Frédéric Bastiat

“ If you could be consoled by the noisy appeals of your champions to philanthropy, to powerless charity, to degrading almsgiving, or if the high-sounding words of Voice of the People, Rights of Labor, &c., would relieve you—these indeed you can have in abundance. But justice, simple justice—this nobody thinks of rendering you. For would it not be just that after a long day's labor, when you have received your wages, you should be permitted to exchange them for the largest possible sum of comforts you can obtain voluntarily from any man upon the face of the earth? ”

“ For the good of the consumer—of society—of humanity. Printers, having no longer any peculiar merit, receive no longer a peculiar remuneration. As men—as consumers—they no doubt participate in the advantages which the invention confers upon the community; but that is all. As printers, as producers, they are placed upon the ordinary footing of all other producers. Society pays them for their labor, and not for the usefulness of the invention. That has become a gratuitous benefit, a common heritage to mankind. ”

“ A protective duty calculated upon such a basis does nothing more than secure free competition; free competition can only exist where there is an equality in the facilities of production. In a horse-race the load which each horse carries is weighed and all advantages equalized; otherwise there could be no competition. In commerce, if one producer can undersell all others, he ceases to be a competitor and becomes a monopolist. Suppress the protection which represents the difference of price according to each, and foreign produce must immediately inundate and obtain the monopoly of our market. ”

“ As for you, you form a theory, in the unfavorable sense of the word. You imagine, you invent—proceedings which are not sanctioned by the practice of any living man under the vault of heaven—and then you call to your assistance constraint and prohibition. You need, indeed, have recourse to force, since, in wishing that men should produce that which it would be more advantageous to them to buy, you wish them to renounce an advantage; you demand that they should act in accordance with a doctrine which implies contradiction even in its terms. ”

“ But to say "there are no principles," is the lowest degree of abasement to which the human mind can descend; and we confess we blush for our country when we hear so monstrous a heresy uttered in the presence of the American people, with their consent; that is to say, in the presence and with the consent of the greater part of our fellow-citizens, in order to justify Congress for imposing laws on us, in perfect ignorance of the reasons for them or against them.
But then we shall be told, "destroy the sophism; prove that machines do not injure human labor, nor importations national industry." ”

“ We are surprised that men who call themselves peculiarly practical, reason independent of all practice.
In practice, is there one exchange in a hundred, in a thousand, in ten thousand perhaps, where there is a direct barter of product for product? Since there has been money in the world, has any cultivator ever said, "I wish to buy shoes, hats, advice, instruction, from that shoemaker, hatter, lawyer, and professor only, who will purchase from me just wheat enough to make an equivalent value?" ”

“ Is not this pure and unadulterated Sisyphism?
That there may be nothing equivocal, these gentlemen carry their idea still farther, and on the same principle that we have heard them call the intensity of labor riches, we will find them calling the abundant results of labor and the plenty of everything proper to the satisfying of our wants, poverty. "Everywhere," they remark, "machinery has pushed aside manual labor; everywhere production is superabundant; everywhere the equilibrium is destroyed between the power of production and that of consumption." ”

“ If self-renunciation has so many claims for you, who prevents your carrying it into private life? Society will be grateful to you for it, for some one, at least, will receive the benefit of it; but to wish to impose it on humanity as a principle is the height of absurdity, for the abnegation of everything is the sacrifice of everything—it is evil set up in theory. ”

“ We hoot at and spit upon interest, that is to say, the useful, the right (for to say that all nations are interested in a thing, is to say that that thing is good in itself) , as if interest were not the necessary, eternal, indestructible instrument to which Providence has intrusted human perfectibility. Would not one suppose us all angels of disinterestedness? And is it supposed that the public does not see with disgust that this affected language blackens precisely those pages for which it is compelled to pay highest? Affectation is truly the malady of this age. ”

“ But if exchange has not a nature proper to itself; if it is governed by no natural law; if it is capriciously useful or injurious; if it does not find its spring in the good it accomplishes, its limit when it ceases to do good; if its effects cannot be appreciated by those who execute them; in one word, if there are no absolute principles, we are compelled to measure, weigh, regulate transactions, to equalize the conditions of labor, to look for the level of profits—colossal task, well suited to give great entertainments, and high influence to those who undertake it. ”

“ You are not, then, men of practice, since you cannot show a single man on the surface of the globe who acts in accordance with your principle.
"But," you will say, "we have never heard our principle made the rule of individual relations. We comprehend perfectly that this would break the social bond, and force men to live, like snails, each one in his own shell. We limit ourselves to asserting that it governs in fact the relations which are established among the agglomerations of the human family." ”

“ Several years ago, three large cities of France—Lyons, Bordeaux, and Havre—were greatly agitated against the restrictive policy. The nation, and indeed all Europe, was moved at seeing a banner raised, which they supposed to be that of free trade. Alas! it was still the banner of monopoly; of a monopoly a little more niggardly, and a great deal more absurd, than that which they appeared to wish to overturn. Owing to the sophism which we are about to unveil, the petitioners merely reproduced the doctrine of protection to national labor, adding to it, however, another folly. ”

“ Competition, no doubt, considering man as producer, must often interfere with his individual and immediate interests. But if we consider the great object of all labor, the universal good, in a word, Consumption, we cannot fail to find that Competition is to the moral world what the law of equilibrium is to the material one. ”

“ I confess that I begin to think it singular that humanity should be ameliorated by shackles, or enriched by taxes: and, frankly, I should be relieved of a heavy weight, I should experience a pure joy, if I could see demonstrated, which the author assures us of, that there is no incompatibility between comfort and justice, between peace and liberty, between the extension of labor and the progress of intelligence. ”

