What is Free Trade? by Frédéric Bastiat

Author:Frédéric Bastiat [Unbekannt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Wirtschaft
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Published: 2017-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X. RECIPROCITY.

We have just seen that all which renders transportation difficult, acts in the same manner as protection; or, if the expression be preferred, that protection tends towards the same result as all obstacles to transportation.

A tariff may be truly spoken of as a swamp, a rut, a steep hill; in a word, an obstacle, whose effect is to augment the difference between the price of consumption and that of production. It is equally incontestable that a swamp, a bog, &c., are veritable protective tariffs.

There are people (few in number, it is true, but such there are) who begin to understand that obstacles are not the less obstacles because they are artificially created, and that our well-being is more advanced by freedom of trade than by protection; precisely as a canal is more desirable than a sandy, hilly, and difficult road.

But they still say, this liberty ought to be reciprocal. If we take off our taxes in favor of Canada, while Canada does not do the same towards us, it is evident that we are duped. Let us, then, make treaties of commerce upon the basis of a just reciprocity; let us yield where we are yielded to; let us make the sacrifice of buying that we may obtain the advantage of selling.

Persons who reason thus, are (I am sorry to say), whether they know it or not, governed by the protectionist principle. They are only a little more inconsistent than the pure protectionists, as these are more inconsistent than the absolute prohibitionists.

I will illustrate this by a fable:

There were, it matters not where, two towns, N*w Y*rk and M*ntr**l, which, at great expense, had a road built, which connected them with each other. Some time after this was done, the inhabitants of N*w Y*rk became uneasy, and said: "M*ntr**l is overwhelming us with its productions; this must be attended to." They established, therefore, a corps of Obstructors, so called, because their business was to place obstacles in the way of the convoys which arrived from M*ntr**l. Soon after, M*ntr**l also established a corps of Obstructors.

After some years, people having become more enlightened, the inhabitants of M*ntr**l began to discover that these reciprocal obstacles might possibly be reciprocal injuries. They sent, therefore, an ambassador to N*w Y*rk, who (passing over the official phraseology) spoke much to this effect: "We have built a road, and now we put obstacles in the way of this road. This is absurd. It would have been far better to have left things in their original position, for then we would not have been put to the expense of building our road, and afterwards of creating difficulties. In the name of M*ntr**l I come to propose to you not to renounce at once our system of mutual obstacles, for this would be acting according to a principle, and we despise principles as much as you do; but to somewhat lighten these obstacles, weighing at the same time carefully our respective sacrifices." The ambassador having thus

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