Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 4 of David Ricardo‘s July 4th, 1821, letter to Hutches Trower as this letter appears in volume ix of the 2004 Liberty Fund edition of The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo:

I cannot but flatter myself with the hopes of a continuance of peace in Europe – the agitations which at present exist will I think subside, and we shall witness a general course of prosperity. When our purses are again filled indeed, we may as usual become quarrelsome, but I hope nations are becoming wiser, and are every day more convinced that the prosperity of one country is not promoted by the distress of another – that restrictions on commerce are not favorable to wealth, and that the particular welfare of each country, as well as the general welfare of all, is best encouraged by unbounded freedom of trade, and the establishment of the most liberal policy. I must do our ministers the justice to say that I believe they view these questions in their true light and would make great improvements in our commercial code if they were not thwarted and opposed by the narrow and selfish policy of the particular interests which are so powerfully exerted in the H. of Commons to check improvement and support monopolies.

DBx: Keep this quotation in mind when you next encounter insinuations offered by poorly informed pundits that economists’ enthusiasm for free trade is largely a 20th-century concoction.