Do the supporters of free-trade predict that, under the reign of their principles, there will not be any wage fluctuations anymore?

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 125 to 128 (in French)
Courrier français, August 24th, 1846

Following the repeal of the corn laws in England, the Morning Herald and the Standard have reported that wages would be lowered in some manufactures and the French press have relayed this information to expose the ravages of free-trade.

In this article published in the Courrier français, Frédéric Bastiat shows that the issue is not that simple and that the information is biased, notably by using the fallacy that consists in confusing causation and correlation on the one hand but also by omitting to report a number of pieces of information that allow to shed some doubts about the validity of the news.

However, before this exposition, Frédéric Bastiat delves also into the issue consisting in reporting the position of the liberals in a misleading way. Today’s quote reminds us that the liberal expectations cannot be compared to paradise on earth. Anticipating an increase of prosperity in a country thanks to a liberal policy does not mean that the extra wealth will be immediate nor that it will be evenly distributed within the population. Moreover, the protectionists who expose a consequence (or more often, a correlation) fail to prove that their own proposals and policies lead to a more desirable result. In the present case, wage fluctuations also occurred before the repeal of the corn laws!