The New Olive Branch (1820) and Selected Essays

A fresh presentation of the most important and accessible work of one of the most influential economic writers of early America.

One of the most important and neglected works of early American economics, Mathew Carey’s “The New Olive Branch” offers insight into political economy as it happened in early America, and provides an excellent example of resistance to Adam Smith and classical economics.

Mathew Carey was one of the most popular and influential economic writers of his day, but his work has been largely overlooked by modern writers, who tend to focus on more scholarly writers or on precursors to contemporary classical economics. Carey was a self-taught printer and publisher who rejected Adam Smith, led the early fight for protective tariffs, and wrote hundreds of newspaper articles to convince the public of the need to protect American manufacturers. “The New Olive Branch” is Carey’s most important, accessible, and sustained elaboration of his political-economic ideas, and is accompanied in this volume by portions of his “Addresses of the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of National Industry” (1822), which offer further insight into his rejection of classical economics.