What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Éconimiques" Designed for the American Reader by Frédéric Bastiat
page 76 of 142 (53%)
page 76 of 142 (53%)
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puerilities seriously and gravely practised? To be the dupe of
another, is bad enough; but to employ all the forms and ceremonies of representation in order to cheat oneself--to doubly cheat oneself, and that too in a mere numerical account--truly this is calculated to lower a little the pride of this _enlightened age_. 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. |
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