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19: Conclusion of the First Two Parts - Étienne Bonnot, Abbé de Condillac, Commerce and Government Considered in their Mutual Relationship [1776]

Edition used:

Commerce and Government Considered in their Mutual Relationship, translated by Shelagh Eltis, with an Introduction to His Life and Contribution to Economics by Shelagh Eltis and Walter Eltis (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008).

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


19

Conclusion of the First Two Parts

We have seen how wealth spreads everywhere when trade enjoys full and permanent freedom. It pours continuously from one province into another. Agriculture is flourishing: people cultivate the arts even in the hamlets: each citizen finds a comfortable existence in work of his choice: all is brought to value; and one does not catch a glimpse of those fortunes out of all proportion which bring luxury and wretchedness.

Everything changes in step with different causes which bring blows to freedom of trade. We have run through these causes, which are wars, tolls, customs, guilds, exclusive privileges, taxes on consumption, variations in coinage, exploitation of mines, every kind of government borrowing, the grain police, the luxury of a great capital, the rivalry of nations, finally the spirit of finance which enters every part of the administration. [1798 addition: Doubtless there are still more causes.]

Then disorder is at its height. Wretchedness grows with luxury: the towns fill with beggars: the countryside loses population; and the state which has contracted huge debts appears to have no further expedients except those which bring about its ruin.

We have been able to see in the first part of this work that Economic Science, which is difficult because it is naturally complicated, becomes easy when it has been simplified, that is to say when one has reduced it to some elementary propositions which, being determined with precision, appear trivial truths. Then this science develops by itself. Propositions arise one from the other, as so many consequences or as propositions that are in turn identical; and the statement of the question shows its solution so visibly, that one finds it in some fashion, without the need to reason.

In the second part I have reduced the reasoning to a simple narration. There I show the advantages of an entire and permanent freedom: I make known the causes which may undermine it: I make their results known: I do not hide the faults of governments, and I confirm the principles which I have established in the first part.

However, I have only picked up the principal abuses. It was all the more pointless for me to dwell on others as there is a means to destroy them all, that is to give trade full, complete and permanent freedom. I believe I have proved that.

Above all I have wished to spread light on a science which seems unknown, at least in practice. If I have succeeded in that, it will only remain to know whether the nations are capable of conducting themselves according to the light. This doubt, if it came from a man who had more talents and greater fame, would perhaps open their eyes, but, as for me, I know well that I shall only make those who have eyes see.

Nations are like children. In general they only do what they see to do; and what they have done, they go on doing for a long time, sometimes for ever.

It is not reason that makes them change, it is whim or authority.

Whim corrects nothing: it substitutes abuse for abuse, and disorders come always in increasing number.

Authority could correct: but usually it alleviates rather than corrects. It is still remarkable for it to alleviate. It has its passions, its prejudices, its routine, and it seems that experience teaches it nothing. How many mistakes have been made! How many times have they been repeated! And they are still repeated!

However, Europe is becoming more enlightened. There is a government which sees abuses, which thinks of ways to correct them; and it would please the monarch to demonstrate the truth. So there you have the moment when every good citizen must seek out the truth. It would be enough to find it. We are no longer in a time when courage was needed to speak the truth, and we live in a reign where its discovery would not be lost.

THE END

The initial 1776 edition concludes:

End of the Second Part

The third part of this work has not been written. The author will work on it, if the first two parts create a demand.

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