Frédéric Bastiat

Bastiat's bust at Mugron

History of the bust

In 1806, a committe of Citizens from Mugron decided to erect a statue of Bastiat in the center of the main square, and entrusted the work to a sculptor named Vital Dubray. The statue was inaugurated on april 23, 1878. As showned below, It was a much more elaborate statue than the present bust,with a women at the feet of Bastiat representing " the Fame" and writing on a marble plate the major works of Bastiat.

In 1942, the Germans, looking for non ferrous metals, removed all the bronze from the statue. Fortunately, there still existed a mold of the bust - but not of the Fame - and the municipality was able to erect the present monument with the bust only and the original inscriptions on marble plates.

In 2001, for the 200th anniversary of Bastiat's birth, the Cercle Frédéric Bastiat organized the congress mentionned elsewhere on this site. The opening was in front of the statue. A few weeks before, we had added "La loi" to the list of his major works. In a sense, it was a tribute to the american libertarians, who consider The Law as Bastiat's most important work. And indeed, 70 out of the 200 people that came to the congress were american!

A few photos of Bastiat's house

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The history of the property is as follows:

Frédéric Bastiat’s family originally came from Laurède. His great-grandfather was a landowner who moved to Mugron, after his marriage, in order to set up a business. He lived in the house on the Place Frédéric Bastiat that is now a local tax-office. He had nine children, one of whom, Frédéric’s grandfather, settled in Bayonne, where he opened a branch of the family business founded in the Landes. He was married in Bayonne in 1770 and had eight children. He then bought himself a country house near Mugron, in Souprosse, by acquiring after the Revolution the domain of Sengresse, which was declared national property and which had belonged to the Count of Béthune-Charrost. This domain consisted of a fine manor house and several tenanted farms.

His eldest son worked in the family business with one of his brothers and one of his brothers-in-law, M. de Monclar. Around 1800 he married a young woman from Bayonne. From this marriage Frédéric was born in 1801, then a sister who died in infancy. However, Frédéric’s parents had both contracted tuberculosis. His mother died in 1808 when Frédéric was only seven. In 1810 his grandmother also died. His grandfather then went with his daughter Justine to live in the house in Mugron, taking with him Frédéric and his father, who in turn died the same year. Frédéric was brought up by his aunt Mlle Justine Bastiat. She sent him away to study in the secondary school at Sorèze in the Tarn, which had an excellent reputation.

After his studies, Frédéric was taken on by his uncle de Monclar to work in the business in Bayonne.

In 1825, when he was 24, his grandfather died. He inherited the manor house in Sengresse, to which he moved, and 3 tenanted farms. For several years he devoted all his energies to them. His aim was to replace the system of three-yearly rotation of crops, which left one third of the land fallow, with alternate crops. Initially he decided to set aside ten hectares of land for growing experimental crops. In order to do so he employed youngsters aged between ten and fifteen to work with him. However, these experiments proved to be a failure, and he allowed the tenant farmers to look after the land themselves.

Bastiat, who had no direct descendant, bequeathed Sengresse to his aunt Saubade Victoire Bastiat, who had married Henry de Monclar, the forebear of the Gavardie de Monclar. The house is today lived in by the eldest son of the Dufaur de Gavardie de Monclar family, known more simply as Dufaur. (Since 2004, the house has been the property of an English couple, Mr. and Mrs. McLusky, who had never heard of Bastiat before, but who made a point of paying a visit to the Cercle)

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Grave of Bastiat in the church Saint-Louis des Français in Rome.

Text of the epitaph :

Return to the English main page of www.bastiat.net