Friday June 29 was the 217th anniversary of the birth of Frederic Bastiat, champion of free trade and personal freedom.
Mark Perry has a tribute to the 19th Century Liberal economist @ fee.org, the blog of the Foundation for Economic Education:

According to the Library of Economics and Liberty, Bastiat’s biggest contributions to economics were “his fresh and witty expressions of economic truths,” which “made them so understandable and compelling that the truths became hard to ignore.” Celebrating Bastiat’s birthday has become an annual tradition at Carpe Diem, and below I present some of my favorite quotes from the great liberty-loving, influential French economist!

1. One of Bastiat’s most famous and important writings was “The Candlemakers’ Petition,”…

“We [French candlemakers] are suffering from the intolerable competition of a foreign rival, placed, it would seem, in a condition so far superior to ours for the production of light that he absolutely inundates our national market with it at a price fabulously reduced. The moment he shows himself, our trade leaves us — all consumers apply to him; and a branch of native industry, having countless ramifications, is all at once rendered completely stagnant. This rival, who is none other than the sun, wages war mercilessly against us.”

“We ask you to pass a law requiring the closing of all windows, skylights, dormer-windows, outside and inside shutters, curtains, blinds; in a word, of all openings, holes, chinks, clefts, and fissures, by or through which the light of the sun has been in use to enter houses, to the prejudice of the meritorious manufactures with which we flatter ourselves that we have accommodated our country — a country that, in gratitude, ought not to abandon us now to a strife so unequal.”

Full celebration by Mark J Perry https://fee.org/articles/happy-217th-birthday-to-french-classical-liberal-economist-frederic-bastiat/?utm_campaign=FEE%20Daily&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=64159662&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-95PXiAGSHJE7GHbHJ2RsmLx8TRylwZgWxu8hPcaZgG7QDc42qGtuRKBws2nUTacJsPxK9WyHclaJalQgkj5Jwr17RfwQ&_hsmi=64159662