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Updated: May 15, 2025
A plane, in short such is Bastiat's meaning, though he does not put it in this precise way is a possession which is fruitful no less than a sheep and a ram are, or a wine which adds to its value by the mere process of being kept, and it, therefore, yields interest for a virtually similar reason.
He had been himself a protectionist, having read Greeley's arguments in the ``New York Tribune, but he had become a convert to my views, and day after day and week after week I kept him in training on the best expositions of free trade, and, above all, on Bastiat's ``Sophisms of Protection. On the appointed evening the city hall was crowded, and my young David having modestly taken a back seat, the great Goliath appeared at the front in full senatorial costume, furbished up for the occasion, with an enormous collection of books and documents; and, the subject being announced, he arose, assumed his most imposing senatorial attitude, and began a dry, statistical oration.
Now, if Bastiat's plane is to be taken as signifying a plane only, the criticism of George is just. But what George forgets is that, if the plane means a plane only an implement which any man could make just as well as the lender interest on planes, besides being morally indefensible, would as a matter of fact never be paid at all.
For, George observes, it is no part of Bastiat's contention that the plane is due to the exertion of any faculties possessed by the maker only. Either man could make it, just as either man could use it. Why, then, should A pay a tribute to B for the use of something which, to-morrow, if not to-day, he could make for himself without paying anything to anybody?
I espouse Free Trade because it is just, it is unselfish, and it is profitable. For these reasons have I, a Worker, deeply interested in the welfare of the fellow-workers who are my countrymen, lent to Truth and Justice what little aid I could, by adapting Bastiat's keen and cogent Essay to the wants of readers on this side of the Atlantic. EMILE WALTER, the Worker.
Years ago I could not rid my mind of the notion that Free Trade meant some cunning policy of British statesmen designed to subject the world to British interests. Coming across Bastiat's inimitable Sophismes Economiques I learnt to my surprise that there were Frenchmen also who advocated Free Trade, and deplored the mischiefs of the Protective Policy.
I was obliged to make this slight digression, Gentlemen, even if it is somewhat remote from my essential purpose, because this slight improvement in the course of centuries and generations is always the point to which those go back, who, after Bastiat's example, wish to throw dust in your eyes by declamation that is as easy as it is meaningless. Consider exactly my words, Gentlemen.
Bastiat's plane, however, stands for a kind of capital, the borrowing of which and the paying of interest on which, form one of the most constant features of the modern industrial world; and he evidently assumes, even if he does not say so, that for all this borrowing and paying there is some constant and sufficient reason.
For instance, with the increase of population since Queen Elizabeth's time the production of silk- stockings has wonderfully increased, and silk- stockings have become much cheaper and procurable in much greater abundance by many more people, and tend perhaps, as population and manufactures increase, to get cheaper and cheaper, and at last to become, according to Bastiat's favourite image, a common free property of the human race, like light and air.
George, however, seeks to dispose of Bastiat's argument thus: If the maker of the plane lends it, he says, instead of himself using it, and the borrower borrows a plane, instead of himself making one, such an arrangement is simply due to the fact that both parties for the moment happen to find it convenient.
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