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I




Economic Sophisms
By FREDERIC BASTIAT
Translated by PATRICK JAMES STIRLING,
LL.D., F.R.S.E.  With Introductions by
The Rt. Hon. H. H. ASQUITH, M.P., and
GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM, Litt.D.,
President of the American Free Trade League
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK
1922




vi


INTRODUCTION


Chamberlain plans, I suggested that it would be interesting to have an opportunity given for a fair testing of his
theory. Chamberlain held that the productions of the
independent Dominions and of the Colonies should be
available for the use of British consumers without duty,
but that supplies of all articles of the classes produced by
the Dominions and the Colonies coming from other countries should be called upon to pay duty. He insisted that
a differential system could be put into shape which would
not increase the cost of living for English workers, or
bring upon English manufacturers burdens which should
interfere with their competition with the rest of the world.
Chamberlain was unable, however, to convince the English workers that they would be better off if the cost of
grain, pork and beef, coming from North and South
America, and elsewhere, was to be increased. He found
it impossible to make clear to the manufacturers that
their interests would be benefited by tariff taxes which,
in increasing the cost of living for their working people,
would necessitate a proportionate addition to the cost of
the wages.
Under the pressure of the necessities, or alleged necessities, of war requirements, certain tariff prohibitions and
restrictions were imposed in England in 1914; and, at this
time of writing (1921), more than two years after the close
of the war, a number of these tariff restrictions have been
continued. The groups that found advantage for themselves, during the years of the war, in the restriction of
foreign competition are unwilling to forgo this advantage
in peace time.
Under the leadership of Austen Chamberlain, an
attempt is being made, without the opportunity being
given for an expression of opinion on the part of the
voters, to change the national policy of Great Britain and,
through the continuance and extension of restrictions imposed during the war, to make a beginning of a protective
tariff system for the United Kingdom. It will, it appears,
be necessary again to discuss the issues which were
thrashed out in 1904, and even to re-emphasise the elementary principles the acceptance of which brought about
a repeal of the Corn Laws of i846.
The policy of France has, with the exception of certain
concessions made in i860 in the Treaty with England
negotiated by Cobden, maintained in substance the same
general protective policy which was in force at the time
when Rastiat wrote: but in France, as in Great Britain




INTRODUCTION


vii


and the United States, the doubt as to the wisdom of
these restrictions in restraint of trade and as to the possibility of increasing the wealth and the comfort of the
people by placing burdens upon all materials used by the
people, or required for the life of the people, cannot be
put to one side. These inquiries will be pressed, and the
discussion will be continued until the voters on both sides
of the Atlantic may be made to realise that the prosperity
of the world at large, that is to say, of every community
in the world, depends upon securing the largest possible
return for the labour of each individual in the community;
and that such largest return can be secured only if the
labourer be permitted to work without unnecessary restriction, and to have full freedom of action in exchanging for
other productions the results of his labour.
Bastiat points out, as Cobden had before made clear,
that the protective policy which was in his time in force
throughout Europe was closely connected with the theory
of the balance of power, which made necessary the maintenance of national armaments and an ever-increasing expenditure for navies and for armies. The teachings of
both men present an early prophecy of a development of
civilisation which should bring the nations into relations
with each other as a family, or into the more formal
organisation of a league. To both writers it seemed
elementary that the welfare of all of the nations must
depend upon the prosperity enjoyed by each, and that
anything which lessened the resources of one state and,
in this way, impaired the resources of the world, constituted a disadvantage for all the states the welfare of which
was of necessity dependent upon a world-wide prosperity.
In opening, in May, I851, the first of the world's
expositions, Prince Albert emphasised the same thought.
He insisted that men must come to understand that, looking at the matter from the most selfish point of view, they
could gain more by trading with their neighbours than
by killing them  in battle, or by undermining their
prosperity by means of tariff barriers.
Bastiat's work, while written as an attack upon the
contentions of the French economists (so-called) of his
day, deals with general principles-principles which are
as instructive for the problems of the twentieth century as
for those of the nineteenth.  He makes clear that the
burden of proof must rest upon those who undertake to
prevent, or to restrict, the natural right of men to exchange
with each other the varied products of their labour.




x


INTRODUCTION


to a crime, to make unnecessary additions to the burdens
coming upon needy people, by compelling them to pay,
in addition to the cost of the things that they need,
unnecessary charges caused by tariff barriers."
The protectionist is ready with the phrase that the
believer in Freedom of Trade may be "all right in theory,"
but that his theory will not work in practice. This is,
of course, an absurd utterance. If a theory is really sound,
it must represent correct reasoning based upon verified
facts.  It is not to be dismissed because the so-called
"practical man " has not accepted it. If, when the theory
is applied, it does not work, it is evident that either the
facts had not been verified or that the reasoning was
wrong.
Bastiat did not think to call attention to the fact that
the United States, even in his time, presented an excellent example of the value of Freedom of Trade between
communities possessing a very varied series of products
and business interests that, in appearance at least, were
diverse. The thirty states that were in existence in 1848
held, and the forty-eight states which are doing business
with each other to-day now hold, that it would be not only
disadvantageous but absurd to the point of wickedness to
have their business relations restricted, hampered, blocked
by tariff barriers.
Massachusetts understands that there is direct and
continuing advantage in the freedom with which it exchanges its shoes and its cotton goods for the sugar of
Louisiana and the rice and the raw cotton of South Carolina; and the advantage of such exchange is equally clear
to the citizens of the latter states.  It is difficult for a
protectionist to explain why, if Maine finds a continuing
advantage in Freedom of Trade with Massachusetts on
the South, there could be any detriment whatsoever in
carrying on trade, equally free from restriction, with its
neighbours in New Brunswick on the North.
In such an illustration, we go back at once to the
elementary propositions laid down by Bastiat: Liberty is
natural, restriction arbitrary. Liberty unrestricted may
become, as has been made too clear by example in this
twentieth century, licence and anarchy; but the licence to
secure, at the smallest expenditure of labour, the things
actually needed and the further things that may be desired
does not impress the economist as a serious evil. If the
liberty to follow an honest calling, free from interference
from the other fellow, and free from any further exactions




INTRODUCTION


xi


from, or contributions to, the government than are required for national defence and for the maintenance of
justice, constitutes anarchy, I am ready, to that extent,
to accept anarchy.
The new burdens that have been placed upon the
nations as a result of the awful waste of the last war,
make clear the difficulty of maintaining the liberty of the
citizen in connection with an excessive national budget.
In America, as in England, citizens are complaining of
the continuation of burdens which they had assumed would
be required only during the period of war. They now
realise that the waste of war continues for years before
the actual fighting in the outlays to cover the preparation
for war; and continues for many years after the fighting
has ceased, in order to make good the waste of the national
resources and the destruction of the property of the citizens.
The first step towards getting rid of the burdens resulting
from war and of the further burdens resulting from the
preparation for war, must be to establish decent and
common-sense relations between the states of the world,
relations which shall give assurance of peace for the future.
Such relations can be maintained with certainty only
through the removal of the barriers and trade grievances
which have, in the past, and which would again in tt.L
future, make for war..^
The equitable law of humanity is, says Bastia  unrt ^
stricted exchange of service for service. If n ns c
become wealthier by maintaining tariff barritg;   the,
boundaries, it must be equally true that, wealth -iml
come to the States of America, or to thp- Rrwint6s of
France, through the construction of similar tariff. Carriers.
It would be equally true that the grea cities of the world
could benefit their citizens by the restoratal of the oldtime octroi taxes or charges for goods that 'ere being
brought in for the needs of the inhabitants.;*
The hope of freedom for mankind, iWiict was epressed
through the revolutions of 1848, the dream, of inorecivilised relations between the states of the world and of
common-sense business conditions within eac stati^ve
been seriously delayed in coming into realisatio. Iastiat,
Cobden and Prince Albert were, however, sound in their
ideals and in their contentions. The fact that there has
been delay in making clear to men their own interest and
their duty to their fellow-men cannot prevent the final
acceptance of these universal truths. Other elementary
principles of civilisation have been delayed in their appli



Xii


INTRODUCTION


cation. Slavery continued through many centuries and
with fierce defenders.
Individual war (duelling), wars between small groups
of men, wars between cities, were permitted to go on for
centuries before the larger communities called states were
in a position to enforce peace with justice throughout their
territories. The contest now is to get rid of the larger
wars-the wars between the nations which men have, during ten thousand years of recorded history, assumed to be
unavoidable.
It is now well understood that protection is in itself
but a form of war, while it is equally evident that the
operations of war, in blocking the relations between the
states, constitute a conclusive form of protection. In outgrowing the theories, the prejudices, and the antagonisms
that have produced wars, humanity must, at the same time,
put to one side that form of interstate antagonism that has
been expressed by protection. An example of stupidity
and of loss of natural advantage in connection with transportation is shown by the operation of the American Navigation Laws. The Sandwich Islands are held to be, at
least de jure, a part of the coast line of the United States.
The prohibition of the use of vessels other than American
for the carrying of passengers and freight applies, therefore, not only to carrying between New York and New
Orleans, or San Francisco and Los Angeles, but also
between San Francisco and Hawaii. As a result, English
steame''fuaching a. San Francisco go on to Hawaii
'-prartically  eimpty  when  American  passengers  and
American goods are awaiting opportunities for trans.
portation.
Those wllo are believers in a truth that to them seems
to rest on sv,te foundations are not to be discouraged
because of thr. delay in securing an acceptance of an application of their principles. Individuals die, generations
pass, but ",luth must remain, and must secure, from
generation to generation, an ever-widening influence. It
is on this ground that the believers in Freedom of Trade
may iook forward with hopeful confidence to a development
of civilisation on the lines of the brotherhood of nations.
This is the ideal, and this must become the practical
politics of the twentieth century.


New York, July, 1921.


G. H. P.




INTRODUCTORY NOTE


I AM very glad that an English translation of Bastiat's
Sophismes Economiques is being reissued in a popular
shape. The cardinal doctrines of Free Trade have never
been more cogently presented or more brilliantly illustrated.  The Sophisms, which Bastiat so ruthlessly
exposed, will always have a certain vogue so long as
there are people who think confusedly. It is the fashion
in some quarters nowadays-a very convenient fashion
-to treat the economics of the Cobdenite era as obsolete.
There is no writer or thinker of that time whose reasoning and conclusions are less dependent upon local and
transient conditions than are those of Bastiat.  The
Economic Sophisms are no more out of date than the
Wealth of Nations.
H. H. ASQUITH.
May, 1909.




xvi                 CONTENTS
CHAPTER                                        RAG9
XIX. NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE...    07
XX. HUMAN LABOUR —NATIONAL LABOUR.. 110
XXI. RAW MATERIALS.....
XXII. METAPHORS......      27
SECOND SERIES
I. THE Two HATCHETS...... 132
II. LOWER COUNCIL OF LABOUR....        136
III. DEARNESS-CHEAPNESS...... I40
IV. To ARTISANS AND WORKMEN...       51
V. A CHINESE STORY...... 161
VI. POST HOC, ERGO PROPTER HOC.... I66
VII. THE PREMIUM THEFT...... 169
VIII. THE TAXGATHERER...... 178
IX. PROTECTION; OR, THE THREE CITY ALDERMEN. 185
X. SOMETHING ELSE....... 98
XT. THE LITTLE ARSENAL OF THE FREE-TRADER.   209
XII. THE RIGHT HAND AND THE LEFT... 216
XIII. DOMINATION BY LABOUR..... 224




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION
(Sophismes Economiques)
FIRST SERIES
INTRODUCTION
MY design in this little volume is to refute some of the
arguments which are urged against the Freedom of Trade
I do not propose to engage in a contest with the protectionists; but rather to instil a principle into the minds of
those who hesitate because they sincerely doubt.
I am not one of those who say that Protection is founded
on men's interests. I am of opinion rather that it is
founded on errors, or, if you will, upon incomplete truths.
Too many people fear liberty, to permit us to conclude
that their apprehensions are not sincerely felt.
It is perhaps aiming too high, but my wish is, I confess,
that this little work should become, as it were, the Manual
of those whose business it is to pronounce between the
two principles. Where men have not been long accustomed and familiarised to the doctrine of liberty, the
fallacies of protection, in one shape or another, are constantly coming back upon them. In order to disabuse
them of such errors when they recur, a long process of
analysis becomes necessary; and everyone has not the time
required for such a process-legislators less than others.
This is my reason for endeavouring to present the analysis
and its results cut and dry.
t The first series of the Sophismes Economigues appeared in the end
of 1845; the bccond srics in 1848.-FRENCH EDITOR.
a




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


But it may be asked: Are the benefits of liberty so
hidden as to be discovered only by Economists by profession?
We must confess that our adversaries have a marked
advantage over us in the discussion. In very few words
they can announce a half-truth; and in order to demonstrate that it is incomplete, we are obliged to have recourse
to long and dry dissertations.
This arises from the nature of things. Protection concentrates on one point the good which it produces, while
the evils which it inflicts are spread over the masses. The
one is visible to the naked eye; the other only to the eye
of the mind.' In the case of liberty, it is just the reverse.
In the treatment of almost all economic questions we
find it to be so.
You say: Here is a machine which has turned thirty
workmen into the street.
Or: Here is a spendthrift who encourages every branch
of industry.
Or: The conquest of Algeria has doubled the trade of
Marseilles.
Or: The budget secures subsistence for a hundred
thousand families.
You are understood at once and by all. Your pro.
positions are in themselves clear, simple, and true. What
are your deductions from them?
Machinery is an evil.
Luxury, conquests, and heavy taxation are productive
of good.
And your theory has all the more success that you are
in a situation to support it by a reference to undoubted
facts.
On our side, we must decline to confine our attention
1 See also Bastiat's What is seen and what is not seen, written in
1850. Collected Works, vol. v., p. 336, French edition. [A translation
has been published by the Cobden Club.)




INTRODUCTION


to the cause, and its direct and immediate effect. We
know that this very effect in its turn becomes a cause. To
judge correctly of a measure, then, we must trace it
through the whole chain of effects to its final result. In
other words, we are forced to reason upon it.
But then clamour gets up: You are theorists, metaphysicians, idealists, Utopian dreamers, doctrinaires, and
all the prejudices of the popular mind are roused against
-us.
What, under such circumstances, are we to do? We
can only invoke the patience and good sense of the reader,
and set our deductions, if we can, in a light so clear that
truth and error must show themselves plainly, openly, and
without disguise; and that the victory, once gained, may
remain on the side of restriction or on that of freedom.
And here I must set down an essential observation
Some extracts from this little volume have already
appeared in the Journal des Economistes.
In a criticism, in other respects very favourable, from
the pen of M. le Vicomte de Romanet, he supposes that I
demand the suppression of customs. He is mistaken. I
demand the suppression of the protectionist system. We
don't refuse taxes to the Government, but we desire, if
possible, to dissuade the governed from taxing one another.
Napoleon said that "the custom-house should not be made
an instrument of revenue, but a means of protecting industry." We maintain the contrary, and we contend that
the custom-house ought not to become in the hands of
the working classes an instrument of reciprocal rapine, but
that it may be used as an instrument of revenue as legitimately as any other. So far are we-or, to speak only for
myself, so far am I-from demanding the suppression of
customs, that I see in that branch of revenue our future
anchor of safety. I believe our resources are capable of
yielding to the Treasury immense returns; and, to speak




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


plainly, I must add that, seeing how slow is the spread of
sound economic doctrines, and so rapid the increase of
our budgets, I am disposed to count more upon the
necessities of the Treasury than on the force of enlightened
opinion for furthering the cause of commercial reform.
You ask me, then: What is your conclusion? And I
reply, that here there is no need to arrive at a conclusion.
I combat fallacies; that is all.
But you rejoin, that it is not enough to pull down-it is
also necessary to build up. True; but to destroy an error
is to build up the truth which stands opposed to it.
After all, I have no repugnance to declare what my
wishes are. I desire to see public opinion led to sanction
a law of customs conceived nearly in these terms:Articles of primary necessity to pay a duty, ad valorem,
of 5 per cent.
Articles of convenience, io per cent.
Articles of luxury, 15 to 20 per cent.
These distinctions, I am aware, belong to an order of
ideas which are quite foreign to Political Economy strictly
so called, and I am far from thinking them as just and
useful as they are commonly supposed to be. But this
subject does not fall within the compass of my present
design 1
[' Bastiat suggests a scheme of customs duties which would have been
on immense improvement on the fiscal system then (1845) existing in
France, but which would have been difficult to carry out in practice.]




CHAPTER I


AB UN DANCE-SCARCITY
WHICH is best for man and for society, abundance or
scarcity?
What! you exclaim, can that be a question? Has anyone ever asserted, or is it possible to maintain, that scarcity
is at the foundation of human wellbeing?
Yes, this has been asserted, and is maintained every
day; and I hesitate not to affirm that the theory of scarcity
is much the most popular. It is the life of conversation,
of the newspapers, of books, and of political oratory;
and, strange as it may seem, it is certain that Political
Economy will have fulfilled its practical mission when it
has established beyond question, and widely disseminated,
this very simple proposition: "The wealth of men consists
in the abundance of commodities."
Do we not hear it said every day: "The foreigner is
about to inundate us with his products?" Then we fear
abundance.
Did not M. Saint-Cricq exclaim: "Production is excessive "? Then he feared abundance.
Do workmen break machines? Then they fear excess
of production, or abundance.
Has not M. Bugeaud pronounced these words: "Let
bread be dear, and agriculturists will get rich "? Now,
bread can only be dear because it is scarce. Therefore
M1. Bugeaud extols scarcity.
Does not M. d'Argout urge as an argument against
sugar-growing the very productiveness of that industry?
Does he not say: "Beetroot has no future, and its culture




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


cannot be extended, because a few acres devoted to Its
culture in each department would supply the whole
consumption of France"? Then, in his eyes, good
lies in sterility, in dearth, and evil in fertility and
abundance.
La Presse, Le Commerce, and the greater part of the
daily papers, have one or more articles every morning
to demonstrate to the Legislative Chamber and the Government that it is sound policy to raise legislatively the
price of all things by means of tariffs. And do the
Chamber and the Government not obey the injunction?
Now tariffs can raise prices only by diminishing the supply
of commodities in the market! Then the journals, the
Chamber, and the Minister put in practice the theory of
scarcity, and I am justified in saying that this theory is
by far the most popular.
How does it happen that in the eyes of workmen, of
publicists, and statesmen abundance should appear a thing
to be dreaded and scarcity advantageous? I propose to
trace this illusion to its source.
We remark that a man grows richer in proportion to
the return yielded by his exertions, that is to say, in proportion as he sells his commodity at a higher price. He
sells at a higher price in proportion to the rarity, to the
scarcity, of the article he produces. We conclude from
this that, as far as he is concerned at least, scarcity enriches
him. Applying successively the same reasoning to all
other producers, we construct the theory of scarcity. We
next proceed to apply this theory, and, in order to favour
producers generally, we raise prices artificially, and cause
a scarcity of all commodities, by prohibition, by restriction,
by the suppression of machinery, and other analogous
means.
The same thing holds of abundance. We observe that
when a product is plentiful, it sells at a lower price, and




ABUNDANCE-SCARCITY


7


the producer gains less. If all producers are in the same
situation, they are all poor. Therefore it is abundance
that ruins society. And as theories are soon reduced to
practice, we see the law struggling against the abundance
of commodities.
This fallacy in its more general form may make little
impression, but applied to a particular order of facts,
to a certain branch of industry, to a given class of producers, it is extremely specious; and this is easily explained.
It forms a syllogism which is not false, but incomplete.
Now, what is true in a syllogism is always and necessarily
present to the mind. But incompleteness is a negative
quality, an absent datum, which it is very possible, and
indeed very easy, to leave out of account.
Man produces in order to consume. He is at once
producer and consumer. The reasoning which I have just
explained considers him only in the first of these points
of view. Had the second been taken into account, it would
have led to an opposite conclusion. In effect, may it not
be said:
The consumer is richer in proportion as he purchases
all things cheaper; and he purchases things cheaper in
proportion to their abundance; therefore it is abundance
which enriches him. This reasoning, extended to all consumers, leads to the theory of plenty.
It is the notion of exchange imperfectly understood
which leads to these illusions. If we consider our personal
interest, we recognise distinctly that it is double. As
sellers we have an interest in dearness, and consequently
in scarcity'; as buyers, in cheapness, or what amounts to
the same thing, in the abundance of commodities. We
cannot, then, found our reasoning on one or other of these
interests before inquiring which of the two coincides and
[' Ilastiat here means scarcity of supply outside of the seller's own
business whiclh would allow him to fix his own price.]




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


is identified with the general and permanent interest of
mankind at large.
If man were a solitary animal, if he laboured exclusively
for himself, if he consumed directly the fruit of his labour
-in a word, if he did not exchange-the theory of scarcity
would never have appeared in the world. It is too evident
that, in that case, abundance would be advantageous, from
whatever quarter it came, whether from the result of his
industry, from ingenious tools, from powerful machinery
of his invention, or whether due to the fertility of the
soil, the liberality of nature, or even to a mysterious
invasion of products brought by the waves and left by
them upon the shore. No solitary man would ever have
thought that in order to encourage his labour and render
it more productive, it was necessary to break in pieces
the instruments which saved it, to neutralize the fertility
of the soil, or give back to the sea the good things it
had brought to his door. He would perceive at once that
labour is not an end, but a means; and that it would be
absurd to reject the result for fear of doing injury to the
means by which that result was accomplished. He would
perceive that if he devotes two hours a day to providing
for his wants, any circumstance (machinery, fertility,
gratuitous gift, no matter what) which saves him an hour
of that labour, the result remaining the same, puts that
hour at his disposal, and that he can devote it to increasing
his enjoyments; in short, he would see that to save labour
is nothing else than progress.
But exchange disturbs our view of a truth so simple.
In the social state, and with the separation of employments
to which it leads, the production and consumption of a
commodity are not mixed up and confounded in the same
individual. Each man comes to see in his labour no
longer a means but an end. In relation to each commrodity, exchange creates two interests, that of the pro



ABUNDANCE-SCARCITY


9


ducer and that of the consumer; and these two interests
are always directly opposed to each other.
It is essential to analyse them, and examine their
nature.
Take the case of any producer whatever, what is his
immediate interest? It consists of two things: first, that
the fewest possible number of persons should devote themselves to his branch of industry; secondly, that the greatest
possible number of persons should be in quest of the article
he produces.  Political economy explains it more succinctly in these terms: Supply very limited, demand very
extended; or, in other words still, Competition limited,
demand unlimited.
What is the immediate interest of the consumer? That
the supply of the product in question should be extended,
and the demand restrained
Seeing, then, that these two interests are in opposition
to each other, one of them must necessarily coincide with
social interests in general, and the other be antagonistic
to them.
But which of them should legislation favour, as
identical with the public good-if, indeed, it should favour
either?
To discover this, we must inquire what would happen
if the secret wishes of men were granted.
In as far as we are producers, it must be allowed that
the desire of every one of us is anti-social  Are we vine.
dressers? It would give us no great regret if hail should
shower down on all the vines in the world except our own:
this is the theory of scarcity. Are we iron-masters? Our
wish is that there should be no other iron in the market
but our own, however much the public may be in want of
it; and for no other reason than that this want, keenly
felt and imperfectly satisfied, shall ensure us a higher
price: this is still the theory of scarcity. Are we farmers?




IO


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


We say with M. Bugeaud: Let bread be dear, that is to
say, scarce, and agriculturists will thrive: always the
same theory, the theory of scarcity.
Are we physicians? We cannot avoid seeing that
certain physical ameliorations, improving the sanitary
state of the country, the development of certain moral
virtues, such as moderation and temperance, the progress
of knowledge tending to enable each man to take better
care of his own health, the discovery of certain simple
remedies of easy application, would be so many blows to
our professional success. In as far as we are physicians,
then, our secret wishes would be anti-social  I do not
say that physicians form these secret wishes. On the
contrary, I believe they would hail with joy the discovery of a universal panacea; but they would not do
this as physicians, but as men and as Christians. By
a noble abnegation of self, the physician places himself
in the consumer's point of view. But as exercising a
profession, from which he derives his own and his family's
subsistence, his desires, or, if you will, his interests, are
anti-social.
Are we manufacturers of cotton stuffs? We desire
to sell them at the price most profitable to ourselves.
We should consent willingly to an interdict being laid
on all rival manufactures; and if we could venture to
give this wish public expression, or hope to realise it
with some chance of success, we should attain our end,
to some extent, by indirect means; for example, by excluding foreign fabrics, in order to diminish the supply,
and thus produce, forcibly and to our profit, a scarcity
of clothing.
In the same way, we might pass in review all other
branches of industry, and we should always find that
the producers, as such, have anti-social views.  "The
shopkeeper," says Montaigne, "thrives only by the




ABUNDANCE-SCA RITY


I I


irregularities of youth; the farmer by the high price of
corn, the architect by the destruction of houses, the officers
of justice by lawsuits and quarrels. Ministers of religion
derive their distinction and employment from our vices
and our death. No physician rejoices in the health of his
friends, nor soldiers in the peace of their country; and
so of the rest."
Hence it follows that if the secret wishes of each
producer were realised, the world would retrograde rapidly
towards barbarism. The sail would supersede steam, the
oar would supersede the sail, and general traffic would
be carried on by the carrier's wagon; the latter would
be superseded by the mule, and the mule by the pedlar.
Wool would exclude cotton, cotton in its turn would
exclude wool, and so on until the dearth of all things
had caused man himself to disappear from the face of
the earth.
Suppose for a moment that the legislative power and
the public force were placed at the disposal of Mimeral's
committee, and that each member of that association had
the privilege of bringing in and sanctioning a favourite
law, is it difficult to divine to what sort of industrial code
the public would be subjected?
If we now proceed to consider the immediate interest
of the consumer, we shall find that it is in perfect harmony with the general interest, with all that the welfare
of society calls for. When the purchaser goes to market
he desires to find it well stocked.  Let the seasons be
propitious for all harvests; let inventions, more and more
marvellous, bring within reach a greater and greater
number of products and enjoyments; let time and labour
be saved; let distances be effaced by the perfection and
rapidity of transit; let the spirit of justice and of peace
allow of a (liminislied weight of taxaltion, let barriers of




12


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


every kind be removed;-in all this the interest of the
consumer runs parallel with the public interest. The
consumer may push his secret wishes to a chimerical and
absurd length, without these wishes becoming antagonistic
to the public welfare. He may desire that food and
shelter, the hearth and the roof, instruction and
morality, security and peace, power and health, should
be obtained without exertion and without measure,
like the dust of the highways, the water of the brook,
the air which we breathe; and yet the realisation of
his desires would not be at variance with the good of
society.
It may be said that, if these wishes were granted,
the work of the producer would become- more and more
limited, and would end with being stopped for want of
aliment. But why? Because, on this extreme supposition, all imaginable wants and desires would be fully
satisfied. Man, like Omnipotence, would create all things
by a simple act of volition. Well, on this hypothesis,
what reason should we have to regret the stoppage of
industrial production?
I made the supposition not long ago of the existence
of an assembly composed of workmen, each member of
which, in his capacity of producer, should have the power
of passing a law embodying his secret wish, and I said
that the code which would emanate from that assembly
would be monopoly systematised, the theory of scarcity
reduced to practice.
In the same way, a chamber in which each should
consult exclusively his own immediate interest as a consumer, would tend to systematise liberty, to suppress all
restrictive measures, to overthrow all artificial barriersin a word, to realise the theory of plenty.
Hence it follows:
That to consult exclusively the immediate interest of




ABUNDANCE-SCARCITY


13


the producer, is to consult an interest which is antisocial;
That to take for basis exclusively the immediate
interest of the consumer would be to take for basis the
general interest.
Let me enlarge on this view of the subject a little, at
the risk of being prolix.
A radical antagonism exists between seller and buyer.'
The former desires that the subject of the bargain
should be scarce, its supply limited, and its price high.
The latter desires that it should be abundant, its supply
large, and its price low.
The laws, which should be at least neutral, take the
part of the seller against the buyer, of the producer against
the consumer, of dearness against cheapness, of scarcity
against abundance.
They proceed, if not intentionally, at least logically,
on this datum: a nation is rich when it is in want of
everything.
For they say, it is the producer that we must favour
by securing him a good market for his product. For
this purpose it is necessary to raise the price, and in
order to raise the price we must restrict the supply; and
to restrict the supply is to create scarcity.
Just let us suppose that at the present moment, when
all these laws are in full force, we make a complete inventory, not in value but in weight, measure, volume,
I The author has rectified the terms of this proposition in a later
work.-See Harmonies Economiques, ch. xi.-FRENCH EDITOR. [The
translation of the passage referred to is as follows: " I have been
reproached with reason for having written this phrase,' Between the
vendor and purchaser exists a radical antagonism.'  The word antagonism, above all with the word radical added, goes far beyond my
meaning. It seems to indicate a permanent opposition of interests, and
consequently an indestructible social discord; but I only meant to speak
of that temporary debate which precedes any bargain and which is
inherent in the very idea of the transaction."]




