Frédéric Bastiat：Economic Sophisms, Excerpt 50

But what is true with regard to sugar, cannot be otherwise with regard to bread. If, then, the _utility_ of any branch of industry is to be estimated not by the amount of satisfactions it is fitted to procure us with a determinate amount of labour, but, on the contrary, by the amount of labour which it exacts in order to yield us a determinate amount of satisfactions, what we ought evidently to desire is, that each acre of land should yield less corn, and each grain of com less nourishment; in other words, that our land should be comparatively barren; for then the quantity of land, capital, and manual labour that would be required for the maintenance of our population would be much more considerable; we could then say that the demand for human labour would be in direct proportion to this barrenness. The aspirations of MM. Bugeaud, Saint-Cricq, Dupin, and d'Argout, would then be satisfied; bread would be dear, labour abundant, and France rich--rich at least in the sense in which these gentlemen understand the word.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44145
Locator：Excerpt 50 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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