There, each experience, each effort aimed at doing good through State intervention ends up as a disappointment.

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 234 to 235 (in French)
La République française, March 6th, 1848

Today’s quote is referring to the United Kingdom. Frédéric Bastiat lists four examples of industrial policy in England, institutional policy in New-Zealand and foreign policy towards Portugal and Brazil to show that they peter out after having cost a fortune and before costing even more because the taxes that were levied to implement such policies will not be repealed. It is a sad truth that if a disastrous policy may be abolished (always too late because the disaster needs to be a great one in order to convince the government of its own mistake), it is even more difficult to revert the taxes and vested interests that have been created.

In this article, Frédéric Bastiat, who believes that such disasters are about to have consequences for the British government, is worrying about the second republic which seems to lean towards the same type of mistakes because the desire to do good beyond what is possible is a feature of French constructivists governments. His worries were indeed well founded and on that count, I would struggle to name a French government that has not fallen in such a trap since.