It is 1838, in Manchester, a small number of men, little known until then, gather to find a way to overthrow the monopoly of the wheat landowners through legal means and to accomplish, as Bastiat would later recount,

From this meeting would emerge the League against the Corn Laws, or the Grain Laws, as Bastiat would call them. However, this goal would soon become the total and unilateral abolition of protectionism.

This economic battle for free trade would occupy all of England until 1846. In France, outside of a small number of initiates, the existence of this vast movement was completely unknown. It was by reading an English newspaper, to which he had subscribed by chance, that Frédéric Bastiat learned of the League's existence in 1843. Enthused, he translated the speeches of Cobden, Fox, and Bright. Then he corresponded with Cobden and finally, in 1845, he went to London to attend the League's gigantic meetings.

It was this campaign of agitation for free trade, throughout the kingdom, with tens of thousands of members, that set Bastiat's pen on fire and radically and definitively changed the course of his life.

The League can be compared to a traveling university, educating economically those who attended its meetings across the country—common folk, industrialists, cultivators, and farmers, all of whom the League had taken under its wing and whose interests the grain laws oppressed. Richard Cobden was the driving force behind the movement and an outstanding agitator.

A fascinating and formidable speaker, he had a prodigious gift for inventing striking and concise phrases, far from the abstract discourses of economists.

In 1845, Bastiat published his book, "Cobden and the League," in Paris, accompanied by his translations with commentary. The book opens with an introduction to the economic situation in England, as well as the history of the League's origin and progress. Since 1815, protectionism has been well-developed in England. There were, in particular, laws limiting grain imports, which had very harsh consequences for the people. Indeed, wheat was necessary for making bread, a vital commodity at the time. Moreover, this system favored the aristocracy, that is, the large landowners, who derived rents from it.

The goal of the League was to mobilize public opinion to pressure parliament to repeal the grain law. In the long term, Cobden and his friends hoped to:

(Jeremy Bentham)

A disciple of Bentham's utilitarianism, Cobden's conviction was that the freedom of labor and trade directly served the interests of the most numerous, poorest, and most suffering masses of society. On the contrary, customs, as an instrument of arbitrary prohibitions and privileges, could only benefit the most powerful industries.

In the 1841 elections, five members of the league, including Cobden, were elected to parliament. On May 26, 1846, unilateral free trade became the law of the kingdom. From then on, the United Kingdom would experience a brilliant period of freedom and prosperity. What's interesting is that Bastiat appropriated a part of their method; he assimilated their language and transposed it into the French context. The book on Cobden and the League quickly became a success, and Bastiat made a sensational entry into the world of economists. He founded an association in Bordeaux in favor of free trade and then moved it to Paris. He was offered the leadership of the Journal des Économistes. The movement emerged and continued until 1848.

It was only after Bastiat's death, in 1866, that Napoleon III would sign a free trade treaty with England, a sort of posthumous victory for the man who had dedicated the last six years of his short life to this great idea.

(Michel Chevalier)

The issue of free trade remains relevant today. Geography textbooks in schools claim that globalization is to blame and that poor countries require Western aid to survive. Yet, extreme poverty has been halved in 20 years. By choosing openness, countries like India, China, and Taiwan have been able to escape poverty, whereas stagnation characterizes closed countries like North Korea and Venezuela. According to the UN, 36% of humanity lived in total destitution in 1990. They are now "only" 18% in 2010. Extreme poverty remains a major challenge, but it is receding.