We believe that there should not be an attempt to amend the octroi but to repeal it.

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, page 218 (in French)
La République française, February 28th, 1848

In this very short text, Frédéric Bastiat reiterates his agreement in leaving enough leeway to the provisory government that is being implemented with the February Revolution. However, he reacts to the announcement of the government that the octroi “needs to be reviewed in such a manner as to lower its burden for the working class”.

He had acknowledged a year before that the octroi was legitimate in its quality of a fiscal levy. We can see here that such a tax was not free from weaknesses, since he is asking for his repeal. Clearly, the declaration by the provisory government shows the vague constructivist desire when it would like to make it a tax that is less of a “burden” for a part of the population, and hence unjust for another part of it.

Once more, he has not been heard and the octroi was repealed in metropolitan France after world war II only, a century later! Worse still, I discovered that it is still in force in the overseas territories in 2024, which marks the protectionist inclination of governments to whom free-trade remains an anomaly.