Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc33*34*

Second Series, Chapter 8

This is the most common and the most deceptive of all fallacies.

Real suffering is taking place in England.

It comes in the train of two other events:

1. The tariff reform.
35*
2. Two bad harvests in succession.

To which of these last two circumstances is the first to be attributed?

The protectionists have not failed to cry out: “It is this accursed free trade that is causing all the trouble. It promised us no end of blessings, we accepted it, and here the factories have closed, and the people are suffering:
Cum hoc, ergo propter hoc.”

Free trade distributes in the most uniform and equitable manner the fruits that Providence grants to the labor of man. If some of these fruits are destroyed by a natural disaster, free trade nonetheless ensures the fair distribution of what remains. Men are, no doubt, less well supplied; but should the blame be laid on free trade, or on the natural disaster?

Free trade acts on the same principle as insurance. When a disaster occurs, insurance spreads over a great number of men and a great many years losses that, in its absence, would have had to be borne by one individual all at one time. Now, is one ever justified in saying that fire is no longer a calamity since the introduction of insurance?

In 1842, 1843, and 1844, England began reducing her tariffs. At the same time, her harvests were very abundant; and it is reasonable to conclude that these two circumstances contributed to the unprecedented prosperity that the country enjoyed during this period.

In 1845, the harvest was poor; in 1846, poorer still. As the price of food rose, the people had to spend more of their available resources just to feed themselves, and had to limit their consumption of other commodities accordingly. Clothing was less in demand, factories were not so busy, and wages showed a tendency to decline.

Fortunately, in that same year, the tariff barriers were lowered again, and an enormous quantity of food was able to enter the English market. Otherwise it is almost certain that a frightful revolution would have broken out in Great Britain at that time.

And yet free trade is blamed for disasters that it forestalled and at least partly redressed!

A poor leper was living in solitude. No one wanted to touch anything he had touched. Reduced to providing entirely for himself, he dragged out a miserable existence. One day a great doctor cured him. Now our recluse was able to enjoy all the benefits of
free trade. What a beautiful future was opening up before him! He entertained himself by imagining the excellent use which, thanks to his relations with other men, he would now be able to make of his physical strength. But then he had the misfortune to break both his arms. Alas! Now his lot was more dreadful. The journalists of this country, witnessing his misery, said, “Look at what free trade has reduced him to! Really, he was less to be pitied when he lived as a recluse.”

“Come now,” replied the doctor, “do you take no account of his two broken arms? Have they nothing to do with his sorry plight? His misfortune comes from having lost the use of his arms, and not at all from being cured of leprosy. He would be much more pitiable if he had the use of but one arm and were leprous into the bargain.”

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc; put no faith in that sophism.

23.
[This chapter first appeared in the
Courier français (September 18, 1846), whose columns were opened to the author so that he could reply to the attacks which had appeared in L’Atelier. It was only two months later that the newspaper
Le Libre échange appeared.—EDITOR.]

24.
[Words enclosed in quotation marks are in English in the original.—TRANSLATOR.]

25.
[Richard Cobden (1804-1865), English manufacturer, member of Parliament, and champion of free trade, known personally to Bastiat and much admired by him. Lord George Bentinck (1802-1848), known in Parliament almost exclusively for his leadership of the opposition to free trade.—TRANSLATOR.]

26.
[In France at this time, just as traditionally in the United States, there was an agricultural, free-trade South and an industrial, protectionist North.—TRANSLATOR.]

27.
[In 1836 the monasteries in Spain were closed, and their property was confiscated by the government.—TRANSLATOR.]

28.
[Meeting-place, in Paris, of the Chamber of Deputies.—TRANSLATOR.]

29.
[In France at this time, out of a population of about thirty millions, perhaps as many as 200,000 men from the upper-income group were empowered to vote.—TRANSLATOR.]

30.
[Cf., in Vol. II (of the French edition), the point-blank polemic against various newspapers.—EDITOR.]

Second Series, Chapter 7

31.
[The Deciuses referred to here were Publus Decius Mus, father and son, both military leaders of the Roman Republic between 350 and 275 B.C. Each is said to have performed an act of self-devotion by hurling himself into the enemy’s midst when the Roman column he was leading was repulsed by the foe.—TRANSLATOR.]