14


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


quantity, of all the commodities existing in the country,
which are fitted to satisfy the wants and tastes of its
inhabitants-corn, meat, cloth, fuel, colonial products,
etc.
Suppose, again, that next day all the barriers which
oppose the introduction of foreign products are removed.
Lastly, suppose that in order to test the result of this
reform they proceed three months afterwards to make a
new inventory.
Is it not true that there will be found in France more
corn, cattle, cloth, linen, iron, coal, sugar, etc., at the
date of the second than at the date of the first inventory?
So true is this that our protective tariffs have no other
purpose than to hinder all these things from reaching
us, to restrict the supply, and prevent depreciation and
abundance.
Now I would ask, Are the people who live under our
laws better fed because there is less bread, meat, and
sugar in the country? Are they better clothed because
there is less cloth and linen? Better warmed because there
is less coal? Better assisted in their labour because there
are fewer tools and less iron, copper, and machinery?
But it may be said, If the foreigner inundates us with
his products he will carry away our money.
And what does it matter? Men are not fed on money.
They do not clothe themselves with gold, or warm themselves with silver. What matters it whether there is
more or less money in the country if there is more bread
on our sideboards, more meat in our larders, more linen
in our wardrobes, more firewood in our cellars?
Restrictive laws always land us in this dilemma:
Either you admit that they produce scarcity, or you
do not.
If you admit it, you avow by the admission that vou
inflict on the people all the injury in your power. If you




ABUNDANCE-SCARCITY                        15
do not admit it, you deny having restricted the supply and
raised prices, and consequently you deny having favoured
the producer.
What you do is either hurtful or profitless, injurious
or ineffectual. It never can be attended with any useful
result.
See also Harmonies Economiques, ch. xi., and also Abundance,
in the French Collected Edition, vol. v., p. 393.-FRENCH EDITOR.




CHAPTER II


OBSTACLE-CAUSE
THE obstacle mistaken for the cause-scarcity mistaken
for abundance-this is the same fallacy under another
aspect; and it is well to study it in all its phases.
Man is originally destitute of everything.
Between this destitution and the satisfaction of his
wants there exist a multitude of obstacles which labour
enables,us to surmount. It is curious to inquire how and
why these very obstacles to his material prosperity have
come to be mistaken for the cause of that prosperity.
I want to travel a hundred miles. But between the
starting-point and the place of my destination, mountains,
rivers, marshes, impenetrable forests, brigands —in a word,
obstacles-interpose themselves; and to overcome these
obstacles it is necessary for me to employ many efforts,
or, what comes to the same thing, that others should
employ many efforts for me, the price of which I must
pay them. It is clear that I should have been in a better
situation if these obstacles had not existed.
On his long journey through life, from the cradle to
the grave, man has need to assimilate to himself a prodigious quantity of alimentary substances, to protect himself against the inclemency of the weather, to preserve
himself from a number of ailments, or cure himself of
them. Hunger, thirst, disease, heat, cold, are so many
obstacles strewn along his path. In a state of isolation
he must overcome them all, by hunting, fishing, tillage,
spinning, weaving, building; and it is clear that it would
be better for him that these obstacles were less numerous
and formidable, or, better still, that they did not exist at,6




OBSTACLE-CAUSE


17


all. In society he does not combat these obstacles personally, but others do it for him; and in return he employs
himself in removing one of those obstacles which are encountered by his fellow-men.
It is clear also, considering things in the gross, that it
would be better for men in the aggregate, or for society,
that these obstacles should be as few and feeble as possible.
But when we come to scrutinise the social phenomena
in detail, and men's sentiments as modified by the introduction of exchange, we soon perceive how they have come
to confound wants with wealth, the obstacle with the cause.
The separation of employments, the division of labour,
which results from the faculty of exchanging, causes each
man, instead of struggling on his own account to overcome all the obstacles which surround him, to combat only
one of them; he overcomes that one not for himself but for
his fellow-men, who in turn render him the same service.
The consequence is that this man, in combating this
obstacle which it is his special business to overcome for
the sake of others, sees in it the immediate source of his
own wealth. The greater, the more formidable, the more
keenly felt this obstacle is, the greater will be the remuneration which his fellow-men will be disposed to accord him;
that is to say, the more ready will they be to remove the
obstacles which stand in his way.
The physician, for example, does not bake his own
bread, or manufacture his own instruments, or weave or
make his own coat. Others do these things for him, and
in return he treats the diseases with which his patients are
afflicted. The more numerous, severe, and frequent these
diseases are, the more others consent, and are obliged, to
do for his personal comfort. Regarding it from this point
of view, disease, that general obstacle to human happiness,
becomes a cause of material prosperity to the individual
physician. The same argument applies to all producers
C




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


in their several departments. The shipowner derives his
profits from the obstacle called distance; the agriculturist
from that called hunger; the manufacturer of cloth from
that called cold; the schoolmaster lives upon ignorance;
the lapidary upon vanity; the attorney on cupidity; the
notary upon possible bad faith-just as the physician lives
upon the diseases of men. It is quite true, therefore, that
each profession has an immediate interest in the continuation, nay, in the extension, of the special obstacle which
it is its business to combat.
Observing this, theorists make their appearance, and,
founding a system on their individual sentiments, tell us:
Want is wealth, labour is wealth, obstacles to material
prosperity are prosperity. To multiply obstacles is to
support industry.
Then statesmen intervene. They have the disposal of
the public force; and what more natural than to make it
available for developing and multiplying obstacles, since
this is developing and multiplying wealth? They say, for
example: If we prevent the importation of iron from places
where it is abundant, we place an obstacle in the way of
its being procured. This obstacle, keenly felt at home,
will induce men to pay in order to be set free from it. A
certain number of our fellow-citizens will devote themselves
to combating it, and this obstacle will make their fortune.
The greater the obstacle is-that is, the scarcer, the more
inaccessible, the more difficult to transport, the more distant from the place where it is to be used, the mineral
sought for becomes-the more hands will be engaged in
the various ramifications of this branch of industry. Exclude, then, foreign iron, create an obstacle, for you
thereby create the labour which is to overcome it.
The same reasoning leads to the proscription of
machinery.
Here, for instance, are men who are in want of casks




OBSTACLE-CAUSE


for the storage of their wine. This is an obstacle; and
here are other men whose business it is to remove that
obstacle by making the casks that are wanted. It is fortunate, then, that this obstacle should exist, since it gives
employment to a branch of national industry, and enriches
a certain number of our fellow-citizens. But then we have
ingenious machinery invented for felling the oak, cutting
it up into staves, and forming them into the wine-casks that
are wanted. By this means the obstacle is lessened, and
so are the gains of the cooper. Let us maintain both at
their former elevation by a law, and put down the
machinery,
To get at the root of this fallacy it is necessary only
to reflect that human labour is not the end, but the means.
It never remains unemployed. If one obstacle is removed,
it does battle with another; and society is freed from two
obstacles by the same amount of labour which was formerly
required for the removal of one. If the labour of the
cooper is rendered unnecessary in one department, it will
soon take another direction. But how and from what
source will it be remunerated? From the same source
exactly from which it is remunerated at present; for when
a certain amount of labour becomes disposable by the
removal of an obstacle, a corresponding amount of remuneration becomes disposable also. To maintain that
human labour will ever come to want employment, would
be to maintain that the human race will cease to encounter
obstacles.  In that case labour would not only be impossible; it would be superfluous. We should no longer
have anything to do, because we should be omnipotent;
and we should only have to pronounce our fiat in order to
ensure the satisfaction of all our desires and the supply of
all our wants.'
I See ch. x. of second series, and cb. iii. and xi. of the Hermonies
Economiq us.




CHAPTER III


EFFORT-RESULT
WE have just seen that between our wants and the satisfaction of these wants, obstacles are interposed. We
succeed in overcoming these obstacles, or in diminishing
their force, by the employment of our faculties. We may
say, in a general way, that industry is an effort followed
by a result.
But what constitutes the measure of our prosperity, or
of our wealth? Is it the result of the effort? or is it the
effort itself? A relation always subsists between the effort
employed and the result obtained. Progress consists in
the relative enhancement of the second or of the first term
of this relation.
Both theses have been maintained; and in political
economy they have divided the region of opinion and
of thought.
According to the first system, wealth is the result of
labour, increasing as the relative proportion of result to
effort increases. Absolute perfection, of which God is
the type, consists in the infinite distance interposed
between the two terms-in this sense, effort is nil, result
infinite.
The second system teaches that it is the effort itself
which constitutes the measure of wealth. To make pro.
gress is to increase the relative proportion which effort
bears to result. The ideal of this system may be found
in the sterile and eternal efforts of Sisyphus.1
1 For this reason, and for the sake of conciseness, the reader will
pardon us for designating this system in the sequel by the name of
20




EFFORT-RESULT


2I


The first system naturally welcomes everything which
tends to diminish pains and augment products; powerful
machinery which increases the forces of man, exchange
which allows him to derive greater advantage from natural
agents distributed in various proportions over the face
of the earth, intelligence which discovers, experience
which proves, competition which stimulates, etc.
Logically, the second invokes everything which has
the effect of increasing pains and diminishing products;
privileges, monopolies, restrictions, prohibitions, suppression of machinery, sterility, etc.
It is well to remark that the universal practice of
mankind always points to the principle of the first system.
We have never seen, we shall never see, a man who
labours in any department, be he agriculturist, manufacturer, merchant, artificer, soldier, author, or philosopher, who does not devote all the powers of his mind
to work better, to work with more rapidity, to work more
ecnomically-in a word, to effect more with less.
The opposite doctrine is in favour only with theorists,
deputies, journalists, statesmen, ministers-men, in short,
born to make experiments on the social body.
At the same time, we may observe, that in what
concerns themselves personally they act as everyone else
does, on the principle of obtaining from labour the
greatest possible amount of useful results.
Perhaps I may be thought to exaggerate, and that
there are no true sisyphists.
If it be argued that in practice they do not press
their principle to its most extreme consequences, I
willingly grant it. This is always the case when one
sets out with a false principle. Such a principle soon
sisyphism. [Sisyphus in Greek mythology was condemned, as a punishment for his wickedness in this life, to roll a large stone from the
bottom to the top of a high hill, which, whenever it reached the top,
rolled down again, and thus made his task unending.]




22


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


leads to results so absurd and so mischievous that we
are obliged to stop short.  This is the reason why
practical industry never admits sisypkism; punishment
would follow error too closely not to expose it. But in
matters of speculation, such as theorists and statesmen
deal in, one may pursue a false principle a long time
before discovering its falsity by the complicated consequences to which men were formerly strangers; and when
at last its falsity is found out, the authors take refuge
in the opposite principle, turn round, contradict themselves, and seek their justification in a modern maxim
of incomparable absurdity: in political economy there is
no inflexible rule, no absolute principle.
Let us see, then, if these two opposite principles
which I have just described do not predominate by turns,
the one in practical industry, the other in industrial
legislation.
I have already noticed the saying of M. Bugeaud
that "when bread is dear agriculturists become rich";
but in M. Bugeaud are embodied two separate characters,
the agriculturist and the legislator.
As an agriculturist, M. Bugeaud directs all his efforts
to two ends-to save labour, and obtain cheap bread.
When he prefers a good plough to a bad one; when he
improves his pastures; when, in order to pulverize the
soil, he substitutes as much as possible the action of the
atmosphere for that of the harrow and the hoe; when he
calls to his aid all the processes of which science and
experiment have proved the efficacy-he has but one
object in view, viz. to diminish the proportion of effort
to result. We have indeed no other test of the ability
of a cultivator, and the perfection of his processes, than
to measure to what extent they have lessened the one
and added to the other. And as all the farmers in the
world act upon this principle we may assert that the effort




EFFORT-RESULT


of mankind at large is to obtain, for their own benefit
undoubtedly, bread and all other products cheaper, to
lessen the labour needed to procure a given quantity of
what they want.
this incontestable tendency of mankind once established should, it would seem, reveal to the legislator the
true principle, and point out to him in what way he
should aid industry (in as far as it falls within his
province to aid it); for it would be absurd to assert
that human laws should run counter to the laws of
Providence.
And yet we have heard M. Bugeaud, as a deputy,
exclaim: "I understand nothing of this theory of cheapness; I should like better to see bread dearer and labour
more abundant." And following out this doctrine, the
deputy of the Dordogne votes legislative measures, the
effect of which is to hamper exchanges, for the very
reason that they procure us indirectly what direct production could not procure us but at greater expense.
Now, it is very evident that M. Bugeaud's principle
as a deputy is directly opposed to the principle on which
he acts as an agriculturist. To act consistently he should
vote against all legislative restriction, or else import into
his farming operations the principle which he proclaims
from the tribune.  We should then see him sow his
corn in his most sterile fields, for in this way he would
succeed in working much to obtain little. We should
see him throwing aside the plough, since hand-culture
would satisfy his double wish for dearer bread and more
abundant labour.
Restriction has for its avowed object, and its acknowledged effect, to increase labour.
It has also for its avowed object, and its acknowledged effect, to cause dearness, which means simply
scarcity of products; so that, carried out to its extreme




24


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


limits, it is pure sisyphism, such as we have defined itlabour infinite, product nil.
Baron Charles Dupin, the light of the peerage, it is
said, on economic science, accuses railways of injuring
navigation; and it is certain that it is of the nature of
a more perfect to restrict the use of a less perfect means
of conveyance.  But railways cannot hurt navigation
except by attracting traffic; and they cannot attract traffic
but by conveying goods and passengers more cheaply;
and they cannot convey them more cheaply but by
diminishing the proportion which the effort employed
bears to the result obtained, seeing that that is the very
thing which constitutes cheapness. When, then, Baron
Dupin deplores this diminution of the labour employed
to effect a given result, it is the doctrine of sisyphism
which he preaches. Logically, since he prefers the ship
to the rail, he should prefer the cart to the ship, the
pack-saddle to the cart, and the pannier to all other
known means of conveyance, for it is the latter which
exacts the most labour with the least result.
"Labour constitutes the wealth of a people," said
M. de Saint-Cricq, that Minister of Commerce who has
imposed so many restrictions upon trade. We must not
suppose that this was an elliptical expression, meaning,
"The results of labour constitute the wealth of a people."
No, this economist distinctly intended to affirm that it
is the intensity of labour which is the measure of wealth,
and the proof of it is that, from consequence to consequence, from one restriction to another, he induced France
(and in this he thought he was doing her good) to
expend double the amount of labour, in order, for example, to provide herself with an equal quantity of iron.
In England iron was then at eight francs, while in France
it cost sixteen francs.  Taking a day's labour at one
franc, it is clear that France could, by means of exchange,




EFFORT-RESULT


25


procure a quintal of iron by subtracting eight days'
work from the aggregate national labour. In consequence
of the restrictive measures of M. de Saint-Cricq, France
was obliged to expend sixteen days' labour in order to
provide herself with a quintal of iron by direct production.
Double the labour for the same satisfaction, hence double
the wealth. Then it follows that wealth is not measured
by the result, but by the intensity of the labour. Is not
this sisyphism in all its purity?
And in order that there may be no mistake as to his
meaning, the Minister takes care afterwards to explain
more fully his ideas; and as he had just before called
the intensity of labour wealth, he goes on to call the
more abundant results of that labour, or the more
abundant supply of things proper to satisfy our wants,
pove'rty. "Everywhere," he says, "machinery has taken
the place of manual labour; everywhere production superabounds; everywhere the equilibrium between the faculty
of producing and the means of consuming is destroyed."
We see, then, to what, in M. de Saint-Cricq's estimation,
the critical situation of the country was owing: it was
to having produced too much, and her labour being too
intelligent, and too fruitful. We were too well fed, too
well clothed, too well provided with everything; a too
rapid production surpassed all our desires.  It was
necessary, then, to put a stop to the evil, and for that
purpose to force us, by restrictions, to labour more in
order to produce less.
I have referred likewise to the opinions of another
Minister of Commerce, M. d'Argout. They deserve to
be dwelt upon for an instant. Desiring to strike a formidable blow at beet-root culture, he says, "Undoubtedly,
the cultivation of beet-root is useful, but this utility is
limited. The developments attributed to it are -exaggerated. To be convinced of this it is sufficient to observe




26


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


that this culture will be necessarily confined within the
limits of consumption. Double, triple, if you will, the
present consumption of France, you will always find that
a very trifling portion of the soil will satisfy the requirements of that consumption."  (This is surely rather a
singular suLject of complaint ) "Do you desire proof
of this?  How many hectares' had we under beet-root
in I828?-3,130, which is equivalent to I-o1540th of our
arable land. At the present time, when indigenous sugar
supplies one-third of our consumption, how much land
is devoted to that culture?-16,700 hectares, or 1-1978th
of the arable land, or 45 centiares in each commune.
Suppose indigenous sugar already supplied our whole
consumption we should have only 48,000 hectares under
beet-root, or 1-689th of the arable land."
There are two things to be remarked upon in this
quotation-the facts and the doctrine. The facts tend to
prove that little land, little capital, and little labour are
required to produce a large quantity of sugar, and that
each commune of France would be abundantly provided
by devoting to beet-root cultivation one hectare of its
soil.  The doctrine consists in regarding this circumstance as adverse, and in seeing in the very power and
fertility of the new industry, a limit to its utility.
I do not mean to constitute myself here the defender
of beet-root culture, or a judge of the strange facts advanced by M. d'Argout; but it is worth while to scrutinise
the doctrine of a statesman to whom France for a long
time entrusted the care of her agriculture and of her
commerce.
I remarked at the outset that a variable relation exists
between an industrial effort and its result; that absolute
imperfection consists in an infinite effort without any
result; absolute perfection in an unlimited result without
1 Hectare = a acres, i rood, 35 perches.




EFFORT-RESULT


27


any effort; and perfectibility in the progressive diminution
of effort compared with the result.
But M. d'Argout tells us there is death where we
think we perceive life, and that the importance of any
branch of industry is in direct proportion to its powerlessness. What are we to expect, for instance, from the
cultivation of beet-root?  Do you not see that 48,ooo
hectares of land, with capital and manual labour in proportion, are sufficient to supply all France with sugar?
Then, this is a branch of industry of limited utility;
limited, of course, with reference to the amount of labour
which it demands, the only way in which, according to
the ex-Minister, any branch of industry can be useful.
This utility would be still more limited if, owing to the
fertility of the soil and the richness of the beet-root, we
could reap from 24,000 hectares what at present we only
obtain from 48,ooo.  Oh I were only twenty times, a
hundred times, more land, capital and labour necessary
to yield us the same result, so much the better.  We
might build some hopes on this new branch of industry,
and it would be worthy of state protection, for it would
offer a vast field to our national industry. But to produce
much with little I That is a bad example, and it is time
for the law to interfere.
But what is true with regard to sugar cannot be otherwise with regard to bread. If, then, the utility of any
branch of industry is to be estimated not by the amount
of satisfactions it is fitted to procure us with a determinate
amount of labour, but, on the contrary, by the amount of
labour which it exacts in order to yield us a determinate
amount of satisfactions, what we ought evidently to desire
is, that each acre of land should yield less corn, and each
grain of corn less nourishment; in other words, that our
land should be comparatively barren; for then the quantity
of land, capital, and manual labour that would be required




28


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


for the maintenance of our population would be much
more considerable; we could then say that the demand for
human labour would be in direct proportion to this barrenness. The aspirations of MM. Bugeaud, Saint-Cricq,
Dupin, and d'Argout would then be satisfied; bread would
be dear, labour abundant, and France rich-rich at least
in the sense in which these gentlemen understand the word.
What we should desire also is, that human intelligence
should be enfeebled or extinguished; for, as long as it
survives, it will be continually endeavouring to augment
the proportion which the end bears to the means, and
which the product bears to the labour.  It is in that
precisely that intelligence consists.
Thus, it appears that sisyphism has beefi the doctrine
of all the men who have been entrusted with our industrial
destinies. It would be unfair to reproach them with it.
This principle guides Ministers only because it is predominant in the Chambers; and it predominates in the
Chambers only because it is sent there by the electoral
body, and the electoral body is imbued with it only because
public opinion is saturated with it.
I think it right to repeat here that I do not accuse men
such as MM. Bugeaud, Dupin, Saint-Cricq, and d'Argout
of being absolutely and under all circumstances sisyphists.
They are certainly not so in their private transactions; for
in these they always desire to obtain by way of exchange
what would cost them dearer to procure by direct production; but I affirm they are sisyphists when they hinder
the country from doing the same thing.'
1 See on the same subject, second series, ch. xii., and Harmonies
Economiques, ch. vi.




CHAPTER IV


TO EQUALISE THE CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION
IT has been said-but in case I should be accused of
putting fallacies into the mouths of the protectionists, I
shall allow one of their most vigorous athletes to speak
for them.
"It has been thought that protection in our case should
simply represent the difference which exists between the
cost price of a commodity which we produce and the cost
price of the same commodity produced by our neighbours.
*.. A protective duty calculated on this basis would
only ensure free competition...; free competition
exists only when there is equality in the conditions and in
the charges. In the case of a horse-race, we ascertain
the weight which each horse has to carry, and so equalise
the conditions; without that there could be no fair competition. In the case of trade, if one of the sellers can
bring his commodity to market at less cost, he ceases to
be a competitor, and becomes a monopolist.... Do
away with this protection which represents the difference
of cost price, and the foreigner invades our markets and
acquires a monopoly." 1
"Everyone must wish, for his own sake, as well as for
the sake of others, that the production of the country
should be protected against foreign competition, whenever the latter can furnish products at a lower price." 2
This argument recurs continually in works of the protectionist school. I propose to examine it carefully, and I
M. le Vicomte de Romanet.   2 Matthieu de Dombasle.
29




30


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


solicit earnestly the reader's patience and attention.  I
shall consider, first of all, the inequalities which are attributable to nature, and afterwards those which are
attributable to diversity of taxation.
In this, as in other cases, we shall find protectionist
theorists viewing their subject from the producer's standpoint, whilst we advocate the cause of the unfortunate
consumers, whose interests they studiously keep out of
sight. They institute a comparison between the field of
industry and the turf. But as regards the latter, the race
is at once the means and the end. The public feel no
interest in the competition beyond the competition itself.
When you start your horses, your end, your object, is
to find out which is the swiftest runner, and I see your
reason for equalising the weights. But if your end, your
object, were to secure the arrival of some important and
urgent news at the winning-post, could you, without inconsistency, throw obstacles in the way of anyone who should
offer you the best means of expediting your message?
This is what you do in commercial affairs. You forget
the end, the object sought to be attained, which is material
prosperity; you disregard it, you sacrifice it to a veritable
petitio principii; in plain language, you are begging the
question.
But since we cannot bring our opponents to our point
of view, let us place ourselves in theirs, and examine the
question in its relations with production.
I shall endeavour to prove
ist.-That to level and equalise the conditions of labour
is to attack exchange in its essence and principle.
2nd —That it is not true that the labour of a country
is neutralised by the competition of more favoured
countries.
3rd.-That if that were true, protective duties would not
equalise the conditions of production.




CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION


31


4th.-That liberty, freedom of trade, levels these conditions as much as they can be levelled.
5th.-That the least favoured countries gain most by
exchange.
I. To level and equalise the conditions of labour is not
simply to restrict exchanges in certain branches of trade,
it is to attack exchange in its principle, for its principle
rests upon that very diversity, upon those very inequalities
of fertility, aptitude, climate, and temperature, which you
desire to efface. If Guienne sends wine to Brittany, and
if Brittany sends corn to Guienne, it arises from their
being placed under different conditions of production. Is
there a different law for international exchanges?  To
urge against international exchanges that inequality of
conditions which gives rise to them, and explains them,
is to argue against their very existence. If protectionists
had on their side sufficient logic and power, they would
reduce men, like snails, to a state of absolute isolation.
Moreover, there is not one of their fallacies which, when
submitted to the test of rigorous deductions, does not
obviously tend to destruction and annihilation
II. It is not true, in point of fact, that inequality of
conditions existing between two similar branches of industry entails necessarily the ruin of that which is least
favourably situated. On the turf, if one horse gains the
prize, the other loses it; but when two horses are employed
in useful labour, each produces a beneficial result in proportion to its powers; and if the more vigorous renders
the greater service, it does not follow that the other
renders no service at all. We cultivate wheat in all the
departments of France, although there are between them
enormous differences of fertility; and if there Se any one
department which does not cultivate wheat, it is because it
is not profitable to engage in that species of culture in that




32


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


locality. In the same way, analogy shows us that under
the regime of liberty, in spite of similar differences, they
produce wheat in all the countries of Europe; and if there
be one which abandons the cultivation of that grain, it is
because it is found more for its interest to give another
direction to the employment of its land, labour, and capital.
And why should the fertility of one department not paralyse the agriculturist of a neighbouring department which
is less favourably situated?   Because the economic
phenomena have a flexibility, an elasticity, levelling
powers, so to speak, which appear to have altogether
escaped the notice of the protectionist school. That school
accuses us of being given up to system; but it is the protectionists who are systematic in the last degree, if the
spirit of system consists in bolstering up arguments which
rest upon one fact instead of upon an aggregation of facts.
In the example which I have given, it is the difference in
the value of lands which compensates the difference in their
fertility. Your field produces three times more than mine.
Yes, but it has cost you ten times more, and I can still
compete with you. This is the whole mystery. And observe that superiority in some respects leads to inferiority
in others. It is just because your land is more fertile that
it is dearer; so that it is not accidentally, but necessarily,
that the equilibrium is established, or tends to be established; and it cannot be denied that liberty is the system
which is most favourable to this tendency.
I have referred to a branch of agricultural industry;
I might as well have referred to industry in a different
department. There are tailors at Quimper, and that does
not hinder there being tailors also in Paris, though the
latter pay a higher rent, and live at much greater expense.
But then they have a different set of customers, and that
serves not only to redress the balance, but to make it
incline to their side.




CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION


33


When we speak, then, of equalising the conditions of
labour, we must not omit to examine whether liberty does
not give us what we seek from an arbitrary system.
This natural levelling power of the economic phenomena is so important to the question we are considering,
and at the same time so fitted to inspire us with admiration of the providential wisdom which presides over the
equitable government of society, that I must ask permission to dwell upon it for a little.
The protectionist gentlemen tell us: Such or such a
people have an advantage over us in the cheapness of
coal, of iron, of machinery, of capital-we cannot compete
with them.
We shall examine the proposition afterwards under all
its aspects. At present, I confine myself to the inquiry
whether, when a superiority and an inferiority are both
present, they do not possess in themselves, the one an
ascending, the other a descending force, which must
ultimately bring them back to a just equilibrium.
Suppose two countries, A and B. A possesses over B
all kinds of advantages. You infer from this that every
sort of industry will concentrate itself in A, and that B is
powerless. A, you say, sells much more than it buys;
B buys much more than it sells. I might dispute this, but
I accept your hypothesis.
On this hypothesis, labour is much in demand in A,
and will soon rise in price there.
Iron, coal, land, food, capital are much in demand in
A, and they will soon rise in price there.
Contemporaneously with this, labour, iron, coal, land,
food, capital are in little request in B, and will soon fall
in price there.
Nor is this all. While A is always selling, and B is
always buying, money passes from B to A. It becomes
abundant in A, and scarce in B.
D




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


But abundance of money means that we must have
plenty of it to buy everything else. Then in A, to the real
dearness which arises from a very active demand, there is
added a nominal dearness, which is due to a redundancy
of the precious metals.
Scarcity of money means that little is required for each
purchase. Then in B a nominal cheapness comes to be
combined with real cheapness.
In these circumstances, industry will have all sorts of
motives-motives, if I may say so, carried to the highest
degree of intensity-to desert A and establish itself in B.
Or, to come nearer what would actually take place
under such circumstances, we may affirm that sudden
displacements being so repugnant to the nature of industry, such a transfer would not have been so long
delayed, but that from the beginning, under the free
system, it would have gradually and progressively shared
and distributed itself between A and B, according to the
laws of supply and demand-that is to say, according to
the laws of justice and utility.
And when I assert that if it were possible for industry
to concentrate itself upon one point, that very circumstance
would set in motion an irresistible decentralising force, I
indulge in no idle hypothesis.
Let us listen to what was said by a manufacturer in
addressing the Manchester Chamber of Commerce (I omit
the figures by which he supported his demonstration):
"Formerly we exported stuffs; then that exportation
gave place to that of yarns, which are the raw material of
stuffs; then to that of machines, which are the instruments
for producing yarn; afterwards to the exportation of the
capital with which we construct our machines; finally, to
that of our workmen and our industrial skill, which are
the source of our capital. All these elements of labour,
one after the other, are set to work wherever they find the




CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION


35


most advantageous opening, wherever the expense of
living is cheaper and the necessaries of life are most easily
procured; and at the present day, in Prussia, in Austria,
in Saxony, in Switzerland, in Italy, we see manufactures
on an immense scale founded and supported by English
capital, worked by English operatives, and directed by
English engineers."
You see very clearly, then, that nature, or rather that
Providence, more wise, more far-seeing than your narrow
and rigid theory supposes, has not ordered this concentration of industry, this monopoly of all advantages upon
which you found your reasoning as upon a fact which is
unalterable and without remedy. Nature has provided,
by means as simple as they are infallible, that there should
be dispersion, diffusion, solidarity, simultaneous progress;
all constituting a state of things which your restrictive
laws paralyse as much as they can; for the tendency of
such laws is, by isolating communities, to render the
diversity of condition much more marked, to prevent
equalisation, hinder fusion, neutralise countervailing circumstances, and segregate nations, whether in their superiority or in their inferiority of condition.
III. In the third place, to contend that by a protective
duty you equalise the conditions of production, is to give
currency to an error by a deceptive form of speech. It is
not true that an import duty equalises the conditions of
production. These remain, after the imposition of the
duty, the same as they were before. At most, all that such
a duty equalises are the conditions of sale. It may be
said, perhaps, that I am playing upon words, but I throw
back theaccusation. It is for my opponents to show that
production and sale are synonymous terms; and if they
cannot do this, I am warranted in fastening upon them
the reproach, if not of playing on words, at least of mixing
them up and confusing them.




36


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


To illustrate what I mean by an example: I suppose
some Parisian speculators to devote themselves to the
production of oranges. They know that the oranges of
Portugal can be sold in Paris for a penny apiece, whilst
they, on account of the frames and hot-houses which the
colder climate would render necessary, could not sell them
for less than a shilling as a remunerative price. They
demand that Portuguese oranges should have a duty of
elevenpence imposed upon them. By means of this duty,
they say, the conditions of production will be equalised;
and the Chamber, giving effect, as it always does, to such
reasoning, inserts in the tariff a duty of elevenpence upon
every foreign orange.
Now, I maintain that the conditions of production are
in nowise changed. The law has made no change on the
heat of the sun of Lisbon, or on the frequency and intensity of the frosts of Paris. The ripening of oranges will
continue to go on naturally on the banks of the Tagus,
and artificially on the banks of the Seine-that is to say,
much more human labour will be required in the one
country than in the other. The conditions of sale are what
have been equalised. The Portuguese must now sell us
their oranges at a shilling, elevenpence of which goes to
pay the tax. That tax will be paid, it is evident, by the
French consumer. And look at the whimsical result.
Upon each Portuguese orange consumed, the country will
lose nothing, for the extra elevenpence charged to the
consumer will be paid into the treasury. This will cause
displacement, but not loss. But upon each French orange
consumed there will be a loss of elevenpence, or nearly so,
for the purchaser will certainly lose that sum, and the seller
as certainly will not gain it, seeing that by the hypothesis
he will only have received the cost price. I leave it to
the protectionists to draw the inference.
IV, If I have dwelt upon this distinction between the




CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION


37


conditions of production and the conditions of sale, a
distinction which the protectionists will no doubt pronounce paradoxical, it is because it leads me to inflict on
them another, and a much stranger, paradox, which is
this: Would you equalise effectually the conditions of
production, leave exchange free?
Now, really, it will be said, this is too much; you
must be making game of us. Well, then, were it only for
curiosity, I entreat the gentlemen protectionists to follow
me on to the conclusion of my argument. It will not
be long. I revert to my former illustration.
Let us suppose for a moment that the average daily
wage which a Frenchman earns is equal to a shilling,
and it follows incontestably that to produce an orange
in France, a day's work, or its equivalent, is required;
while to produce the value of a Portuguese orange
only a twelfth of that day's labour would be necessary;
which means exactly this, that the sun does at Lisbon what
human labour does at Paris. Now, is it not very evident
that if I can produce an orange, or, what comes to the
same thing, the means of purchasing one, with a twelfth
part of a day's labour, I am placed, with respect to this
production, under exactly the same conditions as the
Portuguese producer himself, excepting the carriage, which
must be at my expense. It is certain, then, that liberty
equalises the conditions of production direct or indirect,
as far as they can be equalised, since it leaves no other
difference, but the inevitable one arising from the expense
of transport.
I add, that liberty equalises also the conditions of
enjoyment, of satisfaction, of consumption, with which
the Protectionists never concern themselves, and which
are yet the essential consideration, consumption being
the end and object of all our industrial efforts. In virtue
of Free Trade we enjoy the sun of Portugal like the




38


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


Portuguese themselves.  The inhabitants of Havre and
the citizens of London are put in possession, and on the
same conditions, of all the mineral resources which nature
has bestowed on Newcastle.
V. Gentlemen protectionists, you find me in -a paradoxical humour; and I am disposed to go further still.
I say, and I sincerely think, that if two countries are
placed under unequal conditions of production, it is that
one of the two which is least favoured by nature which
has most to gain by Free Trade. To prove this, I must
depart a little from the usual form of such a work as
this. I shall do so nevertheless, first of all, because the
entire question lies there, and also because it will afford
me an opportunity of explaining an economic law of the
highest importance, and which, if rightly understood,
appears to me to be fitted to bring back to the science
all those sects who in our day seek in the land of
chimeras that social harmony which they fail to discover
in nature. I refer to the law of consumption, which it
is perhaps to be regretted that the majority of economists
have neglected.
Consumption is the end and final cause of all the
economic phenomena, and it is in consumption consequently that we must expect to find their ultimate and
definitive solution.
Nothing, whether favourable or unfavourable, can
abide permanently with the producer. The advantages
which nature and society bestow upon him, the inconveniences he may experience, glide past him, so to speak,
and are absorbed and mixed up with the community in
as far as the community represents consumers. This is
an admirable law both in its cause and in its effects, and
he who shall succeed in clearly describing it is entitled,
in my opinion, to say, "I have not passed through life
without paying my tribute to society."




CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION


39


Everything which favours the work of production is
welcomed with joy by the producer, for the immediate
effect of it is to put him in a situation to render greater
service to the community, and to exact from it a greater
remuneration. Every circumstance which retards or interrupts production gives pain to the producer, for the
immediate effect of it is to circumscribe his services, and
consequently his remuneration. Immediate good or ill
circumstances-fortunate or unfortunate-necessarily fall
upon the producer, and leave him no choice Sut to accept
the one and eschew the other
In the same way, when a workman succeeds in discovering an improved process in manufactures, the immediate profit from the improvement results to him. This
was necessary in order to give his labour an intelligent
direction; and it is just, because it is fair that an effort
crowned with success should carry its recompense along
with it.
But I maintain that these good or bad effects, though
in their own nature permanent, are not permanent as
regards the producer. If it had been so, a principle of
progressive, and therefore of indefinite, inequality would
have been introduced among men, and this is the reason
why these good or evil effects become very soon absorbed
in the general destinies of the human race
How is this brought about?   I shall show how it
takes place by some examples.
Let us go back to the thirteenth century. The men
who then devoted themselves to the art of copying received for the service which they rendered a remuneration
regulated by the general rate of profits. Among them
there arose one who discovered the means of multiplying
copies of the same work rapidly. He invented printing.
In the first instance, one man was enriched, and many
others were impoverished. At first sight, marvellous as




40


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


the invention proves itself to be, we hesitate to decide
whether it is hurtful or useful.  It seems to introduce
into the world, as I have said, an indefinite element of
inequality.  Gutenberg profits by his invention, and
extends his invention with its profits indefinitely, until
he has ruined all the copyists. As regards the public,
in the capacity of consumer, it gains little; for Gutenberg
takes care to, lower the price of his books only just enough
to undersell his rivals.
But the intelligence which has introduced harmony
into the movements of the heavenly bodies has implanted
it also in the internal mechanism of society. We shall
see the economic advantages of the invention when it
has ceased to be individual property, and has become for
ever the common patrimony of the masses.
At length the invention comes to be known. Gutenberg is no longer the only printer; others imitate him.
Their profits at first are large. They are thus rewarded
for having been the first to imitate the invention; and it
is right that it should be so, for this higher remuneration
was necessary to induce them to concur in the grand
definite result which is approaching. They gain a great
deal, but they gain less than the inventor, for competition
now begins its work. The price of books goes on falling.
The profit of imitators goes on diminishing in proportion
as the invention becomes of older date; that is to say, in
proportion as the imitation becomes less meritorious....
The new branch of industry at length reaches its normal
state; in other words, the remuneration of printers ceases
to be exceptionally high, and comes, like that of the
copyist, to be regulated by the ordinary rate of profits.
Here we have production, as such, brought Back to the
point from which it started. And yet the invention is
not the less an'acquisition; the saving of time, of labour,
of effort to produce a given result, that is, to produce a




CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION


41


determinate number of copies is none the less realised.
But how does it show itself? In the cheapness of books.
And to whose profit?  To the profit of the consumer,
of society, of the human race. The printers, who have
thenceforth no exceptional merit, no longer receive exceptional remuneration.  As men, as consumers, they
undoubtedly participate in the advantages which the
invention has conferred upon the community. But that
is all. As printers, as producers, they have returned to
the ordinary condition of the other producers of the
country. Society pays them for their labour, and not for
the utility of the invention. The latter has become the
common and free heritage of mankind at large.
I confess that the wisdom and the beauty of these
laws call forth my admiration and respect. I see in them
Saint-Simonianism: To each according to his capacity;
to each capacity according to its works. I see in them
communism; that is, the tendency of products to become
the common heritage of men; but a Saint-Simonianism,
a communism, regulated by infinite prescience, and not
abandoned to the frailties, the passions, and the arbitrary
will of men.
What I have said of the art of printing may be
affirired of all the instruments of labour, from the nail
and the hammer to the locomotive and the electric telegraph.  Society becomes possessed of all through its
more abundant consumption, and it enjoys all freely,
for the effect of inventions and discoveries is to reduce
the price of commodities; and all that part of the price
which has been annihilated, and which represents the
share invention has in production evidently renders
the product free to that extent.  All that remains to
be paid for is the human labour, the immediate labour,
and it is paid for without reference to the result of the
invention, at least when that invention has passed through




42


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


the cycle I have just described-the cycle which it is
designed to pass through. I send for a workman to my
house; he comes and brings his saw with him. I pay
him two shillings for his day's work, and he saws me
twenty-five boards. Had the saw not been invented, he
would probably not have been able to furnish me with
one, and I should have had to pay him the same wages
for his day's work. The utility produced by the saw is
then, as far as I am concerned, a gratuitous gift of
nature, or, rather, it is a part of that inheritance which,
in common with all my brethren, I have received from
my ancestors. I have two workmen in my field. The
one handles the plough, the other the spade. The result
of their labour is very different, but the day's wages
are the same, because the remuneration is not proportioned to the utility produced, but to the effort, the
labour, which is exacted.
I entreat the reader's patience, and beg him to believe
that I have not lost sight of Free Trade. Let him only
have the goodness to remember the conclusion at which
I have arrived: Remuneration is not in proportion to
the utilities which the producer brings to market, but to
his labour.1
I have drawn my illustrations as yet from human
inventions. Let us now turn our attention to natural
advantages.
In every branch of production nature and man concur.
But the portion of utility which nature contributes is
always gratuitous. It is only the portion of utility which
human labour contributes which forms the subject of
exchange, and, consequently, of remuneration.      The
latter varies, no doubt, very much in proportion to the
I It is true that labour does not receive a uniform remuneration. It
may be more or less intense, dangerous, skilled, etc. Competition settles
the usual or current price in each department-and this is the fluctuating
price of which I speak.




CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION


43


intensity of the labour, its skill, its promptitude, its
suitableness, the need there is of it, the temporary absence
of rivalry, etc. But it is not the less true, in principle,
that the concurrence of natural laws, which are common
to all, counts for nothing in the price of the product.
We do not pay for the air we breathe, although it
is so useful to us that, without it, we could not live two
minutes.  We do not pay for it, nevertheless, because
nature furnishes it to us without the aid of human labour.
But if, for example, we should desire to separate one of
the gases of which it is composed, to make an experiment,
we must make an exertion; or if we wish another to
make that exertion for us we must sacrifice for that other
an equivalent amount of exertion, although we may have
embodied it in another product.  Whence we see that
pains, efforts, and exertions are the real subjects of
exchange. It is not, indeed, the oxygen gas that I pay
for, since it is at my disposal everywhere, but the labour
necessary to disengage it, labour which has been saved
me, and which must be recompensed.   Will it be said
that there is something else to be paid for, materials,
apparatus, etc.?  Still, in paying for these I pay for
labour.  The price of the coal employed, for example,
represents the labour necessary to extract it from the
mine and to transport it to the place where it is to
be used.
We do not pay for the light of the sun, because it
is a gift of nature. But we pay for gas, tallow, oil, wax,
because there is here human labour to be remunerated;
and it will be remarked that,.in this case, the remuneration
is proportioned, not to the utility produced, but to the
labour employed, so much so, that it may happen that
one of these kinds of artificial light, though more intense,
costs us less, and for this reason that the same amount
of human labour affords us more of it.




44


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


Were the porter who carries water to my house to
be paid in proportion to the absolute utility of water,
my whole fortune would be insufficient to remunerate
him.   But I pay him in proportion to the exertion he
makes. If he charges more, others will do the work, or,
if 'necessary, I will do it myself.  Water, in truth, is
not the subject of our bargain, but the labour of carrying
it.  This view of the matter is so important, and the
conclusions which I am about to deduce from it throw
so much light on the question of the freedom of international exchanges, that I deem it necessary to elucidate
it by other examples.
The alimentary substance contained in potatoes is not
very costly, because we can obtain a large amount of it
with comparatively little labour. We pay more for wheat,
because the production of it costs a greater amount of
human labour   It is evident that if nature did for the
one what it does for the other, the price of both would
tend to equality.  It is impossible that the producer of
wheat should permanently gain much more than the
producer of potatoes. The law of competition would
prevent it.
If by happy miracle the fertility of all arable lands
should come to be augmented, it would not be the
agriculturist but the consumer who would reap advantage
from that phenomenon, for it would resolve itself into
abundance and cheapness.  There would be less labour
incorporated in each quarter of corn, and the cultivator
could exchange it only for a smaller amount of labour
worked up in some other product. If, on the other hand,
the fertility of the soil came all at once to be diminished,
nature's part in the process of production would be less,
that of human labour would be greater, and the product
dearer.  I am, then, warranted in saying that it is in
consumption, in the human element, that all the economic




CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION


45


phenomena come ultimately to resolve themselves. The
man who has failed to regard them in this light, to
follow them out to their ultimate effects, without stopping
short at immediate results, and viewing them from the
producer's standpoint, can no more be regarded as an
economist than the man who should prescribe a draught,
and, instead of watching its effect on the entire system
of the patient, should inquire only how it affected the
mouth and throat, could be regarded as a physician.
Tropical regions are very favourably situated for the
production of sugar and of coffee. This means that nature
does a great part of the work, and leaves little for human
labour to do.  But who reaps the advantage of this
liberality of nature?  Not the producing countries, for
competition causes the price barely to remunerate the
labour. It is the human race that reaps the benefit, for
the result of nature's liberality is cheapness, and cheap..
ness benefits everybody
Suppose a temperate region where coal and iron-ore
are found on the surface of the ground, where one has
only to stoop down to get them.  That, in the first
instance, the inhabitants would profit by this happy
circumstance I allow.  But competition would soon intervene, and the price of coal and iron-ore would go on
falling, till the gift of nature became free to all, and then
the human labour employed would be alone remunerated
according to the general rate of earnings.
Thus, the liberality of nature, like improvements in
the processes of production, is, or continually tends to
become, under the law of competition, the common and
gratuitous patrimony of consumers, of the masses, of
mankind in general. Then, the countries which do not
possess these advantages have everything to gain by
exchanging their products with those countries which
possess them, because the subject of exchange is labour,




46


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


apart from the consideration of the natural utilities worked
up with that labour; and the countries which have incorporated in a given amount of their labour the greatest
amount of these natural utilities, are evidently the most
favoured countries. Their products, which represent the
least amount of human labour, are the least profitable;
in other words, they are cheaper; and if the whole
liberality of nature resolves itself into cheapness, it is
evidently not the producing but the consuming country
which reaps the benefit.
Hence we see the enormous absurdity of consuming
countries which reject products for the very reason that
they are cheap. It is as if they said, "We want nothing
that nature gives us. You ask me for an effort equal to
two in exchange for a product which I cannot create
without an effort equal to four; you can make that effort,
because in your case nature does half the work. Be it
so, I reject your offer, and I shall wait until your
climate, having become more inclement, will force you
to demand from me an effort equal to four, in order that
I may treat with you on a footing of equality."
A is a favoured country. B is a country to which
nature has been less bountiful.  I maintain that exchange benefits both, but benefits B especially; because
exchange is not an exchange of utilities for utilities, but
of value for value. Now A includes a greater amount of
utility in the same value, seeing that the utility of a
product includes what nature has put there as well as
what labour has put there; whilst value includes only
what labour has put there  Then B makes quite an
advantageous bargain.  In recompensing the producer
of A for his labour only it receives into the bargain a
greater amount of natural utility than it has given.
This enables us to lay down the general rule:
Exchange is a barter of values; value under the action




CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION


47


of competition being made to represent labour, exchange
becomes a barter of equal labour.  What nature has
imparted to the products exchanged is on both sides
given gratuitously and into the bargain; whence it follows
necessarily that exchanges effected with countries the
most favoured by nature are the most advantageous.
The theory of which in this chapter I have endeavoured
to trace the outlines would require great developments.
I have glanced at it only in as far as it bears upon my
subject of Free Trade. But perhaps the attentive reader
may have perceived in it the fertile germ which in the
rankness of its maturity will not only smother Protection,
but along with it Fourierisme, Saint-Simonianisme, Communisme, and all those schools whose object it is to
exclude from the government of the world the law of
COMPETITION.  Regarded from the producer's point of
view, competition -no doubt frequently clashes with our
immediate and individual interests; but if we change our
point of view and extend our regards to industry in
general, to universal prosperity-in a word, to consumption-we shall find that competition in the moral world
plays the same part which equilibrium does in the material
world. It lies at the root of true communism, of true
socialism, of that equality of conditions and of happiness
so much desired in our day; and if so many sincere
publicists and well-meaning reformers seek after the
arbitrary, it is for this reason-that they do -not understand liberty.




CHAPTER V


OUR PRODUCTS ARE BURDENED WITH TAXES
WE have' here, again, the same fallacy. We demand
that foreign products should be taxed to neutralise the
effect of the taxes which weigh upon our national pro.
ducts. The object, then, still is to equalise the conditions
of production. We have only a word to say, and it is
this: That the tax is an artificial obstacle which produces
exactly the same result as a natural obstacle, its effect
is to enhance prices. If this enhancement reach a point
which makes it a greater loss to create the product for
ourselves than to pr6cure it from abroad by producing
a counter value, let well alone.  Of two evils, private
interest will do well to choose the least.  I might then
simply refer the reader to the preceding demonstration;
but the fallacy which we have here to combat recurs so
frequently in the lamentations and demands-I might say
in the challenges-of the protectionist school as to merit
a special discussion.
If the question relate to one of those exceptional taxes
which are imposed on certain products, I grant readily
that it is reasonable to impose the same duty on the
foreign product.  For example, it would be absurd to
exempt foreign salt from duty; not that, in an economical
point of view, France would lose anything by doing so,
but the reverse. Let them say what they will, principles
are always the same; and France would gain by the
exemption as she must always gain by removing a natural
or artificial obstacle.  But in this instance the obstacle
has been interposed for purposes of revenue. These pur48




THE BURDEN OF TAXES


49


poses must be attained; and were foreign salt sold in
our market duty free, the Treasury would lose its hundred
millions of francs (four millions sterling), and must raise
that sum from some other source. There would be an
obvious inconsistency in creating an obstacle, and failing
in the object.  It might have been beiter to have had
recourse at first to another tax than that upon French
salt. But I admit that there are certain circumstances
in which a tax may be laid on foreign commodities, provided it is not protective, but fiscal.
But to pretend that a nation, because she is subjected to heavier taxes than her neighbours, should
protect herself by tariffs against the competition of her
rivals, in this is a fallacy, and it is this fallacy which
I intend to attack.
I have said more than once that I propose only to
explain the theory, and lay open, as far as possible, the
sources of protectionist errors. Had I intended to raise
a controversy, I should have asked the protectionists
why they direct their tariffs chiefly against England and
Belgium, the most heavily taxed countries in the world?
Am I not warranted in regarding their argument only
as a pretext? But I am *not one of those who believe
that men are prohibitionists from self-interest, and not
from  conviction.  The doctrine of protection  is too
popular not to be sincere. If the majority had faith in
liberty, we should be free. Undoubtedly it is self-interest
which makes our tariffs so heavy; but conviction is at
the root of it. "The will," says Pascal, "is one of the
principal organs of belief." But the belief exists nevertheless, although it has its root in the will, and in the
insidious suggestions of selfishness.
Let us revert to the fallacy founded on taxation.
The State may make a good or a bad use of the taxes
which it levies. When it renders to the public services
E




50


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


which are equivalent to the value it receives, it makes a
good use of them. And when it dissipates its revenues
without giving any service in return, it makes a bad use
of them.
In the first case, to affirm that the taxes place the
country which pays them under conditions of production
more unfavourable than those of a country which is
exempt from them, is a fallacy. We pay twenty millions
of francs for justice and police; but then we have them,
with the security they afford us, and the time which they
save us; and it is very probable that production is neither
more easy nor more active in those countries, if there are
any such, where the people take the business of justice
and police into their own hands. We pay many hundreds
of millions of francs for roads, bridges, harbours, and
railways. Granted; but then we have the benefit of these
roads, bridges, harbours, and railways; and whether we
make a good or a bad bargain in constructing them, it
cannot be said that they render us inferior to other nations,
who do. not indeed support a budget of public works, but
who have no public works. And this explains why, whilst
accusing taxation of being a cause of industrial inferiority,
we direct our tariffs especially against those countries
which are the most heavily taxed. Their taxes, well employed, far from deteriorating, have ameliorated, the conditions of production in these countries.  Thus we are
continually arriving at the conclusion that protectionist
fallacies are not only not true, but are the very reverse
of true.1
If taxes are unproductive, suppress them, if you can;
but assuredly the strangest mode of neutralising their effect
is to add individual to public taxes. Fine compensation
truly I You tell us that the State taxes are too much; and
you give that as a reason why we should tax one another I
1 See Harmonies Economiques, ch. xvii. —FRENH EDITOR.




THE BURDEN OF TAXES       5


51


A protective duty is a tax directed against a foreign
product; but we must never forget that it falls back on the
home consumer. Now the consumer is the tax-payer.
The agreeable language you address to him is this: " Because your taxes are heavy, we raise the price of everything you buy; because the State lays hold of one part
of your income, we hand over another to the monopolist."
But let us penetrate a little deeper into this fallacy
which is in such repute with our legislators, although the
extraordinary thing is that it is just the very people who
maintain unproductive taxes who attribute to them our
industrial inferiority, and in that inferiority find an excuse
for imposing other taxes and restrictions.
It appears evident to me that the nature and effects of
protection would not be changed, were the State to levy
a direct tax and distribute the money afterwards in
premiums and indemnities to the privileged branches of
industry.
Suppose that while foreign iron cannot be sold in our
market below eight francs, French iron cannot be sold for
less than twelve francs.
On this hypothesis, there are two modes in which the
State can secure the home market to the producer.
The first mode is to lay a duty of five francs on foreign
iron. It is evident that that duty would exclude it, since
it could no longer be sold under thirteen francs, namely,
eight francs for the cost price and five francs for the tax,
and at that price it would be driven out of the market by
French iron, the price of which we suppose to be only
twelve francs. In this case, the purchaser, the consumer,
would be at the whole cost of the protection.
Or again, the State might levy a tax of five francs from
the public, and give the proceeds as a premium to the 'ironmaster. The protective effect would be the same. Foreign
iron would in this case be equally excluded; for our iron



FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


master can now sell his iron at seven francs, which, with
the five francs premium, would make up to him the
remunerative price of twelve francs.  But with home
iron at seven francs, the foreigner could not sell his
for eight, which by the supposition is his lowest remunerative price.
Between these two modes of going to work, I can
see only one difference. The principle is the same; the
effect is the same; but in the one, certain individuals pay
the price of protection; in the other, it is paid for by the
nation at large.
I frankly avow my predilection for the second mode.
It appears to me more just, more economical, and more
honourable; more just, because if society desires to give
largesses to some of its members, all should contribute;
more economical, because it would save much expense in
collecting, and get us rid of many restrictions; more
honourable, because the public would then see clearly the
nature of the operation, and act accordingly.
But if the protectionist system had taken this form, it
would have been laughable to hear men say: "We pay
heavy taxes for the army, for the navy, for the administration of justice, for public works, for the university, the
public debt, etc.-in all exceeding a milliard (14o,ooo,ooo
sterling). For this reason, the State should take another
milliard from us to relieve these poor ironmasters, these
poor shareholders in the coal-mines of Anzin, these unfortunate proprietors of forests, these useful men who
supply us with cod-fish."
Look at the subject closely, and you will be satisfied
that this is the true meaning and effect of the fallacy we
are combating. It is all in vain; you cannot give money
to some members of the community but by taking it from
others. If you desire to ruin the tax-payer, you may do
so. But at least do not banter him by saying: "In order




THE BURDEN OF TAXES


53


to compensate your losses, I take from you again as much
as I have taken from you already."
To expose fully all that is false in this fallacy would
be an endless work.  I shall confine myself to three
observations.
You assert that the country is overburdened with taxes,
and on this fact you found an argument for the protection
of certain branches of industry. But we have to pay these
taxes in spite of protection. If, then, a particular branch
of industry presents itself, and says, "I share in the payment of taxes; that raises the cost price of my products,
and I demand that a protecting duty should also raise their
selling price," what does such a demand amount to? It
amounts simply to this, that the tax should be thrown over
on the rest of the community. The object sought for is
to be reimbursed the amount of the tax by a rise of prices.
But as the Treasury requires to have the full amount of
all the taxes, and as the masses have to pay the higher
price, it follows that they have to bear not only their own
share of taxation but that of the particular branch of industry which is protected. But we mean to protect everybody, you will say.  I answer, in the first place, that
that is impossible; and, in the next place, that if it were
possible, there would be no relief. I would pay for you,
and you would pay for me; but the tax must be paid
all the same.
You are thus the dupes of an illusion. You wish in
the first instance to pay taxes in order that you may have
an army, a navy, a church, a university, judges, highways,
etc., and then you wish to free from taxation first one
branch of industry, then a second, then a third, always
throwing back the burden upon the masses. You do
nothing more than create interminable complications, without any other result than these complications themselves.
Show me that a rise of price caused by protection falls upon




54


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


the foreigner, and I could discover in your argument something specious. But if it be true that the public pays the
tax before your law, and that after the law is passed it
pays for protection and the tax into the bargain, truly
I cannot see what is gained by it.
But I go further, and maintain that the heavier our
taxes are, the more we should hasten to throw open our
ports and our frontiers to foreigners less heavily taxed
than ourselves. And why? In order to throw back upon
them a greater share of our burden. Is it not an incontestable axiom in political economy that taxes ultimately
fall on the consumer? The more, then, our exchanges are
multiplied, the more will foreign consumers reimburse us
for the taxes incorporated and worked up in the products
we sell them; whilst we in this respect will have to make
them a smaller restitution, seeing that their products,
according to our hypothesis, are less heavily burdened
than ours.
In fine, have you never asked yourselves whether these
heavy burdens on which you found your argument for a
prohibitory system are not caused by that very system?
If commerce were free, what use would you have for your
great standing armies and powerful navies?.. But
this belongs to the domain of politics.'
Et ne confondons pas, pour trop approfondir,
Leurs affaires avec les notres.
1 See Peace and Liberty, Bastiat's Collected Works, voL v., P. 407.FRENCH EDITOR.




