Quotation of the Day…

Tweet

… is from page 286 of William Leggett’s December 13th, 1834, Evening Post essay, “A Little Free-Trade Crazy,” as this essay is reprinted and titled in Democratick Editorials, Lawrence H. White, ed.:

They who read the pages of history with thinking eyes, will perceive that to the interference of Government with the private pursuits of individuals; to the granting of exclusive privileges to one body of citizens, and placing burdensome restrictions on others; to the giving a stimulating bounty here, and imposing a prohibitory duty there; to the withholding from whole communities the right to employ their capital or labour in a particular channel of industry, and conferring a monopoly of that privilege on some single one as a token of favour, or selling it to hide as an article of traffic – that to these, and a thousand similar violations of the principles of political economy, is to be ascribed much, very much of the misery with which the groaning nation of king-governed Europe is filled.

DBx: What an important and relevant fact to ponder on this 249th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.