Contributors
Gary M. Galles - Contributor

Mr. Galles is a professor of econmics at Pepperdine University.

Thomas Paine–Firebrand for Free Trade
Commemorating an American revolutionary...
[Gary M. Galles] 1/29/04

Thomas Paine is primarily remembered for his fiery rhetoric for America’s revolution. As John Adams once said, “without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.” But in The Rights of Man, he established “principles...on which government ought to be erected,” and showed that commerce, or free trade, is deducible from those principles, and interference with it impoverishes nations. Given the continual attacks free trade suffers from in America today, we would do well to honor his January 29 birthday by returning to that understanding.

...government...have no other object than the general happiness. When, instead of this, it operates to create and increase wretchedness in any of the parts of society, it is on a wrong system, and reformation is necessary.

...governments...pervert the abundance which civilized life produces...It affords to them pretenses for power and revenue, for which there would be neither occasion nor apology, if the circle of civilization were rendered complete.

I have been an advocate for commerce, because I am a friend to its effects. It is a pacific system, operating to cordialize mankind, by rendering nations, as well as individuals, useful to each other...

If commerce were permitted to act to the universal extent it is capable, it would extirpate the system of war, and produce a revolution in the uncivilized state of governments.

...commerce...is the greatest approach towards universal civilization that has yet been made by any means not immediately flowing from moral principles.

Commerce is no other than the traffic of two individuals, multiplied on a scale of numbers; and by the same rule that nature intended for the intercourse of two, she intended that of all. For this purpose she has distributed the materials of manufactures and commerce, in various and distant parts of a nation and of the world; and as they cannot be procured by war so cheaply or so commodiously as by commerce, she has rendered the latter the means of extirpating the former.

When the ability in any nation to buy is destroyed, it equally involves the seller...the prosperity of any commercial nation is regulated by the prosperity of the rest.

There can be no such thing as a nation flourishing alone in commerce: she can only participate; and the destruction of it in any part must necessarily affect all...the consequence is the same as if each had attacked his own.

...commerce is not to be attributed to ministers, or to any political contrivances, but to its own natural operation in consequence of peace...Every nation feels the advantage...

...different nations trading together will both become rich...each...increases its riches by something which it procures from another in exchange.

The merchants of London and Newcastle trade on the same principles, as if they resided in different nations...yet London does not get rich out of Newcastle, any more than Newcastle out of London: but coals, the merchandise of Newcastle, have an additional value at London, and London merchandise has the same at Newcastle.

Free trade is simply the freedom to choose for yourself who you associate with in productive ways, and how you arrange those associations, without artificial government restrictions. It is an essential, inalienable part of self-ownership.

Thomas Paine’s devotion to liberty made him a defender of free trade. But few today echo his passion for liberty, resulting in the perpetual use of political means–i.e., coercion–to advance narrow interests by assailing others’ rights to decide for themselves.

Americans must remember Thomas Paine’s warning against “the greedy hand of government, thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry” for some against others, if we would return to the liberty our nation was founded on. But all forms of protectionism undermine liberty. As a result, the only real impediment to eliminating trade restrictions is that few still share Paine’s conclusion that “Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated.”

copyright 2004 Gary M. Galles

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