Vested interests, of which the monopoly benefits, lose a lot of their shine if they are wrongly vested, if they are acquired to the detriment of others.

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 91 to 96 (in French)
Mémorial bordelais, May 2nd, 1846

In this article, Frédéric Bastiat explores some arguments published in the Constitutionnel, which tries and show why free trade is not desirable.

The last argument against which Frédéric Bastiat protests is the defense of the status quo because of the inconvenience that change could create. He ignores the issue of brutal change, which is undeniable and that Milton Friedman will take into account when he will suggest to eliminate tariffs progressively in the United States (over 5 years, to the tune of 20% per year). Today’s quote is once again a question of principle. The fact that reforms disrupt the status quo is not a sufficient reason for not correcting injustice (as demanded by the Constitutionnel). It is obvious that injustice linked to protectionism is beneficial to protected industries but as long as it is an injustice, it needs to be corrected and indeed, the said industrials will suffer from its removal.

To those who worry about what needs to be done to correct the situation, he is echoing what Thomas Sowell will later answer to Peter Robinson who asked about what needs to replace the Federal Reserve system in the United States: “When someone removes a cancer, what do you replace it with?”