"When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law."

"When Sir Robert Peel had at last passed his famous measure [the repeal of the Corn Laws], Bastiat, a French economist and Cobden's friend, was gravely disappointed. It was not enough that the markets of England were thrown wide open to French commerce. "What you have to show France above all else," said Bastiat in an astounding letter, "is that freedom of exchange will cause the disappearance of those military perils which France apprehends. England ought seriously to disarm." It would be hard indeed to surpass the pedant naïveté of this French Free Trader. It was not enough that England should surrender her markets—she must surrender herself as well, or France would not believe in her sincerity!"

"Bastiat...was not long in awakening to the fact that not Protection but Socialism was now the foe that menaced France. He turned round with admirable versatility, and brought to bear on the new monster the same keen and patient scrutiny, the same skilful dexterity in reasoning and illustration, which had done such good service against the more venerable heresy. The pamphlets which he wrote between 1848 and 1850 contain by much the most penetrating and effective examination that the great Socialist writers in France have ever received."

"The shallowest and therefore the most successful representative of the apologists of vulgar economics."

"In three years every Frenchman can know how to read. Do you think that we shall be the better off? Imagine on the other hand that in each commune, there was ONE bourgeois, only one, who had read Bastiat, and that this bourgeois was respected, things would change."

"By the way, have you had time to read Bastiat's partly posthumous volume, 'Les Harmonies Economiques'? If not, do so; it will require a studious perusal, but will repay it. He has breathed a soul into the dry bones of political economy, and has vindicated his favourite science from the charge of inhumanity with all the fervour of a religious devotee."

"If (when) goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will."