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Guyot provides a history of French tariff policy from the time of Colbert and a discussion of its effects on particular industries such as textiles and food. He then discusses protection in the US and Germany and refutes many… more

This is a critique of both the idea that only agriculture is truly a productive activity and government war-time policy which resulted in rising food prices and taxes which had a deleterious impact on the poor.

The great Swedish economist, Heckscher’s, first effort to show how interventionist economic policies fail. He began with this 1918 study of Napoleon’s effort to wage economic warfare against the British known as The Continental… more

A cheap mass produced pamphlet of Cobden’s speech distributed by the Anti-Corn Law League.

North ’s Discourses upon Trade is one of the earliest attempts to theorize as a whole the workings of a market economy in England. There are two discourses: one concerning “the abatement of interest” and the other on “coyned money”.

The Foundation for Economic Education’s translation of Bastiat’s series of short essays in which he tries to correct common misunderstandings about the free market.

Locke’s detailed proposals to encourage the Irish linen industry which was quoted in full in Fox Bourne’s The Life of John Locke (1876), vol. 2, pp. 363-372.

Mill provides a brief history of the Corn Laws and argues for their abolition.

A collection of speeches and articles illustrating the broad range of views of the British classical liberals and free traders of the 19th century known as the Manchester School. They cover foreign policy, free trade, the repeal of… more

A brief and succinct defense of free trade.

The organ of the National Anti-Corn-Law League was based in London and appeared between 1843 and 1846. It closed when the League achieved its goal of abolishing the Corn Laws in 1846. It was perhaps the first lobby group to use… more

The second volume in Liberty Fund’s The Collected Works of Israel M. Kirzner series, Market Theory and the Price System was published in 1963 as Kirzner’s only textbook. The basic aim of Market Theory is to utilize the tools of… more

The German political economist and protectionist List defends his views in this series of letters published in Virginia.

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… more

George was not just an advocate of the single tax on the unimproved value of land, but also a strong defender of free trade, as this work demonstrates.

Read the Liberty Classic on this title from Econlib

A clear and strong case for free trade against proctectionism. The chapter of the fallacies of protectionism is very thorough.

A collection of eight early English tracts on trade and commerce edited by John McCulloch for the Political Economy Club. It includes works by Thomas Mun, Lewes Roberts, Samuel Fortrey, and other anonymous authors.

Taussig, a professor of economics at Harvard, wrote what has become a classic work on modern trade theory. The book is an elaboration of articles which he wrote for the Quarterly Journal of Economics and other journals in the late… more

A collection of 25 of Cobden’s speeches on free trade given between 1841-1853. It was a cheap reprint from the larger two volume collection of his speeches and was part of Macmillan’s Sixpenny Series of cheap books.

A two volume collection of Cobden’s speeches on Free Trade, Finance, War, Foreign Policy, and Parliamentary Reform.

Taussig has collected speeches and reports by Alexander Hamilton, Albert Gallatin, R.J. Walker, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster on the issue of free trade and tariffs. He used these documents in his course at Harvard University on the… more

A magisterial history of the theory of international trade. Viner shows where economists went wrong and were they were right in the understanding of this idea. Along the way he refutes the fallacies of mercantilism, just as Adam… more

The 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was the last edition which appeared before the First World War destroyed the old liberal order in Europe. The next edition, the 12th, reproduced the 11th edition with the addition of 4… more

Atkinson applies the free trade ideas of Bastiat and Cobden to the American situation. He criticizes the tradition of Hamilton, debunks the idea that protection improves the economic condition of ordinary workers, argues that free… more

This is a collection of essays published by the National Anti-Corn Law League. It consists of three prize winning essays on the Corn Laws and a collection of other Anti-Corn Law League propaganda. It was issued as a presentation copy… more

John Taylor of Caroline (1753-1824) was one of the foremost philosophers of the States’ rights Jeffersonians of the early national period. In keeping with his lifelong mission as a “minority man,” John Taylor wrote Tyranny Unmasked… more