Frédéric Bastiat：Economic Sophisms, Excerpt 142

Now, among these _obstacles_ there is one which we have ourselves set up, and at no little cost, too, between Brussels and Paris. There are men who lie in ambuscade along the frontier, armed to the teeth, and whose business it is to throw _difficulties_ in the way of transporting merchandise from the one country to the other. They are called Customhouse officers, and they act in precisely the same way as ruts and bad roads. They retard, they trammel commerce, they augment the difference we have remarked between the price paid by the consumer and the price received by the producer--that very difference, the reduction of which, as far as possible, forms the subject of our problem.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44145
Locator：Excerpt 142 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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