PETITION OF THE MANUFACTURES OF CANDLES, WAXLIGHTS, LAMPS, CANDLESTICKS, STREET LAMPS, SNUFFERS, EXTINGUISHERS, AND OF THE PRODUCERS OF OIL, TALLOW, RESIN, ALCOHOL, AND GENERALLY EVERYTHING CONNECTED WITH LIGHTING

To Messieurs the Members of the Chamber of Deputies

Gentlemen,
. . . We are suffering from the intolerable competition of a foreign rival, placed, it would seem, in a condition so far superior to our own for the production of light, that he absolutely inundates our national market with it at a price fabulously reduced . . . . This rival . . . is no other than the sun.
What we pray for, is, that it may please you to pass a law ordering the shutting up of all windows, skylights, dormer-windows, outside and inside shutters, curtains, blinds, bull's-eyes; in a word of all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures.
. . . If you shut up as much as possible all access to natural light and create a demand for artificial light, which of our French manufacturers will not benefit by it?
. . . If more tallow is consumed, then there must be more oxen and sheep. . . if more oil is consumed, then we shall have extended cultivation of the poppy, of the olive. . . our heaths will be covered with resinous trees.
Make your choice, but be logical; for as long as you exclude, as you do, iron, corn, foreign fabrics, in proportion as their prices approximate to zero, what inconsistency it would be to admit the light of the sun, the price of which is already at zero during the entire day!


Frederic Bastiat. 1801-1850. French Economist. The Worldly Philosophers: the lives, times and ideas of the great economic thinkers. By Robert L. Heilbroner. Revised Seventh Edition. 1999. P.179, 180