THIS engraving of Mr. Carey is tolerably faithful. We give it to effect such presentment of the man as Art can supply in lack of personal opportunity. We wish the pen could as successfully do its share of the duty of introducing him to those of our friends to whom he may happen to be unknown. They would be the richer for it by all that there is of gain in the complete apprehension of a man who has rendered such services to the world as will make it wiser and better and happier in the time to come. It is a great thing to make an intimate acquaintance with a man who brings us new revelations of truth, and makes us happy in understanding what before we hated to think of, for the difficulty, darkness, and humiliation, with which it oppressed us. It is a very great thing to be admitted to the secrets of the system wherein we live, and move, and have our being; it puts us upon a good understanding with God, Nature, and ourselves, and gives us all the life and joy of confidence in the conditions of our existence, and the hope of our destiny. We would gladly see the face and know the history of the men who bring us such benefits; their thoughts and feelings and aspirations have become ours, and we naturally long for a fuller acquaintance and commu nion. Mr. Carey is the Political Economist of the age. He has delivered the science of Society from its darkness and bondage, and brought the system of the world's business, the financial and industrial interests, and the civil and social relations of men and nations, within the dominion of principles, and set their mysteries clear in the light of a simple and certain philosophy. The physical sciences, within their respective spheres, have established their truth of theory and accomplished wonders in practice, and machinery, mathematics, and physiology-the systems of dead and living matter-are well subdued to our mental rule; but society-the whole system of human rela tions that lies beyond the scope of the instincts and affections which take care of the family circle-still lay in doubt and error, affronting reason, and repelling the genial enthusiasm of research. Politicians, indeed, talked experience and statistics, for affairs required discussion; am. parties wrangled about policies, for decisions must at least seem to rest upon principles: ba government was eminently empirical; and lea ing men of directly opposite opinions became equally distinguished and renowned; for there was no true standard to judge them by; and not a few instances have occurred, in which the champions of opposite doctrines have grow: equally famous in debates which proved nothing and converted nobody. Such things could not have been, if policy had been illustrated by ascertained principles. In the received system grand, pervading, and controlling truths were wanting for the uses of creed, conduct, and criticism, in new positions. Not only were michievous errors admitted, but elements vital the system were excluded; indeed, the author ties would have regarded its true breadth of range and depth of principle as so much intrasion into the neighbouring territories of C Science and Moral Philosophy. With them Political Economy was merely "the science whi teaches the manner in which nations and ind viduals acquire wealth." They could not regani it as the system of laws by which mankin advances in intellectual, moral, and political inprovement, to better still and better conditions in continual progression; for they held the dotrine of a natural and necessary antagonism be tween the material creation and the laws of human life; they held the dismal belief that, in the settled order of the earth's system, populatio increases faster than the supply of food; that ai. discoveries of science, all improvements in culti vation, by which production is increased, must be followed by still more rapid increase of population, and that war, pestilence, and famine, are the inevitable results and the natural correctives of such excess of population over food. Better fortunes might casually lighten the burden, and brighten the hope that "springs eternal in the human breast;" the gloomy process might be temporarily diverted; but the tide and tendency was sure; fate led the destiny of the race, and the oracles of science were but the prophecy of sorrow and destruction. Naturally enough, the gloom of such an inevitable catastrophe threw its shadow over all the stages and incidents of the progress. As men grow more numerous, it was held, competition for labour increases, and wages as steadily decline, until capital reaches the point of supremacy at which wages and charity differ only in name, and the dependence of the masses upon the money of the world becomes more wretched and helpless than in the condition of chattel slavery. This is the very philosophy of despair, resting upon an arithmetic of ruin; but it was and is the accepted doctrine of the schools. It is the atheism, the irreligion, of science; it lacks the faith and hope and charity of truth; it impeaches the government of Providence; nay, it denies unity in the system of existence, and, in its reflex action upon opinion