Progress occurred following the cuts in our tariffs, without any reciprocity on the part of France.

Milner Gibson, translated by Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 3, pages 463 to 474 (in French)
Manchester, January 25th, 1848

This meeting in Manchester was organised in order to celebrate the entry in parliament of several dozens of MPs from the free-trade movement further to the General Election of 1847 and after the abolition of the corn laws in 1846. Their position towards the necessary moves that are still necessary is presented, notably the repeal of the navigation laws and the withdrawal of monopoly held by the West Indies. Discussions are particularly focusing on the issues to come for war and peace in the United Kingdom.

Several speeches were pronounced and taken into account by Frédéric Bastiat. I shall extract three quotes out of three of them, those of Milner Gibson, Richard Cobden and John Bright.

Today’s quote is from Milner Gibson who shows how the opponents to free-trade erred and how the supporters of it were right in their assertions. In particular, it focuses on the situation of trade with France and shows how it has grown, British exports having increased ten-fold between 1815 and 1847 to become more important than exports to the West Indies. Of particular note, we can see that the unilateral decision to repeal tariffs is a downright success despite the widespread belief (even to this day in 2024) that international commerce must be subjected to international treaties aiming at a “reciprocity” consisting in lifting tariffs only in exchange of the removal by the commercial partner of his own tariffs. So far as these tariffs constitute a restriction for the country which is imposing them itself, this is absurd and their withdrawal does not require the withdrawal of the very restrictions that the commercial partner imposes on itself (even if this is desirable).

Pages 463 to 474 – Pages 474 to 485 – Pages 486 to 491