The Petition of the Candlemakers
IF you shut up as much as possible all access to natural light, and create a demand for artificial light, which of our French manufactures will not be encouraged by it?
If more tallow is consumed, then there must be more oxen and sheep; and, consequently, we shall behold the multiplication of artificial meadows, meat, wool, hides, and, above all, manure, which is the basis and foundation of all agricultural wealth.
If more oil is consumed, then we shall have an extended cultivation of the poppy, of the olive, and of rape. These rich and exhausting plants* will come at the right time to enable us to avail ourselves of the increased fertility which the rearing of additional cattle will impart to our lands.*
Our heaths will be covered with resinous trees. Numerous swarms of bees will, on the mountains, gather perfumed treasures, now wasting their fragrance on the desert air, like the flowers from which they emanate.* No branch of agriculture but will then exhibit a cheering development.
* In French, ‘Ces plantes riches et épuisantes’, i.e. high-yield, but not the kind of crop that can be grown in the same field season after season. Fortunately, say Bastiat’s candlemakers, by the time that intense cultivation of these plants (under artificial light of course) has stripped the soil of its nutrients, animal husbandry will have provided a solution.
* In their excited planning, the candlemakers are in danger of counting their chickens before they are hatched, like The Country Milkmaid in Aesop’s fable.
* The translator has taken the liberty of making an explicit literary reference here to Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Grey (1716-1771), which is not so plain in the original French. For Grey’s verses, see Unsung Heroes.