and conduct, hardens the heart against social evil by demonstrating its necessity, and, so, discourages the impulses of justice, represses the efforts of philanthropy, and breaks the heart of hope. Mr. Carey's doctrine opens upon this wretched system of doubt and darkness, in a sunburst of light and warmth. He denies and disproves the alleged antagonism between nature and man, between capital and the labour which is its creator. In his system, there is no curse brooding over every scene of prosperity; no plagues of war, famine, and pestilence, in leash, ready to spring upon the prey at its boundary point of prosperous fortunes. He puts no enmity between the classes of toilers, traders, and employers; and forbids no indulgence of the natural affections, in fear of entailing only misfortune upon posterity; but, on the contrary, he occupies the ground of hope and harmony, affirming and demonstrating a natural unity of interests, and consent of movement, in the functions and affairs of the several classes engaged in the world's work, and concerned in its wealth-creating agencies. The most general proposition of his theory, is a law of uniform relation between the quantity of capital in use in a community, and the quality of its labour; connecting every increase or diminution in the former, with a corresponding improvement or deterioration of the latter; or, in other words, marrying the active and passive agents of production together, "for better, for worse, till death doth them part." of present labour; for no commodity, however much labour it may have required for its produc-. tion, will command the value of more labour than is necessary to reproduce it at the time. It is obvious to the slightest observation, and the reason is apparent to the most superficial reflection, that the purchase price, and the rent or hire of all commodities, of all the products of work and wealth, are cheapened to the purchaser and borrower, in proportion to the facility of their production. These propositions seem indisputable. The next advanced position in Mr. Carey's cheerful philosophy is, that "the rate of wages is the index of the productiveness of labour"-that the labourer's share of the joint product of wealth wedded to work, is in constant proportion to its quantity and value; increasing with its prosperity, and diminishing with its decline. Here is both harmony and hope, where before we had only conflict and despair. His argument runs thus: the labourer must receive his wages out of the product of his labour, which, other things being equal, depends upon its quantity. The larger this, the greater the fund for his payment, whether made by the capitalist, as when he hires labour, or retained by the labourer when he hires capital; the wages or share of labour, being, in the latter case, certainly, and in the former, possibly, the residuum left after paying capital its interest or share of the product due to it. This is clear as to the power of the capitalist who hires labour to pay wages; the motive is found in such considerations as these. The human machine, like the inanimate instruments of production, yields results to the employer proportioned to its condition and capabilities. The highest perfection of the instrument, animate or inanimate, is essential to its highest productive power. But, besides the food and clothing of the one, corresponding to the fuel and structural materials of the other, which are required alike for both kinds of power, to maintain them in working condition, the human producer has his most available faculties in his rational and moral nature. The cultivation of these up to their highest use in the service of production, demands the opportunities of some leisure, the refinement of some luxury, the cordial stimulus of current happiness, and the excitement of future hope. This development and culture can come only from a liberal surplusage of wages, after provision is made for the primary wants of the mere animal life; and the policy of parsimony which denies these conditions, is as unwise as the saving of wood and water, which would keep a steam engine at half its working power. The ox has more brute force, the engine more mechanical power, than the human machine possesses, and these can be had at a cheaper rate. The special element of human labour which capital depends upon for the en This fundamental law is resolvable into the fol-hancements of its profits, is of that kind whose lowing propositions, which are either proved by the mere statement, or, are capable of easy verification. Labour gains increased productiveness in the proportion that capital contributes to its efficiency. Every improvement in the efficiency of labour, so gained by the aid of capital, is so much in creased facility of accumulation. 