Harmonies of Political Economy / Translated from the Third French Edition, with a Notice of the Life and Writings of the Author

TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD EDITION OF THE FRENCH,
WITH A
AUTHOR OF “THE PHILOSOPHY OF TRADE,” “THE GOLD DISCOVERIES AND THEIR PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES,” ETC.
Second Edition.
EDINBURGH: OLIVER AND BOYD, TWEEDDALE COURT. LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO.
EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY OLIVER AND BOYD, TWEEDDALE COURT.
The favour with which the English public has received the First Edition of this translation of Bastiat’s Harmonies Économiques , published originally in separate parts, has induced me to have the whole reprinted in a cheaper and more accessible form, in the hope of giving the work a wider circulation, and rendering it more generally useful.
Some of the chapters thus added are unfortunately mere fragments, but most of the others indicate very clearly Bastiat’s opinions on the subjects to which they relate, and several of them display a breadth, a vigour, and an originality worthy of the best days of their lamented author.
Many of the questions purely economical which are discussed in the posthumous portions of the work,—such, for instance, as those of Wages, Population, and the relations of Labour and Capital, etc.,—are still deeply engaging public attention in England, as well as on the other side of the Channel; and on subjects of such vast practical importance it is surely desirable that the opinions of so profound and fearless a thinker as Bastiat should be as widely disseminated as possible.
A word as to my mode of rendering Bastiat. I have not aimed at giving a literal translation. Indeed, the language often employed by Bastiat hardly admits of literal translation. But the more important object, I trust, has been attained of conveying fully, plainly, and intelligibly the author’s precise meaning.
The materials of the following notice of the life and writings of Bastiat have been borrowed partly from a short account of him in the Dictionnaire de l’Économie Politique , partly from the Memoir and Correspondence prefixed to the author’s Œuvres Complètes , and partly from an able article in the Revue des Deux Mondes from the pen of M. Louis Reybaud.