REV. CALVIN COLTON.
Mr. Colton is a man of very decided abilities, voluminous and various in their manifestation, and assiduously cultivated during a long life, in which he has never failed of the curiosity, ambition, and industry of a learner. The untiring freshness and hopefulness of his spirit is shown by his undertaking the study of the French language not more than three or four years ago, and obtaining such a mastery of it as to read with delight its most abstruse authors, and to preach in it with fluency and even with eloquence. It is characteristic of him that he is always earnest, and that he considers whatever he has to do worthy of his best abilities, so that in writing of theology, economy, polity, or manners, he arrays in order for each particular subject all the forces of his understanding, and makes its discussion their measure and illustration. He has been in an eminent degree devoted to literature as a profession, and although he has produced works which may be deemed unfortunate in design or defective in execution, it must be admitted that he is entitled to a highly respectable position as a thinker and as a writer, and that in opinion and in affairs he has exercised a steady and large influence.
He was born in Long Meadow, Massachusetts, graduated at Yale College in 1812, studied divinity at Andover, and in 1815 took orders in the Presbyterian church. For several years he was settled in the village of Batavia in western New-York, but his voice failing in 1826, he became a contributor to several of the principal periodicals occupied with religion and learning, and in the summer of 1831, after an extended tour through the western states and territories, proceeded to London, as a correspondent of the New-York Observer.
In England, he led a life of remarkable literary activity. In 1832 he published a Manual for Emigrants to America, which had a large sale among the middling classes; and The History and Character of American Revivals of Religion, of which there were two or three editions. In 1833, in a volume entitled The Americans, by an American in London, he replied, with an unanswerable display of facts, to the libels on this country by British travellers and reviewers; and published The American Cottager, a religious narrative. A Tour of the American Lakes and among the Indians of the North-West Territory, in two volumes, and Church and State in America, a vindication of the religious character of the country and the voluntary principle for the support of religion, in reply to the Bishop of London, who had endeavored to show that the United States were going back to paganism because the church was not here connected with the state.
Returning to New-York, in 1835, he published Four Years in Great Britain, in two volumes, which were soon after reprinted, with some additions, in a more popular form. In 1836 he gave to the public anonymously, Protestant Jesuitism, a criticism of the constitution, extreme opinion, and unwise action of many of the benevolent and religious societies; and having taken orders in the Episcopal church, Thoughts on the Religious State of the Country, and Reasons for preferring Episcopacy, a work which was much read and the cause of much critical observation in Great Britain as well as in the United States.
From that time Mr. Colton has written very little on any subject intimately connected with religion, but directing his attention to public affairs, has been as conspicuous in the state as he was previously in the church. In 1838 he published Abolition a Sedition, and Abolition and Colonization Contrasted, in which he contended with equal earnestness and ability that the entire subject of slavery is beyond the limits of the proper action of the national government, and that there is no justification of its discussion, except in the states where slavery is established, or for the wise and really philanthropic purpose of promoting African Colonization. In 1839 he again took up the argument of our social relations with Great Britain, in a work written in Philadelphia, but published in London, under the title of A Voice from America to England, By an American Gentleman. The plan was judicious: it was not so much to express opinions as to state facts which should compel opinions in the adverse audience he addressed. While mainly defensive, he was at the same time bravely critical. He contended that in its constitution our government was republican and not democratic, but that the extraordinary force of public opinion among us has made it democratic in fact. A large portion of the work was devoted to the several ecclesiastical polities existing here, which he treated with singular freedom and originality, so that the frequent impertinences of ignorant laymen and obtrusively-meddling women, in the affairs of churches, rendering the clerical profession humiliating and difficult to a person of manly character and cultivation, were stated without any hesitation or attempt at concealment. The entire performance is still attractive for frequent sound observation upon institutions, judicious criticism of manners, happy illustration, and good humor, and its opportune appearance was advantageous to the best fame of the country.
In 1840 he made a more distinct and powerful impression than ever before, by the publication of The Crisis of the Country, American Jacobinism, and One Presidential Term, a series of tracts under the name of "Junius," which were circulated in all the states by thousands and hundreds of thousands, and were supposed to have had great influence in the overthrow of the democratic administration. In 1842 he edited at Washington a paper called The True Whig, and in 1843 and 1844 he brought out a second series, embracing ten publications, still more popular than the first, of the Junius Tracts.