3 The increased power of accumulating capital, lessens the value in labour, of that already existing; bringing it more easily within the purchase VOL. X. 32 proper stimulant is his hope of bettering his condition, and rising in his own person, or that of his children, to higher culture and greater comfort. The assertion, therefore, that wages are the index of productiveness, or that higher wages naturally accompany richer yield and larger product, that the labourer, under the law of the subject, divides in an equitable ratio with the capitalist, the enhanced product of their joint agency, is well established in the reason of the thing; and, nothing can be more positive and | conclusive, than the testimony of facts to the same point. Mr. Carey traces the history of wages from the days of the earlier Plantagenets, when the owner took the whole produce of the earth, and doled out such provisions for the support of the serf, as he pleased, up till the present day, and finds that the rate of wages, and the labourer's control over the distribution of products, have, in fact, advanced at even pace with the increase of wealth and the growth of population, until now the labourer of England has more liberal remuneration, than in any less prosperous country of Europe; and, that wages have advanced most rapidly in the present century, during which population and wealth have more rapidly increased than ever before. alone will secure the fame of Mr. Carey, and rank him chief among the cultivators of the science. Until 1848, he accepted the received doctrine of his predecessors on this point, and per mitted it to stand unquestioned, upon the authority of its teachers. He escaped most of the mischief there was in it, through his law of the distribution of the products of labour, which saved him from the fatal error which otherwise it would have is fused into his reasonings. In his work entitled "The Past, Present, and Future," published that year, for the first time, the truth of Ricardo's doo trine concerning the settlement and cultivation of the earth, and of his theory of Rents, was assailed, and with such force of demonstration refuted, that there is perhaps no example in science of more satisfactory and complete triumph over long-esta blished error. By an elaborate survey of the settle ment and cultivation of the United States, Mexics, the West Indies, South America, Great Britain, France, Italy, Greece, India, and the Islands of the Pacific, and carrying the examination down into detail by applying it to the progress in cult Thus, the theory of our author exhibits the true interests of all classes coupled in the bonds of reciprocal dependency and common fortunes; wealth and work are reconciled, man and nature put into amicable relations, and the system of human existence vindicated from the infidelities of despair. It was an axiom with his predeces-vation of every individual farm within the reach sors, that "there is no way of keeping profits up but by pressing wages down." For the refutation of this murderous dogma, of the "dismal science," Mr. Carey has the gratitude of every humane student of his works. It has long been perceived and acknowledged, that with the growth of population, the increase of capital and consequent improvement of machinery, abundance of product and cheapness of price for the resulting commodities, follow as a natural consequence; all the happy issues of the fact were not perceived, though the fact itself was familiarly known. Until the publication of Mr. Carey's discovery in the matter of man's relation to land, it was generally held that the directly opposite facts were true of the products of that greatest and most important of all instruments of production-that primary and ultimate reliance for all our resources, the soil that feeds our race and all that we feed upon, and furnishes, besides, all the materials which we mould and shape for our multiform needs. Ricardo, whose work is the Koran of the old school's faith, taught that cultivation begins, when land is abundant and population scarce, with the richest soils, and proceeds, with the growth of numbers, steadily to poorer and still poorer soils, until, at last, all proportion ceases, and the catastrophe of famine and disease relieves the over-burdened earth, unless wars and other forms of destruction shall have anticipated the necessity. McCullough states it in these words: "From the operation of fixed and permanent causes, the increasing sterility of the soil is sure, in the long run, to overmatch the improvements that occur in agriculture and machinery." Malthus, building upon the same basis, taught that population increases faster than food, and that all the improvements in cultivation, which increase production, are invariably followed by a still more rapid increase of population, neutralizing their effect by compelling a resort to soils growing continually less and less productive, and bringing men nearer and nearer to the inevitable starvation point. of personal observation, he establishes the fact historically that men invariably commence ther improvements of the soil upon the uplands, and thinner and lighter lands, and descend towards the richer and deeper moulds of the valleys and water-courses, as population and wealth, or abun dance of labour and excellence of machinery, qualify them for the task of clearing and draining them. The heavy timber of the richer lands is more than a match for the men and means of the earliest