CHAPTER VI


BALANCE OF TRADE
OUR adversaries have adopted tactics which are rather
embarrassing.  Do we establish our doctrine?  They
admit it with the greatest possible respect. Do we attack
their principle? They abandon it with the best grace in
the world. They demand only one thing-that our
doctrine, which they hold to be true, should remain relegated to books, and that their principle, which they
acknowledge to be vicious, should reign paramount in
practical legislation. Resign to them the management of
tariffs, and they will give up all dispute with you in the
domain of theory.
"Assuredly," said M. Gauthier de Rumilly, on a recent
occasion, "no one wishes to resuscitate the antiquated
theories of the balance of trade." Very right, Monsieur
Gauthier, but please to remember that it is not enough to
give a passing slap to error, and immediately afterwards,
and for two hours together, reason as if that error were
truth.
Let me speak of M. Lestiboudois. Here we have a
consistent reasoner, a logical disputant. There is nothing
in his conclusions which is not to be found in his premises.
He asks nothing in practice but what he justifies in theory.
His principle may be false; that is open to question. But, at
any rate, he has a principle. He believes, and he proclaims
it aloud, that if France gives ten, in order to receive fifteen,
she loses five; and it follows, of course, that he supports
laws which are in keeping with this view of the subject.
"The important thing to attend to," he says, "is that
the amount of our importations goes on augmenting, and
55




56


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


exceeds the amount of our exportations-that is to say,
France every year purchases more foreign products, and
sells less of her own. Figures prove this. What do we
see? In i842 imports exceeded exports by 200 millions.
These facts appear to prove in the clearest manner that
national industry is not sufficiently protected, that we
depend upon foreign labour for our supplies, that the
competition of our rivals oppresses our industry.  The
present law appears to me to recognise the fact that the
economists are wrong in saying that when we purchase
we necessarily sell a corresponding amount of commodities.
It is evident that we can purchase, not with our usual
products, not with our revenue, not with the results of
permanent labour, but with our capital, with products
which have been accumulated and stored up, those intended for reproduction-that is to say, that we may
expend, that we may dissipate, the proceeds of previous
economies, that we may impoverish ourselves, that we
may proceed on the road to ruin, and consume entirely
the national capital. This is exactly what we are doing.
Every year we give away 200 millions of francs to the
foreigner."
Well, here is a man with whom we can come to an
understanding. There is no hypocrisy in this language.
The doctrine of the balance of trade is openly avowed.
France imports 200 millions more than she exports. Then
we lose 200 millions a year. And what is the remedy?
To place restrictions on importation. The conclusion is
unexceptionable.
It is with M. Lestiboudois, then, that we must deal, for
how can we argue with M. Gauthier? If you tell him that
the balance of trade is an error, he replies that that was
what he laid down at the beginning. If you say that the
balance of trade is a truth, he will reply that that is what
he proves in his conclusions.




BALANCE OF TRADE


57


The economist school will blame me, no doubt, for
arguing with M. Lestiboudois. To attack the balance of
trade, it will be said, is to fight with a windmill.
But take care. The doctrine of the balance of trade is
neither so antiquated, nor so sick, nor so dead as M.
Gauthier would represent it, for the entire ChamberM. Gauthier himself included-has recognised by its votes
the theory of M. Lestiboudois.
I shall not fatigue the reader by proceeding to probe
that theory, but content myself with subjecting it to the
test of facts.
We are constantly told that our principles do not hold
good, except in theory. But tell me, gentlemen, if you
regard the books of merchants as holding good in practice?
It appears to me that if there is anything in the world
which should have practical authority, when the question
regards profit and loss, it is commercial accounts. Have
all the merchants in the world come to an understanding
for centuries to keep their books in such a way as to
represent profits as losses, and losses as profits? It may
be so, but I would much rather come to the conclusion that
M. Lestiboudois is a bad economist.
Now, a merchant of my acquaintance having had
two transactions, the results of which were very different,
I felt curious to compare the books of the counting-house
with the books of the Customhouse, as interpreted by M.
Lestiboudois to the satisfaction of our six hundred legislators.
M. T. despatched a ship from Havre to the United
States, with a cargo of French goods, chiefly those known
as articles de Paris, amounting to 200,000 francs. This
was the figure declared at the Customhouse. When the
cargo arrived at New Orleans it was charged with io per
cent. freight and 30 per cent. duty, making a total of
280,000 francs. It was sold with 20 per cent. profit, or




58


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


40,000 francs, and produced a total of 320,000 francs,
which the consignee invested in cottons. These cottons
had still for freight, insurance, commission, etc., to bear
a cost of 10 per cent.; so that when the new cargo arrived
at Havre it had cost 352,000 francs, which was the figure
entered in the Customhouse books. Finally M. T. realised
upon this return cargo 20 per cent. profit, or 70,400 francs;
in other words, the cottons were sold for 422,400 francs.
If M. Lestiboudois desires it, I shall send him an extract from the books of M. T. He will there see at the
credit of the profit and loss account-that is to say, as
profits-two entries, one of 40,000, another of 70,400
francs, and M. T. is very sure that his accounts are
accurate.
And yet, what do the Customhouse books tell M.
Lestiboudois regarding this transaction? They tell him
simply that France exported 200,000 francs' worth, and
imported to the extent of 352,000 francs; whence the
honourable deputy concludes "that she had expended and
dissipated the profits of her previous economies, that she
is impoverishing herself, that she is on the high road to
ruin, and has given away to the foreigner 152,000 francs
of her capital."
Some time afterwards, M. T. despatched another vessel
with a cargo also of the value of 200,000 francs, composed
of the products of our native industry. This unfortunate
ship was lost in a gale of wind after leaving the harbour,
and all M. T. had to do was to make two short entries
in his books, to this effect:
"Sundry goods debtors to X, 200,000 francs, for purchases of different commodities despatched by the ship N.
" Profit and loss debtors to sundry goods, 200,000
francs, in consequence of definitive and total loss of the
cargo."
At the same time, the Customhouse books bore an entry




BALANCE OF TRADE


59


of 200,000 francs in the list of exportations; and as there
was no corresponding entry to make in the list of importations, it follows that M. Lestiboudois and the Chamber will
see in this shipwreck a clear and net profit for France of
200,000 francs.
There is still another inference to be deduced from this,
which is, that according to the theory of the balance of
trade, France has a very simple means of doubling her
capital at any moment. It is enough to pass them through
the Customhouse, and then pitch them into the sea. In
this case the exports will represent the amount of her
capital, the imports will be nil, and even impossible, and
we shall gain all that the sea swallows up.
This is a joke, the protectionists will say. It is impossible we could give utterance to such absurdities. You
do give utterance to them, however, and, what is more,
you act upon them and impose them on your fellow-citizens
to the utmost of your power.
The truth is, it would be necessary to take the balance
of trade backwards [au rebours], and calculate the national
profits from foreign trade by the excess of imports over
exports. This excess, after deducting costs, constitutes
the real profit.  But this theory, which is true, leads
directly to Free Trade.  I make you a present of it,
gentlemen, as I do of all the theories in the preceding
chapters. Exaggerate it as much as you please-it has
nothing to fear from that test. Suppose, if that amuses
you, that the foreigner inundates us with all sorts of
useful commodities without asking anything in return,
that our imports are infinite and exports nil, I defy you
to prove to me that we should be poorer on that account.
Bastiat afterwards rectified the preceding demonstration by
excluding from his calculation the cost of transport and the duty
See Balance of Commerce, vol. v., p. 902, Collected Works.FRENCH EDITOR. [The rectification does not affect the argument.]




CHAPTER VII


PErITION OF THE MANUFACTURERS OF CANDLES, WAX-LIGHTS,
LAMPS, CANDLESTICKS, STREET LAMPS, SNUFFERS, EXTINGUISHERS, AND OF THE PRODUCERS OF OIL, TALLOW,
RESIN, ALCOHOL, AND, GENERALLY, OF EVERYTHING
CONNECTED WITH LIGHTING
To Messieurs the Members of the Chamber of Deputies.
GENTLEMEN,-YOU are on the right road. You reject
abstract theories, and have little consideration for cheapness and plenty. Your chief care is the interest of the
producer. You desire to protect him from foreign competition, and reserve the national market for national
industry.
We are about to offer you an admirable opportunity
of applying your-what shall we call it?-your theory?
No; nothing is more deceptive than theory-your doctrine? your system? your principle?  But you dislike
doctrines, you abhor systems, and as for principles you
deny that there are any in social economy. We shall
say, then, your practice-your practice without theory
and without principle.
We are suffering from the intolerable competition of a
foreign rival, placed, it would seem, in a condition so far
superior to ours for the production of light that he absolutely inundates our national market with it at a price
fabulously reduced. The moment he shows himself our
trade leaves us —all consumers apply to him; and a
branch of native industry, having countless ramifications,
is all at once rendered completely stagnant. This rival,
who is no other than the sun, wages war to the knife
60




CANDLEMAKERS' PETITION


against us, and we suspect that he has been raised up
by perfidious Albion (good policy as times go); inasmuch
as he displays towards that haughty island a circumspection with which he dispenses in our case.
What we pray for is, that it may please you to pass
a law ordering the shutting up of all windows, skylights, dormer-windows, outside and inside shutters,
curtains, blinds, bull's-eyes; in a word, of all openings,
holes, chinks, clefts, and fissures, by or through which
the light of the sun has been in use to enter houses, to
the prejudice of the meritorious manufactures with which
we flatter ourselves we have accommodated our countrya country which, in gratitude, ought not to abandon us
now to a strife so unequal.
We trust, Gentlemen, that you will not regard this
our request as a satire, or refuse it without at least previously hearing the reasons which we have to urge in
its support.
And, first, if you shut up as much as possible all
access to natural light, and create a demand for artificial
light, which of our French manufactures will not be
encouraged by it?
If more tallow is consumed, then there must be more
oxen and sheep; and, consequently, we shall behold the
multiplication of meadows, meat, wool, hides, and, above
all, manure, which is the basis and foundation of all
agricultural wealth.
If more oil is consumed, then we shall have an extended cultivation of the poppy, of the olive, and of rape.
These rich and exhausting plants will come at the right
time to enable us to avail ourselves of the increased
fertility which the rearing of additional cattle will impart
to our lands.
Our heaths will be covered with resinous trees.
Numerous swarms of bees will, on the mountains, gather




62


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


perfumed treasures, now wasting their fragrance on the
desert air, like the flowers from which they emanate.
No branch of agriculture but will then exhibit a cheering
development.
The same remark applies to navigation. Thousands
of vessels will proceed to the whale fishery; and, in a
short time, we shall possess a navy capable of main.
taining the honour of France, and gratifying the patriotic
aspirations of your petitioners, the undersigned candlemakers and others.
But what shall we say of the manufacture of articles
de Paris? Henceforth you will behold gildings, bronzes,
crystals, in candlesticks, in lamps, in lustres, in candelabra, shining forth, in spacious warerooms, compared
with which those of the present day can be regarded but
as mere shops.
No poor resinier from his heights on the seacoast, no
coalminer from the depth of his sable gallery, but will
rejoice in higher wages and increased prosperity.
Only have the goodness to reflect, Gentlemen, and
you will be convinced that there is, perhaps, no Frenchman, from the wealthy coalmaster to the humblest vendor
of lucifer matches, whose lot will not be ameliorated by
the success of this our petition.
We foresee your objections, Gentlemen, but we know
that you can oppose to us none but such as you have
picked up from the effete works of the partisans of Free
Trade. We defy you to utter a single word against us
which will not instantly rebound against yourselves and
your entire policy.
You will tell us that, if we gain by the protection
which we seek, the country will lose by it, because the
consumer must bear the loss.
We answer:
You have ceased to have any right to invoke the




CANDLEMAKERS' PETITION


63


interest of the consumer; for, whenever his interest is
found opposed to that of the producer, you sacrifice the
former. You have done so for the purpose of encouraging labour and increasing employment. For the same
reason you should do so again.
You have yourselves obviated this objection. When
you are told that the consumer is interested in the free
importation of iron, coal, corn, textile fabrics-yes, you
reply, but the producer is interested in their exclusion.
Well, be it so; if consumers are interested in the free
admission of natural light, the producers of artificial
light are equally interested in its prohibition.
But, again, you may say that the producer and consumer are identical. If the manufacturer gain by protection, he will make the agriculturist also a gainer; and
if agriculture prosper, it will open a vent to manufactures.
Very well; if you confer upon us the monopoly of
furnishing light during the day, first of all we shall
purchase quantities of tallow, coals, oils, resinous substances, wax, alcohol-besides silver, iron, bronze, crystal
-to carry on our manufactures; and then we, and those
who furnish us with such commodities, having become
rich will consume a great deal, and impart prosperity
to all the other branches of our national industry.
If you urge that the light of the sun is a gratuitous
gift of nature, and that to reject such gifts is to reject
wealth itself under pretence of encouraging the means of
acquiring it, we would caution you against giving a
death-blow to your own policy. Remember that hitherto
you have always repelled foreign products, because they
approximate more nearly than home products to the
character of gratuitous gifts.  To comply with the
exactions of other monopolists, you have only half a
motive; and to repulse us simply because we stand on a
stronger vantage-ground than others would be to adopt




64


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


the equation + X + = -; in other words, it would be
to heap absurdity upon absurdity.
Nature and human labour co-operate in various proportions (depending on countries and climates) in the
production of commodities. The part which nature
executes is always gratuitous; it is the part executed by
human labour which constitutes value, and is paid for.
If a Lisbon orange sells for half the price of a Paris
orange, it is because natural, and consequently gratuitous,
heat does for the one what artificial, and therefore expensive, heat must do for the other.
When an orange comes to us from Portugal, we may
conclude that it is furnished in part gratuitously, in part
for an onerous consideration; in other words, it comes to
us at half-price as compared with those of Paris.
Now, it is precisely the gratuitous half (pardon the
word) which we contend should be excluded. You say,
How can national labour sustain competition with foreign
labour, when the former has all the work to do, and the
latter only does one-half, the sun supplying the remainder?
But if this half, being gratuitous, determines you to exclude competition, how should the whole, being gratuitous,
induce you to admit competition? If you were consistent, you would, while excluding as hurtful to native
industry what is half gratuitous, exclude a fortiori and
with double zeal, that which is altogether gratuitous.
Once more, when products such as coal, iron, corn,
or textile fabrics are sent us from abroad, and we can
acquire them with less labour than if we made them ourselves, the difference is a free gift conferred upon us. The
gift is more or less considerable in proportion as the
difference is more or less great. It amounts to a quarter,
a half, or three-quarters of the value of the product, when
the foreigner only asks us for three-fourths, a half, or a
quarter of the price we should otherwise pay. It is as




CANDLEMAKERS' PETITION


65


perfect and complete as it can be, when the donor (like
the sun in furnishing us with light) asks us for nothing.
The question, and we ask it formally, is this: Do you
desire for our country the benefit of gratuitous consumption, or the pretended advantages of onerous production?
Make your choice, but be logical; for as long as you
exclude, as you do, coal, iron, corn, foreign fabrics, in
proportion as their price approximates to zero, what
inconsistency it would be to admit the light of the
sun, the price of which is already at zero during the
entire day!


IF




CHAPTER VIII


DIFFERENTIAL DUTIES
A POOR vine-dresser of the Gironde had trained with fond
enthusiasm a slip of vine, which, after much fatigue and
much labour, yielded him at length a tun of wine; and
his success made him forget that each drop of this precious
nectar had cost his brow a drop of sweat. "I shall sell
it," said he to his wife, "and with the price I shall buy
stuff sufficient to enable you to furnish a trousseau for our
daughter."  The honest countryman repaired to the
nearest town, and met a Belgian and an Englishman. The
Belgian said to him: "Give me your cask of wine, and I
will give you in exchange fifteen parcels of stuff." The
Englishman said: "Give me your wine, and I will give
you twenty parcels of stuff; for we English can manufacture the stuff cheaper than the Belgians."  But a
Customhouse officer, who was present, interposed, and
said: "My good friend, exchange with the Belgian if you
think proper, but my orders are to prevent you from
making an exchange with the Englishman." "What!"
exclaimed the countryman; "you wish me to be content
with fifteen parcels of stuff which have come from Brussels
when I can get twenty parcels which have come from
Manchester? "  "Certainly; don't you see that France
would be a loser if you received twenty parcels instead of
fifteen?"  "I am at a loss to understand you," said the
vine-dresser. "And I am at a loss to explain it," rejoined
the Customhouse official; "but the thing is certain, fQr all
our deputies, ministers, and journalists agree in this, that
the more a nation receives in exchange for a given quantity
66




DIFFERENTIAL      DUTIES             67
of its products, the more it is impoverished."  The
peasant found it necessary to conclude a bargain with
the Belgian. The daughter of the peasant got only threequarters of her trousseau; and these simple people are still
asking themselves how it happens that one is ruined by
receiving four instead of three; and why a person is
richer with three dozens of towels than with four dozens.




CH APTER IX


IMMENSE DISCOVERY
AT a time when everybody is bent on bringing about a
saving in the expense of transport-and when, in order to
effect this saving, we are forming roads and canals, improving our steamers, and connecting Paris with all our
frontiers by a network of railways-at a time, too, when
I believe we are ardently and sincerely seeking a solution
of the problem, how to bring the prices of commodities, in
the place where they are to be consumed, as nearly as
possible to the level of their prices in the place where they
were produced-I should think myself wanting to my
country, to my age, and to myself, if I kept longer secret
the marvellous discovery which I have just made.
The illusions of inventors are proverbial, but I am
positively certain that I have discovered an infallible means
of bringing products from every part of the world to
France, and vice versa, at a considerable reduction of cost.
Infallible, did I say? Its infallibility is only one of
the advantages of my invention.
It requires neither plans, estimates, preparatory study,
engineers, mechanists, contractors, capital, shareholders,
or Government aid!
It presents no danger of shipwreck, explosion, fire, or
collision!
It may be brought into operation at any time!
Moreover-and this must undoubtedly recommend it to
the public-it will not add a penny to the Budget, but the
reverse.  It will not increase the staff of functionaries,
but the reverse. It will interfere with no man's liberty, but
the reverse.
68




IMMENSE DISCOVERY


69


It is observation, not chance, which has put me in
possession of this discovery, and I will tell you what
suggested it.
I had at the time this question to resolve:
"Why does an article manufactured at Brussels, for
example, cost dearer when it comes to Paris? "
I soon perceived that it proceeds from this: That between Paris and Brussels obstacles of many kinds exist.
First of all, there is distance, which entails loss of time,
and we must either submit to this ourselves, or pay another
to submit to it. Then come rivers, marshes, accidents, bad
roads, which are so many difficulties to be surmounted.
We succeed in building bridges, in forming roads, and
making them smoother by pavements, iron rails, etc. But
all this is costly, and the commodity must be 'made to bear
the cost. Then there are robbers who infest the roads,
and a body of police must be kept up, etc.
Now, among these obstacles there is one which we have
ourselves set up, and at no little cost, too, between Brussels and Paris.  There are men who lie in ambuscade
along the frontier, armed to the teeth, and whose business
it is to throw difficulties in the way of transporting merchandise from the one country to the other.  They are
called Customhouse officers, and they act in precisely the
same way as ruts and bad roads.   They retard, they
trammel commerce, they augment the difference we have
remarked between the price paid by the consumer and the
price received by the producer-that very difference, the
reduction of which, as far as possible, forms the subject of
our problem.
That problem is resolved in three words: Reduce your
tariff.
You will then have done what is equivalent to constructing the Northern Railway without cost, and will immediately begin to put money in your pocket.




7o


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


In truth, I often seriously ask myself how anything
so whimsical could ever have entered into the human
brain, as first of all to lay out many millions for the purpose of removing the natural obstacles which lie between
France and other countries, and then to lay out many more
millions for the purpose of substituting artificial obstacles,
which have exactly the same effect; so much so, indeed,
that the obstacle created and the obstacle removed neutralise each other, and leave things as they were before,
the residue of the operation being a double expense.
A Belgian product is worth at Brussels 20 francs, and
the cost of carriage would raise the price at Paris to 30
francs. The same article made in Paris costs 40 francs.
And how do we proceed?
In the first place, we impose a duty of IO francs on the
Belgian product, in order to raise its cost price at Paris
to 40 francs; and we pay numerous officials to see the duty
stringently levied, so that, on the road, the commodity
is charged io francs for the carriage and io francs for
the tax.
Having done this, we reason thus: The carriage from
Brussels to Paris, which costs io francs, is very dear. Let
us expend two or three hundred millions (of francs) in railways, and we shall reduce it by one-half. Evidently all
that we gain by this is that the Belgian product would
sell in Paris for 35 francs, viz.:
20 francs, its price at Brussels.
JO,,  duty.
5,,   reduced carriage by railway.
Total, 35 francs, representing cost price at Paris.
Now, I ask, would we not have attained the same result
by lowering the tariff by 5 francs? We should then have



IMMENSE DISCOVERY


7


20 francs, the price at Brussels.
5,,  reduced duty.
10,,  carriage by ordinary roads.
Total, 35 francs, representing cost price at Paris.
And by this process we should have saved the 200
millions which the railway cost, plus the expense of
Customhouse surveillance, for this last would be reduced
in proportion to the diminished encouragement held out
to smuggling.
But it will be said that the duty is necessary to protect
Parisian industry. Be it so; but then you destroy the
effect of your railway.
For, if you persist in desiring that the Belgian product
should cost at Paris 40 francs, you must raise your duty
to 15 francs, and then you have20 francs, the price at Brussels.
15,,   protecting duty.
5,,  railway carriage.
Total, 40 francs, being the equalised price.
Then, I venture to ask, what, under such circumstances,
is the good of your railway?
In sober earnestness, let me ask, is it not humiliating
that the nineteenth century should make itself a laughingstock to future ages by such puerilities, practised with such
imperturbable gravity? To be the dupe of other people
is not very pleasant, but to employ a vast representative
apparatus in order to dupe, and double dupe, ourselvesand that, too, in an affair of arithmetic-should surely
humble the pride of this age of enlightenment.




CHAPTER X


RECIPROCITY
WE have just seen that whatever increases the expense of
conveying commodities from one country to another-in
other words, whatever renders transport more onerous —
acts in the same way as a protective duty; or if you prefer
to put it in another shape, that a protective duty acts in
the same way as more onerous transport.
A tariff, then, may be regarded in the same light as a
marsh, a rut, an obstruction, a steep declivity-in a word,
it is an obstacle, the effect of which is to augment the
difference between the price which the producer of a commodity receives and the price which the consumer pays
for it.  In the same way, it is undoubtedly true that
marshes and quagmires are to be regarded in the same
light as protective tariffs.
There are people (few in number, it is true, but there
are such people) who begin to understand that obstacles
are not less obstacles because they are artificial, and that
our mercantile prospects have more to gain from liberty
than from protection, and exactly for the same reason
which makes a canal more favourable to traffic than a
steep, roundabout, and inconvenient road.
But they maintain that this liberty must be reciprocal.
If we remove the barriers we have erected against the
admission of Spanish goods, for example, Spain must remove the barriers she has erected against the admission
of ours. They are, therefore, the advocates of commero4al
treaties, on the basis of exact reciprocity, concession for
72




RECIPROCITY


73


concession; let us make the sacrifice of buying, say they,
to obtain the advantage of selling.
People who reason in this way, I am sorry to say, are,
whether they know it or not, protectionists in principle;
only, they are a little more inconsistent than pure protectionists, as the latter are more inconsistent than absolute
prohibitionists.
The following apologue will demonstrate this:
STULTA AND PUERA
There were, no matter where, two towns called Stulta
and Puera. They completed at great cost a highway from
the one town to the other. When this was done, Stulta
said to herself: "See how Puera inundates us with her
products; we must see to it." In consequence, they created
and paid a body of obstructives, so called because their
business was to place obstacles in the way of traffic coming
from Puera. Soon afterwards Puera did the same.
At the end of some centuries, knowledge having in
the interim made great progress, the common sense of
Puera enabled her to see that such reciprocal obstacles
could only be reciprocally hurtful.  She therefore sent
a diplomatist to Stulta, who, laying  aside official
phraseology, spoke to this effect: "We have made a
highway, and now we throw obstacles in the way of
using it. This is absurd. It would have been better to
have left things as they were. We should not, in that
case, have had to pay for making the road in the first
place, nor afterwards have incurred the expense of maintaining obstructives. In the name of Puera, I come to
propose to you, not to give up opposing each other all
at once-that would be to act upon a principle, and we
despise principles as much as you do-but to lessen somewhat the present obstacles, taking care to estimate
equitably the respective sacrifices we make for this pur



FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


pose." So spoke the diplomatist. Stulta asked for time
to consider the proposal, and proceeded to consult, in
succession, her manufacturers and agriculturists.  At
length, after the lapse of some years, she declared that
the negotiations were broken off.
On receiving this intimation, the inhabitants of Puera
held a meeting. An old gentleman (they always suspected
he had been secretly bought by Stulta) rose and said:
The obstacles created by Stulta injure our sales, which
is a misfortune. Those which we have ourselves created
injure our purchases, which is another misfortune. With
reference to the first, we are powerless; but the second
rests with ourselves. Let us, at least, get quit of one,
since we cannot rid ourselves of both evils.  Let us
suppress our obstructives without requiring Stulta to do
the same. Some day, no doubt, she will come to know
her own interests better.
A second counsellor, a practical, matter-of-fact man,
guiltless of any acquaintance with principles, and brought
up in the ways of his forefathers, replied: "Don't listen
to that Utopian dreamer, that theorist, that innovator,
that economist, that Stultomaniac. We shall all be undone if the stoppages of the road are not equalised,
weighed, and balanced between Stulta and Puera. There
would be greater difficulty in going than in coming, in
exporting than in importing. We should find ourselves
in the same condition of inferiority relatively to Stulta
as Havre, Nantes, Bordeaux, Lisbon, London, Hamburg,
and New Orleans are with relation to the towns situated
at the sources of the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne, the
Tagus, the Thames, the Elbe, and the Mississippi, for
it is more difficult for a ship to ascend than to descend
a river.  (A  Voice: Towns at the mouths of rivers
prosper more than towns at their source.) This is impossible. (Same Voice: But it is so.) Well, if it be so,




RECIPROCITY


75


they have prospered contrary to rules." Reasoning so
conclusive convinced the assembly, and the orator followed up his victory by talking largely of national independence, national honour, national dignify, national
labour, inundation of products, tributes, murderous competition. In short, he carried the vote in favour of the
maintenance of obstacles; and if you are at all curious
on the subject, I can point out to you countries where
you will see with your own eyes Road-makers and
Obstructives working together on the most friendly terms
possible, under the orders of the same legislative assembly,
and at the expense of the same taxpayers, the one set
endeavouring to clear the road, and the other set doing
their utmost to render it impassable.




