Voltaire on the Benefits which Trade and Economic Abundance bring to People living in the Present Age (1736)
About this Quotation:
Voltaire was best known in his lifetime as an author of poetry and plays. To us in the 21st century he is best known for his satirical work Candide (1759) and the Philosophical Dictionary (1764). Yet as this quote shows even in his poetry and plays Voltaire had sharp observations about political and economic matters.
Other quotes from this week:
- 2009: Samuel Smiles on how an idle, thriftless, or drunken man can, and should, improve himself through self-help and not by means of the state (1859).
- 2008: Job rightly wants to know why he, “the just upright man is laughed to scorn” while robbers prosper (6thC BC)
- 2007: Harriet Martineau condemns tariffs as a “vicious aristocratic principle” designed to harm the ordinary working man and woman (1861)
- 2006: In Ecclesiastes there is the call to plant, to love, to live, and to work and then to enjoy the fruits of all one’s labors (3rdC BC)
- 2005: Hugo Grotius discusses the just causes of going to war, especially the idea that the capacity to wage war must be matched by the intent to do so (1625)
Other quotes about Economics & Free Trade:
- 2010: Richard Cobden outlines his strategy of encouraging more people to acquire land and thus the right to vote in order to defeat the “landed oligarchy” who ruled England and imposed the “iniquity” of the Corn Laws (1845)
- 2009: Ludwig von Mises on the impossibility of rational economic planning under Socialism (1922)
- 2009: Frank Taussig argues for the reverse of a common misconception about the relationship between high wages and the use of machinery (1915)
- 2009: Condy Raguet lays out a set of basic principles of free trade among which is the idea that governments cannot create wealth by means of legislation and that individuals are better judges of the best way to use their capital and labor than governments (1835)
- 2009: John Ramsay McCulloch argues that smuggling is “wholly the result of vicious commercial and financial legislation” and that it could be ended immediately by abolishing this legislation (1899)
- 2009: Adam Smith argues that retaliation in a trade war can sometimes force the offending country to lower its tariffs, but more often than not the reverse happens (1776)
- 2008: Jean-Baptiste Say argues that there is a world of difference between private consumption and public consumption; an increase in the latter does nothing to increase public wealth (1803)
- 2008: Nassau Senior objected to any government regulation of factories which meant that a horde of inspectors would interfere with the organization of production (1837)
- 2007: Ludwig von Mises argues that monopolies are the direct result of government intervention and not the product of any inherent tendency within the capitalist system (1949)
- 2007: Harriet Martineau condemns tariffs as a “vicious aristocratic principle” designed to harm the ordinary working man and woman (1861)
- 2007: Ludwig von Mises argues that the division of labor and human cooperation are the two sides of the same coin and are not antagonistic to each other (1949)
- 2007: Lord Macaulay writes a devastating review of Southey’s Colloquies in which the Poet Laureate’s ignorance of the real condition of the working class in England is exposed (1830)
- 2006: Jane Haldimand Marcet, in a popular tale written for ordinary readers, shows the benefits to workers of foreign trade, especially at Christmas time (1833)
- 2006: Adam Ferguson observed that social structures of all kinds were not “the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design” (1782)
- 2006: Forrest McDonald argues that the Founding Fathers envisaged a new economic order based upon Lockean notions of private property and the creation of the largest contiguous area of free trade in the world (2006)
- 2006: Montesquieu thought that commerce improves manners and cures “the most destructive prejudices” (1748)
- 2005: Bernard Mandeville concludes his fable of the bees with a moral homily on the virtues of peace, hard work, and diligence (1705)
- 2005: Bernard Mandeville uses a fable about bees to show how prosperity and good order comes about through spontaneous order (1705)
- 2005: Adam Smith argued that the “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange” was inherent in human nature and gave rise to things such as the division of labour (1776)
- 2004: Adam Smith on the natural ordering Tendency of Free Markets, or what he called the “Invisible Hand” (1776)
13 September, 2004
 | Voltaire on the Benefits which Trade and Economic Abundance bring to People living in the Present Age (1736) |
Voltaire’s poem celebrating the fact that he was living in an age of developing commerce and markets:
Others may with regret complain
That ’tis not fair Astrea’s reign,
That the famed golden age is o’er
That Saturn, Rhea rule no more:
Or, to speak in another style,
That Eden’s groves no longer smile.
For my part, I thank Nature sage,
That she has placed me in this age…
I have, I own, a worldly mind,
That’s pleased abundance here to find;
Abundance, mother of all arts,
Which with new wants new joys imparts
The treasures of the earth and main,
With all the creatures they contain:
These, luxury and pleasures raise;
This iron age brings happy days.
The full passage from which this quotation was taken can be be viewed below (front page quote in bold):
Others may with regret complain
That ’tis not fair Astrea’s reign,
That the famed golden age is o’er
That Saturn, Rhea rule no more:
Or, to speak in another style,
That Eden’s groves no longer smile.
For my part, I thank Nature sage,
That she has placed me in this age:
Religionists may rail in vain;
I own, I like this age profane;
I love the pleasures of a court;
I love the arts of every sort;
Magnificence, fine buildings, strike me;
In this, each man of sense is like me.
I have, I own, a worldly mind,
That’s pleased abundance here to find;
Abundance, mother of all arts,
Which with new wants new joys imparts
The treasures of the earth and main,
With all the creatures they contain:
These, luxury and pleasures raise;
This iron age brings happy days.
Needful superfluous things appear;
They have joined together either sphere.
See how that fleet, with canvas wings,
From Texel, Bordeaux, London brings,
By happy commerce to our shores,
All Indus, and all Ganges stores;
Whilst France, that pierced the Turkish lines,
Sultans make drunk with rich French wines.