period of civilized occupation; and the drainage of the marshes, which hold the trea sured wash of the adjacent hills, is quite beyond the power of pioneer enterprise. Indeed, the miasm of their rank fertility forbids the encounter till the human force is sufficient completely subdue and disinfect them. In our own new country, where the work of clearing and tillage is presented, within short distances, in every stage of progress, from the very earliest to the most mature, the proof is open to easy observation. From any considerable outlook in our more recent settlements may be seen, at a glance, the perfect verification of Mr. Carey's position. The cultivated spots, spread out like patchwork before the eye, are seen to he scattered over the hill-tops and mountain-sides; while the water-courses, marshes, and lowlands, are still covered with their unbroken forests and smothering verdure. The pioneer farmer resorts to the thin lands, easily cleared and cultivated, for the reason that they return him, at little original outlay of labour and capital, a light crop which meets his pressing need, and affords a slight surplus, by which wealth gradually grows. and enables him to descend lower and lower towards the best soils, as he grows more and more able to encounter their more difficult cultivation, and to await the slower, though greater, returns to the capital and labour which they require. A fact at hand will serve for illustration. I accords with all others which bear upon the question. The Turtle Creek Hill lies upon the The refutation of this melancholy notion, and route of the central road from Philadelphia to the reversal of the resulting inferences, is one of Pittsburg, about fifteen miles east of the latter. the grandest contributions ever made to the Time out of mind, it has been the main impedi science of political economy. This achievementment of that great thoroughfare; any ridge of the Alleghany chain being more easy of ascent. The | road, rising from the creek, clambers the steep hillside by doublings and windings, which evasively relieve the acclivity, but leave it still the catastrophe of the trip. But there was no help for it, for it was the proper and direct route through and by the settlements of the vicinity. Last year, the Central Pennsylvania Railroad was made through that region; but, turning aside from the farm-houses and taverns on the road as not at all in the way of its duty, and avoiding the bluff ridge as very much in the way of its progress, it made its way through the swamp down the bank of the creek, following its course to the Monongahela River, and so, by a level track, reached its terminus at Pittsburg, lessening the distance one mile, as well as avoiding the ascent altogether. The explanation is apparent-the public had to clamber that horrible hill for fifty years, because the earlier cultivation of the country chose the hillsides, and heads of streams, and their thinner and lighter lands, of necessity, leaving the deep, rich soil on the margin of the creek, and the narrow valley through which it ran, in its primeval state, uncultivated and untenanted, and, therefore, out of the line of travel. Here the expense of drainage has delayed the reduction of this waste-land until now, though it lay directly in the nearest and best route of travel, and within marketing distance of a city demanding its products. In further illustration, it is worthy of notice that large sections of the richest land in Ohio are still in forest, because it would require ten times the original purchase-money per acre to bring it into cultivation. Where the soil is moist, and the timber trees are from three to four feet in diameter, the subjugation of the land requires an investment heavier than poor men are able to make, and a delay of returns longer than rich men are willing to endure. The force of this law, and the activity of its principle, are even more strikingly exhibited in the instances of declining prosperity of which there are abundance in the fortunes of the Old World. The Campagna di Roma, almost up to the gates of" the Eternal City," once crowded with population and covered with villas, has long escaped from the control of the cultivator, and recovered its wild liberty. The vestiges of its ancient inhabitation and culture are still there; but the people, impoverished and enfeebled by wars and social deterioration, have fled to the hills and poorer soils, to which their inferior powers of cultivation are better matched. In India, where war and pestilence have done their work of destruction, and wealth and population have declined, the richer soils have relapsed, with the scanty and wretched inhabitants, into barbarism, and agriculture and social prosperity have declined together. The rule is invariable and absolute:-a poor and sparse people can occupy only the poorer soils; the more fertile are reserved for the dominion of wealth and abundant labour, directed by science and made efficient by machinery. Man's actual government of the earth graduates to his real efficiency in every kind of force, in the nicest correspond ence. Thus, observation and reason