(BROADSIDES - POLITICAL ECONOMY) [Matthew Carey]

To the Members of the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Indiana. The memorial of the subscribers, inhabitants of the said state. [caption title]

[Philadelphia?]: [s.n.], [1824]. Broadsheet, 17 by 10˝ inches, printed in two columns. Dense and small text, ample margins. Former folds; some darkening along fold lines; small paper and text loss affecting several words; a few splits with expert tissue mends.
Outside of the glaring “STATE OF INDIANA” to the title, this broadsheet seems identical in all respects to the one example held by AAS, citing New Jersey subscribers. Our attribution to Matthew Carey is based upon Clarkin 1434 which is an 8-page item in which Carey urges "all interested citizens to sign and forward to their respective legislators in Congress" a petition to begin efforts to determine the remedy for a stagnating economy. Our example would in fact, seem to suggest that Carey had printed broadsheets of this petition to be specifically presented to the various state legislatures. Our example would be presented to Indiana. The one copy found on OCLC to New Jersey, and so forth. Our attribution to Matthew Carey is also, in part, anecdotal; this broadsheet being purchased from a collection of his printed and ephemeral material. The text of this item despairs of the languished and stagnant economy experienced by merchants and farmers of 1824. The benefits of conducting economic enterprises in America are lauded. The distresses of the times are enumerated: glutted markets, depressed prices, limited navigation, crashing real estate, suspension of immigration, increased pauperism, and so forth. A litany of over twenty-five markets and/or economic scenarios are presented. The broadsheet suggests that America’s over-involvement in agricultural production is a strong source of her woe: “We are fully persuaded, that almost all of the embarrassments and difficulties of our country arise from the over-proportion of our population employed in agriculture, whereby is produced the pernicious glut in the foreign markets ... we have forborne to enter into the discussion of bewildering theories of political economy -to defend or combat the conflicting opinions of Adam Smith and Alexander Hamilton -of John Baptiste Say and Benjamin Franklin.”
Not in Shaw and Shoemaker. Not in Clarkin. OCLC records one physical example at AAS, but entitled “To the Members ... of the state of New Jersey”; this variant, apparently unknown, clearly printed from same, and consistent with Carey's intent per Clarkin 1434.
$1,250





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