Frédéric Bastiat, whose last and greatest, though, alas! unfinished work—the Harmonies économiques—I now venture to introduce to the English public, was born at Bayonne, on the 19th of June 1801. His father, an eminent merchant of Bayonne, died young, and his wife having died before him, Frédéric, their only child, was left an orphan at the early age of nine years.