CAREY, HENRY CHARLES (1793-1879), American economist, was born in Philadelphia, (Pa.), Dec. 15, 1793. At the age of 28 he succeeded his father, Mathew Carey (1760-1839)— an influential economist, political reformer, editor and publisher, of Irish birth, for many years a resident of Philadelphia—as a member of the publishing firm of Carey & Lea. He died in Philadelphia on Oct. 13, 1879.
Among Mathew Carey's many writings had been a collection (18 2 2) of Essays on Political Economy, one of the earliest of American treatises favouring protection, and Henry C. Carey's life-work was devoted to the propagation of the same theory. He retired from business in 1838, almost simultaneously with the appearance (1837-40) of his Principles of Political Economy. This treatise, which was translated into Italian and Swedish, soon became the standard representative in the United States of the school of economic thought which, with some interruptions, has since dominated the tariff system of the country.
Carey's first large work on political economy was preceded and followed by many smaller volumes on wages, the credit system, interest, slavery, copyright, etc., and in 1858-59 he gathered the fruits of his lifelong labours into The Principles of Social Science, in three volumes. In this work Carey sought to show that there existed, independently of human wills, a natural system of eco nomic laws, which was essentially beneficent, and of which the increasing prosperity of the whole community, and especially of the working classes, was the spontaneous result—capable of being defeated only by the ignorance or perversity of man resisting or impeding its action. He rejected the Malthusian doctrine of popu lation, maintaining that numbers regulated themselves sufficiently in every well-governed society, and that their pressure on subsist ence characterized the lower, not the more advanced, stages of civilization. He held that the law of diminishing returns from land was not true for all stages of cultivation. Carey attributed his attitude on protection to his observation of the effects of liberal and protective tariffs respectively on American prosperity. But it seems probable that the influence of the writings of Fried rich List added to his own deep-rooted and hereditary jealousy and dislike of English predominance, had something to do with his feeling (see PROTECTION) .