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The best way to get at the impact of Ricardo on Garrison would 
probably be to see if he possessed Ricardo's writings at the 
time of his death (that is, look at the estate inventory). 
 
In dealing with America before the Civil War, it can be really 
hard to get at PRECISE origins of people's thinking because 
there was a lot of passing around of ideas without attribution -- 
that is, copyright enforcement was pretty lax, and when it came 
to overseas copyright, VERY lax.   
 
Garrison would certainly have read material written by British 
intellectuals who themselves had been influenced by Ricardo -- 
and that is one way that Ricardo's language could find its way 
into Garrison's writings.   
 
I have to say that the only real SCHOOL of political economy 
that appears to have functioned in any organized fashion was 
the one at South Carolina -- which was linked more to the 
German national romanticist movement than the British school 
(argued quite convincingly, I thought, by a member of this 
very list <g>) 
 
I am personally fascinated by the clear turning point in the 
early part of the 1800s when the terms "capital, labor,  
surplus value" etc. suddenly show up in the popular press.   
 
But to reiterate -- until later in the 1800s, university educations 
in America were primarily "classical" or theological -- whatever 
education went on with regard to "political economy" would have 
been on a very casual basis, and most Americans "learned" these 
issues second-hand, through newspapers or magazines.  Even such 
a well-read publisher as Garrison (though he would have been more 
likely to have read Ricardo, it's hard to say how CONSCIOUSLY 
he was USING Ricardo). 
 
Also -- it seems an ingrained American politico's habit, but 
Garrison would have been the type to take what he wanted out of 
his readings and leave the rest -- as Jefferson was.  I can't 
think of any mechanism for "disciplining" that type of study (such 
as the contemporaneous London Club). 
 
Hope this is making sense -- what I guess I am trying to say is that 
IF you find what sounds  like Ricardo in Garrison's writings, I 
would not be surprised because it would have been endemic to the 
Anglo-American culture as a whole.  But it would not have been 
due to any EXPLICIT appeals to authority, or a feeling that such 
is necessary. 
 
Mary Schweitzer, Dept. of History, Villanova University 
(on leave 1995-??) <[log in to unmask]> 
 
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