Mathew Carey

Mathew Carey 1760-1839, American publisher, bookseller, and economist, b. Dublin. In his Dublin journal he violently attacked English rule of Ireland, was imprisoned for a month, fled to France, where he worked in Benjamin Franklin's printing shop at Passy, returned to Ireland, and finally emigrated (1784) to Philadelphia. There a gift from Lafayette enabled him to establish (1785) the Pennsylvania Herald. From 1787 to 1792 he edited and published the American Museum, making it the leading American magazine of the period. In 1790, Carey began his career as bookseller and publisher on a large scale. In this double capacity he stimulated the growth of American letters. Although many of his own political pamphlets were controversial, the most famous, The Olive Branch (1814), was written during the War of 1812 in an effort to unite the Democratic and Federalist parties in support of the war. His copious writings advocating the American protective system are interesting documents for the study of American economic history. The economist Henry Charles Carey was his son.

Bibliography: See biography by E. L. Bradsher (1912, repr. 1968).

Carey, Mathew (1760–1839), born in Ireland, escaped to France when his pamphlet in defense of Irish Catholics was considered treasonable. After a year in Franklin's printing office at Passy, he returned to Ireland to edit the Volunteer's Journal, a paper in which he militated against English rule. His violent editorial policy led to his arrest and later escape to America (1784). He edited the conservative Pennsylvania Herald, The American Museum, and The Columbian Magazine. From his Philadelphia publishing house, he issued his various books, which include a vivid pamphlet on the yellow fever epidemic of 1793; The Porcupiniad; A Hudibrastic Poem (1796), one of his attacks on William Cobbett; The Olive Branch (1814), a plea for reconciliation after the War of 1812; and many addresses before the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of National Industry. Next to Hamilton's works, these are the most distinguished American arguments of the time in favor of the protective system, and are forerunners of the work of his son Henry C. Carey. Among his many tracts and books, the Miscellaneous Essays (1830) is an outstanding example of his vigorous writing. He published a volume of Autobiographical Sketches (1829).