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From The Spectator Qne volume, 16mo, $1.00. **Mr. Habberton has given us atruly readable and delightful selection from a series of volumes that ought possibly never to go out of fashion, but which by the reason of their length and slightly antiquated form there is danger of our overlooking.—Liberal Christian, ‘ ~ * Ray ie Toy eae Te a a Jone SEGS~ Eee ae smo sacle Ket. fcrfore Leh PIL a Tay eS aot day treacs Crccenery A; Mat A ak pagel fora hk ve SO fA GA. ob pimp fee Bi ale Anta defect ct os y / - : | ie gain ny a +f VI/ SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. BY THE LATE - M. FREDERIC BASTIAT, Member of the Institute of France. Part I. Sophisms of Protection—First Series. Part II. Sophisms of Protection—Second Series. Part III. Spoliation and Law. Part IV. Capital and Interest. JRANSLATED FROM THE PARIS EDITION OF 18069. WITH PREFACE BY HORACE WHITE. NEW-YORK : Cie eens bee INE AMY SS 2 S'O NS 1877. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1869, by THE WESTERN NEWS COMPANY, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Northern District of Illinois, PRHEEACE. A previous edition of this work has been published under the title of ‘‘Essays on Political Economy, by the late M. Frederic Bastiat.” When it became necessary to issue a second edition, the Free-Irade League offered to buy the stereotype plates and the copyright, with a view to the publi- cation of the book on a large scale and at a very low price. The primary object of the League is to educate public opi- nion; to convince the people of the United States of the folly and wrongfulness of the Protective system. The methods adopted by the League for the purpose have been the holding of public meetings and the publication of books, pamphlets, and tracts, some of which are for sale at the cost of publica- tion, and others given away gratuitously. — In publishing this book the League feels that it is offering the most effective and most popular work on political econo- my that has as yet been written. M. Bastiat not only en- livens a dull subject with his wit, but also reduces the propo- sitions of the Protectionists to absurdities. £OOR li PREFACE. Free-Traders can do no better service in the cause of truth, justice, and humanity, than by circulating this little book among their friends. It is offered you at what it costs to print it. - Will not every Free-[rader put a copy of the book into ~ the hands of his Protectionist friends ? It would not be proper to close this short preface without an expression on the part of the League of its obligation to the able translator of the work from the French, Mr. Horace White, of Chicago. Orrice or Tur American Fren-Trapre Leacus, 38 Burling Slip, New-York, June, 1870. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. Tis compilation, from the works of the late M. Bastiat, is given to the public in the belief that the time has now come when the people, relieved from the absorbing anxi- eties of the war, and the subsequent strife on reconstruc- tion, are prepared to give a more earnest and thoughtful attention to economical questions than was possible during the previous ten years. That we have retrograded in economical science during this period, while making great strides in moral and political advancement by the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of the freedmen, seems to me incontestable. Professor Perry has described very concisely the steps taken by vhe manufacturers in 1861, after the Southern members had left their seats in Con- gress, to reverse the policy of the government in reference to foreign trade.* He has noticed but has not laid so much stress as he might on the fact that while there was @ Elements of Political Economy, p. 461. lv PREFACE. no considerable public opinion to favor them, there was none at all to oppose them. Not only was the attention of the people diverted from the tariff by the dangers then impending, but the Republican party, which then came into power, had, in its National Convention, offered a bribe to the State of Pennsylvania for its vote in the Presidential election, which bribe was set forth in the fol- lowing words: ‘* Resolved, That while providing revenue for the support of the General Government by duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imposts as to encourage the development of the industrial interests o {the whole coun- try; and we commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the workingmen liberal wages, to agriculture remu- nerative prices, to mechanics and manufactrrers an adequate reward for their skill, labor and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence.’’—Chicago Convention Pla‘form, 1860. It is true that this resolution did not commit anybody to the doctrine that the industrial interests of the whole country are promoted by taxes levied upon imported property, however ‘‘adjusted,” but it was understood, by the Pennsylvanians at least, to be a promise that if the Republican party were successful in the coming election, tlhe doctrine of protection, which had been overthrown in 1846, and had been in an extremely languishing state ever since, should be put upon its legs again. I am far from asserting that this overture was needed to se -sre the PREFACE. ; V vote of Pennsylvania for Mr. Lincoln in 1860, or. that that State was governed by less worthy motives in her political action than other States. I only remark that her delegates in the convention thought such a resolution would be extremely useful, and such was the anxiety to secure her vote in the election that a much stronger reso- lution might have been