Willard Phillips

Willard Phillips (1784-1873) was born on December 19, 1784, in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, some forty kilometers south of Boston. He would then attend local primary and grammar schools in Bridgewater. After finishing school, Phillips worked as a bricklayer where he was able to save enough money to fund his college education. Phillips would then enter Harvard at the age of eighteen and would later graduate in 1810. It can be concluded that Phillips was a productive and hardworking student during his time at Harvard. He would be proficient in Latin and Greek, and, for a period after graduating, he served as a tutor in mathematics. Phillips would then study law in Boston in the office of the respected lawyer William Sullivan. Phillips’ intense devotion to his studies would afflict him with sight problems, however, with his physician instructing him to suspend his studies and to go on a sea voyage. Phillips would then sail to Cuba, where he stayed for several months at the estate of John Moreland, the Consul-General of the United States to Cuba at the time. With his sight problems being relieved, Phillips returned to Boston to continue his studies in law. Then in 1815, Phillips would be appointed as the first editor of the newly established North American Review, which was one of America’s first and most popular literary magazines. Phillips would later retire from this position in 1817, but he would continue to be a contributor.

Phillips started off as a free trader, and during the Panic of 1819, he would continue to defend freedom of trade against calls from protectionists. He would later remark that, during his youth, he was “imbued with that [Classical] economical creed which is taught in our public seminaries… against… protective legislation.” He would later realize, however, that “the science… consisted very much of groundless postulates and sophistry.”All of Phillips’ major economic works were published after his conversion to protectionism. The first of these would be his treatise A Manual of Political Economy, which appeared in 1828. This text was of a general nature and covered all the major aspects of Phillips’ system of thought. Phillips’ next major work entitled Propositions Concerning Protection and Free Trade, would not appear until 1850. In this work, Phillips provides a systematic refutation of seventy fallacies and sophisms committed by free traders.

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Phillips literary efforts also extended outside political economy. In 1823, Phillips would write a treatise on insurance law, and in 1837, he would produce another work on patent law. Both of these works would earn him a reputation as a legal authority, and in 1839, the Governor of Massachusetts Edward Everett, who was also the brother of fellow protectionist Alexander Everett, would appoint Phillips as Probate Judge of Suffolk County. Phillips would remain in this post until 1843, when he would retire in order to take over as President of the New England Mutual Life Insurance Company, a company he helped found in 1835. Phillips would later retire  from this role in 1865, at the age of eighty-one. He would pass away eight years later, on September 9, 1873.