sustain Mr. Carey's views; and the foundation of the "dismal science" is destroyed, for it rested mainly upon the plausible but utterly false assumption in respect to the relation of man to land which Mr. C. has so amply refuted. The doctrine that cultivation begins with the poorest soils, and proceeds, as wealth and popu lation increases, constantly forward to richer lands, yielding greater returns, sustains the proposition that food obeys the same law as the products of mechanical industry; that is, increases and cheapens faster than population advances, and provides more ample supplies for life and luxury as the demand is greater; and the law of distribution, which, by its normal operation, tends constantly to enhance the proportion of all products divided to the share of labour, completes the triumph of the new theory, and establishes the fame of its author upon an achievement as beneficent as it is imposing. The theory of Rent, which makes such a figure, and casts such a horror over the system of Ricardo, perishes under the touch of this searching investigation, and facts are found in uniform support of the more cheerful doctrine. We must not pause here to analyze the argument by which our author establishes his position, but must content ourselves with remarking that History affords the fullest proof of its truth. In the time of James I., the lands in cultivation yielded, on an average, eight bushels to the acre; subtract two bushels for the seed, and six remain,-net product of the tillage; of this the landlord took onehalf, leaving the labourer three bushels. Now, the farm-lands of England yield forty bushels; the landlord takes one-fifth, or eight bushels, instead of three, and the cultivator has thirty-two for his share. Here the proportion of products divided are, respectively, to the landlord one-half diminishing to one-fifth, to the tenant one-half increasing to four-fifths;-the increase in quantity being, to the former, from three to eight bushels, to the latter, from three to thirty-two. Thus, increase of wealth, population, and productiveness, are linked together; and their effect is to level up the fortunes of the working-man towards equality with his employer, at a rate which probably corresponds very nearly with his rising capability of using and enjoying his prosperity. Incidental to the discovery of laws so pervadingly operative as these, and naturally accompanying the establishment of cardinal principles in the whole depth of their truth and vast breadth of their reach, the whole system of national and individual relations involved get the illustration and support of demonstrative science; and, because they are not merely empirical and partial, but scientific and general truths; they have the force to inaugurate the golden rule in the government of finance, social relations, civil economy, and international policy. The obligations of peace and good-will among men are reinforced by the arithmetic of societary science, and the precepts of honesty are fortified by the material profits in which they are seen to issue. The old-school authorities, regarding the race as without hope in their destiny, have treated man as the slave of his necessities, and governed solely by force and fear; Mr. Carey regards him as the child of hope and the heir of happiness, governed by justice, and inspired by the instinctive apprehension of its assured rewards, and, as an active element in the world's movement, constitutionally in harmony with its happiest condi the world, and its doctrines have such importance, that at least the students of the science are at ready busily occupied with their examination. It is matter of experience, that fundamental inso vations in theory, more especially such as concern tions and highest ends. A generous view of human fellowship and inter-dependency, and a magnanimous apprehension of the relation of "Man and his helpmate," and "Man and his family," hold integral positions in the structure of his system. In all this, there is not only the ful-political policy, and those great ideas that under ness of a completed thought, the soundness of a vital truth, and the beauty of a symmetrical theory, but there is also the freshness of new and delightful connexions and harmonies, interlinking the remotest departments of the philosophy of human nature. His system has also this other evidence of its truth and use, that it is clear and conclusive in the apprehension of the student. The reader finds his books attractive in matter and form. They are easily read. The effective array of facts, and the natural flow of the argument, renders the doctrines exhibited so familiar in their plain conclusiveness, that one can scarcely feel, the admiration and surprise due to their grandeur and beneficence, so much as the still greater wonder which starts up, that they could so long remain unknown. Indolent, incapable, and uncandid critics like to know to what school, clique, or sect, a new thinker may be referred, that his pretensions may be despatched with a word, We cannot accommodate them with any research-saving classification of the subject of this