conceded if it had been required. I affirm, however, that there was no agitation on the tariff question in any other quarter. New England had united in passing the tariff of 1857, which lowered the duties imposed by the act of 1846 about fifty per cent., 7. e., one- half of the previously existing scale. The Western States had not petitioned Congress or the convention to disturb the tariff; nor had New York done so, although Mr. Greeley, then as now, was invoking, more or less fre- quent:y, the shade of Henry Clay to help re-establish what is deftly styled the ‘‘ American System.” The protective policy was restored, after its fifteen years’ sleep, under the auspices of Mr. Morrill, a Repre- sentative (now a Senator) from Vermont. Latterly I have noticed in the speeches and votes of this gentleman (who is, I think, one of the most conscientious, as he is one of the most amiable, men in public life), a reluctance to follow to their logical conclusion the principles em- bodied in the ‘‘Morrill tariff” of 1861. His remarks upon the copper bill, during the recent session of Congress, ’ vi PREFACE. indicate that, in his opinion, those branches of American industry which are engaged in producing articles sent abroad in exchange for the products of foreign nations, are entitled to some consideration. This is an important admission, but not so important as another, which he made in his speech on the national finances, January 24, 1867, in which, referring to the bank note circulation existing in the year 1860, he said: ‘And that was a year of as large production and as much general prosperity asany, perhaps, in our history.”* If the year imme- diately preceding the enactment of the Morrill tariff was a year of as large production and as much general pros- perity as any in our history, of what use has the Morrill tariff been? We have seen that it was not demanded by any public agitation. We nowsee that it has been of no public utility. In combating, by arguments and illustrations adapted to the comprehension of the mass of mankind, the errors and sophisms with which protectionists deceive themselves and others, M. Bastiat is the most lucid and pointed of all writers on economical science with whose works I have any acquaintance. It is not necessary to accord to him a place among the architects of the science of political economy, although some of his admirers rank him among * Congressional Globe, Second Session Thirty-Ninth Congress, Part I, pf. 724. PREFACE. vi the highest.* It is enough to count him among the great- est of its expounders and demonstrators. His death, which occurred at Pisa, Italy, on the 24th December, 1850, at the age of 49, was a serious loss to France and to the world. His works, though for the most part frag. mentary, and given to the public from time to time through the columns of the Journal des Hconomustes, the Journal des Debats, and the Libre Hchange, remain a mon- ument of a noble intellect guided by a noble soul. They have been collected and published (including the Harmo- nies Economiques, which the author left in manuscript) by Guillaumin & Co., the proprietors of the Journal des EHconomistes, in two editions of six volumes each, 8vo. and 12mo. When we reflect that these six volumes were produced between April, 1844, and December, 1850, by a young man of feeble constitution, who commenced life as a clerk in a mercantile establishment, and who spent much of his time during these six years in delivering public lectures, and laboring in the National Assembly, to which he was chosen in 1848, our admiration for such industry is only modified by the thought that if he had * Mr. Macleod (Dictionary of Political Economy, vol. I, p. 246) speaks of Bastiat’s definition of Value as “the greatest revolution that has been effected in any science since the days of Galileo.” See also Professor Perry’s pamphlet, Recent Phases of Thought in Political Economy, read before the American Social Science Associatiun, October, 1868, in which, it appears to me, that Bastiat’s theory of Kent, fn announcing which he was anticipated by Mr. Carey, is too highly praised. Vill PREFACE. been more saving of his strength, he might have rendered even greater services to his country and to mankind. The Sovhismes Economiques, which fill the larger portion of this volume, were not expected by their author to out- last the fallacies which they sought to overthrow. But these fallacies have lived longer and have spread over more of the earth’s surface than any one @ prior? could have believed possible. It is sometimes useful, in oppos- ing doctrines which people have been taught to believe are peculiar to their own country and time, to show that the same doctrines have been maintained in other coun- tries and times, and have been exploded in other lan- guages. By what misuse of words the doctrine of Pro- tection came to be denominated the ‘‘ American System,” Icould never understand. It prevailed in England nearly two hundred years before our separation from the mother country. Adam Smith directed the first formidable attack against it in the very year that our independence was declared. It held its ground in England until it had starved and ruined almost every branch of industry—agr* culture, manufactures, and commerce alike.* It was not * It is so often affirmed by protectionists that the superiority of Great Britain in manufactures was attained by means of protection, that ‘t ia worth while to dispel that illusion. The facts are precisely the reverse. Protection had brought Great Britain in the year 1842 to the last stages of pennry and decay, and it wanted but a year or two more of the same regimen to have precipitated the country into a bloody revolution. I quote a paragraph from Miss }Jartineau’s “ History of England from 1316 to 1954,” Book VI, Chapter 5. PREFACE. 