The act is not illicit in itself. Nature does not make it so, legislation and legislation only makes it so.

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 78 to 83 (in French)
Mémorial bordelais, April 23rd, 1846

Following the postal reform in England that introduced the first postal stamp, the penny black, France looks into the matter. It gives the opportunity to Frédéric Bastiat to criticise the existing system as well as the proposal and to introduce his own proposal, which would be the introduction of a unique price of postage, paid by the sender (rather than the recipient – it reminds us of the pricing system implemented at the start of mobile telecommunications in the late eighties and early nineties in France). A quick calculation allows him to suggest a stamp to be sold at 5 or 10 cents, depending on the need to cover the costs of post by the administration or not.

Today’s quote pertains to a specific feature of a universal reach, that of the monopoly of the post office. Indeed, mail delivery by any other mean than the post office was then illegal, notably because the taxes associated with it were so high that the incentive to compete with the post office was enormous. In order to collect revenue for the Treasury, the State had therefore created a monopoly and private delivery of mail was an offence liable to an excessive fine (6500 francs then). According to Frédéric Bastiat, a reduction of the price that would have allowed to cover the costs of mailing only would have allowed the monopoly to be accepted naturally thanks to its simplicity and reasonable costs instead of being imposed through the legal force. He is here touching upon the issue of criminalising actions that should not be, when there is a victimless crime (we can think about immigration or drug trafficking for instance).

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