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the elite—“the relationship between persons and the legislator
appears to be the same as the relationship between the clay and
the potter.” And for people who have this vision, Bastiat displays
the only anger I find in The Law when he lashes out at do-good-
ers and would-be rulers of mankind, “Ah, you miserable crea-
tures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge
humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything!
Why don’t you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient
enough.”
Bastiat was an optimist who thought that eloquent argu-
ments in defense of liberty might save the day; but history is not
on his side. Mankind’s history is one of systematic, arbitrary
abuse and control by the elite acting privately, through the
church, but mostly through government. It is a tragic history
where hundreds of millions of unfortunate souls have been
slaughtered, mostly by their own government. A historian writ-
ing 200 or 300 years from now might view the liberties that
existed for a tiny portion of mankind’s population, mostly in the
Western world, for only a tiny portion of its history, the last cen-
tury or two, as a historical curiosity that defies explanation. That
historian might also observe that the curiosity was only a tempo-
rary phenomenon and mankind reverted back to the traditional
state of affairs—arbitrary control and abuse.
Hopefully, history will prove that pessimistic assessment
false. The worldwide collapse of the respectability of the ideas of
socialism and communism suggests that there is a glimmer of
hope. Another hopeful sign is the technological innovations that
make it more difficult for government to gain information on its
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citizens and control them. Innovations such as information
access, communication, and electronic monetary transactions
will make government attempts at control more costly and less
probable. These technological innovations will increasingly
make it possible for world citizens to communicate and
exchange with one another without government knowledge,
sanction, or permission.
Collapse of communism and technological innovations,
accompanied by robust free-market organizations promoting
Bastiat’s ideas, are the most optimistic things I can say about the
future of liberty in the United States. Americans share an awe-
some burden and moral responsibility. If liberty dies in the
United States, it is destined to die everywhere. A greater famil-
iarity with Bastiat’s clear ideas about liberty would be an impor-
tant step in rekindling respect and love, and allowing the resus-
citation of the spirit of liberty among our fellow Americans.
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ix
Introduction
Richard Ebeling
The defense of economic liberty has never been an easy
task. Adam Smith expressed his own despair at this problem in
The Wealth of Nations. After presenting his powerful criticisms
of mercantilism—the eighteenth-century system of government
regulation and planning—he despondently suggested that free
trade in Great Britain was as unlikely as the establishment of a
utopia.
He said that two factors made the success of economic lib-
erty unpromising. “Not only the prejudices of the public,” Smith
said, “but what is much more unconquerable, the private inter-
ests of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it.”
1
By the preju-
dices of the public, Smith meant the apparent difficulty of many
ordinary people to follow the often abstract and complex argu-
ments of the economic theorist that demonstrate the superior
workings of the free market over various forms of government
intervention and control. And by the private interests of many
individuals, Smith had in mind the wide variety of special-
interest groups that gain from, and would therefore always
lobby hard to maintain, government regulations that limit or
prevent open competition. In combination, Smith feared, these
Richard Ebeling is president of the Foundation for Economic Education. 
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two factors would permanently prevent the logic of economic
freedom from ever winning in the arenas of ideas and politics. 
In the nineteenth century, however, there was one champi-
on of freedom who mastered the art of making the complexities
of economic reasoning understandable to the layman: the
French classical-liberal economist Frederic Bastiat
(1801–1850). More than one historian of economic thought has
emphasized Bastiat’s special abilities in undermining the ratio-
nales for protectionism, socialism, and interventionism. 
Sir Alexander Gray, for example, said that, “No one has
ever been quite so skillful in making the case of his antagonist
look extremely foolish. Even now his most ephemeral work
remains a joy to read, by reason of its wit, its merciless satire and
the neatness wherewith he pinks his opponents.” 
2
Lewis Haney
referred to Bastiat’s “pleasing and luminous style” and how,
“brilliantly, with fable and irony, the masses are appealed to.”
3
Eduard Heimann, a critic of the market economy,
described him as, “A brilliant writer, [who] achieved world fame
with his parable of the candle-makers, who petition for protec-
tion against the unfair competition of the sun in order that the
community may become richer by the enrichment of their
industry.”
4
Charles Gide and Charles Rist pointed out that “If
modern Protectionists no longer speak of the ‘inundation of a
country’ or of an ‘invasion of foreign goods’ . . . we too often for-
get that all this is due to the small but admirable pamphlets writ-
ten by Bastiat . . . . No one could more scornfully show the
laughable inconsistency of tunneling the mountains which
divide countries, with a view to facilitating exchange, while at
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