This doctrine is contradicted by facts as much as it is shocking to reason.

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 63 to 66 (in French)
Courrier français, April 1st, 1846

This article published in the Courrier français is a response to a speech by the member of parliament Hyacinthe Corne at the national assembly where he pleaded in favour of tariffs. Frédéric Bastiat exposes the fact that “these honourable men reason differently, as pertaining to trade, than traders themselves” and attempts in three pages to show how protectionists are fooling themselves.

In today’s quote, he also mentions that, in order to reach these twisted reasonings, protectionists are fooling themselves about (or simply ignore) facts. If it is sometimes difficult to convince through reason (human psychology makes it particularly difficult to convince somebody about his own reasoning faults), facts should allow to engage a dialogue. Unfortunately, facts are not always obvious and vanity tends to hide them to those who do not wish to see them. However, as Thomas Sowell says, “Reality is not optional”.