notice. He is neither Socialist, Communist, Associationist, nor Feudal Conservatist. He is himself the founder of the American system of Political Economy, We say American, not because he is American born and bred, but because he belongs to the New World, born for the New Time, and, by right of natural fitness, the expositor of the New Order which has its sphere and fortunes specially and exclusively in this his native country. It is not within our province, nor does it consist with our limits or objects, to analyze Mr. Carey's system after the manner of a formal review, much less to state and array in any fashion the bearing of his principles upon the questions of policy upon which the political parties of the country are divided, as their sectional interests and popular commitments determine. The specialties of his creed, and the controversies which it involves, must be sought at first-hand in his own lucid and masterly presentment of them. It was our purpose and aim only to present the author, in the broadest and most catholic principles of his philosophy, to our readers, and to recommend his works to their consideration. The first of his book-publications was his "Essay on the Rate of Wages, with an Examination of the Causes of the Difference in the Condition of the Labouring Population throughout the World," published in 1835. This work was substantially absorbed and reproduced in his "Principles of Political Economy," in three octavo volumes, published respectively in the years 1837, 1838, and 1840. "The Past, Present, and Future," appeared in 1848, and "The Harmony of Interests" in 1850. Besides these works, covering the general ground of his science, he has been favourably known in Europe and at home as the author of two works upon the subject of the currency. The larger of these is entitled "The Credit System in France, England, and the United States.". 1 Mr. Carey's system, though very recent and wholly new, has yet obtained some currency in lie the business establishments of society, are slowly admitted to a hearing, and must usually wait still longer for a definitive judgment upon their pretensions. The new material, and the changes of form, by which we grow in mind, as well as in body, work slowly into the old frame, and the worn-out, which must be displaced, is surrendered as reluctantly as if our identity de pended upon a tardiness that protects from the consciousness of change. Energies which are intrinsic and the accidents of circumstance, hasten or delay the movement in the inevitable progress, but it is seldom sudden. The principles of out author have, however, had the fortune and the force to command an interest in Continental Es rope, earlier than their novel and revolutionary character might allow him to hope. Ten years ago, his "Political Economy" was translated into Swedish, elaborately reviewed in their periodicals of authority, and promptly introduced into the University at Upsal. It is now in course of pais lication at Turin, in Italian. The "Past, Present, and Future," has been published in London, translated, and published in Sweden, and is now being translated for publication in Paris. In the United States, his books are well known to the few who make a science of politics, but they have not been introduced into any college except in Virginia. This is probably owing, in great part to the fact, that the books in their original form, are necessarily argumentative and controversial, If they were thrown into the didactic style and method, adapted to elementary instruction, their admission and adoption would be instantly se cured; except, perhaps, so far as party opinions on the question of the protective tariff, might hinder. We have something of a promise from their author, that he will render them into the required form for the use of our high schools, sa soon as he can find leisure for the task. The very rapid spread, and favourable recep tion of Mr. Carey's views, upon the Continent, are, in a considerable degree, owing to an affair, which has, perhaps, not a parallel in the curiosities of literary history. Early in the year 1854, the distinguished French economist, Fred. Bastiat, did our modest American author the unexpected honour of adopting his whole system, in form, substance, and effect-in facts, figures, and philo sophy, as his own, taking the entire responsibility, with the credit of its discovery! This was the more creditable to the plundered party, that Monsieur Bastiat was really a man of eminent ability, and quite above the temptation to any ordinary style of stealing. The publication of his hooks made a sensation throughout Europe; his authority gave the new views an effective presentment in the world of science, and even the explosion of his pretension to their authorship, added to the notoriety and interest of the doctrines, while it placed our Carey in the front rank of the political economists of the age. Bastiat died in 1851, after denying that he was indebted to Mr. Carey for the ideas already published, but admitting that when he should arrive at the second part of his work, towards which he was progressing, he would, |