In the autumn of the latter year, when the fortunes of the whig party seemed to be entirely broken, when full half the nation felt a personal grief for the defeat of a leader, added to the mortification of political discomfiture, Mr. Colton determined to write the life of the chief he had followed with unwavering admiration and unfaltering activity. Casting aside all other cares, so that his every thought might be given to the work until its completion, he set out for Kentucky, where he was sure of the friendly assistance of Mr. Clay in whatever concerned the investigation of facts. In November, 1844, he reached Lexington, where Mr. Clay laid open to him the stores of his correspondence, and the documentary history of his career. The work was finished in the spring of 1846, and published in two large octavos; and so great was the demand for it, that the first impression of five thousand copies was sold in six months. It is unquestionably an able performance, and from the circumstances under which it was composed and the conclusiveness of some of its arguments it is probable that it will always be regarded as a valuable portion of the material for contemporary political history; but, it appears to me very unequal in execution, and signally unfortunate in design, if considered either as a biography or a history. For the subjective rather than the chronological arrangement of the facts in it there is however this defence, that it rendered the work much more easy of citation, and therefore more valuable as a magazine for partisan controversy. The influence it obtained may be illustrated by reference to a single point: for a quarter of a century the staple of declamation against Mr. Clay, the opposition which thrice cost him the presidency, was his supposed bargain with John Quincy Adams; but since the appearance of Mr. Colton's exposition of this subject any person in an intelligent society would forfeit the consideration given to a gentleman who should repeat the charge.
For several years the attention of Mr. Colton had been more and more attracted to the literature and philosophy of political economy. In 1846 he printed his first work in which it is formally treated, The Rights of Labor, in which he asserted, illustrated, and with unanswerable logic vindicated the American doctrine of the privileges and dignity of Industry; and in 1848 he gave to the world his last and most important work, Public Economy for the United States. From the formation of the first system of society the subjects embraced in this production have employed the most powerful intellects of all nations. But though illustrated by the liveliest genius and the profoundest reflection, they have not until recently assumed even the forms of science. We cannot tell what formulæ of economical truth passed from existence in the lost books of Aristotle. The father of the peripatetic philosophy undoubtedly brought to public economics the severe method which enabled him to construct so much of the everlasting science of which the history goes back to his times; but whatever direction he gave to the subject, by the investigation of its ultimate principles and their phenomena, his successors, and the writers upon it since the revival of learning, have generally been guided by empirical laws, which in an especial degree have obtained in regard to the economy of commerce. Scarcely any of the literature or reflection upon the subject has gone behind the bold hypotheses of free trade theorists, which have been as unsubstantial as the fanciful systems of the universe swept from existence by the demonstrations of Newton. Not only have economical systems generally been made up of unproven hypotheses, but they have rarely evinced any such clear apprehension and constructive ability as are essential in the formation and statement of principles; and down to the chaos of Mr. Mills's last essay there is scarcely a volume on political economy which rewards the wearied attention with any more than a vague understanding of the shadowy design that existed in the author's brain.
In the eminently original and scientific work of Mr. Colton we see economy subjected to fundamental and ultimate methods of investigation of which the results have a mathematical certainty. We have new facts, new reasonings, new deductions; and if the paramount ideas are not altogether original, they are discovered by original processes, and their previous existence is but an illustration of the truth that the instinctive perspicacity of the common mind often surpasses the logical faculty in recognizing laws before they are discovered from elements and relations. Mr. Colton has not rejected the title "political economy" because he proposed to enter a different field, or because the subject and argument have no relation to politics, but chiefly because the term has been so much abused in the rude agitation of what are commonly called politics, that he does not think it comports with the dignity of the theme; and the second part of his title is adopted from a conviction that the economical principles of states are to be deduced from their separate experience and adapted to their individual condition. The task which he proposed to himself is, the exhibition of the merits of the protective and free trade systems as they apply to the United States. He expresses at the outset his opinion that the settlement of the question is one of the most desirable, and will be one of the most important results which remain to be achieved in the progress of the country; and we can assure him that the accomplishment of it will be rewarded by the best approval of these times, and an enduring name. The second chapter of his work is a statement of the new points which it embraces. By new points he does not mean that all thus described are entirely original, though many of them are so; but that on account of the importance of the places he has assigned them as compared with those they occupy in other works of the kind, they are entitled to be presented as new. Many of them involve fundamental and pervading principles that have not hitherto appeared in speculations on the subject, but which are destined to an important influence in its discussion. Some of the most prominent are, that public economy is the application of knowledge, derived from experience, to given positions, interests and institutions, for the increase of wealth; that it has never been reduced to a science, and that the propositions of which it has been for the most part composed, down to this time, are empirical; that protective duties in the United States are not taxes, and that a protective system rescues the country from a system of foreign taxation; that popular education is a fundamental element of public economy; that freedom is a thing of commercial value, and that the history of freedom for all time, shows it to be identical with protection.
Recently the renewal of his voice has enabled Mr. Colton to devote more attention to the favorite pursuit of his life, and he is a very frequent preacher, in French or English. He resides in New-York.