EVERETT, Alexander Hill.

£2,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Autograph letter signed, to Henry Charles Carey. A superb letter connecting two of the leading American economists of the day, testimony to the emergence of an American school of economics explicitly conceived as an alternative to the orthodoxy of British classical economics.The letter was inspired by the recent publication of Carey's first book, Theory of Wages (1835), which he had sent to Everett for review. Carey sought the approval of Everett, who had established his reputation as a pioneering economic thinker with his New Ideas on Population, with Remarks on the Theories of Malthus and Godwin (published in 1823), in which he re-conceived population growth as a positive dynamic factor in economic development, in opposition to Malthus's pessimism. Everett responds favourably to Carey's publication, writing that "my occupations at the present moment are so engrossing as to deprive me entirely of time for reading. I have however glanced through some passages of your work where the subject was particularly interesting to me and anticipate much pleasure from the perusal of the whole." Everett is particularly pleased with Carey's attack on Malthus: "I perceive from the parts of your work which I have looked into that you are an opponent of, or at least no believer in the doctrines of Malthus. This constitutes the great dividing line between the two modern schools of political economy and I cannot conceive that two persons who agree respecting this could differ upon any question

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