FUS W. GRISWOLD.

Henry C. Carey has been recognized through continental Europe as one of
the master thinkers of our generation. It is time for him to be known in
his own country. In Political Economy he has applied the methods of the
Positive Philosophy, and his works exhibit the chief advances the
science has made since Adam Smith published his "Wealth of Nations."
They are text-books in the colleges even of Sweden and Norway, while at
the University in the street next to that in which the author has his
residence, books are adopted composed of ideas from empirical and nearly
obsolete systems: Say and Ricardo are regarded as expositors of the last
and ultimate discoveries. Let us see if this law respecting prophets
cannot be changed; or if not changed, confirmed, by an exception in the
case of our philosopher.

Mr. Carey was born in Philadelphia, in December, 1793. His father was
the late eminent Matthew Carey, memories of whose virtues preserve about
his name a thousand delightful associations. Matthew Carey was a
political economist also. He wrote much, and he wrote effectively,
because he taught that which was in accordance with the feelings and
interests of his readers; but he was of the old school, dead now, with
its professors. He disliked abstract ideas or principles, and did not
trouble himself much with their investigation. The consequence was, that
he made no addition to politico-economical knowledge, and left nothing
by which he should be remembered except the fact that he was a
consistent and ardent friend of Protection.

Ricardo left his doctrine of Rents; Malthus his principle of Population;
their books are little read now, and they themselves would have been
long since forgotten, but that they taught what had been taught by no
others. Of the hundreds of their countrymen who have since written,
scarcely one has furnished a new idea; or if such an idea can be found
in the books of any one, it will not bear investigation. Many have
collected facts, that are useful, and all of them have talked and
written about their facts and theories; but only as empirics. One man
contended on one side and another on another, and there was no standard
by which to judge them. Ricardo and Malthus gave laws that would not fit
the facts, and the facts were altered and suppressed to suit the
laws.[22] McCulloch taught that transportation and exchange were more
advantageous than production,[23] and Cobden that it was better