A Comment on the Exclusiveness of Protection in Chilean Economics at Mid-Nineteenth Century
IN A RECENT article entitled "The Introduction of Classical Economics Into Chile " (HAHR, XLIV, No. 1 [February, 1964]-, 1-21), Professor Robert M. Will asserted that during the late 1840's protection was the vogue in Chilean economic thinking. He stated that "the pros and cons of free trade were still being debated in the press and in learned circles, but the balance of the argument, as earlier, weighed heavily in favor of protection and against any suggestion that Chile should adopt a more liberal commercial policy."' But this is only part of the story, for Professor Will has focused his attention primarily upon tariff legislation, an 1847 thesis presented to the University of Chile's Faculty of Law and Political Science, the views of Cristobal Valdes, a self-styled economist, and a message presented by the Minister of Hacienda to Congress in 1848, to the exclusion of other attitudes relating to commerce which in fact embodied the concept of free trade.2 The free-trade sentiment became vocal around the issue of foreign participation in the nation's coastal trade.