=============== HES POSTING ======================== 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]> ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]