Monuments to Free Trade: Bastiat and Cobden

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-knpwn sculptor Gabriel-Vital Dubray (1813-1892) had been commissioned to design and create the monument. Dubray was a very successful sculptor who had created many important works during the Third Empire (1852-1870) for which he was made a knight of the Legion of Honor. Many of his works were displayed in churches and even in the Louvre Palace.Thus it was quite a coup to get an artist of his stature and importance to do the Bastiat monument. As the engraving above indicates, Dubray planned 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).

It seems that nature did not smile upon Bastiat's monument on that occasion as it rained for most of the day. This did not stop numerous speakers including Léon Say, the Minister of Finance, from reminding the crowd of well wishers of Bastiat's importance to the classical liberal movement in France and his contributions to the deregulation of the French economy. At 7.00 pm a crowd of 150 gathered in the local school for a banquet which lasted until 11.00 pm when they dispersed. But they did not retire to bed apparently. The correspondent for the Journal des économistes remarked wryly that "the streets of Mugron were full of singing and noise for the rest of the night" thus bringing to an end a veritable "festival of peace."

Unfortunately this festival of peace did not survive the orgies of statism and nationalism which were the First and Second World Wars. M. Jacques de Guenin, the director of the Cercle Frédéric Bastiat in France states that in 1942 during the occupation of France by the Nazis any statues containing bronze were to be seized and broken up for their metal content (presumably to make weapons). 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.

However, one might say that "Fame" did eventaully return to Bastiat's monument in spite of what the Nazis and 50 years of the European welfare state had done to it. Bicentennial celebrations of Bastiat's birth were organised in 2001, including a major conference on his political and economic ideas and a formal visit to his monument in Mugron to unveil an addition to the list of his most famous works. The title of the pamphlet "La Loi" (The Law) was added in respect to the many American visitors who hold this work of Bastiat's in high regard. "Fame" had at last been recalled to complete the work which she had begun in 1878.