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Conf lict of PrinciplesMises Daily: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 by Frederic Bast iat (http://mises.org/daily/author/123/Frederic-Bast iat )

[Included in The Bastiat Collection (http://mises.org/document/6299/The-Bastiat-Collection) (2011), this article

appeared in Economic Sophisms (1845).]

There is one thing t hat confounds me, and it is this. Sincerepublicists, studying the economy of societ y from t heproducer's point of view, have laid down this doubleformula:

1. "Government s should order t he interest s of consumerswho are subject to their laws, in such a way as t o befavorable t o national indust ry."

2. "They should bring distant consumers under subjection to

their laws, for the purpose of ordering their interest s ina way favorable to nat ional indust ry."

The first of these formulas gets the name of protection; the second we call outlets, or the creating of markets, or vents, for our produce.

Both are founded on what we call the balance of trade : "A nation is impoverished when it import s;enriched when it export s."

For if every purchase from a foreign count ry is a tribute paid and a national loss, it follows, of course,that it is right to rest rain, and even prohibit , import ations.

And if every sale to a foreign country is a tribut e received, and a national profit, it is quite right andnatural to creat e market s for our products even by force.

The syst em of prot ection and t he colonial system are, t hen, only t wo aspect s of one and the sametheory. To hinder our fellow citizens from buying from foreigners, and to force foreigners t o buy fromour fellow cit izens, are only t wo consequences of one and t he same principle.

Now, it is impossible not to admit that this doctrine, if t rue, makes general utility to repose onmonopoly or internal spoliation, and on conquest or ext ernal spoliat ion.

I enter a cot tage on t he French side of the Pyrenees.

The father of the family has received but slender wages. His half-naked children shiver in t he icy nort hwind; the fire is extinguished, and t here is not hing on the t able. There are wool, firewood, and cornon the other side of the mountain; but these good things are forbidden to the poor day-laborer, forthe ot her side of t he mount ain is not in France. Foreign firewood is not allowed to warm the cottageheart h; and the shepherd's children can never know t he taste of Biscayan wheat, [1] and t he wool of Navarre can never warm t heir benumbed limbs. General utility has so ordered it. Be it so; but let usagree t hat all this is in direct opposit ion to the first principles of justice. To dispose legislatively of theint erests of consumers, and postpone them t o the supposed int erests of national indust ry, is to encroachupon t heir liberty it is t o prohibit an act; namely, the act of exchange, t hat has in it nothingcont rary t o good morals; in a word, it is to do t hem an act of injust ice.

And yet this is necessary, we are t old, unless we wish to see national labor at a standst ill, and publicprosperit y sust ain a fat al shock.

Writers of t he protectionist school, t hen, have arrived at the melancholy conclusion that there is aradical incompatibility bet ween justice and utility.

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On the other hand, if it be the int erest of each nat ion t o sell, and not to buy, t he nat ural state of t heirrelations must consist in a violent act ion and reaction, for each will seek to impose its products on all,and all will endeavor t o repel the products of each.

A sale, in fact, implies a purchase, and since, according t o this doct rine, to sell is beneficial, and t obuy is the reverse, every international t ransaction would imply t he amelioration of one people and thedet erioration of another.

But if men are, on t he one hand, irresistibly impelled toward what is for t heir profit, and if, on theother, t hey resist inst inct ively what is hurtful, we are forced to conclude that each nation carries in it sbosom a natural force of expansion, and a not less natural force of resistance, which forces are equallyinjurious to all ot her nat ions; or, in ot her words, that antagonism and war are the natural st at e of human society.

Thus t he theory we are discussing may be summed up in t hese two axioms:

Utility is incompatible with just ice at home.

Utility is incompatible with peace abroad.

Now, what ast onishes and confounds me is that a publicist , a st at esman, who sincerely holds an

economical doct rine t hat runs so violent ly counter to other principles t hat are incont estable, should beable to enjoy one moment of calm or peace of mind.

For my own part, it seems t o me that if I had ent ered the precinct s of the science by the same gat e,if I had failed t o perceive clearly that libert y, ut ility, just ice, peace, are things not only compat ible,but strict ly allied with each other, and, so to speak, identical, I should have endeavored to forgetwhat I had learned, and I should have asked,

"How God could have willed t hat men should attain prosperity only through injustice and war? How Hecould have willed that they should be unable to avoid Injustice and War except by renouncing thepossibilit y of att aining prosperit y?

"Dare I adopt, as the basis of t he legislat ion of a great nat ion, ascience t hat thus misleads me by false lights, that has conducted meto this horrible blasphemy, and landed me in so dreadful analt ernative? A nd when a long train of illustrious philosophers havebeen conduct ed by this science, to which t hey have devot ed theirlives, t o more consoling result s when they affirm that liberty andutility are perfectly reconcilable wit h just ice and peace t hat allthese great principles run in infinit ely extended parallels, and will doso to all et ernity, wit hout running count er t o each other I wouldask, Have they not in their favor t hat presumption which result sfrom all that we know of the goodness and wisdom of God, asmanifested in the sublime harmony of the mat erial creation? In t heface of such a presumption, and of so many reliable authorities,ought I to believe lightly that God has been pleased t o implantantagonism and dissonance in the laws of t he moral world? No;before I should venture to conclude t hat the principles of social order run count er t o and neutralizeeach other, and are in et ernal and irreconcilable opposition before I should venture to impose on myfellow citizens a syst em so impious as that to which my reasonings would appear to lead I should setmyself t o re-examine t he whole chain of t hese reasonings, and assure myself t hat at this st age of thejourney I had not missed my way."

But if, aft er a candid and searching examination, 20 t imes repeated, I arrived always at this fright ful

conclusion, t hat we must choose between t he right and t he good, discouraged, I should reject thescience, and bury myself in voluntary ignorance; above all, I should decline all part icipat ion in publicaffairs, leaving to men of another t emper and const itut ion t he burden and responsibility of a choice sopainful.

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Frdric Bastiat was t he great French proto-A ustrolibertarian whose polemics and analytics run circlesaround every statist clich. His primary desire as a writer was to reach people in the most practicalway wit h the message of the moral and mat erial urgency of freedom. See Frederic Bastiat's art iclearchives (http://mises.org/daily/author/123/Frederic-Bastiat) .

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Copyright 2012 by the Ludwig von M ises Instit ute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is herebygranted, provided full credit is given.

N ot e s

[1] The French word employed is meture , probably a Spanish word Gallicised mestura , meslin,mixed corn, as wheat and rye. Translator.