Henry Lee (February 4, 1782 – February 6, 1867) was a merchant, political economist and politician from Massachusetts whose writings were popular in England. He was the Nullifier Party's nominee for vice president of the United States in 1832, coming in third place out of four major candidates.
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Economics
Henry Lee established himself as a merchant in Boston as one of the owners of the firm H & J Lee & Company. After the economic collapse in 1811, the firm folded and Lee traveled to Calcutta, India for four years. He returned to Boston and became an importer of Indian goods, a business in which he had to pay a 30% tariff and compete with the local Boston Manufacturing Company (of which he later became a shareholder). When the textile business dried up, he began importing indigo, iron and sugar and sold salt to the Du Pont Company for the manufacture of munitions. He dedicated himself to the study of political economy and to the collection of financial and commercial statistics and exchanged correspondences with contemporary British economists such as McCulloch, Tooke, Villiers and Cobden, who considered him an authority. He assisted Albert Gallatin in preparing an analysis of the impact of the tariff on free trade in 1831 and became an advocate of free trade. He was a frequent contributor to the "Free Trade Advocate" and other periodicals and author of the book "Boston Reports" in 1827.
Politics
As a free trade proponent, Lee became an ardent Federalist and in 1830 ran a spirited, but losing campaign, against tariff proponent Nathan Appleton for a United States House seat. Appleton would go on to help write the Tariff of 1832 and the Tariff of 1842.