edecessors, and so furnished additional proof that their laws were
_not_ laws, but mere anarchy. Ricardo had to leave a place of escape for
difficult facts[24] and his successors have since found themselves
obliged to open so many new ones, that his laws are now like sieves.

The period was propitious for a discoverer. The opinion of D'Alembert
that the steps of Civilization were to be taken in the middle of each
century, was to be confirmed by a new illustration.

Mr. Carey's father was a practical man; all his children were trained to
affairs; thus they became observers. The students of books are rarely
creators in science. Truth is most likely to be evolved in the school of
experience. From the age of seven years until he was twenty-one, Mr.
Carey was in his father's bookstore. From 1821 to 1838, he was a partner
in the important publishing house of Carey, Lea & Carey, and Carey &
Lea; but in this period he passed one season abroad, we believe
immediately after his marriage with a sister of Leslie the painter. The
determination of his mind was already fixed, when his retirement from
business enabled him to devote his faculties entirely to the science
with which his name will for ever be associated.

Mr. Carey's first book--_An Essay on the Rate of Wages_--was published
in 1836, and was soon after expanded into _The Principles of Political
Economy_, which appeared in three octavo volumes in 1837--1840.

Before proceeding to give an account of this performance, we will more
particularly show what was, at the date of its publication, the
condition of the science it was designed to illustrate. Mr. Malthus had
taught that population tended to increase faster than food, and that so
irresistible was this tendency, that all human efforts to restrain the
number of men within the limits of subsistence were vain. It was a great
"law of nature," and it was of little consequence, therefore, how fast
food might be increased, since the only effect must be to stimulate
population, which, in the end, was sure to outrun the means of living.
The impression which this work produced has been briefly noticed in what
we have written in connection with Mr. Alexander H. Everett's reply to
it, printed in London and Boston in 1822. The doctrine was a convenient
one, for it relieved the directors of affairs from the charge of
causing, or suffering, the poverty and wretchedness by which they were
surrounded.

Soon after this, Mr. Ricardo att