Title page from The Principles of Free Trade

The Principles of Free Trade

A collection of essays written in the early 1830s as part of a campaign in favor of free trade. The second edition of 1840 contains the minutes of a Free Trade Convention held in Philadelphia in 1831 as well as a dedication to Colonel Biddle the editor of Jean-Baptiste Say’s American edition of the Treatise on Political Economy.

Key Quotes

Free Trade

That individuals are better judges of the most advantageous mode of employing their labour and capital, than governments— That wealth cannot be created by the mere enactment of laws— That commerce is an exchange of equivalents not merely beneficial to one of the parties which carries it on, but to…

Free Trade

IT is to us one of the most incomprehensible things that so many persons, who profess to be advocates of religion and good will to man, should be the disciples of a philosophy which teaches that the selfish principle is paramount to the principle of neighbourly love. If there be one truth which the…