IX.

BASTIAT.*

SCIENCE belongs to no country; yet the method of cultivating a science cannot but be affected by the habits of philosophic thought which prevail among its cultivators; and this influence will obviously be stronger in proportion as the subject-matter of science comes more directly into contact with human intelligence and will. I have lately pointed out in this Review† that, even in a speculation so eminently positive as Chemistry, there is room for difference of opinion on problems of a fundamental kind, and that in England and France opposing schools have ranged themselves round conflicting theories from the infancy of chemical science down to the present hour. It is not, then, strange that similar phenomena should manifest themselves in Political Economy, so much more closely connected than Chemistry with human conduct and pursuits; and we need not be surprised if we find in France modes of thinking on this subject more or less out of relation with those

*Fortnightly Review, October 1870.

† Ante, p. 301.

The fact unquestion

which prevail among ourselves. ably is so; but it is important that we should not overrate its extent or significance. Indeed, I think, it must be considered as no slight testimony to the influence of the scientific point of view in keeping speculation straight, that, in spite of the divergent tendencies of national philosophies, the most characteristic doctrines of the English school of Political Economy should have found some of their most powerful champions and most skilful expositors on the other side of the Channel; and that such men as Say, Duchâtel, Garnier, Courcelle-Seneuil, and Cherbuliez, while contributing not a few original and important developments to economic doctrine, should have been the interpreters to their countrymen of Adam Smith and Malthus, Ricardo and Mill. effect, the main stream of economic thought has in both countries flowed in the same channels; while the idiosyncrasies of the national mind have, on each side, made themselves felt in producing certain eddies of speculation apart from the main current. No one can be at any loss in finding examples of aberrations due to this cause among ourselves. Among French political thinkers one of the most noteworthy is presented by the writings of Bastiat.

In

The name of Bastiat is, perhaps, the most familiar in this country of all French economists; a result to which several circumstances have contributed besides the merit of his writings. At a critical period of our reforming career he threw himself with extraordinary ardour into our contests, and lent effective assistance. to the side that has triumphed. He is known on

more than one occasion to have made himself the generous defender of English policy and character against the unreasoning prejudices of his countrymen. He was, moreover, the friend of Cobden-in itself, in the judgment of most, a sufficient voucher for economic acquirement; and he has been fortunate enough to find excellent translators for his principal works. This last circumstance cannot, indeed, be fairly separated from the merits of the writings themselves; and it must be owned that these were in some respects of a high and rare order. As examples of dialectical skill in reducing an opponent to absurdity, of simple and felicitous illustration, of delicate and polished raillery, attaining occasionally the pitch of a refined irony,, the "Sophismes Economiques" might almost claim a place beside the "Provincial Letters." The petition of the candle-makers and other manufacturers of light to the Legislative Body, praying the exclusion by legislative enactment of the light of the sun, is alone almost enough to make a reputation in this line; and Swift himself has hardly shown greater art in the logical conduct of an absurd proposition than that with which the reader, in this modest proposal, is led, step by step, from the avowed premisses of Protection, through a series of the most natural and irrefragable deductions, straight to the preposterous conclusion advocated by the petitioners.

"What we pray for is, that it may please you to pass a law ordering the shutting up of all windows, skylights, dormerwindows, outside and inside shutters, curtains, blinds, bull'seyes-in a word, of all openings, holes, chinks, clefts, and fissures, by or through which the light of the sun has been

allowed to enter houses, to the prejudice of the meritorious manufactures with which we flatter ourselves we have accommodated our country-a country which, in gratitude, ought not to abandon us now to a strife so unequal. . . .

"And, first, if you shut up as much as possible all access to natural light, and create a demand for artificial light, which of our French manufactures will not be encouraged by it?

"If more tallow is consumed, then there must be more oxen and sheep; and, consequently, we shall behold the increase of artificial meadows, meat, wool, hides, and, above all, manure, which is the basis and foundation of all agricultural wealth.

"If more oil is consumed, then we shall have an extended cultivation of the poppy, of the olive, and of colewort. These rich and exhausting plants will come at the right time to enable us to avail ourselves of the increased fertility which the rearing of additional cattle will impart to our lands.

"Our heaths will be covered with resinous trees. Numerous swarms of bees will, on the mountains, gather perfumed treasures, now wasting their fragrance on the desert air, like the flowers from which they are derived. No branch of agriculture but will then exhibit a cheering development. . . . .

"If you urge that the light of the sun is a gratuitous gift of nature, and that to reject such gifts is to reject wealth itself under pretence of encouraging the means of acquiring it, we would caution you against giving a death-blow to your own policy. Remember that hitherto you have always repelled foreign products, because they approximate more nearly than home products to the character of gratuitous gifts. To comply with the exactions of other monopolists, you have only half a motive; and to repulse us simply because we stand on a stronger vantage-ground than others, would be to adopt the equation+X+; in other words, it would be to heap absurdity upon absurdity.

."Make your choice, but be logical; for as long as you exclude, as you do, coal, iron, corn, foreign fabrics, in proportion as their price approximates to zero, what inconsis

tency would it be to admit the light of the sun, the price of which is already at zero during the entire day!"

But it was not on the "Sophismes Économiques"

that Bastiat would have been content to take the verdict of posterity as to his pretensions as an economist. Indeed, whatever might be the controversial and literary merits of these admirable tracts, they added nothing to already familiar economic truths. The theory of Free Trade had been fully thought out by a succession of able writers before Bastiat took it in hand, and all that he here could do was what, in fact, he did-furnish new and apt illustrations of a familiar doctrine, or, by well-selected instances, reduce opponents to glaring absurdity. But in 1848 the advent of the democratic republic brought other questions to the front, and stirred controversies more fitted to try the metal of a philosophic thinker. Socialism had raised its grim visage, and was propounding those solutions of the social problem, the mere recollection of which has since so often sufficed to frighten France from her propriety. Louis Blanc, Considérant, Leroux, Proudhon, were thundering against the existing industrial order; and for those who cared to maintain that order the need of the hour was a philosophy adapted to the popular apprehension, which should be capable of furnishing a plausible reply to their attacks. At this time Bastiat was at the height of his reputation in Paris. He had frankly and sincerely accepted the Revolution, though sensible of the unpreparedness of the country for the new régime, and alive to the inevitable dangers incident to this state of things. His views, however, did not extend beyond