What Is Free Trade?: An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Éconimiques" Designed for the American ReaderBastiat, Frédéric
General
What Is Free Trade?: An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Éconimiques" Designed for the American Reader
Bastiat, Frédéric
Free trade; Tariff -- United States
S, and his friends own 76,990 tons of whaling ships (see Commerce and
Navigation Reports, 1866), worth $40 per ton, gold, or $3,079,600.
These ships are sent annually to the Arctic regions and earn for S and
his friends ten per cent., or $307,960 net profit each year. Five
years' profits, consisting of whale oil, bone, etc., which, after an
active and profitable trade at the Sandwich Islands, they returned
with this year, were valued at $1,655,659, and were duly entered among
the imports, furnishing to Mr. Greeley an indubitable proof that the
country was losing money in this business, and that the attention of
Congress should at once be directed toward supplying a proper remedy.
T, was a South American refugee, who brought with him a million of
dollars in gold doubloons. After living here for many years, by which
time, through foreign trading, his capital had doubled, he invested
the entire avails in United States bonds, as a last and striking
evidence of his faith in our institutions, and departed to his native
country, there to rest his bones. This man clearly prospered, and so
did the country in which he settled, and on whose national faith he
lent all his fortune. Yet Mr. Greeley concludes the whole thing to
have been a bad job for us, and harps upon another over-importation of
$1,000,000.
U, is a gallant Yankee sea-captain, who picks up an abandoned vessel
at sea laden with a valuable cargo of teas, and bravely tows her into
port, receiving $200,000 of the proceeds of the sale of her cargo as
salvage for his skill and intrepidity. From Mr. Greeley's point of
view U is a traitor to his country, and suffering a merited poverty
for over-importing. But U drives his carriage about town, and has his
own opinion of Mr. Greeley's views.
V, having a debt of $300,000 due to him by a merchant in Alexandria,
requests him to invest the same in Arabian horses, as fancy stock to
improve American breeds. The horses arrive in good order, and on being
sold, yield V a net profit of $30,000, besides enriching our native
breeds of these useful animals. Mr. Greeley still holds out, and jots
the whole transaction down as an additional evidence of national
decadence.
TABULAR EXPOSE.
Official Returns of these Transactions as they would appear per
Commerce and Navigation Reports.--Sums all stated in gold.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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