CHAPTER XI


NOMINAL PRICES
Do you desire to be in a situation to decide between
liberty and protection? Do you desire to appreciate the
bearing of an economic phenomenon? Inquire into its
effects upon the abundance or scarcity of commodities,
and not upon the rise or fall of prices. Distrust nominal
prices'; they will only land you in an inextricable
labyrinth.
AI. Matthieu de Dombasle, after having shown that
Protection raises prices, adds:"The enhancement of price increases the expense of
living, and consequently the price of labour, and each
man receives, in the enhanced price of his products,
compensation for the higher prices he has been obliged
to pay for the things he has occasion to buy. Thus, if
everyone pays more as a consumer, everyone receives
more as a producer."
It is evident that we could reverse this argument, and
say:
"If everyone receives more as a producer, everyone
pays more as a consumer."
Now, what does this prove? Nothing but this, that
Protection displaces wealth uselessly and unjustly. In
so far, it simply perpetrates spoliation.
Again, to conclude that this vast apparatus leads to
' I have translated the expression des prix absolus, nominal prices, or
actual money prices, because the English economists do not, so far as I
remember, make use of the term absolute price.-See ch. iii. of
second series, where the author employs the expression in this sense.TRANSLATOR.
76




NOMINAL PRICES


77


simple compensations, we must stick to the "consequently" of M. de Dombasle, and make sure that the
price of labour will not fail to rise with the price of the
protected products. This is a question of fact which I
remit to M. Moreau de JonnCs, that he may take the
trouble to find out whether the rate of wages advances
along with the price of shares in the coal-mines of Anzin.
For my own part, I do not believe that it does; because,
in my opinion, the price of labour, like the price of everything else, is governed by the relation of supply to
demand. Now, I am convinced that restriction diminishes
the supply of coal, and consequently enhances its price;
but I do not see so clearly that it increases the demand
for labour, so as to enhance the rate of wages; and that
this effect should be produced is all the less likely,
because the quantity of labour demanded depends on
the disposable capital. Now, Protection may indeed displace capital, and cause its transference from one employment to another, but it can never increase it by a single
farthing.
But this question, which is one of the greatest interest
and importance, will be examined in another place.' I
return to the subject of nominal price; and I maintain
that it is not one of those absurdities which can be
rendered specious by such reasonings as those of M. de
Dombasle.
Put the case of a nation which is isolated, and possesses a given amount of specie, and which chooses to
amuse itself by burning each year one-half of all the
commodities that it possesses. I undertake to prove that,
according to the theory of M. de Dombasle, it will not
be less rich.
In fact, in consequence of the fire, all things will be
doubled in price, and the inventories of property, made
See ch. iii., second series.-TRANSLATOR.




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


before and after the destruction, will show exactly the
same nominal value. But then what will the country in
question have lost?    If John buys his cloth dearer, he
also sells his corn at a higher price; and if Peter loses
on his purchase of corn, he retrieves his losses by the
sale of his cloth.   "Each    recovers, in the extra price
of his products, the extra expense of living he has been
put to; and if everybody pays as a consumer, everybody
receives a corresponding amount as a producer."
All this is a jingling quibble, and not science. The
truth, in plain terms, is this: That men consume cloth
and corn by fire or by using them, and that the effect
is the same as regards price, but not as regards wealth,
for it is precisely in the use of commodities that wealth
or material prosperity consists.
In the same way, restriction, while diminishing the
abundance of things, may raise their price to such an
extent that each party will be, pecuniarily speaking, as
rich as before. But to set down in an inventory three
measures of corn at 20s., or four measures at I5s.,
because the result is still 6os.-would this, I ask, come
to the same thing with reference to the satisfaction of
men's wants?
It is to this, the consumer's point of view, that I
shall never cease to recall the Protectionists, for this is
the end and design of all our efforts, and the solution
of all problems.' I shall never cease to say to them:
Is it, or is it not, true that restriction by impeding exchanges, by limiting the division of labour, by forcing
labour to connect itself with difficulties of climate and
situation, diminishes ultimately the quantity of commo1 To this view of the subject the author frequently reverts. It was,
in his eyes, all important; and, four days before his death, he dictated
this recommendation: "Tell M. de F. to treat economical questions
always from the consumer's point of view, for the interest of the consumer
is identical with that of the human race."-FRENCH EDITOR.




NOMINAL PRICES


79


dities produced by a determinate amount of efforts? And
what does this signify, it will be said, if the smaller
qtuaritity produced under the regime of Protection has
the same nominal value as that produced under the regime
of liberty? The answer is obvious. Man does not live
upon nominal values, but upon real products, and the
more products there are, whatever be their price, the
richer he is.
In writing what precedes, I never expected to meet
with an anti-economist who was enough of a logician
to admit, in so many words, that the wealth of nations
depends on the value of things, apart from the consideration of their abundance. But here is what I find
in the work of M. de Saint-Chamans (p. 2IO):" If fifteen millions' worth of commodities, sold to
foreigners, are taken from the total production, estimated
at fifty millions, the thirty-five millions' worth of commodities remaining, not being sufficient to meet the
ordinary demand, will increase in price, and rise to the
value of fifty millions. In that case the revenue of the
country will represent a value of fifteen millions additional.
0.. There would then be an increase of the wealth of the
country to the extent of fifteen millions, exactly the amount
of specie imported."
This is a pleasant view of the matter! If a nation
produces in one year, from its agriculture and commerce,
a value of fifty millions, it has only to sell a quarter of
it to the foreigner to be a quarter richer! Then if it
sells the half, it will be one-half richer! And if it should
sell the whole, to its last tuft of wool and its last
grain of wheat, it would bring up its revenue to one
hundred millions. Singular way of getting rich, by pro.
ducing infinite dearness by absolute scarcity!
Again, would you judge of the two doctrines? Submit
them to the test of exaggeration.




8o       FALLACIES OF PROTECTION
According to the doctrine of M. de Saint-Chamans,
the French would be quite as rich-that is to say, quite
as well supplied with all things- had they only a
thousandth part of their annual products, because they
would be worth a thousand times more.
According to our doctrine, the French would be infinitely rich if their annual products were infinitely abundant, and, consequently, without any value at all.1
1 See ch. iii. of second series of Sophisms; and ch. iv. of Har.
monies Economiques.




CHAPTER XII


DOES PROTECTION RAISE THE RATE OF WAGES?
LET us inquire whether injustice is not done you by
fixing legislatively the people from whom you are to
purchase the things you have need of-bread, meat,
linens, or cloth; and in dictating, if I may say so, the
artificial scale of prices which you are to adopt in your
dealings.
Is it true that protection, which admittedly makes you
pay dearer for everything, and entails a loss upon you in
this respect, raises proportionately your wages?
On what does the rate of wages depend?
One of your own class has put it forcibly, thus: When
two workmen run after one master, wages fall; they rise
when two masters run after one workman.
For the sake of brevity, allow me to make use of this
formula, more scientific, although, perhaps, not quite so
clear. The rate of wages depends on the proportion which
the supply of labour bears to the demand for it.
Now, on what does the supply of labour depend?
On the number of men waiting for employment; and on
this first element protection can have no effect.
On what does the rate of wages depend?
On the disposable capital of the nation. But does the
law which says: We shall no longer receive such or such
a product from abroad, we shall make it at home, augment
the capital? Not in the least degree. It may force capital
from one employment to another, but it does not increase
it by a single farthing.  It does not then increase the
demand for labour.
a                   8


G


8r




82


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


We point with pride to a certain manufacture. Is it
established or maintained with capital which has fallen
from the moon? No; that capital has been withdrawn
from agriculture, from shipping, from the production of
wines. And this is the reason why, under the system of
protective tariffs, there are more workmen in our mines and
in our manufacturing towns, and fewer sailors in our ports,
and fewer labourers in our fields and vineyards.
I could expatiate at length on this subject, but I prefer
to explain what I mean by an example.
A countryman was possessed of twenty acres of land,
which he worked' with a capital of ~400. He divided his
land into four parts, and established the following rotation
of crops: ist, maize; 2nd, wheat; 3rd, clover; 4th, rye.
He required for his own family only a moderate portion
of the grain, meat, and milk which his farm produced,
and he sold the surplus to buy oil, flax, wine, etc. His
whole capital was expended each year in wages, hires, and
small payments to the working classes in his neighbourhood. This capital was returned to him in his sales, and
even went on increasing year by year; and our countryman, knowing very well that capital produces nothing
when it is unemployed, benefited the working classes by
devoting the annual surplus to enclosing and clearing his
land, and to improving his agricultural implements and
farm buildings. He had even some savings in the neighbouring town with his banker, who, of course, did not let
the money lie idle in his till, but lent it to shipowners
and contractors for public works, so that these savings
were always resolving themselves into wages.
At length the countryman died, and his son, who succeeded him, said to himself: "My father was a dupe all
his life. He purchased oil, and so paid tribute to Provence, whilst our own land, with some pains, can be made
to grow the olive. He bought cloth, wine, and oranges,




PROTECTION AND WAGES


83


and thus paid tribute to Brittany, Medoc, and Hy~res,
whilst we can cultivate hemp, the vine, and the orange
tree with more or less success. He paid tribute to the
miller and the weaver, whilst our own domestics can
weave our linen and grind our wheat. In this way he
ruined himself, and spent among strangers that money
which he might have spent at home."
Misled by such reasoning, the volatile youth changed
his rotation of crops. His land he divided into twenty
divisions. In one he planted olives, in another mulberry
trees, in a third he sowed flax, in a fourth he had vines,
in a fifth wheat, and so on. By this means he succeeded
in supplying his family with what they required, and felt
himself independent. He no longer drew anything from
the general circulation, nor did he add anything to it.
Was he the richer for this? No; for the soil was not
adapted for the cultivation of the vine, and the climate
was not fitted for the successful cultivation of the olive;
and he was not long in finding out that his family was
less plentifully provided with all the things which they
wanted than in the time of his father, who procured them
by exchanging his surplus produce.
As regarded his workmen, they had no more employment than formerly. There were five times more fields,
but each field was five times smaller; they produced oil,
but they produced less wheat; he no longer purchased
linens, but he no longer sold rye. Moreover, the farmer
could expend in wages only the amount of hiis capital, and
his capital went on constantly diminishing. A great part
of it went for buildings, and the various implements needed
for the more varied cultivation in which he had engaged.
In short, the supply of labour remained the same, but as
the means of remunerating that labour fell off, the ultimate
result was a forcible reduction of wages.
On a greater scale, this is exactly what takes place in




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


the case of a nation which isolates itself by adopting a
prohibitive system. It multiples its branches of industry,
I grant, but they become of diminished importance; it
adopts, so to speak, a more complicated industrial rotation,
but it is not so prolific, because its capital and labour have
now to struggle with natural difficulties. A greater proportion of its circulating capital, which forms the wages
fund, must be converted into fixed capital. What remains
may have more varied employment, but the total mass is
not increased. It is like distributing the water of a pond
among a multitude of shallow reservoirs-it covers more
ground, and presents a greater surface to the rays of the
sun, and it is precisely for this reason that it is all the
sooner absorbed, evaporated, and lost.
The amount of capital and labour being given, they
create a smaller amount of commodities in proportion as
they encounter more obstacles. It is beyond doubt, that
when international obstructions force capital and labour
into channels and localities where they meet with greater
difficulties of soil and climate, the general result must be,
fewer products created-that is to say, fewer enjoyments
for consumers. Now, when there are fewer enjoyments
upon the whole, will the workman's share of them be augmented? If it were augmented, as is asserted, then the
rich —the men who make the laws-would find their own
share not only subject to the general diminution, but that
diminished share would be still further reduced by what
was added to the labourers' share. Is this possible? Is
it credible? I advise you, workmen, to reject such suspicious generosity.'
' See Harmonies Economiques, ch. Xiv. —FRENCH EDrrOX.
I




CHAPTER XIII


THEORY-PRACTICE
As advocates of Free Trade, we are accused of being
theorists, and of not taking practice sufficiently into
account.
"What fearful prejudices were entertained against
M. Say," says M. Ferrier,' "by that long train of distinguished administrators, 'and that imposing phalanx of
authors who dissented from his opinions; and M. Say
was not unaware of it. Hear what he says: ' It has been
alleged in support of errors of long standing that there
must have been some foundation for ideas which have
been adopted by all nations. Ought we not to distrust
observations and reasonings which run counter to opinions
which have been constantly entertained down to our own
time, and which have been regarded as sound by so
many men remarkable for their enlightenment and their
good intentions? This argument, I allow, is calculated
to make a profound impression, and it might have cast
doubt upon points which we deem the most incontestable,
if we had not seen, by turns, opinions the most false,
and now generally acknowledged to be false, received
and professed by everybody during a long series of ages.
Not very long ago all nations, from the rudest to the
most enlightened, and all men, from the street-porter to
the savant, admitted the existence of four elements. No
one thought of contesting that doctrine, which, however,
is false; so much so that even the greenest assistant in
De I'Administration Commerciale opposds a 'Economie Politiqu,
D.5.
85




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


a naturalist's classroom would be ashamed to say that
he regarded earth, water and fire as elements.' "
On this M. Ferrier remarks:
" If M. Say thinks to answer thus the very strong
objection which he brings forward he is singularly mistaken. That men, otherwise well informed, should have
been mistaken for centuries on certain points of natural
history is easily understood, and proves nothing. Water,
air, earth and fire, whether elements or not, are not the
less useful to man... Such errors are unimportant:
they lead to no popular commotions, no uneasiness in
the public mind; they run counter to no pecuniary interest; and this is the reason why without any felt inconvenience they may endure for a thousand years. The
physical world goes on as if they did not exist. But of
errors in the moral world can the same thing be said?
Can we conceive that a system of administration, found
to be absolutely false and therefore hurtful, should be
followed out among many nations for centuries, with the
general approval of all well-informed men? Can it be
explained how such a system could coexist with the constantly increasing prosperity of nations? M. Say admits
that the argument which he combats is fitted to make a
profound impression. Yes, indeed; and the impression
remains; for M. Say has rather deepened than done away
with it."
Let us hear what MI. de Saint-Chamans says on the
same subject:
"It was only in the middle of the last century, of
that eighteenth century which handed over all subjects
and all principles without exception to free discussion,
that these speculative purveyors of ideas, applied by them
to all things without being really applicable to anything,
began to write upon political economy. There existed
previously a system of political economy not to be found




THEORY-PRACTICE


87


in books, but which had been put in practical operation
by governments. Colbert, it is said, was the inventor
of it, and it was adopted as a rule by all the nations of
Europe. The singular thing is that, in spite of contempt
and maledictions, in spite of all the discoveries of the
modern school, it still remains in practical operation.
This system, which our authors have called the mercantile
system, was designed to... impede, by prohibitions
or import duties, the entry of foreign products which
might ruin our own manufactures by their competition.
Economic writers of all schools' have declared this system
untenable, absurd, and calculated to impoverish any
country. It has been banished from all their books, and
forced to take refuge in the practical legislation of all
nations. They cannot conceive why, in measures relating
to national wealth, governments should not follow the
advice and opinions of learned authors, rather than trust
to their experience of the tried working of a system
which has been long in operation. Above all, they cannot
conceive why the French government shwId in economic
questions obstinately set itself to resist the progress of
enlightenment, and maintain in its practice those ancient
errors, which all our economic writers have exposed. But
enough of this mercantile system, which has nothing in
its favour but facts, and is not defended by any speculative writer." '
Such language as this would lead one to suppose that
in demanding for everyone the free disposal of his property, economists were propounding some new system,
some new, strange and chimerical social order, a sort of
I Might we not say, that it is a " fearful prejudice " against MM.
Ferrier and Saint Chamans, that " economists ol all schools, that is to
say, everybody who has studied the question, should have arrived at the
conclusion, that, after all, liberty is better than constraint, and the laws
of God wiser than those of Colbert."
I Du Systime de l'lmptt, par M. e Vi comtc de Saixt-Chamans, p. il.




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


phalansttre, coined in the mint of their own brain, and
without precedent in the annals of the human race. To
me it would seem that if we have here anything factitious
or contingent, it is to be found, not in liberty, but in
protection; not in the free power of exchanging, but in
customs duties employed to overturn artificially the
natural course of remuneration.
But our business at present is not to compare, or
pronounce between, the two systems; but to inquire which
of the two is founded on experience.
The advocates of monopoly maintain that the facts
are on their side, and that we have on our side only
theory.
They flatter themselves that this long series of public
acts, this old experience of Europe, which they invoke,
has presented itself as something very formidable to the
mind of M. Say; and I grant that he has not refuted it
with his wonted sagacity. For my own part, I am not
disposed to concede to the monopolists the domain of
facts, for they.have only in their favour facts which are
forced and exceptional; and we oppose to these, facts
which are universal, the free and voluntary acts of mankind at large.
What do we say; and what do they say?
We say:
"You should buy from others what you cannot make
for yourself but at a greater expense."
And they say:
"It is better to make things for yourself, although
they cost you more than the price at which you could
buy them from others."
Now, gentlemen, throwing aside theory, argument,
demonstration-all which seem to affect you with nausea
— which of these two assertions has on its side the sanction
of universal practice?




THEORY-PRACTICE


Visit your fields, your workshops, your forges, your
warehouses; look above, below, and around you; look
at what takes place in your own houses; remark your own
everyday acts; and say what is the principle which guides
these labourers, artisans and merchants; say what is your
own personal practice.
Does the farmer make his own clothes?  Does the
tailor produce the corn he consumes? Does your housekeeper continue to have your bread made at home, after
she finds she can buy it cheaper from the baker? Do
you resign the pen for the brush to save your paying
tribute to the shoeblack? Does the entire economy of
society not rest upon the separation of employments, the
division of labour-in a word, upon exchange? And
what is exchange but a calculation which we make with
a view to discontinuing direct production in every case
in which we find that possible, and in which indirect
acquisition enables us to effect a saving in time and in
effort?
It is not you, therefore, who are the men of practice,
since you cannot point to a single human being who acts
upon your principle.
But you will say, we never intended to make our
principle a rule for individual relations. We perfectly
understand that this would be to break up the bond of
society, and would force men to live like snails, each in
his own shell. All that we contend for is that our principle regulates de facto the relations which obtain between
the different agglomerations of the human family.
Well, I affirm that this principle is still erroneous.
The family, the commune, the canton, the department,
the province, are so many agglomerations, which all,
without any exception, reject practically your principle,
and have never dreamt of acting on it.  All procure
themselves, by means of exchange, those things which




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


it would cost them dearer to procure by means of pro.
duction. And nations would do the same, did you not
hinder them by force.
We, then, are the men of practice and of experience;
for we oppose to the restriction which you have placed exceptionally on certain international exchanges the practice
and experience of all individuals and of all agglomerations of individuals, whose acts are voluntary and can
consequently be adduced as evidence. But you begin by
constraining, by hindering, and then you lay hold of acts
which are forced or prohibited, as warranting you to exclaim, "We have practice and experience on our side! "
You inveigh against our theory, and even against
theories in general. But when you lay down a principle
in opposition to ours you perhaps imagine you are not
proceeding on theory. Clear your heads of that idea.
You, in fact, form a theory as we do; but between your
theory and ours there is this difference:Our theory consists merely in observing universal
facts, universal opinions, calculations and ways of proceeding which universally prevail; and in classifying these
and rendering them co-ordinate, with a view to their
being more easily understood.
Our theory is so little opposed to practice that it is
nothing else but practice explained. We observe men
acting as they are moved by the instinct of selfpreservation and a desire for progress, and what they
thus do freely and voluntarily we denominate political
or social economy. We can never help repeating that
each individual man is practically an excellent economist,
producing or exchanging according as he finds it more
to his interest to produce or to exchange.  Each, by
experience, educates himself in this science; or, rather,
the science itself is only this same experience accurately
observed and methodically explained.




THEORY-PRACTICE


9I


But on your side you construct a theory in the worst
sense of the word. You imagine, you invent, a course
of proceeding which is not sanctioned by the practice of
any living man under the canopy of heaven; and then
you invoke the aid of constraint and prohibition. It
is quite necessary that you should have recourse to force,
for you desire that men should be made to produce those
things which they find it more advantageous to buy;
you desire that they should renounce this advantage,
and act upon a doctrine which implies a contradiction
in terms.
I defy you to take the doctrine, which you acknowledge
would be absurd in the relations of individuals, and extend
it, even in speculation, to transactions between families,
communities, or provinces.  By your own admission it
is only applicable to international relations.
This is the reason why you are forced to keep repeating:
"There are no absolute principles, no inflexible rules.
What is good for an individual, a family, a province,
is bad for a nation. What is good in detail-namely,
to purchase rather than produce, when purchasing is more
advantageous than producing-that same is bad in the
gross. The political economy of individuals is not that
of nations "; and other nonsense of the same kind.
And to what does all this tend? Look at it a little
closer. The intention is to prove that we, the consumers,
are your property!-that we are yours body and soul I
that you have an exclusive right over our stomachs and
our limbs 1-that it belongs to you to feed and clothe us
on your own terms, whatever be your ignorance, incapacity
or rapacity!
No, you are not men of practice: you are men of
abstraction-and of extortion.




CHAPTER XIV


CONFLICT OF PRINCIPLES
THERE is one thing which confounds me; and it is this:
Sincere publicists, studying the economy of society from
the producer's point of view, have laid down this double
formula':
"Governments should order the interests of consumers
who are subject to their laws, in such a way as to be
favourable to national industry.
"They should bring distant consumers under subjection
to their laws, for the purpose of ordering their interests
in a way favourable to national industry."
The first of these formulas gets the name of protection;
the second we call debouchds, or the creating of markets,
or vents, for our produce.
Both are founded on what we call the Balance of
Trade:
"A nation is impoverished when it imports; enriched
when it exports."
For if every purchase from a foreign country is a
tribute paid and a national loss, it follows, of course, that
it is right to restrain, and even prohibit, importations.
And if every sale to a foreign country is a tribute received, and a national profit, it is quite right and natural
to create markets for our products even by force.
The system of protection and the colonial system are,
then, only two aspects of one and the same theory. To
hinder our fellow-citizens from buying from foreigners,
and to force foreigners to buy from our fellow-citizens,
are only two consequences of one and the same principle.
92




CONFLICT OF PRINCIPLES


93


Now, it is impossible not to admit that this doctrine, if
true, makes general utility to repose on monopoly or in.
ternal spoliation, and on conquest or external spoliation.
I enter a cottage on the French side of the Pyrenees.
The father of the family has received but slender wages.
His half-naked children shiver in the icy north wind; the
fire is extinguished, and there is nothing on the table.
There are wool, firewood, and corn on the other side of
the mountain; but these good things are forbidden to the
poor day-labourer, for the other side of the mountain is not
in France. Foreign firewood is not allowed to warm the
cottage hearth; and the shepherd's children can never
know the taste of Biscayan corn,' and the wool of Navarre
can never warm their benumbed limbs. General utility
has so ordered it. Be it so; but let us agree that all this
is in direct opposition to the first principles of justice. To
dispose legislatively of the interests of consumers, and
postpone them to the supposed interests of national industry, is to encroach upon their liberty-it is to prohibit
an act; namely, the act of exchange, which has in it
nothing contrary to good morals; in a word, it is to do
them an act of injustice.
And yet this is necessary, we are told, unless we wish
to see national labour at a standstill, and public prosperity
sustain a fatal shock.
Writers of the protectionist school, then, have arrived
at the melancholy conclusion that there is a radical incompatibility between Justice and Utility.
On the other hand, if it be the interest of each nation
to sell, and not to buy, the natural state of their relations
must consist in a violent action and reaction, for each will
seek to impose its products on all, and all will endeavour
to repel the products of each.
I The French word employed is misure, probably a Spanish word
Gallicised-mestra, meslin, mixed corn, as wheat and rye.-TRANSLATOR.




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


A sale, in fact, implies a purchase, and since, according to this doctrine, to sell is beneficial, and to buy is the
reverse, every international transaction would imply the
amelioration of one people and the deterioration of another.
But if men are, on the one hand, irresistibly impelled
towards what is for their profit, and if, on the other, they
resist instinctively what is hurtful, we are forced to conclude that each nation carries in its bosom a natural
force of expansion, and a not less natural force of resistance, which forces are equally injurious to all other
nations; or, in other words, that antagonism and war are
the natural state of human society.
Thus the theory we are discussing may be summed up
in these two axioms:
Utility is incompatible with justice at home.
Utility is incompatible with Peace abroad.
Now, what astonishes and confounds me is, that a
publicist, a statesman, who sincerely holds an economical
doctrine which runs so violently counter to other principles
which are incontestable, should be able to enjoy one
moment of calm or peace of mind.
For my own part, it seems to me that if I had entered
the precincts of the science by the same gate, if I had
failed to perceive clearly that Liberty, Utility, justice,
Peace, are things not only compatible, but strictly allied
with each other, and, so to speak, identical, I should have
endeavoured to forget what I had learned, and I should
have asked:
"How God could have willed that men should attain
prosperity only through Injustice and War? How He
could have willed that they should be unable to avoid
Injustice and War except by renouncing the possibility
of attaining prosperity?
" Dare I adopt, as the basis of the legislation of a great
nation, a science which thus misleads me by false lights,




CONFLICT OF PRINCIPLES


95


which has conducted me to this horrible blasphemy, and
landed me in so dreadful an alternative? And when a
long train of illustrious philosophers have been conducted
by this science, to which they have devoted their lives, to
more consoling results-when they affirm that Liberty and
Utility are perfectly reconcilable with Justice and Peacethat all these great principles run in infinitely extended
parallels, and will do so to all eternity, without running
counter to each other-I would ask, Have they not in their
favour that presumption which results from all that we know
of the goodness and wisdom of God, as manifested in the
sublime harmony of the material creation? In the face
of such a presumption, and of so many reliable authorities,
ought I to believe lightly that God has been pleased to
implant antagonism and dissonance in the laws of the
moral world? No; before I should venture to conclude
that the principles of social order run counter to and
neutralise each other, and are in eternal and irreconcilable
opposition-before I should venture to impose on my
fellow-citizens a system so impious as that to which my
reasonings would appear to lead-I should set myself to
re-examine the whole chain of these reasonings, and assure
myself that at this stage of the journey I had not missed
my way."
But if, after a candid and searching examination,
twenty times repeated, I arrived always at this frightful
conclusion, that we must choose between the Right and
the Good, discouraged, I should reject the science, and
bury myself in voluntary ignorance; above all, I should
decline all participation in public affairs, leaving to men
of another temper and constitution the burden and responsibility of a choice so painful.
See also ch. xviii. and xx., pp. 103, o10; also the letter to
Thiers, Collected Works, vol. iv, p. 504.-FRENCH EDITOR.