32.
[
Écus, obsolete French coins approximating in size the later silver five-franc piece.—TRANSLATOR.]

Second Series, Chapter 8

33.
[Latin, “after this; therefore, on account of it.”—TRANSLATOR.]

34.
[Taken from
Le Libre échange, December 6, 1846.—EDITOR.]

35.
[In 1846 Parliament had taken the longest step toward introducing free trade by ending the duties on imports of grain.—TRANSLATOR.]

Second Series, Chapter 9

36.
[Taken from the
Journal des économistes, January, 1846.—EDITOR.]

37.
[A reference to the ancient legend of King Midas, who, after preferring Pan’s flute to Apollo’s lyre in a musical contest, had a pair of ass’s ears clapped on his head by Apollo.—TRANSLATOR.]

38.
[Excerpts from a scene in Molière’s
Le Misanthrope, in which Alceste, the misanthrope, is trying to tell Oronte, a silly nobleman, that a sonnet of Oronte’s is literarily worthless. The problem arises from the fact that Alceste, an upright man, is severely limited by strict rules on his conduct and speech. He is, however, a personal advocate of frankness, so that after several circumlocutions he bursts out with the last line.—TRANSLATOR.]

39.
[In Molière’s
L’Avare, Harpagon, the miser, asks this question of Élise, his daughter, regarding “marriage.”—TRANSLATOR.]

40.
Possessing a farm that provides him with his living, he belongs to the
protected class. This circumstance should disarm criticism. It shows that, if he does use harsh words, they are directed against the thing itself, and not against anyone’s motives.

41.
[Adam Smith,
The Wealth of Nations, Bk. I, chap. x, Pt. II.—TRANSLATOR.]

42.
Here is the text: “May I cite again the tariff laws of the 9th and 11th of last June, whose object is in large part to encourage overseas shipping by increasing on several articles the
surtaxes on goods entering under foreign flags. Our tariff laws, as you know, are generally directed toward this end, and, little by little, the surtax of ten francs, established by the law of April 28, 1816, being often insufficient, is disappearing, to give place to…. a form of protection that is more efficacious and more consonant with the relatively
high cost of our shipping.” (M. Cunin-Gridaine, meeting of December 15, 1845, opening statement.) The expression “…. is disappearing” is really precious!

43.
[Cf.
supra, First Series, chap. 5.—EDITOR.]

44.
[This the
real de vellón, a base-silver coin, of which there were twenty to the piaster (peso). The
real de plata was presumably sterling and valued at one-eighth of a piaster, which consequently was a “piece of eight.”—TRANSLATOR.]

45.
[Faithful to his promise to alter his literary style, Bastiat here indulges in a parody of Molière’s parody on the conferring of the degree of Doctor of Medicine in his comedy,
The Imaginary Invalid (Le Malade imaginaire). Molière says in macaronic Latin: “I give and grant you / Power and authority to / Practice medicine, / Purge, / Bleed, / Stab, / Hack, / Slash, / and Kill / With impunity / Throughout the whole world.”—TRANSLATOR.]

46.
[
Laissez passer: “allow to pass,” substantially equivalent to
laissez faire.—TRANSLATOR.]

Second Series, Chapter 10

47.
[An adaptation from a popular song, author unknown. The “column” refers to the Vendôme Column standing in the heart of Paris, made from the brass of the cannons captured by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805.—TRANSLATOR.]

48.
[Village near Paris containing the best-known insane asylum in France.—TRANSLATOR.]

49.
[A Berber people of Algeria and Tunisia.—TRANSLATOR.]

50.
[The puncheon was a varying measure, but it might take four to make a tun of 252 gallons.—TRANSLATOR.]

51.
[There tribute was often exacted from the unwary traveler.—TRANSLATOR.]

52.
[Cf., in Vol. I (of the French edition), the “Letter to M. Larnac,” and, in Vol. V (of the French edition), “Parliamentary Inconsistencies.”—EDITOR.]

Second Series, Chapter 11