Mathew Carey’s Learning Experience: Commerce, Manufacturing, and the Panic of 1819

Abstract

When Mathew Carey arrived in Philadelphia in 1784, he turned his formidable skills in publishing toward breaking North American dependence on English commerce and credit, forging alliances with leading political economists in the mid-Atlantic region. North American self-sufficiency was an attainable goal, he argued, one that would be founded on discriminatory tariffs designed to limit foreign imports, encouragements to manufacturers of desirable and necessary goods, and a liberal banking system that supported entrepreneurial ambitions. Carey’s prodigious writings over the years reveal a remarkable consistency of economic vision. But in Carey’s view, the Panic of 1819 swept vulnerable North Americans into economic chaos that was directly traceable to the contentious political and economic interests in his own Philadelphia region and in the country that had failed to create a viable system of banks, tariffs, manufactures, and commercial auctions. The Panic of 1819 could, he argued, also be traced to the erroneous popular attachments to ill-conceived theory about economic freedom that stemmed from Adam Smith and his followers in the new nation.