He was an advocate of free trade, the anti-slavery movement, and an ardent member of the union and emancipation societies that were formed during the civil war in America. Massie visited America several times, on the last occasion as one of the deputation appointed to convey to ministers there the address adopted at the ministerial anti-slavery conference held in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on 3 June 1863. He was also frequently in Ireland in connection with 'revival work.'
Massie died in Kingstown, near Dublin, on 8 May 1869. He was married, and left a son, Milton, and two daughters. He was D.D., LL.D., and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. His portrait by Wageman was engraved by Holl (Evans, Cat. of Engraved Portraits, ii. 274).
Besides numerous pamphlets and sermons Massie published:
- 'Continental India,' 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1840.
- 'Recollections of a Tour: a Summer Ramble in Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland,' 8vo, London, 1846.
- 'The Evangelical Alliance; its Origin and Development,' 8vo, London, 1847.
- 'The American Crisis, in relation to the Anti-Slavery Cause,' 8vo, London, 1862.
- 'America: the Origin of her present Conflict; her Prospect for the Slave, and her Claim for Anti - Slavery Sympathy; illustrated by Incidents of Travel … in … 1863 throughout the United States,' 8vo, London, 1864.
[Massie's Works; Cooper's Regist. and Mag. of Biog. 1869, i. 472, ii. 54; Appleton's Cyclop, of Amer. Biog.]
MASSIE, JOSEPH (d. 1784), writer on trade and finance, united a profound knowledge of the economic literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with a keen interest in the economic difficulties of his own time. He formed a collection of some fifteen hundred treatises, extending from 1557 to 1763, and the study of these served to make him upon the whole a discriminating critic, though he was too much inclined to judge events of his own day in the light of the past. The catalogue of his collection, dated 1764, is Lansdowne MS. 1049 in the British Museum, and affords much valuable information regarding economic bibliography. His chief aim was to establish 'commercial knowledge upon fixed principles,' and he devoted a great portion of his time to the compilation of statistics, which traversed the vague contemporary impression that British trade was declining, and illustrate in an important manner the gradual expansion and relative distribution of our industries and commerce during the middle of the last century. His schemes met apparently with little encouragement either from the public or from the statesmen to whom he dedicated his works, for he had ceased to write, or at least to publish, twenty years before his death, which took place in Holborn on 1 Nov. 1784 (Gent. Mag. 1784, pt. ii. p. 876).
Massie's writings, exclusive of tables of calculations published in single folio sheets, are:
- 'An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest, wherein the Sentiments of Sir W. Petty and Mr. Locke on that head are considered,' 8vo, London, 1750. He here refutes the notion of Locke that the rate of interest depends on the abundance of money by showing, as Hume did two years later in his 'Essay on Interest,' that the rate of interest really depends on the abundance and scarcity of disposable capital compared with the demands of the borrowers and the rate of profit. To Hume is usually assigned the credit of having been the first to point out the fallacy of Locke's opinion.
- 'Calculations of Taxes for a Family of each Rank, Degree, or Class, for One Year,' 8vo, London, 1756; 2nd edit. 1761.
- 'Observations on Mr. Fauquier's "Essay on Ways and Means for Raising Money for the Support of the Present War,"' 8vo, London, 1756 [see Fauquier, Francis]. Fauquier's project was a moderate house tax, which Massie deprecated (cf. No. 6).
- 'Ways and Means for Raising the Extraordinary Supplies to carry on the War for Seven Years, pt. i.,' 8vo, London, 1757. A collection of valuable statistics on the growth of English trade during the first half of the eighteenth century, prefaced by an apparently serious proposal to impose a tax on bachelors and widowers.
- 'Considerations on the Leather Trades of Great Britain,' 8vo, London, 1757.
- 'The Proposal, commonly called Sir Matthew Decker's Scheme, for one General Tax upon Houses, laid open,' 8vo, London, 1757. Decker's project was the repeal of all existing taxes and the substitution of a single graduated house tax, so completely freeing trade from artificial restraint. Massie criticises this early plea for abolition of customs by simply demonstrating the fact that it was opposed to the first principles of protection, on which subject he shared the views of the majority (see under No. 13 and art. Decker)).
- 'A Letter to Bourchier Cleave [sic] … concerning his Calculations of Taxes,' 8vo, London, 1757. Massie demonstrates that the taxes could not amount to anything like half the sum as stated by B. Cleeve [q. v.] in his Letter to Lord Chester-