CHAPTER XV


RECIPROCITY AGAIN
M. DE SAINT-CRICQ inquires: "Whether it is certain that
the foreigner will buy from us as much as he sells? "
M. de Dombasle asks: "What reason we have to
believe that English producers will take from us, rather
than from some other country of the world, the commodities they have need of, and an amount of commodities equivalent in value to that of their exports to
France? "
I wonder how so many men who call themselves
practical men should have all reasoned without reference
to practice!
In practice, does a single exchange take place, out of
a hundred, out of a thousand, out of ten thousand, perhaps, which represents the direct barter of commodity for
commodity? Never since the introduction of money has
any agriculturist said: I want to buy shoes, hats, advice,
lessons; but only from the shoemaker, the hat-maker, the
lawyer, the professor, who will purchase from me corn to
an exactly equivalent value.  And why should nations
bring each other under a yoke of this kind?
Practically how are such matters transacted?
Let us suppose a people shut out from external relations. A man, we will suppose, produces wheat. He
sends it to the home market, and offers it for the highest
price he can obtain.  He receives in exchange-what?
Coins, which are just so many drafts or orders, varying
very much in amount, by means of which he can draw,
in his turn, from the national stores, when he judges it,96




RECIPROCITY AGAIN


97


proper, and subject to due competition, everything which
he may want or desire  Ultimately, and at the end of
the operation, he will have drawn from the mass the exact
equivalent of what he has contributed to it, and, in value,
his consumption will exactly equal his production.
If the exchanges of the supposed nation with foreigners
are left free, it is no longer to the national, but to the
general, market that each sends his contributions, and, in
turn, derives his supplies for consumption. He has no
need to care whether what he sends into the market of the
world is purchased by a fellow-countryman or by a
foreigner; whether the drafts or orders he receives come
from a Frenchman or an Englishman; whether the commodities for which he afterwards exchanges these drafts
or orders are produced on this or on the other side of
the Rhine or the Pyrenees. There is always in each individual case an exact balance between what is contributed
and what is received, between what is poured into and
what is drawn out of the great common reservoir; and if
this is true of each individual it is true of the nation at
large.
The only difference between the two cases is, that in
the last each has to face a more extended market both as
regards sales and purchases, and has consequently more
chances of transacting both advantageously.
This objection may perhaps be urged: If everybody
enters into a league not to take from the general mass the
commodities of a certain individual, that individual cannot,
in his turn, obtain from the mass what he is in want of.
It is the same of nations.
The reply to this is, that if a nation cannot obtain what
it has need of in the general market, it will no longer
contribute anything to that market. It will work for itself.
It will he forced in that case to submit to what you want
to impose on it beforehand-isolation.
11




98       FALLACIES OF PROTECTION
And this will realise the ideal of the prohibitive
system.
Is it not amusing to think that you inflict upon the
nation, now and beforehand, this very system, from a
fear that it might otherwise run the risk of arriving at
it independently of your exertions?




CHAPTER XVI


OBSTRUCTED NAVIGATION PLEADING FOR TIlE
PROHIBITIONISTS
SOME years ago I happened to be at Madrid, and went
to the Cortes. The subject of debate was a proposed treaty
with Portugal for improving the navigation of the Douro.
One of the deputies rose and said: " If the navigation of
the Douro is improved in the way now proposed, the
traffic will be carried on at less expense. The grain of
Portugal will, in consequence, be sold in the markets of
Castile at a lower price, and will become a formidable
rival to our national industry. I oppose the project,
unless, indeed, our ministers will undertake to raise the
tariff of customs to the extent required to re-establish
the equilibrium." The Assembly found the argument
unanswerable.
Three months afterwards I was at Lisbon. The same
question was discussed in the Senate. A noble hidalgo
made a speech: "Mr. President," he said, "this project is
absurd. You place guards, at great expense, along the
banks of the Douro to prevent Portugal being invaded by
Castilian grain; and at the same time you propose, also
at great expense, to facilitate that invasion. This is a
piece of inconsistency to which I cannot assent. Let us
leave the Douro to our children, as it has come to us
from our fathers."
Afterwards, when the subject of improving the naviga.
tion of the Garonne was discussed, I remembered the
arguments of the Iberian orators, and I said to myself:
If the Toulouse deputies were as good economists as the
99




ioo      FALLACIES OF PROTECTION
Spanish deputies, and the representatives of Bordeaux as
acute logicians as those of Oporto, assuredly they would
leave the Garonne
" Dormir au bruit flatteur de son onde naissante;"
for the canalisation of the Garonne would favour the
invasion of Toulouse products, to the prejudice of Bordeaux, and the inundation of Bordeaux products would
do the same thing to the detriment of Toulouse.




CHAPTER XVII


A NEGATIVE RAILWAY
I HAVE said that when, unfortunately, one has regard to
the interest of the producer, and not to that of the consurrer, it is impossible to avoid running counter to the
general interest, because the demand of the producer, as
such, is only for efforts, wants, and obstacles.
I find a remarkable illustration of this in a Bordeaux
newspaper.
M. Simiot proposes this question:
Should the proposed railway from Paris to Madrid
offer a break of continuity at Bordeaux?
He answers the question in the affirmative, and gives
a multiplicity of reasons, which I shall not stop to examine,
except this one:
The railway from Paris to Bayonne should have a
break at Bordeaux, for if goods and passengers are forced
to stop at that town, profits will accrue to bargemen,
porters, commissionaires, hotel-keepers, etc.
Here we have clearly the interest of labour put before
the interest of consumers.
But if Bordeaux has a right to profit by a gap in the
line of railway, and if such profit is consistent with the
public interest, then Angoul~me, Poitiers, Tours, Orleans,
nay, more, all the intermediate places, Ruffec, ChAtellerault, etc., should also demand gaps, as being for the
general interest, and, of course, for the interest of national
industry; for the more these breaks in the line are multiplied, the greater will be the increase of consignments,
commissions, transhipments, etc., along the whole extent
Io0




102      FALLACIES OF       PROTECTION
of the railway. In this way, we shall succeed in having
a line of railway composed of successive gaps, and which
may be denominated a Negative Railway.
Let the protectionists say what they will, it is not the
less certain that the principle of restriction is the very same
as the principle of gaps; the sacrifice of the consumer's
interest to that of the producer-in other words, the sacrifice of the end to the means.




CHAPTER XVIII


THERE ARE NO ABSOLUTE PRINCIPLES
WE cannot wonder enough at the facility with which
men resign themselves to continue ignorant of what it
is most important that they should know; and we may
be certain that such ignorance is incorrigible in those
who venture to proclaim this axiom: There are no
absolute principles.
You enter the legislative precincts.  The subject of
debate is whether the law should prohibit international
exchanges, or proclaim freedom.
A deputy rises, and says:If you tolerate these exchanges the foreigner will
inundate you with his products: England with her
textile fabrics, Belgium with coals, Spain with wools,
Italy with silks, Switzerland with cattle, Sweden with
iron, Prussia with corn; so that home industry will no
longer be possible.
Another replies:
If you prohibit international exchanges the various
bounties which nature has lavished on different climates
will be for you as if they did not exist. You cannot
participate in the mechanical skill of the English, in the
wealth of the Belgian mines, in the fertility of the Polish
soil, in the luxuriance of the Swiss pastures,.in the
cheapness of Spanish labour, in the warmth of the Italian
climate; and you must obtain from an unprofitable and
misdirected production those commodities which, through
exchange, would have been furnished to you by an easy
production.
103




104


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


Assuredly, one of these deputies must be wrong. But
which? We must take care to make no mistake on the
subject, for this is not a matter of abstract opinion merely.
You have to choose between two roads, and one of them
leads necessarily to poverty.
To get rid of the dilemma we are told that there are
no absolute principles.
This axiom, which is so much in fashion nowadays,
not only countenances indolence, but ministers to ambition.
If the theory of prohibition comes to prevail, or if
the doctrine of Free Trade comes to triumph, one brief
enactment will constitute our whole economic code.  In
the first case, the law will proclaim that all exchanges
with foreign countries are prohibited; in the second, that
all exchanges with foreign countries are free; and many
grand and distinguished personages will thereby lose
their importance.
But.if exchange does not possess a character which
is peculiar to it; if it is not governed by any natural
law; if, capriciously, it be sometimes useful and sometimes detrimental; if it does not find its motive force in
the good which it accomplishes, its limit in the good
which it ceases to accomplish; if its consequences cannot
be estimated by those who effect exchanges-in a word,
if there be no absolute principles, then we must proceed
to weigh, balance, and regulate transactions, we must
equalise the conditions of labour, and try to find out the
average rate of profits-a colossal task, well deserving
the large emoluments and powerful influence awarded to
those who undertake it.
On entering Paris, which I had come to visit, I said
to myself-Here are a million of human beings who would
all die in a short time if provisions of every kind ceased
to flow towards this great metropolis.  Imagination is




NO ABSOLUTE PRINCIPLES


105


baffled when it tries to appreciate the vast multiplicity
of commodities which must enter to-morrow through the
barriers in order to preserve the inhabitants from falling
a prey to the convulsions of famine, rebellion and pillage.
And yet all sleep at this moment, and their peaceful
slumbers are not disturbed for a single instant by the
prospect of such a frightful catastrophe. On the other
hand, eighty departments have been labouring to-day,
without concern, without any mutual understanding, for
the provisioning of Paris.  How does each succeeding
day bring what is wanted, nothing more, nothing less,
to so gigantic a market? What, then, is the ingenious
and secret power which governs the astonishing regularity
of movements so complicated, a regularity in which everybody has implicit faith, although happiness and life itself
are at stake? That power is an absolute principle, the
principle of freedom in transactions. We have faith in
that inward light which Providence has placed.in the
heart of all men, and to w:hich He has confided the
preservation and indefinite amelioration of our species,
namely, a regard to personal interest-since we must
give it its right name-a principle so active, so vigilant,
so foreseeing, when it is free in its action.  In what
situation, I would ask, would the inhabitants of Paris
be it a minister should take it into his head to substitute for this power the combinations of his own genius,
however superior we might suppose them to be-if he
thought to subject to his supreme direction this prodigious mechanism, to hold the springs of it in his hands,
to decide by whom, or in what manner, or on what
conditions, everything needed should be produced, transported, exchanged and consumed? Truly, there may be
much suffering within the walls of Paris-poverty, despair,
perhaps starvation, causing more tears to flow than ardent
charity is able to dry up; but I affirm that it is probable,




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


nay, that it is certain, that the arbitrary intervention of
government would multiply infinitely those sufferings, and
spread over all our fellow-citizens those evils which at
present affect only a small number of them.
This faith, then, which we repose in a principle, when
the question relates only to our home transactions, why
should we not retain when the same principle is applied
to our international transactions, which are undoubtedly
less numerous, less delicate, and less complicated? And
if it is not necessary that the municipality should regulate
our Parisian industries, weigh our chances, balance our
profits and losses, see that our circulating medium is
not exhausted, and equalise the conditions of our home
labour, why should it be necessary that the customhouse,
departing from its fiscal duties, should pretend to exercise
a protective action over our external commerce? '
1 See the first letter to Lamartine, Collected Works, vol. i., p. 406;
also Harmonies Economiques, ch. i.-FRENCH EDITOR.




CHAPTER XIX


NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE
AMONG the arguments which we hear adduced.in favour
of the restrictive revgime we must not forget that which
is founded on national independence.
"What should we do in case of war," it is said, "if
we are placed at the mercy of England for iron and
coal? "
English monopolists do not fail to cry out in their
turn:"What would become of Great Britain in case of war
if she is dependent on France for provisions? "
One thing is overlooked, which is this: That the
kind of dependence which results from exchange, from
commercial transactions, is a reciprocal dependence. We
cannot be dependent on the foreigner without the foreigner
being dependent on us. Now, this is the very essence
of society. To break up natural relations is not to place
ourselves in a state of independence, but in a state of
isolation.
Remark this: A nation isolates itself looking forward
to the possibility of war; but is not this very act of
isolating itself the beginning of war?  It renders war
more easy, less burdensome, and, it may be, less unpopular. Let countries be permanent markets for each
other's produce; let their reciprocal relations be such that
they cannot be broken without inflicting on each other
the double suffering of privation and a glut of commodities; and they will no longer stand in need of naval
armaments, which ruin them, and overgrown armies,
107




Io8


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


which crush them; the peace of the world will not then
be compromised by the caprice of a Thiers or of a
Palmerston; and war will disappear for want of what
supports it, for want of resources, inducements, pretexts,
and popular sympathy.
I am quite aware that I shall be reproached (it is
the fashion of the day), with basing the fraternity of
nations on men's personal interest-vile, prosaic selfinterest. Better far, it may be thought, that it should
have had its basis in charity, in love, even in a little
self-abnegation, and that, interfering somewhat with
men's material comforts, it should have had the merit
of a generous sacrifice.
hWhen shall we be done with these puerile declamations?  When will hypocrisy be finally banished from
science?  When shall we cease to exhibit this nauseous
contradiction between our professions and our practice?
We hoot at and execrate personal interest; in other words,
we denounce what is useful and good (for to say that
all men are interested in anything is to say that the thing
is good in itself), as if personal interest were not the
necessary, eternal and indestructible mainspring to which
Providence has confided human perfectibility. Are we
not represented as being all angels of disinterestedness?
And does the thought never occur to those who say so
that the public begins to see with disgust that this
affected language disfigures the pages of those very
writers who are most successful in filling their own
pockets at the public expense?  Oh  affectation!I affectation I thou art verily the besetting sin of our times!
What! because material prosperity and peace are
things correlative, because it has pleased God to establish
this beautiful harmony in the moral world, am I not to
admire, am I not to adore His ordinances, am I not to
accept with gratitude laws which make justice the con



NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE


Iog


dition of happiness? You desire peace only in as far
as it runs counter to material prosperity; and liberty is
rejected because it does not impose sacrifices. If abnegation has indeed so many charms for you, why do you
fail to practise it in private life? Society will we grateful
to you, for someone, at least, will reap the fruit; but to
desire to impose it upon mankind as a principle is the
very height of absurdity, for the abnegation of all is the
sacrifice of all, which is evil erected into a theory.
But, thank Heaven, one can write or read many of
these declamations without the world ceasing on that
account to obey the social motive force, which leads us
to shun evil and seek after good, and which, whether
they like it or not, we must denominate personal interest.
After all, it is singular enough to see sentiments of
the most sublime self denial invoked in support of spoliation itself.  See to what this boasted disinterestedness
tendsl These men who are so fantastically delicate as
not to desire peace itself, if it is founded on the vile
interest of mankind, put their hand into the pockets of
others, and especially of the poor  For what article of
the tariff protects the poor?  Be pleased, gentlemen, to
dispose of what belongs to yourselves as you think proper,
but leave us the disposal of the fruit of our own toil, to
use it or exchange it as we see best.  Declaim on selfsacrifice as much as you choose, it is all very fine and
very beautiful, but be at least consistent.1
I See Justice and Fraternity, Collected Works, vol. iv., p. 298; also
introduction to Cobden and the League and the Second Campaign of
the League, Collected Works, vol. iii.-FRENCH EDITOR.




CHAPTER XX


HUMAN LABOUR-NATIONAL LABOUR
MACHINE-BREAKING-prohibition of foreign commoditiesare two acts founded on the same doctrine.
We see men who clap their hands when a great invention is introduced, and who nevertheless adhere to
the protectionist system. Such men are grossly inconsistent!
With what do they reproach free trade? With encouraging the production by foreigners, more skilled or
more favourably situated than we are, of commodities
which, but for free trade, would be produced at home.
In a word, they accuse free trade of being injurious to
national labour.
For the same reason, should they not reproach
machinery with accomplishing by natural agents what
otherwise would have been done by manual labour, and
so of being injurious to human labour?
The foreign workman, better and more favourably
situated than the home workman for the production of
certain commodities, is, with reference to the latter, a
veritable economic machine, crushing him by competition.
In like manner, machinery, which executes a piece of work
at a lower price than a certain number of men could do by
manual labour, is, in relation to these manual labourers,
a veritable foreign competitor, who paralyses them by his
rivalry.
If, then, it is politic to protect national labour against
the competition of foreign labour, it is not less so to protect
human labour against the rivalry of mechanical labour.
Io1




HUMAN     LABOUR-NATIONAL LABOUR            III
Thus, every adherent of the system of protection, if
he is logical, should not content himself with prohibiting
foreign products; he should proscribe also the products of
the shuttle and the plough.
And this is the reason why I like better the logic of
those men who, declaiming against the invasion of foreign
merchandise, declaim likewise against the excess of production which is due to the inventive power of the human
mind.
Such a man is M. de Saint-Chamans. "One of the
strongest arguments against free trade," he says, "is the
too extensive employment of machinery, for many workmen are deprived of employment, either by foreign competition, which lowers the price of our manufactured
goods, or by instruments which take the place of men in
our workshops." 1
M. de Saint-Chamans has seen clearly the analogy, or,
we should rather say, the identity, which obtains between
imports and machinery. For this reason, he proscribes
both; and it is really agreeable to have to do with such
intrepid reasoners, who, even when wrong, carry out their
argument to its logical conclusion.
But here is the mess in which they land themselves:
If it be true, a priori, that the domain of invention and
that of labour cannot be simultaneously extended but at
each other's expense, it must be in those countries where
machinery most abounds-in Lancashire, for examplethat we should expect to find the fewest workmen. And if,
on the other hand, we establish the fact that mechanical
power and manual labour co-exist, and to a greater extent,
among rich nations than among savages, the conclusion is
inevitable, that these two powers do not exclude each
other.
I cannot understand how any thinking being can
X Doa,Stystfme 4'J7mps, p. 438.




112


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


enjoy a moment's repose in presence of the following
dilemma:
Either the inventions of man are not injurious to
manual labour, as general facts attest, since there are more
of both in England and France than among the Hurons
and Cherokees, and, that being so, I am on a wrong road,
though I know neither where nor when I missed my way;
at all events, I see I am wrong, and I should commit the
crime of treason to humanity were I to introduce my error
into the legislation of my country:
Or else, the discoveries of the human mind limit the
amount of manual labour, as special facts appear to indicate; for I see every day some machine or other superseding twenty or a hundred workmen; and then I am
forced to acknowledge a flagrant, eternal, and incurable
antithesis between the intellectual and physical powers of
man-between his progress and his present wellbeing;
and in these circumstances I am forced to say that the
Creator of man might have endowed him with reason, or
with physical strength, with moral force, or with brute
force; but that He mocked him by conferring on him, at
the same time, faculties which are destructive of each other.
The difficulty is pressing and puzzling; but you contrive to find your way out of it by adopting the strange
apophthegm:
In political economy there are no absolute principles.
In plain language, this means:
"I know not whether it be true or false; I am ignorant
of what constitutes general good or evil. I give myself
no trouble about that. The immediate effect of each
measure upon my own personal interest is the only law
which I can consent to recognise."
There are no principles I You might as well say there
are no facts; for principles are merely formulas which
classify such facts as are well established,




HUMAN LABOUR-NATIONAL LABOUR II3
Machinery, and the importation of foreign commodities,
certainly produce effects. These effects may be good or
bad; on that there may be difference of opinion.  But
whatever view we take of them, it is reduced to a formula,
by one of these two principles: Machinery is a good; or,
machinery is an evil: Importations of foreign produce are
beneficial; or, such importations are hurtful. But to assert
that there are no principles, certainly exhibits the lowest
degree of abasement to which the human mind can
descend; and I confess that I blush for my country when
I hear such a monstrous heresy proclaimed in the French
Chambers, and with their assent; that is to say, in the face
and with the assent of the elite of our fellow-citizens; and
this in order to justify their imposing laws upon us in total
ignorance of the real state of the case.
But then I am told to destroy the fallacy by proving
that machinery is not hurtful to human labour, nor the
importation of foreign products to national labour.
A work like the present cannot well include very full
or complete demonstrations. My design is rather to state
difficulties than to resolve them; to excite reflection rather
than to satisfy doubts. No conviction makes so lasting an
impression on the mind as that which it works out for
itself. But I shall endeavour nevertheless to put the reader
on the right road.
What misleads the adversaries of machinery and
foreign importations is, that they judge of them by their
immediate and transitory effects, instead of following them
out to their general and definite consequences.
The immediate effect of the invention and employment
of an ingenious machine is to render superfluous, for the
attainment of a given result, a certain amount of manual
labour. But its action does not stop there. For the very
reason that the desired result is obtained with fewer efforts,
the product is handed over to the public at a lower price;
I




I14


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


and the aggregate of savings thus realised by all purchasers, enables them to procure other satisfactions; that
is to say, to encourage manual labour in general to exactly
the extent of the manual labour which has been saved in
the special branch of.industry which has been recently improved. So that the level of labour has not fallen, while
that of enjoyments has risen.
Let us render this evident by an example.
Suppose there are used annually in this country ten
millions of hats at 15 shillings; this makes the sum which
goes to the support of this branch of industry 7,500oo,ooo
sterling. A machine is invented which allows these hats
to be manufactured and sold at o1 shillings. The sum
now wanted for the support of this industry is reduced
to ~5,00o,ooo, provided the demand is not augmented by
the change. But the remaining sum of ~2,500,000 is not
by this change withdrawn 'from the support of human
labour. That sum, economised by the purchasers of hats,
will enable them to satisfy other wants, and, consequently,
to that extent will go to remunerate the aggregate industry
of the country. With the five shillings saved, John will
purchase a pair of shoes, James a book, Jerome a piece of
furniture, etc. Human labour, taken in the aggregate,
will continue, then, to be supported and encouraged to the
extent of ~7,500,000; but this sum will yield the same
number of hats, plus all the satisfactions and enjoyments
corresponding to ~2,500,000 that the employment of the
machine has enabled the consumers of hats to save. These
additional enjoyments constitute the clear profit which the
country will have derived from the invention. This is a
free gift, a tribute which human genius will have derived
from nature. We do not at all dispute that in the course
of the transformation a certain amount of labour will have
been displaced; but we cannot allow that it has been
(destroyed or,disinisbe4.




HUMAN LABOUR —NATIONAL LABOUR I I5
The same thing holds of the importation of foreign
commodities. Let us revert to our former hypothesis.
The country manufactures ten millions of hats, of which
the- cost price was I5 shillings. The foreigner sends
similar hats to our market, and furnishes them at o10 shillings each. I maintain that the national labour will not be
thereby diminished.
For it must produce to the extent of ~5,000,00ooo to
enable it to pay for io millions of hats at io shillings.
And then there remains to each purchaser five shillings
saved on each hat, or in all, ~2,5oo,ooo, which will be
spent on other enjoyments-that is to say, which will go
to support labour in other departments of industry.
Then the aggregate labour of the country will remain
what it was, and the additional enjoyments represented
by ~62,500,000 saved upon hats will form the clear profit
accruing from imports under the system of free trade.
It is of no use to try to frighten us by a picture of the
sufferings which, on this hypothesis, the displacement of
labour will entail.
For, if the prohibition had never been imposed, the
labour would have found its natural place under the
ordinary law of exchange, and no displacement would
have taken place.
If, on the other hand, prohibition has led to an
artificial and unproductive employment of labour, it is
prohibition, and not liberty, which is to blame for a displacement which is inevitable in the transition from what
is detrimental to what is beneficial.
At all events, let no one pretend that because an abuse
cannot be done away with, without inconvenience to those
who profit by it, what has been suffered to exist for a time
should be allowed to exist for ever.




CHAPTER XXI


RAW MATERIALS
IT is said that the most advantageous of all branches
of trade is that which supplies manufactured commodities
in exchange for raw materials. For these raw materials
are the aliment and support of national labour.
Hence the conclusion is drawn:
That the best law of customs is that which gives the
greatest possible facility to the importation of raw
materials, and which throws most obstacles in the way
of importing finished goods.
There is no fallacy in political economy more widely
disseminated than this. It is cherished not only by the
protectionist school, but also, and above all, by the- school
which dubs itself Liberal; and it is unfortunate that it
should be so, for what can be more injurious to a good
cause than that it should be at the same time vigorously
attacked and feebly defended?
Commercial liberty is likely to have the fate of liberty
in general; it will only find a place in the statute book
after it has taken possession of men's minds and convictions. But if it be true that a reform, in order to be
solidly established, should be generally understood, it
follows that nothing can so much retard reform as that
which misleads public opinion. And what is more calculated to mislead public opinion than works which, in
advocating freedom, invoke aid from the doctrines of
monopoly?
Some years ago three of the great towns of FranceLyons, Bordeaux, and Havre-united in a movement
zt6




RAW MATERIALS


117


against the restrictive regime. All Europe was stirred
on seeing raised what they took for the banner of liberty.
Alas I it proved to be also the banner of monopoly-of
a monopoly a little more niggardly and much more absurd
than that of which they seemed to desire the overthrow.
By the aid of the fallacy which I have just endeavoured
to expose, the petitioners did nothing more than reproduce the doctrine of protection to national industry, tacking
to it an additional inconsistency.
It was, in fact, nothing else than the system of prohibition. Just listen to M. de Saint-Cricq:"Labour constitutes the wealth of a nation, because
labour alone creates those material objects which our
wants demand; and universal ease and comfort consist
in the abundance of these things." So much for the
principle.
"But this abundance must be produced by national
labour. If it were the result of foreign labour, national
labour would be immediately brought to a stand." Here
lies the error. (See the preceding chapter.)
"What course should an agricultural and manufacturing country take under such circumstances? Reserve its
markets for the products of its own soil and of its own
industry." Such is the end and design.
"And for that purpose restrain by duties, and, if
necessary, prohibit importation of the products of the soil
and industry of other nations." Such are the means.
Let us compare this system with that which the Bordeaux petition advocates.
Commodities are there divided into three classes:"The first includes provisions, and raw materials upon
which no human labour has been bestowed. In principle,
a wise economy would demand that this class should be
free of duties." Here we have no labour, no protection.
"The second consists of products which have, to some




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


extent, been prepared. This preparation warrants such
products being charged with a certain amount of duty."
Here protection begins, because here, according to the
petitioners, begins national labour.
"The third comprises goods and products in their
finished and perfect state. These contribute nothing to
national labour, and we regard this class as the most
taxable!' Here labour, and protection along with it,
reach their maximum.
We thus see that the petitioners profess their belief
in the doctrine that foreign labour is injurious to national
labour; and this is the error of the prohibitive system.
They demand that the home market should be reserved
for home industry. That is the design of the system of
prohibition.
They demand that foreign labour should be subjected
to restrictions and taxes. These are the means employed
by the system of prohibition.
What difference, then, can we possibly discover be.
tween the Bordeaux petitioners and the Corypheus of
restriction? One difference, and one only: the greater
or less extension given to the word labour.
M. de Saint-Cricq extends it to everything, and so
he wishes to protect all.
"Labour constitutes all the wealth of a people," he
says; "to protect agricultural industry, and all agricultural industry; to protect manufacturing industry, and
all manufacturing industry, is the cry which should never
cease to be heard in this Chamber."
The Bordeaux petitioners take no labour into account
but that of the manufacturers; and for that reason they
would admit them to the benefits of protection.
"Raw materials are commodities upon which no
human labour has been bestowed.   In principle, we
should not tax them. Manufactured products can no




RAW MATERIALS


I19


longer serve the cause of national industry, and we
regard them as the best subjects for taxation."
It is not our business in this place to inquire whether
protection to national industry is reasonable.  M. de
Saint-Cricq and the Bordeaux gentlemen are at one upon
this point, and, as we have shown in the preceding
chapters, we on this subject differ from both.
Our present business is to discover whether it is by
M. de Saint-Cricq, or by the Bordeaux petitioners, that
the word labour is used in a correct sense.
Now, in this view of the question, we think that
M. de Saint-Cricq has very much the best of it; and to
prove this we may suppose them to hold some such
dialogue as the following:M. DE SAINT-CRICQ: You grant that national labour
should be protected. You grant that the products of no
foreign labour can be introduced into our market without
superseding a corresponding amount of our national
labour. Only you contend that there are a multiplicity
of products possessed of value (for they sell), but upon
which no human labour has been bestowed [vierges de
tout travail humain]. And you enumerate, among other
things, corn, flour, meat, cattle, tallow, salt, iron, copper,
lead, coal, wool, hides, seeds, etc.
If you will only prove to me that the value of these
things is not due to labour, I will grant that it is useless
to protect them.
But, on the other hand, if I demonstrate to you that
there is as much labour worked up in Ioo francs worth
of wool as in Ioo francs worth of textile fabrics, you
will allow that the one is as worthy of protection as the
other.
Now, why is this sack of wool worth ioo francs? Is
it not because that is its cost price? And what does its
cost price represent but the aggregate wages of all the




