Harmonies of Political Economy

Harmonies of Political Economy is by Frédéric Bastiat, translated from the third edition of the French, with a notice of the life and writings of the author by Patrick James Stirling. The translator's preface notes the favour with which the English public has received the first edition of this translation of Bastiat's Harmonies Économiques, published originally in separate parts.

Bastiat had been for some time meditating a greater, more elaborate, and more systematic work, and in June 1845 he writes to M. Coudroy that if his little treatise of the Sophismes Économiques is successful, we may follow it up by another entitled Harmonies Sociales. The text asks whether reasoners will never understand that, for each result obtained, capital supersedes more labour than it exacts. A list of chapters intended to complete the Harmonies Économiques was found among the author's papers, with a note that of those marked * no notes or traces were found.