… is from page 30 of Winston Churchill’s November 11th, 1903, speech at a free-trade meeting in Birmingham as this speech is printed in the 1977 volume For Free Trade, a collection of some of Churchill’s early speeches on trade:
Again our Free Trade plan is quite simple. We say that every Englishman shall have the right to buy whatever he wants, wherever he wants, at his own good pleasure, without restriction or discouragement from the state.
DBx: Simple yet profound. Free trade is not a complex outcome that must be designed or superintended by the state. Free trade happens, of necessity, whenever the state refrains from obstructing individuals’ commercial actions. Special privileges – driven nearly always by cronyism – are what happen, of necessity, whenever the state obstructs individuals’ commercial actions.
