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Subject Area: Political Theory
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175.: Letter to Prosper Paillottet - Frédéric Bastiat, The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat. Vol. 1: The Man and the Statesman: The Correspondence and Articles on Politics [2011]

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The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat. Vol. 1: The Man and the Statesman: The Correspondence and Articles on Politics, translated from the French by Jane and Michel Willems, with an introduction by Jacques de Guenin and Jean-Claude Paul-Dejean. Annotations and Glossaries by Jacques de Guenin, Jean-Claude Paul-Dejean, and David M. Hart. Translation editor Dennis O’Keeffe (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2011).

Part of: The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat, in 6 Vols.

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.


175.

Letter to Prosper Paillottet

Les Eaux-Bonnes, 23 June 1850

[vol. 7, p. 440]

. . . Here I am at the so-called source of health. I am doing things conscientiously, which means that I am doing very little work. As I am not inclined to start further work on the Harmonies, I am finishing the pamphlet What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen and will probably be able to send it to you in a few days’ time.

Thank you for the article you had printed in L’Ordre. It has just been reprinted in the newspapers in my département. This is probably all that will ever be known about my book.

Another report has appeared in Le Journal des économistes.336 I cannot understand how M. Clément has thought it apposite to criticize my future chapter on population. What has been printed offers enough to work on without dealing in advance with what has not yet appeared. It is true that I have announced that I will be trying to prove the following thesis: The density of the population is equivalent to an increasing production capacity. M. Clément will have to agree with this or deny the virtues of trade and the sharing of work.

The criticism he has made of the chapter on landed property makes me think that it might be useful to reprint as a pamphlet the four or five articles which have appeared in the Débats337 entitled “Property and Plunder.” Besides, this would be another weapon in the armory of our manifesto, which those who do not have the patience to read the Harmonies will need.

Please remember me to MM Quijano and de Fontenay.

[336 ]Bastiat published a short version of Economic Harmonies with only ten chapters in 1850. After Bastiat’s death Paillottet and Fontenay went through his papers and put together a larger edition with twenty-five chapters. The shorter first edition was reviewed by Ambroise Clément in Le Journal des économistes 26 (April-July 1850).

[337 ]Le Journal des débats.