1x wholly overthrown until 1846, the s me year that wit: nessed its discomfiture in the United States, as already shown. It still exists in a subdued and declining way in “ Serious as was the task of the Minister (Sir R. Peel) in every view, the most immediate sympathy was felt for him on account of the fearful state of the people. The distress had now so deepened in the manufacturing districts as to render it clearly inevitable that many must die, and a muititude be lowered to a state of sickness and irritability from want of food; while there seemed no chance of any member of the manufacturing classes coming out of the struggle at last with a vestige of property where- with to begin the world again. The pressure had long extended beyond the interests first affected, and when the new Ministry came into power, there seemed to be no class that was not threatened with ruin. In Carlisle, the Committee of Inquiry reported that a fourth of the population was ina state bordering on starvation—actually certain to die of famine, unless re- lieved by extraordinary exertions. In the woollen districts of Wiltshire, the allowance to the independent laborer was not two-thirds of the mini- mum in the workhouse, and the large existing population consumed only a fourth of the bread and meat required by the much smaller population of 1820. In Stockport, more than half the master spinners had failed be- fore the close of 1842; dwelling houses to the number of 3,000, were shut up; and the occupiers of many hundreds more were unable to pay rates at all. Five thousand persons were walking the streets in compulsory idle- ness, and the Burnley guardians wrote to the Secretary of State that the distress was far beyond their management; so that a government commis- sioner and government funds were sent down withoutdelay. Ata meet- ing in Manchester, where humble shopkeepers were the speakers, anecdotes were related which told more than declamation. Rent collectors were afraid to meet their principals,asno money could be collected. Provision dealers were subject to incursions from a wolfish man prowling for food for his children, or from a half frantic woman, with her dying baby at her breast; or from parties of ten or a dozen desperate wretches who were levy- ing contributions along the street. The linen draper told how new clothes had become out of the question with his customers, and they bought only remnants and patches, to mend the oldones. The baker was more and more surprised at the number of people who bought half-pennyworths of bread. A provision dealer used to throw away outside scraps; but now respectable customers of twenty years’ standing bought them in pennyworths to moisten their potatoes. These shopkeepers contemplated nothing but ruin from the impoverished condition of their customers. While poor-rates were increasing beyond all precedent, their trade was only one-half, or one-third, or even one-tenth what it had been three years before. In that neighborhood, a gentleman, who had retired from business in 1833, leaving & property worth £60,000 to his sons, and who had, early in the distress, become security for them, was anor iae the works for the benefit of the creditors, at a salary of £1 a week. In families where the father had hitherto exrned £2 per week, and Jaid by a portion weekly, and where all was now gone but the sacks of shavings they slept on, exertions were made to get ‘blue milk’ for children to moisten their oatmeal with ; but goon they could have it only on alternate days; and soon water must do. At Leeds the pauper stone-heap amounted to 150,000 tons; and the guardians offered the paupers 6s. per week for doing nothing, rather than 7s. 6d. per week for stone-breaking. The millwrights and other trades were offeriag & premiun) on emigration, to induce their hands togoaway. At Hinckley, x PREFACE. France, despite the powerful and brilliant attacks of Says, Bastiat, and Chevalier, but its end cannot be far distart in that country. The Copden Chevalier treaty with England has been attended by consequences so totally at variance with the theories and prophecies of the protec- vionists that it must soon succumb, As these pages are going through the press, a telegram =nnounces that the French Government has abolished the @scriminating duties levied upon goods imported in foreign bottoms, and has asked our government to abolish the like discrimination which our laws have created. Commer- cial freedom is making rapid progress in Prussia, Austria, one-third ef the inhabitants were paupers; more than a fifth of the houses stood emp\y; and there was not work enough in the place to employ properly one-third of the weavers. In Dorsetshire a man and his wife had for wages 2s. 6d. per week, and three loaves ; and the ablest laborer had 63s. or Ts. In Wiltshire, the poor peasants held open-air meetings after work—which was necos-arily after dark. ‘There, by the light of one or two flaring tallow candles, the man or the woman who had a story to tell stood on a chair, and related how their children wero fed and clothed in old times—poorly enough, but so as to keep body and soul together; and now, how they could nohow manage to doit. The bare details of the ages of their children, and what the little things could do, and the prices of bacon and bread, and calico and coals, had more pathos in them than any oratory heard elsewhere.” “But all this came from the Corn Laws,” is the ready reply of the American protectionist. The Corn Laws were the doctrine of protection