Sophisms of the Protectionists

by Frédéric Bastiat

My Dear Free Trader:—Allow us to say that you have but half read the article which provoked your letter. We said that free trade acted precisely like roads, canals and railways, like everything which facilitates communications, and like everything which destroys obstacles. Its first tendency is to increase the quantity of the article which is relieved from duties, and consequently to lower its price. But by increasing, at the same time, the quantity of all the things for which this article is exchanged, it increases the demand, and consequently the price rises. You ask us what the people will gain. Suppose they have a balance with certain scales, in each one of which they have for their use a certain quantity of the articles which you have enumerated. If a little grain is put in one scale it will gradually sink, but if an equal quantity of cloth, iron and coal is added in the others, the equilibrium will be maintained. Looking at the beam above, there will be no change. Looking at the people, we shall see them better fed, clothed and warmed.

"Dear Mr. Editor:—I am a cloth manufacturer, and a protectionist. I confess that your article on dearness and cheapness has led me to reflect. It has something specious about it, and if well proven, would work my conversion."

My Dear Protectionist:—We say that the end and aim of your restrictive measures is a wrongful one—artificial dearness. But we do not say that they always realize the hopes of those who initiate them. It is certain that they inflict on the consumer all the evils of dearness. It is not certain that the producer gets the profit. Why? Because if they diminish the supply they also diminish the demand.

This proves that in the economical arrangement of this world there is a moral force, a vis medicatrix, which in the long run causes inordinate ambition to become the prey of a delusion.

Pray, notice, sir, that one of the elements of the prosperity of each special branch of industry is the general prosperity. The rent of a house is not merely in proportion to what it has cost, but also to the number and means of the tenants. Do two houses which are precisely alike necessarily rent for the same sum? Certainly not, if one is in Paris and the other in Lower Brittany. Let us never speak of a price without regarding the conditions, and let us understand that there is nothing more futile than to try to build the prosperity of the parts on the ruin of the whole. This is the attempt of the restrictive system.

Competition always has been, and always will be, disagreeable to those who are affected by it. Thus we see that in all times and in all places men try to get rid of it. We know, and you too, perhaps, a municipal council where the resident merchants make a furious war on the foreign ones. Their projectiles are import duties, fines, etc., etc.

Now, just think what would have become of Paris, for instance, if this war had been carried on there with success.

Suppose that the first shoemaker who settled there had succeeded in keeping out all others, and that the first tailor, the first mason, the first printer, the first watchmaker, the first hair-dresser, the first physician, the first baker, had been equally fortunate. Paris would still be a village, with twelve or fifteen hundred inhabitants. But it was not thus. Each one, except those whom you still keep away, came to make money in this market, and that is precisely what has built it up. It has been a long series of collisions for the enemies of competition, and from one collision after another, Paris has become a city of a million inhabitants. The general prosperity has gained by this, doubtless, but have the shoemakers and tailors, individually, lost anything by it? For you, this is the question. As competitors came, you said: The price of boots will fail. Has it been so? No, for if the supply has increased, the demand has increased also.

Thus will it be with cloth; therefore let it come in. It is true that you will have more competitors, but you will also have more customers, and richer ones. Did you never think of this when seeing nine-tenths of your countrymen deprived during the winter of that superior cloth that you make?

This is not a very long lesson to learn. If you wish to prosper, let your customers do the same.