120


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


labour and profits of all the capital which have contributed
to the production of the commodity?
THE BORDEAUX PETITIONERS: Well, perhaps as regards wool you may be right. But take the case of a
sack of corn, a bar of iron, a hundredweight of coalsare these commodities produced by labour? Are they not
created by nature?
M. DE SAINT-CRICQ: Undoubtedly nature creates the
elements of all these things, but it is labour which produces the values. I was wrong myself in saying that
labour created material objects, and that vicious form of
expression has led me into other errors.  It does not
belong to man to create, to make anything out of nothing,
be he agriculturist or manufacturer; and if by production
is meant creation, all our labour must be marked down
as unproductive, and yours, as merchants, more unproductive than all others, excepting perhaps my own.
The agriculturist, then, cannot pretend to have created
corn, but he has created value; I mean to say, he has,
by his labour and that of his servants, labourers, reapers,
etc., transformed into corn substances which had no resemblance to it whatever. The miller who converts the
corn into flour, the baker who converts the flour into
bread, do the same thing.
In order that man may be enabled to clothe himself
a multitude of operations are necessary. Prior to all
intervention of human labour the true raw materials of
cloth are the air, the water, the heat, the gases, the
light, the salts, which enter into its composition. These
are the raw materials upon which, strictly speaking, no
human labour has been employed. They are vierges de
tout travail humain; and since they have no value, I
should never dream of protecting them. But the first
application of labour converts these substances into grass
and provender, a second into wool, a third into yarn, a




RAW MATERIALS


121


fourth into a woven fabric, a fifth into clothing. Who
can assert that the whole of these operations, from the
first furrow laid open by the plough to the last stitch
of the tailor's needle, do not resolve themselves into
labour?
And it is because these operations are spread over
several branches of industry, in order to accelerate and
facilitate the accomplishment of the ultimate object, which
is to furnish clothing to those who have need of it, that
you desire, by an arbitrary distinction, to rank the importance of such works in the order in which they
succeed each other, so that the first of the series shall
not merit even the name of labour, and that the last,
being labour par excellence, shall be worthy of the
favours of protection?
THE PETITIONERS: Yes; we begin to see that corn,
like wool, is not exactly a product of which it can be
said that no human labour has been bestowed upon it;
but the agriculturist has not, at least, like the manufacturer, done everything himself or by means of his
workmen; nature has assisted him, and if there is labour
worked up in corn it is not the simple product of
labour.
M. DE SAINT-CRICQ: But its value resolves itself exclusively into labour. I am happy that nature concurs
in the material formation of grain. I could even wish
that it were entirely her work; but you must allow that
I have constrained this assistance of nature by my labour,
and when I sell you my corn you will remark this: That
it is not for the labour of nature that I ask you to pay,
but for my own.
But, as you state the case, manufactured commodities
are no longer the exclusive products of labour. Is the
manufacturer not beholden to nature in his processes?
Does he not avail himself of the assistance of the steam



122


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


engine, of the pressure of the atmosphere, just as, with
the assistance of the plough, I avail myself of its humidity?
Has he created the laws of gravitation, of the transmission
of forces, of affinity?
THE PETITIONERS: Well, this is the case of the wool
over again; but coal is assuredly the work, the exclusive
work, of nature. It is indeed a product upon which no
human labour has ever been bestowed.
M. DE SAINT-CRICQ: Yes; nature has undoubtedly
created the coal, but labour has imparted value to it. For
the millions of years during which it was buried Ioo
fathoms under ground, unknown to everybody, it was
destitute of value. It was necessary to search for it-that
is labour; it was necessary to send it to market-that is
additional labour. Then the price you pay for it in the
market is nothing else than the remuneration of the labour
of mining and transport.'
Thus far we see that M. de Saint-Cricq has the best of
the argument; that the value of raw materials, like that
of manufactured commodities, represents the cost of production, that is to say, the labour worked up in them; that
it is not possible to conceive of a product possessing value,
which has had no human labour bestowed on it; that the
distinction made by the petitioners is futile in theory; that,
as the basis of an unequal distribution of favours, it would
be iniquitous in practice, since the result would be that
1 I do not particularise the parts of the remuneration falling to the
lessee, the capitalist, etc., for several reasons: First, because, on looking at the thing more closely, you will see that the remuneration always
resolves itself into the reimbursement of advances or the payment of
previous labour. Secondly, because, under the term labour, I include not
only the wages of the workmen, but the legitimate recompense of everything which co-operates in the work of production. Thirdly (and above
all), because the production of manufactured products is, like that of
raw materials, burdened with auxiliary remunerations other than the mere
expense of manual labour; and, moreover, this objection, frivolous in
itself, would apply as much to the most delicate processes of manufacture,
as to the rudest operations of agriculture.




RAW MATERIALS


123


one-third of our countrymen, who happened to be engaged
in manufactures, would obtain the advantages of monopoly, on the alleged ground that they produce by labour,
whilst the other two-thirds-namely, the agricultural
population —would be abandoned to competition under the
pretext that they produce without labour.
The rejoinder to this, I am quite sure, will be, that a
nation derives more advantages from importing what are
called raw materials, whether produced by labour or not,
and exporting manufactured commodities. This will be
repeated and insisted on, and it is an opinion very widely
accredited.
"The more abundant raw materials are," says the Bordeaux petition, "the more are manufactures promoted and
multiplied."
"Raw materials," says the same document in another
place, "open up an unlimited field of work for the inhabitants of the countries into which they are imported."
"Raw materials," says the Havre petition, "constituting as they do the elements of labour, must be submitted to a different treatment, and be gradually admitted
at the lowest rate of duty."
The same petition expresses a wish that manufactured
products should be admitted, not gradually, but after an
indefinite lapse of time, not at the lowest rate of duty, but
at a duty of 20 per cent.
"Among other articles, the low price and abundance of
which are a necessity," says the Lyons petition, "manufacturers include all raw materials."
All this is founded on an illusion.
We have seen that all value represents labour. Now,
it is quite true that manufacturing labour increases tenfold,
sometimes a hundredfold, the value of the raw material;
that is to say, it yields ten times, a hundred times, more
profit to the nation. Hence men are led to reason thus:




124


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


The production of a hundredweight of iron brings in a
gain of only I5 shillings to workmen of all classes. The
conversion of this hundredweight of iron into the mainsprings of watches raises their earnings to 500oo; and will
anyone venture to say that a nation has not a greater
interest to secure for its labour a gain of ~50oo than a gain
of fifteen shillings? We do not exchange a hundredweight of unwrought iron for a hundredweight of watchsprings, nor a hundredweight of unwashed wool for a
hundredweight of cashmere shawls; but we exchange a
certain value of one of these materials for an equal value
of another. Now, to exchange equal value for equal value
is to exchange equal labour for equal labour. It is not
true, then, that a nation which sells five pounds' worth of
wrought fabrics or watch-springs gains more than a nation
which sells five pounds' worth of wool or iron.
In a country where no law can be voted, where no tax
can be imposed, but with the consent of those whose
dealings the law is to regulate, and whose pockets
the tax is to affect, the public cannot be robbed without
first being imposed on and misled. Our ignorance is the,raw material of every extortion from which we suffer, and
we may be certain beforehand that every fallacy is the
precursor of an act of plunder. My good friends! when
you detect a fallacy in a petition, button up your
breeches-pocket, for you may be sure that this is the
mark aimed at.
Let us see, then, what is the real object secretly aimed
at by the shipowners of Bordeaux and Havre, and the
manufacturers of Lyons, and which is concealed under the
distinction which they attempt to draw between agricultural and manufactured commodities.
"It is principally this first class (that which comprises
raw materials, upon which no human labour has been
bestowed) which affords," say the Bordeaux petitioners,




RAW MATERIALS


15


"the principal support to our merchant shipping....
In principle, a wise economy would not tax this class.
*.. The second (commodities partly wrought up)
may be taxed to a certain extent. The third (commodities
which call for no more exertion of labour) we regard as
the fittest subjects of taxation."
The Havre petitioners "consider that it is indispensable
to reduce gradually the duty on raw materials to the lowest
rate, in order that our manufacturers may gradually find
employment for the shipping interest, which furnishes
them with the first and indispensable materials of labour."
The manufacturers could not remain behindhand in
politeness towards the shipowners. So the Lyons petition
asks for the free introduction of raw materials, "in order
to prove," as they express it, "that the interests of the
manufacturing are not always opposed to those of the
maritime towns."
No; but then the interests of both, understood as the
petitioners understand them, are in direct opposition to the
interests of agriculture and of consumers.
Well, gentlemen, we have come at length to see what
you are aiming at, and the object of your subtle economical distinctions. You desire that the law should restrain
the transport of finished goods across the ocean, in order
that the more costly conveyance of raw and rough
materials, bulky, and mixed up with refuse, should afford
greater scope for your merchant shipping, and more largely
employ your marine resources. This is what you call a
wise economy.
On the same principle, why do you not ask that the
pines of Russia should be brought to you with their
branches, bark, and roots; the silver of Mexico in its
mineral state; the hides of Buenos Ayres sticking to the
bones of the putrefying carcases from which they have
been torn?




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


I expect that railway shareholders, the moment they
are in a majority in the Chambers, will proceed to make
a law forbidding the manufacture of the brandy which is
consumed in Paris. And why not? Would not a law
enforcing the conveyance of ten casks of wine for every
cask of brandy afford Parisian industry the indispensable
materials of its labour, and give employment to our locomotive resources?
How long will men shut their eyes to this simple
truth?
Manufactures, shipping, labour-all have for end the
general, the public good; to create useless industries, to
favour superfluous conveyances, to support a greater
amount of labour than is necessary, not for the good
of the public, but at the expense of the public-is to realise
a true petitio principii. It is not labour which is desirable
for its own sake; it is consumption. All labour without
a commensurate result is a loss. You may as well pay
sailors for making ducks and drakes with pebbles on the
surface of the water as pay them for transporting useless
refuse. Thus, we arrive at the result to which all economic
fallacies, numerous as they are, conduct us, namely, confounding the means with the end, and developing the one
at the expense of the other.
And see vol. i., Collected Works, Reflections on the Petitions of
Bordeaux, Havre, etc. —FRENCH EDITOR.




CHAPTER XXII


METAPHORS
A FALLACY sometimes expands, and runs through the
whole texture of a long and elaborate theory. More frequently, it shrinks and contracts, assumes the guise of a
principle, and lurks in a word or a phrase.
"May God protect us from the devil and from metaphors " was the exclamation of Paul-Louis.' And it is
difficult to say which of them has done most mischief
in this world of ours. The devil, you will say; for he has
put the spirit of plunder into all our hearts. True, but
he has left free the means of repressing abuses by the
resistance of those who suffer from  them.  It is the
fallacy which paralyses this resistance  The sword
which malice put into the hands of assailants would be
powerless, did sophistry not break the buckler which
should shield the party assailed.  It was with reason,
therefore, that Malebranche inscribed on the title-page of
his work this sentence: L'erreur est la cause de la misere
des hommes.
Let us see in what way this takes place. Ambitious
men are often actuated by sinister and wicker intentions;
their design, for example, may be to implant in the public
mind the germ of international hatred. This fatal germ
may develop itself, light up a general conflagration, arrest
civilisation, cause torrents of blood to be shed, and bring
upon the country the most terrible of all scourges, invasion.
At any rate, and apart from this, such sentiments of hatred
lower us in the estimation of other nations, and force
Paul Louis Caurier.
127




I28


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


Frenchmen who retain any sense of justice to blush for
their country. These are undoubtedly most serious evils;
and to guard the public against the underhand practices of
those who would expose the country to such hazard, it
is only necessary to see clearly into their designs. How do
they manage to conceal them? By the use of metaphors.
They twist, distort, and pervert the meaning of three or
four words, and the thing is done.
The word invasion itself is a good illustration of this.
A French ironmaster exclaims: Preserve us from the
invasion of English iron.  An English landowner exclaims in return: Preserve us from the invasiont of French
corn. And then they proceed to interpose; barriers between
the two countries. These barriers create isolation, isolation gives rise to hatred, hatred to war, war to invasion.
What does it signify? cry the two sophists; is it not better
to expose ourselves to a possible invasion than accept an
invasion which is certain? And the people believe them,
and the barriers are kept up.
And yet what analogy is there between an exchange
and an invasion?   What possible similarity can be
imagined between a ship of war which comes to vomit fire
and devastation on our towns, and a merchant ship which
comes to offer a free voluntary exchange of commodities
for commodities?
The same thing holds of the use made of the word
inundation. This word is ordinarily used in a bad sense,
for we often see our fields injured, and our harvests
carried away by floods. If, however, they leave on our
soil something of greater value than what they carry away,
like the inundations of the Nile, we should be thankful
for them, as the Egyptians are  Before we declaim, then,
against the inundations of foreign products —before proceeding to restrain them by irksome and costly obstacleswe should inquire to what class they belong, and whether




METAPHORS


I29


they ravage or fertilise.  What should we think of
Mehemet Ali, if, instead of raising at great cost, dams
across the Nile, to extend wider its inundations, he were to
spend his money in digging a deeper channel to prevent
Egypt being soiled by the foreign slime which descends
upon her from the Mountains of the Moon? We display
exactly the same degree of wisdom and sense, when we
desire, at the cost of millions, to defend our countryFrom What? From the benefits which nature has bestowed
on other climates.
Among the metaphors which conceal a pernicious
theory, there is no one more in use than that presented by
the words tribute and tributary.
These words have now become so common that they
are used as synonymous with purchase and purchaser, and
are employed indiscriminately.
And yet a tribute is as different from a purchase as a
theft is from an exchange; and I should like quite as well
to hear it said, Cartouche has broken into my strong-box
and purchased a thousand pounds, as to hear one of our
deputies repeat, We have paid Germany tribute for a
thousand horses which she has sold us.
For what distinguishes the act of Cartouche from a
purchase is, that he has not put into my strong-box, and
with my consent, a value equivalent to what he has taken
out of it.
And what distinguishes our remittance of ~20,000
which we have made to Germany from a tribute paid to
her is this, that she has not received the money gratuitously, but has given us in exchange a thousand horses,
which we have judged to be worth the ~20,000.
Is it worth while exposing seriously such an abuse of
language? Yes; for these terms are used seriously both
in newspapers and in books.
Do not let it be supposed that these are instances of a
I




130


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


mere lapsus lingua~ on the part of certain ignorant writers I
For one writer who abstains from so using them, I will
point you out ten who admit them, and amongst the rest,
the D'Argouts, the Dupins, the Villeles-peers, deputies,
ministers of state-men, in short, whose words are laws,
and whose fallacies, even the most transparent, serve as
a basis for the government of the country.
A celebrated modern philosopher has added to the categories of Aristotle the fallacy which consists in employing
a phrase which includes a petitio principii.  He gives
many examples of it; and he should have added the word
tributary to his list. The business, in fact, is to discover
whether purchases:made from foreigners are useful
or hurtful.  They are hurtful, you say.  And why?
Because they render us tributaries to the foreigner.
This is just to use a word which implies the very thing
to be proved.
It may be asked how this abuse of words first came to
be introduced into the rhetoric of the monopolists?
Money leaves the country to satisfy the rapacity of a
victorious enemy. Money also leaves the country to pay
for commodities. An analogy is established between the
two cases by taking into account only the points in which
they resemble each other, and keeping out of view the
points in which they differ.
Yet this circumstance —that is to say, the non-reimbursement in the first case, and the reimbursement
voluntarily agreed upon in the second-establishes betwixt
them such a difference that it is really impossible to class
them in the same category. To hand over a hundred
pounds by force to a man who has caught you by the
throat, or to hand them over voluntarily to a man who
furnishes you with what you want, are things as different
as light and darkness. You might as well assert that it
is a matter of indifference whether you throw your bread




METAPHORS                      131
into the river, or eat it, for in both cases the bread is
destroyed. The vice of this reasoning, like that applied
to the word tribute, consists in asserting an entire similitude between two cases, looking only at their points of
resemblance, and keeping out of sight the points in which
they differ.




SECOND SERIES


CHAPTER I
THE TWO HATCHETS
PETITION OF JACQUES BONHOMME, CARPENTER, TO M. CUNINGRIDAINE, MINISTER OF COMMERCE
Mr. Manufacturer Minister,
I am a carpenter by trade, as was St. Joseph of old,
and I handle the hatchet and adze for your benefit.
Now, while engaged in hewing and chopping from
morning to night upon the lands of our Lord the King,'
the idea has struck me that 'my labour may Se regarded
at national, as well as yours.
And, in these circumstances, I cannot see why protection
should not visit my woodyard as well as your workshop.
For, sooth to say, if you make cloths I make roofs;
and both, in their own way, shelter our customers from
cold and from rain.
And yet I run after customers, and customers run
after you. You have found out the way of securing them
by hindering them from supplying themselves elsewhere,
while mine apply to whomsoever they think proper.
What is astonishing in all this?  Monsieur Cunin,
the Minister of State, has not forgotten M. Cunin, the
manufacturer-all quite natural. But alas! my humble
trade has not given a Minister to France, although practised in Scripture times by far more august personages.
And in the immortal code which I find embodied in
Scripture I cannot discover the slightest expression which
Published in January, 1848.
132




THE TWO HATCHETS


133


could be quoted by carpenters as authorising them to
enrich themselves at the expense of other people.
You see, then, how I am situated.  I earn fifteen
pence a day, when it is not Sunday or holiday. I offer
you my services at the same time as a Flemish carpenter
offers you his, and, because he abates a halfpenny, you
give him the preference.
But I desire to clothe myself; and if a Belgian weaver
presents his cloth alongside of yours, you drive him and
his cloth out of the country. So that, being forced to
frequent your shop, although the dearest, my poor fifteen
pence go no further in reality than fourteen.
Nay, they are not worth more than thirteen! For in
place of expelling the Belgian weaver at your own cost
(which was the least you could do), you, for your own
ends, make me pay for the people you set at his heels.
And as a great number of your co-legislators, with
whom you are on a marvellously good footing, take each
a halfpenny or a penny, under pretext of protecting iron,
or coal, or oil, or corn, I find, when everything is taken
into account, that of my fifteen pence I have only been
able to save sevenpence or eightpence from pillage.
You will no doubt tell me that these small halfpence,
which pass in this way from my pocket to yours, maintain workpeople who reside around your castle, and
enable you to live in a style of magnificence. To which
I will only reply that, if the pence had been left with
me, the person who earned them, they would have
maintained workpeople in my neighbourhood.
Be this as it may, Mr. Minister Manufacturer, knowing that I should be but ill received by you, I have not
come to require you, as I had good right to do, to withdraw the restriction which you impose on your customers.
I prefer following the ordinary course, and I approach you
to solicit a little bit of protection for myself.




134


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


Here, of course, you will interpose a difficulty. "My
good friend," you will say, "I would protect you and
your fellow-workmen with all my heart; but how can I
confer custom-house favours on carpenter-work? What
use would it be to prohibit the importation of houses
by sea or by land?"
That would be a good joke, to be sure; but, by dint
of thinking, I have discovered another mode of favouring
the children of St. Joseph, which you will welcome the
more willingly, I hope, as it differs in nothing from that
which constitutes the privilege which you vote year after
year in your own favour.
The means of favouring us which I have thus marvellously discovered is to prohibit the use of sharp axes
in this country.
I maintain that such a restriction would not be in
the least more illogical or more arbitrary than the one
to which you subject us in the case of your cloth.
Why do you drive away the Belgians? Because they
sell cheaper than you.  And why do they sell cheaper
than you?   Because they have a certain degree of
superiority over you as manufacturers.
Between you and a Belgian, therefore, there is exactly
the same difference as in my trade there would be between
a blunt and a sharp axe
And you force me, as a tradesman, to purchase from
you the product of the blunt hatchet I
Regard the country at large as a workman who desires,
by his labour, to procure all things he has want of,
and, among others, cloth.
There are two means of effecting this.
The first is to spin and weave the wool.
The second is to produce other articles, as, for example, French clocks, paper-hangings, or wines, and
exchange them with the Belgians for the cloth wanted.




THE TWO HATCHETS


135


Of these two processes the one which gives the best
result may be represented by the sharp axe, and the
other by the blunt one.
You do not deny that at present, in France, we
obtain a piece of stuff by the work of our own looms (that
is the blunt axe) with more labour than by producing
and exchanging wines (that is the sharp axe). So far
are you from denying this that it is precisely because of
this excess of labour (in which you make wealth to consist)
that you recommend, nay, that you compel the employment of the worse of the two hatchets.
Now, only be consistent, be impartial, and if you mean
to be just, treat the poor carpenters as you treat yourselves.
Pass a law to this effect:
"No one shall henceforth be permitted to employ any
beams or rafters but such as are produced and fashioned
by blunt hatchets."
And see what will immediately happen.
Whereas at present we give a hundred blows of the
axe we shall then give three hundred. The work which
we now do in an hour will then require three hours.
What a powerful encouragement will thus be given to
labour! Masters, journeymen, apprentices, our sufferings
are now at an end!   We shall be in demand; and,
therefore, well paid. Whoever shall henceforth desire to
have a roof to cover him must comply with our exactions,
just as at present whoever desires clothes to his back
must comply with yours.
And should the theoretical advocates of Free Trade
ever dare to call in question the utility of the measure
we know well where to seek for reasons to confute them.
Your inquiry of i834 is still to be had.  With that
weapon we shall conquer; for you have there admirably
pleaded the cause of restriction and of blunt axes, which
are in reality the same thing.




CHAPTER II


LOWER COUNCIL OF LABOUR
"WHAT! you have the face to demand for all citizens
a right to sell, buy, barter, and exchange; to render
and receive service for service, and to judge for themselves, on the single condition that they do all honestly,
and comply with the demands of the public treasury?
Then you simply desire to deprive our workmen of employment, of wages, and of bread? "
That is what is said to us. I know very well what
to think of it; but what I wish to know is, what the
workmen themselves think of it.
I have at hand an excellent instrument of inquiry.
Not those Upper Councils of Industry, where extensive
proprietors who call themselves labourers, rich shipowners
who call themselves sailors, and wealthy shareholders who
pass themselves off for workmen, turn their philanthropy
to account in a way which we all know.
No; it is with workmen who are workmen in reality
that we have to do-joiners, carpenters, masons, tailors,
shoemakers, dyers, blacksmiths, innkeepers, grocers, etc.
etc.-and who, in my village have founded a friendly
society.
I have transformed this friendly society, at my own
hand, into a Lower Council of Labour, and instituted an
inquiry which will be found of great importance, although
it is not crammed with figures, or inflated to the bulk
of a quarto volume printed at the expense of the State.
My object was to interrogate these plain, simple
people as to the manner in which they are, or believe
136




LOWER COUNCIL OF LABOUR


I37


themselves to be, affected by the policy of protection
The president pointed out that this would be infringing
to some extent on the fundamental conditions of the
Association. For in France, this land of liberty, people
who associate give up their right to talk politics-in other
words, their right to discuss their common interests.
However, after some hesitation, he agreed to include the
question in the order of the day.
They divided the assembly into as many committees
as there were groups of distinct trades, and delivered to
each committee a schedule to be filled up after fifteen
days' deliberation.
On the day fixed, the worthy president (we adopt the
official style) took the chair, and there were laid upon
the table (still the official style) fifteen reports, which he
read in succession.
The first which was taken into consideration was that
of the tailors. Here is an exact and literal copy of it:EFFECTS OF PROTECTION.-REPORT OF THE TAILORS


Inconveniences.
ist, In consequence of the policy of protection, we pay dearer for bread, meat,
sugar, firewood, thread, needles, etc., which
is equivalent in our case to a considerable
reduction of wages.
2nd, In consequence of the policy of protection, our customers also pay dearer for
everything, and this leaves them less to
spend upon clothing; whence it follows
that we have less employment, and, consequently, smaller returns.
3rd, In consequence of the policy of protection, the stuffs which we make up are
dear, and people on that account wear their
clothes longer, or dispense with part of
them.  This, again, is equivalent to a
diminution of employment, and forces us
to offer our services at a lower rate of remuneration.


Advantages.
None.
Note.-After all our
inquiries,  deliberations,  and   discussions, we have been
quite unable to discover that in any respect whatever   the
policy of protection
has been of advantage to our trade.




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


Here is another report:EFFECTS OF PROTECTION.-REPORT OF THE BLACKSMITHS


Inconvnieiences.
ist, The policy of protection imposes a
tax upon us every time we eat, drink, or
warm or clothe ourselves, and this tax does
not go to the treasury.
2nd, It imposes a like tax upon all our
fellow-citizens who are not of our trade, and
they, being so much the poorer, have recourse to cheap substitutes for our work,
which deprives us of the employment we
should otherwise have had.
3rd, It keeps up iron at so 'high a price,
that it is not employed in the country for
ploughs, grates, gates, balconies, etc.; and
our trade, which might furnish employment
to so many other people who are in want
of it, no longer furnishes employment to
ourselves.
4th, The revenue which the treasury fails
to obtain from commodities which are not
imported, is levied upon the salt we use,
postages, etc.


Advantages.
None.


All the other reports (with which it is unnecessary to
trouble the reader) are to the same tune.  Gardeners,
carpenters, shoemakers, clogmakers, boatmen, millers, all
give vent to the same complaints.
I regret that there are no agricultural labourers in
our association. Their report would assuredly have been
very instructive.
But alas I in our country of the Landes, the poor
labourers, protected though they be, have not the means
of joining an association, and, having insured their cattle,
they find they cannot themselves become members of a
friendly society. The boon of protection does not hinder
them from being the parias of our social order. What
shall I say of the vine-dressers?
What I remark, especially, is the good sense displayed




LOWER COUNCIL OF LABOUR    '


139


by our villagers in perceiving not only the direct injury
which the policy of protection does them, but the indirect
injury, which, although in the first instance affecting their
customers, rebounds upon themselves.
This is what the economists of the Moniteur Industriel
do not appear to understand.
And perhaps those men whose eyes a dash of protection has fascinated, especially our agriculturists, would
be willing to give it up if they were enabled to see this
side of the question.
In that case they might perhaps say to themselves,
"Better far to be self-supported in the midst of a set of
customers in easy circumstances than to be protected in
the midst of an impoverished clientele."
For to desire to enrich by turns each separate branch
of industry by creating a void round each in succession,
is as vain an attempt as it would be for a man to try to
leap over his own shadow.




