John Rae
John Rae (1796-1872) was born in a suburb of Aberdeen, Scotland, on June 1, 1796. Later, in 1815, Rae would attend the University of Edinburgh, where he would study medicine, although it appears that Rae never finished his degree. In 1822, at the age of twenty-five, Rae and his wife, Eliza, who Rae had married some years earlier, would leave Scotland for Canada. Rae would initially reside in Montreal, seemingly because his sister emigrated there in the period prior. Later, in the spring of 1822, Rae would move to Williamstown, Glengarry County, where he became a schoolmaster. During this time Rae would also work as a medical practitioner, and eventually a coroner, to supplement his income. While in Williamstown, Rae also became closely allied with the Presbyterian Church, and would subsequently act as a virtual spokesman of sorts for the Church, which eventually caused him to be viewed as an agitator by the Church of England.
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Rae’s first known work on economics would appear during his time in Williamstown. This was his 1825 essay entitled “Sketch of the Origin and Progress of Manufactures and of the Policy which has Regulated their Legislative Encouragement in Great Britain and in Other Countries.” In many ways, this work foreshadows the ideas which would be later discussed in his New Principles.
Rae would leave Williamstown in late 1831. He would eventually settle in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1834, where he would become a headmaster of a local school. He would remain in this position until 1848. Rae’s magnum opus would appear in 1834 under the title Statement of Some New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy: Exposing the Fallacies of the System of Free Trade and of Some Other Doctrines Maintained in the “Wealth of Nations”. This treatise was sponsored by the Boston protectionist Alexander Everett, who had become acquainted with and impressed by Rae earlier in 1834. Although it was known within American Protectionist circles, Rae’s brilliant treatise would remain in relative obscurity at its time of publication. In the late 19th century, however, it would receive praise from both John Stuart Mill and the Austrian economist Eugne von Bohm-Bewerk. Rae’s final work with important implications for economic thought, albeit not chiefly an economics text, would appear in 1839. This was his essay entitled “Genius and its Application” which appeared in The Literary Gazette.
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Rae was, by most accounts, a highly respected headmaster of the school in Hamilton, but his frequent quarrelling with the Church of England on behalf of the Presbyterian clergy, eventually led to his termination in 1848. Rae would spend part of 1849 teaching in Boston and New York. Rae’s wife Eliza would pass away, however, in August of 1849. This ill-fated event, along with the California Gold Rush, caused Rae to seek out a new life in California. Little is known about Rae’s life in California, but what is known is that by the spring of 1851, Rae decided to leave California for the Hawaiian Islands. Rae arrived first in Honolulu but would eventually move to the island of Maui. After a smallpox outbreak in 1853, during which time Rae assisted in the vaccination of the native population, Rae would be appointed as a Medical Agent to the Board of Health. During this period, Rae would also become a farmer, would serve as the District Judge of Hanna, and would continue to write on various topics, including on geology and the Polynesian language. In 1871, Rae decided to return to the United States to live out the remainder of his life with a friend from Staten Island. Rae died in Staten Island the following year on July 12, 1872, at the age of seventy-seven.