EVERETT, Alexander Hill.

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Autograph letter signed, to Henry Charles Carey. A substantial letter responding to Henry Charles Carey's first book, Essay on the Rate of Wages (1835), in which Everett welcomes a fellow American critic of Malthus. Everett had challenged Malthus's population theory in New Ideas on Population (1823), and identifies opposition to him as "the great dividing line between the two modern schools of political economy".Everett admits that pressing commitments have prevented him from reading Carey's book in full, but the passages consulted already suggest substantial agreement. He proceeds to outline his own theory of wages: "the wages of labour are its products". Each worker, he argues, naturally receives the full value of what he produces, or an equivalent in exchange. Differences in remuneration reflect variations in the "activity and intelligence" of workers, except where political causes distort the operation of economic laws. "This is my theory in a nutshell", he concludes.Everett proposes that, should they disagree after he has read Carey's work in full, they might "compare notes and endeavour to see who is in the right". He nevertheless expresses confidence that Malthus's influence is waning: "Though some of his partisans in England adhere to him with extraordinary tenacity, his day, is, I think, nearly over". He also dismisses Adam Smith's treatment of wages as "incorrect and unsatisfactory".The letter catches Carey at the beginning of a career in which he became a leading A

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