere struggle between "Jackson and the Bank," in which the rival clamors of personal adherents and personal foes shall drown all considerations of scientific or political principle. Such, however, was the ignoble character of the contest which led to the final overthrow of the second Bank of the United States. The financial revulsion which followed that contest, and was