Frédéric Bastiat：Economic Sophisms, Excerpt 92

Thus the liberality of nature, like improvements in the processes of production, is, or continually tends to become, under the law of competition, the common and gratuitous patrimony of consumers, of the masses, of mankind in general. Then, the countries which do not possess these advantages have everything to gain by exchanging their products with those countries which possess them, because the subject of exchange is _labour_, apart from the consideration of the natural utilities worked up with that labour; and the countries which have incorporated in a given amount of their labour the greatest amount of these _natural utilities_, are evidently the most favoured countries. Their products which represent the least amount of human labour are the least profitable; in other words, they _are cheaper_; and if the whole liberality of nature resolves itself into _cheapness_, it is evidently not the producing, but the consuming, country which reaps the benefit.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44145
Locator：Excerpt 92 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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