"Liberty acts on the same principle as insurance.
When an accident, like a fire, happens, insurance spreads over a great number
of men and a great number of years losses that, in the absence of insurance,
would have fallen all at once upon one individual. But will anyone undertake
to affirm that fire has become a greater evil since the introduction of
insurance?"
This is the greatest and most common fallacy in reasoning.
Real sufferings, for example, have manifested themselves in England.
These sufferings come in the train of two other phenomena: first, the
reformed tariff; second, two bad harvests in succession.
To which of these two last circumstances are we to attribute the first?
The protectionists exclaim, "It is this accursed free trade that does
all the harm. It promised us wonderful things; we accepted it; and here are
our manufacturers at a standstill, and the people suffering: Cum hoc, ergo
propter hoc."
Free trade distributes in the most uniform and equitable manner the fruits
that Providence accords to human labor. If we are deprived of part of these
fruits by natural causes, such as a succession of bad seasons, free trade
does not fail to distribute in the same manner what remains. Men are, no
doubt, not so well provided with what they want; but are we to impute this to
free trade, or on the bad harvests?
Liberty acts on the same principle as insurance. When an accident, like a
fire, happens, insurance spreads over a great number of men and a great
number of years losses that, in the absence of insurance, would have fallen
all at once upon one individual. But will anyone undertake to affirm that
fire has become a greater evil since the introduction of insurance?
In 1842, 1843, and 1844, the reduction of taxes began in England. At the
same time the harvests were very abundant; and we are led to conclude that
these two circumstances concurred in producing the unparalleled prosperity
which England enjoyed during that period.
In 1845 the harvest was bad, and in 1846 worse still.
Provisions rose in price; and the people were forced to expend their
resources on necessaries, and to limit their consumption of other
commodities. Clothing was less in demand, manufactories had less work, and
wages tended to fall.
Fortunately, in that same year, the barriers of restriction were still
more effectually removed, and an enormous quantity of provisions reached the
English market. Had this not been so, it is nearly certain that a formidable
revolution would have taken place.
And yet free trade is blamed for disasters that it tended to prevent, and
in part, at least, to repair!
A poor leper lived in solitude. Whatever he happened to touch, no one else
would touch. Obliged to pine in solitude, he led a miserable existence. An
eminent physician cured him, and now our poor hermit was admitted to all the
benefits of free trade, and had full liberty to effect exchanges. What
brilliant prospects were opened to him! He delighted in calculating the
advantages that, through his restored intercourse with his fellow men, he was
able to derive from his own vigorous exertions.
He happened to break both his arms, and was landed in poverty and misery.
The journalists who were witnesses of that misery said, "See to what
this liberty of making exchanges has reduced him! Verily, he was less to be
pitied when he lived alone."
"What!" said the physician, "do you make no allowance for
his broken arms? Has that accident nothing to do with his present unhappy
state? His misfortune arises from his having lost the use of his hands, and
not from his having been cured of his leprosy. He would have been a fitter
subject for your compassion had he been lame and leprous into the
bargain."
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Beware of that fallacy.