“ But social economy is not confined to this narrow circle. Fourierism, Saint-Simonism, communism, mysticism, sentimentalism, false philanthropy, affected aspirations to equality and chimerical fraternity, questions relative to luxury, to salaries, to machines, to the pretended tyranny of capital, to distant territorial acquisitions, to outlets, to conquests, to population, to association, to emigration, to imposts, to loans, have encumbered the field of science with a host of parasitical sophisms, which demand the hoe and the sickle of the diligent economist. ”

“ We dare challenge you to pronounce one word against our petition, which is not equally opposed to your own practice and the principle which guides your policy.
"If you tell us that, though we may gain by this protection, the United States will not gain, because the consumer must pay the price of it, we answer you:
"You have no longer any right to cite the interest of the consumer. For whenever this has been found to compete with that of the producer, you have invariably sacrificed the first. You have done this to encourage labor, to increase the demand for labor. ”

“ Sometimes a sophism dilates itself, and penetrates through the whole extent of a long and heavy theory. More frequently it is compressed, contracted, becomes a principle, and is completely covered by a word. A good man once said: "God protect us from the devil and from metaphors!" In truth, it would be difficult to say which of the two creates the more evil upon our planet. It is the demon, say you; he alone, so long as we live, puts the spirit of spoliation in our hearts. ”

“ But soon comes competition, and the price of coal and iron falls, until this gift of nature becomes gratuitous to all, and human labor is only paid according to the general rate of profits.
Thus, natural advantages, like improvements in the process of production, are, or have, a constant tendency to become, under the law of competition, the common and gratuitous patrimony of consumers, of society, of mankind. Countries, therefore, which do not enjoy these advantages, must gain by commerce with those which do ”

“ Error is manifold, and of ephemeral duration; the work which combats it does not carry within itself a principle of greatness or of endurance.
But if the power, and perhaps the opportunity, have failed us for proceeding in the manner of La Place and of Say, we cannot refuse to believe that the form which we have adopted has, also, its modest utility. It appears to us especially well suited to the wants of the age, to the hurried moments which it can consecrate to study. ”

“ It is constantly alleged in opposition to our principles, that they are good only in theory. But, gentlemen, do you believe that merchants' books are good in practice? It does appear to me, if there is anything which can have a practical authority, when the object is to prove profit and loss, that this must be commercial accounts. We cannot suppose that all the merchants of the world, for centuries back, should have so little understood their own affairs, as to have kept their books in such a manner as to represent gains as losses, and losses as gains. ”

“ Industry, the navy, labor, have for their end, the general good, the public good. To create a useless industry, in order to favor superfluous transportation; to feed superfluous labor, not for the good of the public, but for the expense of the public—this is to realize a veritable begging the question. Work, in itself, is not a desirable thing ”

“ But protection does not relieve us from the payment of these taxes. If, then, individuals devoting themselves to any one object of industry, should advance this demand: "We, from our participation in the payment of taxes, have our expenses of production increased, and therefore ask for a protective duty which shall raise our price of sale:" what is this but a demand on their part to be allowed to free themselves from the burden of the tax, by laying it on the rest of the community? Their object is to balance, by the increased price of their produce, the amount which they pay in taxes. ”

“ To say in the first case that they place the country which pays them in more disadvantageous conditions for production, than the country which is free from them, is a Sophism. We pay, it is true, so many millions for the administration of justice, and the maintenance of order, but we have justice and order; we have the security which they give, the time which they save for us; and it is most probable that production is neither more easy nor more active among nations, where (if there be such) each individual takes the administration of justice into his own hands. ”

“ And that is the reason why we prefer the logic of those men who, declaiming against the invasion of exotic merchandise, have, at least, the courage to declaim as well against the excess of production due to the inventive power of the human mind.
Hear such a Conservative:—"One of the strongest arguments against liberty of commerce, and the too great employment of machines, is, that very many workmen are deprived of work, either by foreign competition, which is destructive to their manufactures, or by machines, which take the place of men in the workshops." ”

“ All that we could have further to hope for, would be, that human intellect might sink and become extinct; for, while intellect exists, it cannot but seek continually to increase the proportion of the end to the means; of the product to the labor. Indeed it is in this continuous effort, and in this alone, that intellect consists.
Sisyphism has been the doctrine of all those who have been intrusted with the regulation of the industry of our country. It would not be just to reproach them with this; for this principle becomes that of our administration only because it prevails in Congress ”

“ English monopolists did not fail on their side to exclaim, when the corn-laws were repealed, "What will become of Great Britain in time of war if she depends on the United States for food?"
One thing they fail to observe: it is that this sort of dependence, which results from exchange, from commercial operations, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot depend on the foreigner unless the foreigner depends on us. This is the very essence of society. We do not place ourselves in a state of independence by breaking natural relations, but in a state of isolation. ”

“ Now that which astonishes us, which confounds us, is, that a publicist, a statesman, who has sincerely adhered to an economic doctrine whose principle clashes so violently with other incontestable principles, could enjoy one moment's calm and repose of mind. As for us, it seems to us, that if we had penetrated into science by this entrance, if we did not clearly perceive that liberty, utility, justice, peace, are things not only compatible, but closely allied together, so to say, identical with each other, we would try to forget all we had learned ”

“ We have just seen that all which renders transportation difficult, acts in the same manner as protection; or, if the expression be preferred, that protection tends towards the same result as all obstacles to transportation.
A tariff may be truly spoken of as a swamp, a rut, a steep hill; in a word, an obstacle, whose effect is to augment the difference between the price of consumption and that of production. It is equally incontestable that a swamp, a bog, &c., are veritable protective tariffs. ”