Sir John Barnard Byles (11 January 1801 – 3 February 1884[1]) was a British barrister, judge and author of books on law and the economy.
Byles studied law and became a member of the Inner Temple, where he was a pupil of the renowned Joseph Chitty, and became a special pleader.
He was described by the contemporary press as being a judge of the "old school", reminiscent of lawyers from Elizabethan times in his predilection for employing old-fashioned sayings and "saws".
[4] He was also a stickler for proper (black) clothing in court, once remarking to Lord Coleridge "I always listen with little pleasure to the arguments of counsel whose legs are encased in light gray trousers".
[3] In Sophisims of free trade, John Byles championed protectionism and refuted the "let it alone," i.e., laissez faire system.
In sum, Byles saw protection as not a source of calamity and peril as free traders depicted it, but as a policy that spread industry and brought water, economic life where there was none.
This challenges the system of free trade, which is built upon cheap labor, and foreign commerce is the way to riches.
Byles adopted the foreign policy of “America’s Benjamin Franklin’s Rules for reducing a Great Empire to a small one.” He called for England to give up all her colonies, but to keep India, and treat Indians the same way British subjects were, and to give India domestic commerce and development.
In addition, he echoed Carey's calling for having those that consume be nigh of the farmer to give him a home market that is better than a foreign one.
Through and Through one can only conclude that Swift should be called a protectionist, Byles quotes Swift saying, “ One cause of a country’s thriving is the industry of the people in working up all their native commodities to the last…..The convenience of safe ports and havens to carry out their own goods as much manufactured, and bring those of others as little manufactured as the nature of mutual commerce will allow.” [9]