applied to breadstuffs, farm products, “raw materials.” But it was not only protection for corn that vexed England in 1842, but protection for avery thing and every body, from the landlord and the mill-owner to the kelp gatherer. Every species of manufacturing industry had asked and obtained protection. The nation had put in force, logically and thoroughly, the principle of denying themselves any share in the advantages which nature or art had conferred upon other climates and peoples, (which is the principle of protection), and with the results so0 pathetically described by Miss Martineau. The prosperity of British manufactures dates from the year 1846. That they maintained sny kind of existence pricr to that time is a most striking proof of the vitality of human industry uuder the bersecution of bad Jaws. e PREFACK. XI Italy, and even in Spain. The United States alone, among civilized nations, hold to the opposite principle. Our anomalous position in this respect is due, as I think, to our anomalous condition during the -past eight or nine years, already adverted to—a condition in which the pro- tected classes have been restrained by no public opinion --public opinion being too intensely preoccupied with the means of preserving the national existence to notice what was doing with the tariff. But evidences of a reawaken- ing are not wanting. There is scarcely an argument current among the protectionists of the United States that was not current in France at the time Bastiat wrote the Sophismes Hcono- miques. Nor was there one current in his: time that is not performing its bad office among us. Hence his demonstrations of their absurdity and falsity are equally applicable to our time and country as to his. They may have even greater force among us if they thoroughly, dispel the notion that Protection is an ‘‘ American system.” Surely they cannot do less than this. There are one or two arguments current among the protectionists of the United States that were not rife in France when Bastiat wrote his Sophismes. It is said, for instance, that protection has failed to achieve all the good results expected from it, because the policy of the govern- ment has been variable. If we could have a steady Xil PREFACE. course of protection for a sufficient period of time (robody being bold enough to say what time would be sufficient), and could be assured of having it, we should see won- derful progress. But, inasmuch as the policy of the government is uncertain, protection has never yet had a fair trial. This is like saying, ‘‘if the stone which I threw in the air had staid there, my head would not have been broken by its fall.” It would not stay there. The law of gravitation is committed against its staying there. Its only resting-place is on the earth. They begin by violating natural laws and natural rights—the right to exchange services for services—and then complain because these natural laws war against them and finally overcome them. But it is not true that protection has not had a fair trial in the United States. The protection has been greater at some times than at others, that is all. Prior to the late war, all our revenue was raised from customs; and while the tariffs of 1846 and 1857 were designated “free trade tariffs,” to distinguish them from those exist- ing before and since, they were necessar’ v protective to a certain extent. Again, it is said that there is need of diversifying our industry—-as though industry would not diversify itself sufficiently through the diverse tastes and predilections of as though it were necessary to supplement individuals the work of the Creator in this behalf, by human enacts PREFACE |. x1 ments founded upon’ reciprocal rapine. The only rational object of diversifying industry is to make people better and happier. Do men and women become betier and happier by being huddled together in mills and factories, in a stifling atmosphere, on scanty wages, ten hours each day and 313 days each year, than when cultivating our free and fertile lands? Do they have equal opportunities for mental and moral improvement? The trades-unions tell us, No. Whatever may be the experience of other countries where the land is either owned by absentee lords, who take all the product except what is necessary to give. the tenant a bare subsistence, or where it is cut up in parcels not larger than an American garden patch, it is an undeniable fact that no other class of American workingmen are s0 independent, so intelligent, so well provided with comforts and leisure, or so rapidly advanc- ing in prosperity, as our agriculturists; and this notwith- standing they are enormously overtaxed to maintain other ~ branches of industry, which, according to the protective theory, cannot support themselves. The natural tendency of our people to flock to the cities, where their eyes and ears are gratified at the expense of their other senses, physical and moral, is sufficiently marked not to need the influence of legislation to stimulate it. It is not the purpose of this pre‘ace to anticipate the admirable arguments of M. Bastiat; but there is another theory in vogue which deserves a moment’s consideration, X1V PREFACE. Mr. H. ©. Carey tells us, that a country which exports its food, in reality exports its soil, the foreign consumers not giving back to the land the fertilizing elements abstracted from it. Mr. Mill has answered this argument, upon philosophical principles, at some length, showing that whenever it ceases to be advantageous to America to export breadstuffs, she will cease todo so; also, that when it becomes necessary to manure her lands, she will either import manure or make it at home.*