![]() ![]() To combat these ideas, Bastiat, sick from tuberculosis, won a seat in the National Assembly from Landes. ![]() In the turmoil that followed, socialist and other utopian schemes gained adherents. In the revolutionary year of 1848, the French people, disgusted with monarchical corruption on behalf of special-interests, forced their king from power. He served as secretary-general and editor of the weekly newspaper, Le Libre Échange ( Free Trade). In 1846 he organized the French Free Trade Association in Bordeaux, before moving to Paris where he organized the free-trade effort on a national scale. Other works, including Cobden and the League (1845) 4 and Capital and Rent (published in 1849), 5 have not been translated.īastiat was an activist as well as an author. In 1850, as his life was nearing an end, Bastiat published The Law, 2 his eloquent foray into political and legal philosophy, and Economic Harmonies, 3 his treatise on political economy. Two series of those essays were compiled under the title Economic Sophisms (1845), 1 a bestseller that went through many editions and was translated into several languages. Thus began his brief torrent of essays and pamphlets deftly exploding the economic fallacies of his day. Bastiat first garnered attention with “The Influence of French and English Tariffs on the Future of the Two Peoples,” published in the Journal des Économistes. In 1844 he began his brief writing career, stimulated by the free-trade efforts of Richard Cobden (who would become his close friend) and the Anti-Corn Law League in England. The multilingual Bastiat devoured the works of political economists from throughout Europe, with the deepest impressions left by Say, Adam Smith, Destutt de Tracy, and Charles Comte. As a young man, he chose the study of economics over business and farming. Orphaned at 9, he came of age during the Napoleonic wars, with their extensive government intervention in economic affairs. The fruits of the creativity thus forgone are “what is not seen” in any act of intervention.Ĭlaude Frédéric Bastiat was born in the southwestern French port city of Bayonne. This is so because interference bars individuals from the creative action they otherwise would have engaged in. Interference with that freedom, and with its corollaries, property and competition, he wrote, leaves people poorer as well as oppressed. ![]() The result is a steady progress in the material well-being of all. In a series of brief essays and pamphlets, and a treatise on political economy, Bastiat taught, contra Rousseau, that there is a natural harmonious order to the social world, an order that emanates from the free exchange between human beings driven to satisfy unlimited wants with limited resources. ![]() Say, Bastiat marshaled logic, clarity, and exuberant wit in the cause of understanding society, prosperity, and liberty. A member of the French Liberal, or laissez-faire, school of economists that included the great J. Samuels Portrait Collection at Duke University.įrédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) merits a hallowed place in the annals of political economy. NFL footage © NFL Productions LLC.Picture of Frédéric Bastiat courtesy of The Warren J. All other NFL-related trademarks are trademarks of the National Football League. NFL and the NFL shield design are registered trademarks of the National Football League.The team names, logos and uniform designs are registered trademarks of the teams indicated. ![]()
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