From The Bastiat Collection — surrounding passage

and that practically everyone would profit as a result. The third section is Bastiat’s Economic Harmonies which was hastily written before his death in 1850 and is considered incomplete. Here he demonstrates that the interests of everyone in society are in harmony to the extent that property rights are respected. Because there are no inherent conflicts in the market,

“Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”

451-95. 7 Patrick James Stirling, The Philosophy of Trade (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1846); or outlines of a theory of profits and prices, including an examination of the principles which determine the relative value of corn, labor, and currency.