However, the kings of Europe would think they would go astray through such a behaviour, which is the only way to save themselves.

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 221 to 222 (in French)
La République française, February 29th, 1848

Here is a short article in which Frédéric Bastiat reverts back to his request to France’s neighbours to reduce drastically their military spending. For each neighbouring power, viz. England, Prussia, Austria and Russia, he suggests to cancel one or two belligerent actions that would allow them to reduce their military spending by half or two-thirds.

Today’s quote conveys the fact that he does not believe this is going to happen and shows his pessimism on that count. From a more universal standpoint, what transpires from this quote is that governments do not always take the right decisions and that they are even prone to take bad ones that are completely counter-productive. This can be observed regularly with protectionist measures, which more often than not, consist in shooting oneself in the foot as an excuse to harm the neighbours.