A Monument to Frédéric Bastiat (1878)
This engraving from the magazine Le Monde illustré appeared shortly after the inauguration of the monument in Mugron on 23 April 1878 and accompanied a report of the event. The well-known sculptor Gabriel-Vital Dubray (1813-1892) had been commissioned to design and create the monument. As the engraving above indicates, Dubray created an elaborate monument with the classical figure of "Fame" leaning against the pedestal and writing with her pen the titles of the three books for which Bastiat was best remembered and for which he deserved to be famous: the work in which he first introduced the French to the ideas on free trade of Richard Cobden and the Anti-Corn Law League Cobden and the League (1845), his best selling collection of witty and clever articles debunking the economic myths of the protectionists Economic Sophisms (1845, 1848), and his incomplete magnum opus on economic theory Economic Harmonies (1850). In 1942 during the occupation of France by the Nazis any statues containing bronze were seized and broken up for their metal content. This was the unfortunate fate of the Bastiat monument - the bust of Bastiat and the figure of Fame were taken for scrap for war matériel. The bust could be reconstituted after the war because the original mold had survived, but the figure of Fame was lost forever. It is both sad and ironic that this would be the fate of Bastiat's monument as Bastiat had dedicated himself to the cause of peace and opposition to war as his writings and his participation in the Peace Congresses of the late 1840s attest. [More] |
Images of Liberty and Power
- “New” Socialist Ideas in the 1848 Revolution
- A Monument to Frédéric Bastiat (1878)
- Abraham Lincoln as the “Federal Phoenix” (1864)
- Adam Smith and J.B. Say on the Division of Labour
- Algernon Sidney (1622-1683) and the Thomas Hollis Library of Liberty
- Althusius’s Schema for Politica
- Amagi Symbol: Liberty Fund’s Logo
- Ancient Romans
- Art of the Levellers
- Bach, Music, and Liberty
- Bentham’s Panopticon
- Biblical Figures
- Blackstone on Consanguity and Descent
- Brueghel, Taxes, and the Numeration of the People of Bethlehem (1566)
- Caricature of Richard Cromwell
- Cato and Republican Liberty
- Chaucer’s Astrolabe
- Cobden and the Anti-Corn Law League
- Coke’s Crest and Motto
- Coke’s splendid lineage
- Darwin’s diagram showing descent
- Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
- Emancipation Proclamation
- Encyclopedic Liberty and Industry
- Engraving of John Toland
- Eugène Delacroix on Press Censorship during the Restoration (1814-1822)
- Frederick Douglass and Abolition
- Grotius on War and Peace
- Hobbes' Leviathan
- Images of the British Abolitionist Movement
- Jacques Callot, Hugo Grotius, and the Miseries of War in the 17th Century
- James Gillray on War and Taxes during the War against Napoleon
- Liberty slaying the Monsters of Tyranny and Oppression
- Lilburne quoting Coke on English Liberties at his treason trial (1649)
- Ludwig von Mises on Rationing in WW2
- Mises on Gresham’s Law and Ancient Greek Silver Coins
- Mises on Rationing and Price Controls in WW2
- Monuments to Free Trade: Bastiat and Cobden
- New Picture of Tocqueville in 1848
- New Playing Cards for the French Republic (1793-94)
- Ngrams and the Changing Vocabulary of Class Analysis in 19th Century Classical Liberal Thought
- Presidents Day and the Apotheosis of Washington
- Pufendorf and the Geometry of Morality
- Representative Women: An Image of Several Suffragists (1870)
- Roman Virtues
- Samuel warns the Israelites of the Dangers of Kings
- Shaftesbury’s Illustrations
- Shaftesbury’s Illustrations for Characteristicks (1732)
- Shakespeare
- Shays’s Rebellion
- The Divine Right of Kings or Regal Tyranny? (Hobbes and Lilburne)
- The First Colored Senator and Representatives
- The Gold Standard vs. Fiat Paper Money
- The People and the Ruling Elite in Caricatures (Wade and Daumier)
- The Seal of Florence
- The Spanish-American War and the Anti-Imperialism League (1902)
- The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1416)
- The Virtues
- Thomas Clarkson and the Abolition of the Slave Trade
- Thomas Hollis and John Locke
- Thomas Jefferson in the Cyclopedia
- Tocqueville and Bastiat on the 1848 Revolution in Paris
- Washington and Napoleon in their Study
- William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job
- William Blake: An Introduction