In his letters to M. Coudroy at this period, we discover the same idea working and fermenting in the mind of Bastiat, and struggling for vent and utterance. Amid the anxieties and distractions in which his duties as a Deputy involved him, he writes—“I am still convinced that the practice of affairs excludes the possibility of producing a work truly scientific, and yet I cannot conceal from you that I always retain that old chimera of my Social Harmonies; and I cannot divest myself of the thought that, if I had remained with you, I should have succeeded in imparting to the world a useful idea. I long much to make my retreat.” In another letter to the same friend, after describing his feebleness, and intimating his intention to leave Paris to try what effect a change to his native air might produce, he adds—“I must renounce public life, and all my ambition now is to have three or four months of tranquillity to write my poor Harmonies Économiques. They are in my head, but I fear they will never leave it.” “The crystal,” he says elsewhere, “is formed drop by drop in silence and obscurity; but retirement, quiet, time, freedom from care—all are wanting to me.”
In April 1849, he writes again to M. Coudroy, “I have my theory to work out, and powerful encouragements have reached me opportunely. I read those words yesterday in an English Review,—‘In Political Economy, the French school has had [p027] three phases, expressed by the three names, Quesnay, Say, Bastiat.’ They assign me this rank and this part prematurely; but it is certain that I have in my head a new and suggestive idea, which I believe to be true. This idea I have never developed methodically. It runs accidentally through some of my articles, and as that has been enough to attract the attention of the savants, and as it has already had the honour conferred on it of being considered as forming an epoch in the science, I am certain now that, when I give that theory in its complete state to the world, it will at least be examined. Is not that all I could desire? With what ardour I am about to turn to account my retirement in order to elaborate that doctrine, certain as I am to have judges who can understand it, and who are waiting for it!”
The three months of leisure, so long and so anxiously wished for, came at last; and in the beginning of 1850 the Harmonies (or rather the portions which the author had intended should form the first volume of that work) made their appearance. The reception of the work was not at first what might have been expected; and Bastiat, again in Paris, writes to his friend M. Coudroy, “The Harmonies pass unnoticed here, unless by some dozen connoisseurs. I expected this—it could not be otherwise. I have not even in my favour the wonted zeal of our own little circle, who accuse me of heterodoxy; but in spite of this, I am confident that the book will make its way by degrees. In Germany it has been very differently received. . . . . I pray Heaven to vouchsafe me a year to write the second volume; after which I shall sing, Nunc dimittis.”
To Mr Cobden, in August 1850, he writes—“I went to my native country to try to cure these unfortunate lungs, which are to me very capricious servants. I have returned a little better, but afflicted with a disease of the larynx, accompanied with a complete extinction of voice. The doctor enjoins absolute silence; and, in consequence, I am about to pass two months in the country, near Paris. There I shall try to write the second volume of the Harmonies Économiques. The first has been nearly unnoticed by the learned world. I should not be an author if I gave in to that judgment. I appeal to the future, for I am conscious that that book contains an important idea, une idée mère, and time will come to my assistance.”
This great work, the child of Bastiat’s anxious hopes, the subject of his dying thoughts, although at first but coldly received, is perhaps the most important and the most original contribution which the science of Political Economy has received since the days [p028] of Adam Smith. On that most abstruse and difficult subject, the first principles of Value, it opens up entirely new views; while on almost every other branch of the subject, it either propounds a new theory, or corrects and improves the nomenclature of the science. Throughout, it treats Political Economy (and it is perhaps the only work which does so, at least systematically) in connexion with final causes, and demonstrates the Wisdom and Goodness of God in the economy of civil society. On some questions we may venture to differ from Bastiat. On the question of Rent, for instance, he would seem to have followed too implicitly the theory of Mr Carey, the able American Economist; but Bastiat’s work, as a whole, has a freshness, a vigour, and an originality which all must admire. He writes like a man thoroughly in earnest,—a devout believer in the doctrines which he teaches, and he seldom fails to carry conviction to the mind of his readers. The leading idea of the work—the harmony of the social laws—is admirable, and is admirably worked out. The motto of the book, in fact, might have been the well-known lines of Dryden,—
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason ending full in Man.