Henry Charles Carey - Legacy

Legacy

Carey, who had set out as an earnest advocate of free trade, accordingly arrived at the doctrine of protection: the coordinating power in society must intervene to prevent private advantage from working public mischief. He attributed his conversion on this question to his observation of the effects of liberal and protective tariffs respectively on American prosperity. This observation, he says, threw him back on theory, and led him to see that intervention might be necessary to remove (as he phrases it) the obstacles to the progress of younger communities created by the action of older and wealthier nations. But it seems probable that the influence of Friedrich List's writings, added to his own deep-rooted and hereditary jealousy and dislike of British predominance, had something to do with his change of attitude.