Maggs Bros.

The first English translations of both parts of Bastiat’s ‘brilliant’ final work, ‘unhappily never finished’ during his lifetime, in which ‘Bastiat shows the contrast between the internal weakness of the artificial organisations which are founded on constraint, and the prosperity spontaneously arising in an economic condition in which the equilibrium of individual and collective forces results from their free and reciprocal balance. This is the fundamental thought (idée mère) on which the Harmonies économiques are based, and granted this as a philosophic basis, it could not have been developed with more skill’ (Palgrave I, pp. 123–4).

Bastiat’s ideas became “resurgent in the late 20th century among libertarian economists dissatisfied with Keynesian orthodoxy and Marxist alternatives. … His writings retain their currency, even today. And as Hayek has reminded us in his introduction to Bastiat’s Selected Essays, his central idea continues to command attention: the notion that if we judge economic policy solely by its immediate and superficial effects, we shall not only not achieve the good results intended, but certainly and progressively undermine liberty, thereby preventing more good than we can ever hope to achieve through conscious design. This principle is exceedingly difficult to elaborate in all of its profundity, but it is one which has galvanized the thought of contemporary economists, Hayek and Friedman” (New Palgrave).

From the library of the American economist and politician Abram Piatt Andrew Jr. (1873-1936), with his neat ownership inscriptions to the half titles of both volumes.