CHAPTER III


DEARNESS-CHEAPNESS
I THINK it necessary to submit to the reader some
theoretical remarks on the illusions to which the words
dearness and cheapness give rise  At first sight, these
remarks may, I feel, be regarded as subtle, but the
question is not whether they are subtle or the reverse,
but whether they are true. Now, I not only believe
them to be perfectly true, but to be well fitted to suggest
matter of reflection to men (of whom there are not a
few) who have sincere faith in the efficacy of a protectionist policy
The advocates of Liberty and the defenders of Restriction are both obliged to employ the expressions,
dearness, cheapness. The former declare themselves in
favour of cheapness with a view to the interest of the
consumer; the latter pronounce in favour of dearness,
having regard especially to the interest of the producer.
Others content themselves with saying: The producer and
consumer are one and the same person; which leaves
undecided the question whether the law should promote
cheapness or dearness.
In the midst of this conflict it would seem that the
law has only one course to follow, and that is to allow
prices to settle and adjust themselves naturally.  But
then we are attacked by the bitter enemies of laissez faire.
At all hazards they want the law to interfere, without
knowing or caring in what direction. And yet it lies
with those who desire to create by legal intervention an
artificial dearness or an unnatural cheapness to explain
140




DEARN ESS —CH EAPN ESS


141


the grounds of their preference. The burden of proof rests
upon them exclusively. Liberty is always esteemed good
till the contrary is proved; and to allow prices to settle
and adjust themselves naturally is liberty.
But the parties to this dispute have changed positions.
The advocates of dearness have secured the triumph of
their system,' and it lies with the defenders of natural
prices to prove the goodness of their cause. On both
sides the argument turns on two words; and it is therefore very essential to ascertain what these two words
really mean.
But we must first of all notice a series of facts which
are fitted to disconcert the champions of both camps.
To engender dearness the restrictionists have obtained
protective duties, and a cheapness, which is to them inexplicable, has come to deceive their hopes.
To create cheapness, the free traders have occasionally
succeeded in securing liberty, and, to their astonishment,
an elevation of prices has been the consequence.
For example, in France, in order to favour agriculture,
a duty of 22 per cent. has been imposed on foreign wool,
and it has turned out that French wool has been sold at
a lower price after the measure than before it.
In England, to satisfy the consumer, they lowered, and
ultimately removed, the duty on foreign wool; and it
has come to pass that in that country the price of wool
is higher than ever.
And these are not isolated facts; for the price of wool
is governed by precisely the same laws which govern the
prices of everything else. The same result is produced
in all analogous cases. Contrary to expectation, protection
has, to some extent, brought about a fall, and competition,
to some extent, a rise of prices.
When the confusion of ideas thence arising had
[' Written in 1847-]




142


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


reached its height, the protectionists began saying to
their adversaries: "If is our system which brings about
the cheapness of which you boast so much." To which
the  reply was: "It is liberty which      has induced the
dearness which you find so useful." 1
Evidently there is in all this a misconception, an
illusion, which it is necessary to clear up; and this is
what I shall now endeavour to do.
Put the case of two isolated nations, each composed
of a million of inhabitants.      Grant that, other things
being equal, the one possesses double the quantity of
everything-corn, meat, iron, furniture, fuel, books, clothing, etc.-which the other possesses.
It will be granted that the one is twice as rich as
the other.
And yet there is no reason to affirm that a difference
in actual money prices2 exists in the two countries.
Nominal prices may perhaps be higher in the richer
country. It may be that in the United States everything
is nominally dearer than in Poland, and that the population of the former country should, nevertheless, be better
provided with all that they need; whence we infer that
~it is not the nominal price of products but their comparative abundance, which constitutes wealth.       When,
then, we desire to pronounce an opinion on the comparative merits of restriction and free trade, we should
not inquire which of the two systems engenders dearness
or cheapness, but which of the two brings abundance or
scarcity
1 Recently, M. DuchAtel, who had formerly advocated free trade, with
a view to low prices, said to the Chamber: " It would not be difficult for
me to prove that protection leads to cheapness."
s The expression, prix absolus (absolute prices), which the author
employs here and in ch. xi. of the first series (ante), is not, I think,
used by English economists, and from the context in both instances I
take it to mean actual money prices; or what Adam Smith terms nominal
prices. —TRANSLATOR.




DEARNESS-CHEAPNESS


I43


For observe this, that products being exchanged for
each other, a relative scarcity of all, and a relative
abundance of all, leave the nominal prices of commodities
in general at the same point; but this cannot be affirmed
of the relative condition of the inhabitants of the two
countries.
Let us dip a little deeper still into this subject.
When we see an increase and a reduction of duties
produce effects so different, from what we had expected,
depreciation often following taxation, and enhancement
following free trade, it becomes the imperative duty of
political economy to seek an explanation of phenomena
so much opposed to received ideas; for it is needless to
say that a science, if it is worthy of the name, is nothing
else than a faithful statement and a sound explanation of
facts.
Now the phenomenon we are here examining is explained very satisfactorily by a circumstance of which we
must never lose sight.
Dearness is due to two causes, and not to one only.
The same thing holds good of cheapness.'
It is one of the least disputed points in political economy
that price is determined by the relative state of supply and
demand.
There are then two terms which affect price-supply
and demand. These terms are essentially variable. They
may be combined in the same direction, in contrary directions, and in infinitely varied proportions. Hence the
combinations of which price is the result are inexhaustible.
High price may be the result either of diminished
supply or of increased demand.
Low price may be the result of increased supply or of
diminished demand.
' See also Bastiat's speech of Sept. 29th, I846, Collected Works, vol. ii.,
P. 238..-FRENCii EDITOR.




144


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


Hence there are two kinds of dearness, and two kinds
of cheapness.
There is a dearness of an injurious kind, that which
proceeds from a diminution of supply, for that implies
scarcity, privation (such as has been felt this year1 from
the scarcity of corn); and there is a dearness of a beneficial
kind, that which results from an increase of demand, for
the latter presupposes the development of general wealth.
In the same way, there is a cheapness which is desirable, that which has its source in abundance; and an
injurious cheapness, that has for its cause the failure of
demand, and the impoverishment of consumers.
Now, be pleased to remark this: that restriction tends
to induce, at the same time, both the injurious cause
of dearness, and the injurious cause of cheapness-injurious dearness, by diminishing the supply, for this is the
avowed object of restriction; and injurious cheapness, by
diminishing also the demand; seeing that it gives a false
direction to labour and capital, and fetters consumers with
taxes and trammels.
So that, as regards price, these two tendencies neutralise
each other; and this is the reason why the restrictive
system, restraining, as it does, demand and supply at one
and the same time, does not in the long run realise even
that dearness which is its object.
But, as regards the condition of the population, these
causes do not at all neutralise each other; on the contrary,
they concur in making it worse.
The effect of freedom of trade is exactly the opposite.
In its general result, it may be that it does not realise
the cheapness it promises; for it has two tendencies, one
towards desirable cheapness through the.extension of
supply, or abundance; the other towards appreciable dearness by the development of demand, or general wealth.
1 This was written in 1847.-TRANSLATOR.




DEARNESS-CHEAPNESS


145


These two tendencies neutralise each other in what concerns nominal price, but they concur in what regards the
material prosperity of the population.
In short, under the restrictive system, in as far as it is
operative, men recede towards a state of things in which
both demand and supply are enfeebled. Under a system
of freedom, they progress towards a state of things in which
both are developed simultaneously, and without necessarily
affecting nominal prices.  Such prices form  no good
criterion of wealth. They may remain the same whilst
society is falling into a state of the most abject poverty
or whilst it is advancing towards a state of the greatest
prosperity.
We shall now, in a few words, show the practical
application of this doctrine.
A cultivator of the south of France believes himself to
be very rich, because he is protected by duties from external competition. He may be as poor as Job; but he
nevertheless imagines that sooner or later he will get rich
by protection. In these circumstances, if we ask him the
question which was put by the Odier Committee in these
words:
"Do you desire-yes or no-to be subject to foreign
competition? " His first impulse is to answer "No,"
and the Odier Committee proudly welcome his response.
However, we must go a little deeper into the matter.
Unquestionably, foreign competition-nay, competition in
general-is always troublesome; and if one branch of
trade alone could get quit of it, that branch of trade would
for some time profit largely.
But protection is not an isolated favour; it is a system.
If, to the profit of the agriculturist, protection tends to
create a scarcity of corn and of meat, it tends likewise to
create, to the profit of other industries, a scarcity of iron,
K




i46


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


of cloth, of fuel, tools, etc.-a scarcity, in short, of
everything.
Now, if a scarcity of corn tends to enhance its price
through a diminution of supply, the scarcity of all other
commodities for which corn is exchanged tends to reduce
the price of corn by a diminution of demand, so that it
is not at all certain that ultimately corn will be a penny
dearer than it would have been under a system of free
trade. There is nothing certain in the whole process but
this-that as there is upon the whole less of every commodity in the country, each man will be less plentifully
provided with everything he has occasion to buy.
The agriculturist should ask himself whether it would
not be more for his interest that a certain quantity of corn
and cattle should be imported from abroad, and that he
should at the same time find himself surrounded by a
population in easy circumstances, able and willing to consume and pay for all sorts of agricultural produce.
Suppose a department in which the people are clothed
in rags, fed upon chestnuts, and lodged in hovels. How
can agriculture flourish in such a locality? What can
the soil be made to produce with a well-founded expectation of fair remuneration? Meat? The people do not
eat it. Milk? They must content themselves with water.
Butter? It is regarded as a luxury. Wool? The use
of it is dispensed with as much as possible. Does anyone
imagine that all the ordinary objects of consumption can
thus be put beyond the reach of the masses, without tending to lower prices as much as protection is tending to
raise them?
What has been said of the agriculturist holds equally
true of the manufacturer.  Our manufacturers of cloth
assure us that external competition will lower prices by
increasing the supply. Granted; but will not these prices
be again raised by an increased demand? Is the con



DEARNESS-CHEAPNESS


I47


sumption of cloth a fixed and invariable quantity? Has
every man as much of it as he would wish to have? And
if general wealth is advanced and developed by the abolition of all these taxes and restrictions, will the first use
to which this emancipation is turned by the population
not be to dress better?
The question-the constantly-recurring question-then,
is not to find out whether protection is favourable to any
one special branch of industry, but whether, when everything is weighed, balanced, and taken into account, restriction is, in its own nature, more productive than liberty.
Now, no one will venture to maintain this. On the
contrary, we are perpetually met with the admission,
"You are right in principle."
If it be so, if restriction confers no benefit on individual
branches of industry without doing a greater amount of
injury to general wealth, we are forced to conclude that
actual money prices, considered by themselves, only express a relation between each special branch of industry
and industry in general, between supply and demand; and
that, on this account, a remunerative price, which is the
professed object of protection, is rather injured than
favoured by the system.
SUPPLEMENT1
The article which we have published under the title of
Dearness, Cheapness, has brought us several letters. We
give them, along with our replies:MR. EDITOR,-YOU upset all our ideas. I endeavoured to aid
the cause of free trade, and found it necessary to urge the consideration of cheapness. I went about everywhere, saying, " When
freedom of trade is accorded, bread, meat, cloth, linen, iron, fuel,
wil.l go on falling in price." This displeased those who sell, but
gave great pleasure to those who buy these commodities. And
I What follows appeared in the Libre Eckange of Aug. ist, 1847.FmRNCH EDITOR.




I48


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


now you throw out doubts as to whether free trade will bring us
cheapness or not. What, then, is to be gained by it? What gain
'will it be to the people if foreign competition, which may damage
their sales, 'does not benefit them in their purchases?
MR. FREE-TRADER, —Allow us to tell you that you must
have read only half the article which has called forth your
letter. We said that free trade acts exactly in the same
way as roads, canals, railways, and everything else which
facilitates communication by removing obstacles. Its first
tendency is to increase the supply of the commodity freed
from duty, and consequently to lower its price. But by
augmenting at the same time the supply of all other commodities for which this article is exchanged, it increases
the demand, and the price by this means rises again. You
ask what gain this would be to the people? Suppose a
balance with several scales, in each of which is deposited
a certain quantity of the articles you have enumerated.
If you add to the corn in one scale it will tend to fall;
but if you add a little cloth, a little iron, a little fuel, to
what the other scales contained, you will redress the
equilibrium. If you look only at the beam, you will find
nothing changed. But if you look at the people for whose
use these articles are produced, you will find them better
fed, clothed, and warmed.
MR. EDITOR,-I am a manufacturer of cloth, and a protectionist. I confess that your article on dearness and cheapness has
made me reflect. It contains something specious which would
require to be well established before we declare ourselves converted.
MR. PROTECTIONIST.-We say that your restrictive
measures have an iniquitous object in view, namely, artificial dearness. But we do not affirm that. they always
realise the hopes of those who promote them. It is certain
that they inflict on the consumer all the injurious consequences of scarcity. It is not certain that they always
confer a corresponding advantage on the producer. Why?




DEARNESS-CHEAPNESS


149


Because if they diminish the supply, they diminish also
the demand.
This proves that there is in the economic arrangement
of this world a moral force, a vis medicatrix, which causes
unjust ambition in the long run to fall a prey to selfdeception.
Would you have the goodness, sir, to remark that one
of the elements of the prosperity of each individual branch
of industry is the general wealth of the community. The
value of a house is not always in proportion to what it
has cost, but likewise in proportion to the number and
fortune of the tenants. Are two houses exactly similar
necessarily of the same value? By no means, if the one
is situated in Paris and the other in Lower Brittany.
Never speak of price without taking into account collateral
circumstances, and let it be remembered that no attempt
is so bootless as to endeavour to found the prosperity of
parts on the ruin of the whole. And yet this is what the
policy of restriction pretends to do.
Consider what would have happened at Paris, for example, if this strife of interests had been attended with
success.
Suppose that the first shoemaker who established himself in that city had succeeded in ejecting all others; that
the first tailor, the first mason, the first printer, the first
watchmaker, the first physician, the first baker, had been
equally successful. Paris would at this moment have been
still a village of 1,200 or 1,500 inhabitants. It has turned
out very differently. The market of Paris has been open
to all (excepting those whom you still keep out), and it
is this freedom which has enlarged and aggrandised it.
The struggles of competition have been bitter and long
continued, and this is what has made Paris a city of a
million of inhabitants. The general wealth has increased,
no doubt; but has the individual wealth of the shoemakers




150


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


and tailors been diminished? This is the question you
have to ask. You may say that according as the number
of competitors increased, the price of their products would
go on falling. Has it done so? No; for if the supply
has been augmented, the demand has been enlarged.
The same thing will hold good of your commodity,
cloth; let it enter freely. You will have more competitors
in the trade, it is true; but you will have more customers,
and, above all, richer customers. Is it possible you can
never have thought of this, when you see nine-tenths of
your fellow-citizens underclothed in winter, for want of
the commodity which you manufacture?
If you wish to prosper, allow your customers to thrive.
This is a lesson which you have been very long in learning.
When it is thoroughly learnt, each man will seek his own
interest in the general good; and then jealousies between
man and man, town and town, province and province,
nation and nation, will no longer trouble the world.




CHAPTER IV


TO ARTISANS AND WORKMEN
MANY journals have attacked me in your presence and
hearing.1 Perhaps you will not object to read my
defence.
I am not suspicious. When a man writes or speaks,
I take it for granted that he believes what he says.
And yet, after reading and re-reading the journals to
which I now reply, I seem unable to discover any other
than melancholy tendencies.
Our present business is to inquire which is more
favourable to your interests —liberty or restriction.
I believe that it is liberty; they believe that it is
restriction. It is for each party to prove his own thesis.
Was it necessary to insinuate that we free traders
are the agents of England, of the south of France, of
the Government?
On this point you see how easy recrimination would be.
We are the agents of England, they say, because some
of us employ the words meeting and free trader!
And do they not make use of the words drawback
and budget?
We, it would seem, imitate Cobden and the English
democracy I
And do they not parody Lord George Bentinck and
the British aristocracy?
We borrow from perfidious Albion the doctrine of
liberty!
I This article appeared in the Courier Frantaise of September, 1846,
in reply to articles which had appeared in L'Atelier.
151




FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


And do they not borrow from the same source the
quibbles of protection?
We follow the lead of Bordeaux and the south 1
And do they not avail themselves of the cupidity of
Lille and the north?
We favour the secret designs of the ministry, whose
object is to divert public attention from their real
policy I
And do they not act in the interest of the civil list,
which profits most of all from the policy of protection?
You see, then, very clearly, that if we did not despise
this war of disparagement, arms would not be wanting
to carry it on.
But this is beside the question.
The question, and we must never lose sight of it, is
this:Whether is it better for the working classes to be free,
or not to be free to purchase foreign commodities?
Workmen! they tell you that: If you are free to
purchase from the foreigner those things which you now
produce yourselves, you will cease to produce them; you
will be without employment, without wages, and without bread. It is therefore for your own good to restrain
your liberty."
This objection recurs in every form: They say, for
example, "If we clothe ourselves with English cloth; if
we make our ploughs of English iron; if we cut our bread
with English knives; if we wipe our hands with English
towels-what will become of French workmen, what will
become of national labour? "
Tell me, workmen! if a man should stand on the
quay at Boulogne and say to every Englishman who
landed, "If you will give me those English boots, I will
give you this French hat"; or, "If you will give me
that English horse I will give you this French tilbury";




TO ARTISANS AND WORKMEN


I53


or ask him, "Will you exchange that machine made at
Birmingham for this clock made at Paris?"; or, again,
"Can you arrange to barter this Newcastle coal against
this champagne wine? " Tell me whether, assuming this
man to make his proposals with discernment, anyone
would be justified in saying that our national labour, taken
in the aggregate, would suffer in consequence?
Would it make the slightest difference in this respect
were twenty such offers to be made in place of one, or a
million such barters to be effected in place of four, or were
merchants and money to intervene, whereby such transactions would be greatly facilitated and multiplied?
Now, when one country buys from another wholesale
to sell again in retail, or buys in retail to sell again in
the lump, if we trace the transaction to its ultimate results
we shall always find that commerce resolves itself into
barter, products for products, services for services. If,
then, barter does no injury to national labour, since it
implies as much national labour given as foreign labour
received, it follows that a hundred thousand millions of
such acts of barter would do as little injury as one.
But where would be the profit? you will ask.  The
profit consists in turning to most account the resources of
each country, so that the same amount of labour shall
yield everywhere more satisfaction and well-being.
There are some who in your case have recourse to a
singular system of tactics. They begin by admitting the
superiority of the free to the prohibitive system, in
order, doubtless, not to have the battle to fight on this
ground.
Then they remark that the transition from one system
to another is always attended with some displacement of
labour.
Lastly, they enlarge on the sufferings, which, in their
opinion, such displacements must always entail. They




154


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


exaggerate these sufferings, they multiply them, they
make them the principal subject of discussion, they
present them as the exclusive and definitive result of
reform, and in this way they endeavour to enlist you
under the banners of monopoly.
This is just the system of tactics which has been
employed to defend every system of abuse; and one thing
I must plainly avow that it is this system of tactics which
constantly embarrasses those who advocate reforms, even
those most useful ro the people. You will soon see the
reason of this.
When an abuse has once taken root everything is
arranged on the assumption of its continuance. Some
men depend upon it for subsistence, others depend upon
them, and so on, till a formidable edifice is erected.
Would you venture to pull it down? All cry out,
and-remark this well-the men who bawl out appear
always at first sight to be in the right, because it is far
easier to show the derangements which must accompany a
reform than the arrangements which must follow it.
The supporters of abuses cite particular instances of
sufferings; they point out particular employers who, with
their workmen and the people who supply them with
materials, are about to be injured; and the poor reformer
can only refer to the general good which must gradually
diffuse itself over the masses. That by no means produces
the same effect.
Thus, when the question turns on the abolition of
slavery, "Poor men!" they say to the negroes, "who
is henceforth to support you? The manager handles the
lash, but he likewise distributes the cassava."
And the slave regrets his chain, for he asks, "Whence
will come the cassava? "
He fails to see that it is not the manager who feeds him,
but his own labour which feeds both him and the manager.




TO ARTISANS AND WORKMEN


I55


When they set about reforming the convents in Spain,
they asked the beggars: "Where will you now find food
and clothing? The prior is your best friend. Is it not
very convenient to be in a situation to address yourselves
to him?"
And the mendicants replied: "True; if the prior goes
away we see very clearly that we shall be losers, and
we do not see at all so clearly who is to come in
his place."
They did not take into account that, if the convents
bestowed alms, the convents also lived upon alms; so that
the nation had more to give away than to receive.
In the same way, workmen! monopoly, quite imperceptibly, saddles you with taxes, and then, with the
produce of these taxes, finds you employment.
And your sham friends exclaim: "But for monopolies
where would you find employment?"
And you, like the Spanish beggars, reply: "True,
true; the employment which the monopolists find us is
certain. The promises of liberty are of uncertain fulfilment."
For you do not see that they take from you in the
first instance the money with part of which they afterwards afford you employment.
You ask: Who is to find you employment? And the
answer is that you will give employment to one another!
With the money of which he is no longer deprived by
taxation the shoemaker will dress better, and give employment to the tailor. The tailor will more frequently renew
his foot-gear, and afford employment to the shoemaker;
and the same thing w.ill take place in all other departments
of trade.
It has been said that under a system of free trade we
should have fewer workmen in our mines and spinningmills.




156


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


I do not think so. But if this happened, we should
necessarily have a greater number of people working freely
and independently, either in their own houses or at outdoor employment.
For if our mines and spinning-mills are not capable
of supporting themselves, as is asserted, without the aid
of taxes levied from the public at large, the moment these
taxes are repealed everybody will be by so much in better
circumstances; and it is this improvement in the general
circumstances of the community which lends support to
individual branches of industry.
Pardon my dwelling a little longer on this view of the
subject; for my great anxiety is to see you all ranged on
the side of liberty.
Suppose that the capital employed in manufactures
yields 5 per cent. profit. But Mondor has an establishment in which he employs A;oo,ooo, at a loss, instead of
a profit, of 5 per cent. Between the loss and the gain
supposed there is a difference of ZIo,ooo. What takes
place? A small tax of ~Io,ooo is coolly levied from the
public, and handed over to Mondor. You don't see it, for
the thing is skilfully disguised. It is not the taxgatherer
who waits upon you to demand your share of this burden;
but you pay it to Mondor, the ironmaster, every time
that you purchase your trowels, hatchets, and planes.
Then they tell you that unless you pay this tax, Mondor
will not be able to give employment; and his workmen,
James and John, must go without work. And yet, if they
gave up the tax, it would enable you to find employment
for one another, independently of Mondor.
And then, be easy, after this smooth pillow of protection has been taken away, Mondor will set his wits to
work to convert his loss into a profit, and James and John
will not be sent away, in which case there will be profit
for everybody.




TO ARTISANS AND WORKMEN


157


You may still rejoin, "We allow that, after the reform,
there will be more employment, upon the whole, than
before; in the meantime, James and John are starving."
To which I reply:
ist.-That when labour is only displaced, to be augmented, a man who has a head and hands is seldom left
long in a state of destitution.
2nd.-There is nothing to hinder the State's reserving
a fund to meet, during the transition, any temporary want
of employment, in which, however, for my own part, I
do not believe.
3rd.-If I do not misunderstand the workmen, they are
quite prepared to encounter any temporary suffering necessarily attendant on a transfer of labour from one department to another, by which the community are more likely
to be benefited and have justice done them. I only wish
I could say the same thing of their employers!
What! will it be said that because you are workmen
you are for that reason unintelligent and immoral? Your
pretended friends seem to think so. Is it not surprising
that in your hearing they should discuss such a question,
talking exclusively of wages and profits without ever once
allowing the word justice to pass their lips? And yet they
know that restriction is unjust. Why "have they not the
courage to admit it, and say to you, "Workmen! an
iniquity prevails in this country, but it is profitable to you,
and we must maintain it." Why? because they know you
would answer, No.
But it is not true that this injustice is profitable to you.
Give me your attention for a few moments longer, and
then judge for yourselves.
What is it that we protect in France? Things which
are produced on a great scale by rich capitalists and in
large establishments, as iron, coal, cloth, and textile




158


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


fabrics; and they tell you that this is done, not in the
interest of employers, but in yours, and in order to secure
you employment.
And yet whenever foreign labour presents itself in our
markets, in such a shape that it may be injurious to you
but advantageous for your employers, it is allowed to enter
without any restriction being imposed.
Are there not in Paris thirty thousand Germans who
make clothes and shoes? Why are they permitted to
establish themselves alongside of you while the importation
of cloth is restricted? Because cloth is manufactured in
grand establishments which belong to manufacturing legislators. But clothes are made by workmen in their own
houses. In converting wool into cloth, these gentlemen
desire to have no competition, because that is their trade;
but in converting cloth into coats, they allow it, because
that is your trade.
In making our railways, an embargo was laid on
English rails, but English workmen were brought over.
Why was this? Simply because English rails came into
competition with the iron produced in our great establishments, while the English labourers were only your rivals.
We have no wish that German tailors and English
navvies should be kept out of France. What we ask is,
that the entry of cloth and rails should be left free. WA'e
simply demand justice and equality before the law, for all.
It is a mockery to tell us that customs restrictions are
imposed for your benefit. Tailors, shoemakers, carpenters,
masons, blacksmiths, shopkeepers, grocers, watchmakers,
butchers, bakers, dressmakers! I defy you all to point out
a single way in which restriction is profitable to you, and
I shall point out, whenever you desire it, four ways in
which it is hurtful to you.
And, after all, see how little foundation your journalists
have for attributing self-abnegation to the monopolists.




TO ARTISANS AND WORKMEN


159


I may venture to denominate the rate of wages which
settles and establishes itself naturally under a system of
freedom, the natural rate of wages. When you affirm,
therefore, that restriction is profitable to you, it is tantamount to affirming that it adds an overplus to you? natural
wages. Now, a surplus of wages beyond the natural rate
must come from some quarter or other; it does not fall
from the skies, but comes from those who pay it.
You are landed, then, in this conclusion by your pretended friends, that the policy of protection has been introduced in order that the interests of capitalists should be
sacrificed to those-of the workmen.
Do you think this probable?
Where is your place, then, in the Chamber of Peers?
When did you take your seat in the Palais Bourbon?
Who has consulted you? Whence did this idea of establishing a policy of protection come to you?
I think I hear you answer, "It is not we who have
established it. Alas I we are neither Peers, nor Deputies,
nor Councillors of State. The capitalists have done it all."
Verily, they must have been in a good humour that
day! Whatl these capitalists have made the law; they
have established a policy of prohibition for the express
purpose of enabling you to profit at their expense!
But here is something stranger still.
How does it come to pass that your pretended friends,
who hold forth to you on the goodness, the generosity,
and the self-abnegation of capitalists, never cease condoling with you on your being deprived of your political
rights? From their point of view, I would ask what
you could make of such rights if you had them? The
capitalists have a monopoly of legislation-granted. By
means of this monopoly, they have adjudged themselves
a monopoly of iron, of cloth, of textile fabrics, of coal, of
wood, of meat-granted likewise. But here are your pre.




160


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


tended friends, who tell you that in acting thus, capitalists
have impoverished themselves, without being under any
obligation to do so, in order to enrich you who have no
right to be enriched! Assuredly, if you were electors and
deputies to-morrow, you could not manage your affairs
better than they are managed for you; you could not
even manage them so well.
If the industrial legislation under which you live is
intended for your profit, it is an act of perfidy to demand
for you political rights; for these new-fashioned democrats
never can get quit of this dilemma-.the law made by the
middle classes either gives you more, or it gives you less
than your natural wages. If that law gives you less, they
deceive you, in soliciting you to maintain it. If it gives
you more, they still deceive you, by inviting you to
demand political rights at the very time when they are
making sacrifices for you, which, in common honesty, you
could not by your votes exact, even if you had the power.
Workmen! I should be sorry indeed if this address
should excite in your minds feelings of irritation against
the rich. If self-interest, badly understood, or too apt to
be alarmed, still maintains monopoly, let us not forget that
monopoly has its root in errors which are common to both
capitalists and workmen. Instead of exciting the one class
against the other, let us try to bring them together. And
for that end what ought we to do? If it be true that the
natural social tendencies concur in levelling inequalities
among men, we have only to allow these tendencies to act,
remove artificial obstructions which retard their operation,
and allow the relations of the various classes of society to
be established on the principle of JUSTICE, which, in my
mind at least, is identical with the principle of LIBERTY.




CHAPTER V


A CHINESE STORY
THERE is nothing which is not pretended by the writers
in favour of Protection to be established as an aid to the
working classes-there is positively no exception, not
even the custom house. You fancy, perhaps, that the
custom house is merely an instrument of taxation like
the town dues or the toll-bar! Nothing of the kind. It
is essentially an institution for promoting the march of
civilisation, fraternity, and equality. What would you
be at? It is the fashion to introduce, or affect to introduce, sentiment and sentimentalism everywhere, even into
the toll-gatherer's booth.
The custom house, we must allow, has a very singular
machinery for realising philanthropical aspirations.
It includes an army of directors, sub-directors, inspectors, sub-inspectors, comptrollers, examiners, heads
of departments, clerks, supernumeraries, aspirant-supernumeraries, not to speak of the officers of the active
service; and the object of all this complicated machinery
is to exercise over the industry of the people a negative
action, which is summed up in the word obstruct.
Observe, I do not say that the object is to tax, but
to obstruct. To prevent, not acts which are repugnant
to good morals or public order, but transactions which
are in themselves not only harmless but fitted to maintain
peace and union among nations.
And yet the human race is so flexible and elastic that
it always surmounts these obstructions. And then we
hear of the labour market being glutted.
L                   x6i




I62


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


If you hinder a people from obtaining its subsistence
from abroad it will produce it at home. The labour is
greater and more painful, but subsistence must be had.
If you hinder a man from traversing the valley he must
cross the hills. The road is longer and more difficult,
but he must get to his journey's end.
This is lamentable, but we come now to what is
ludicrous. When the law has thus created obstacles,
and when in order to overcome them society has diverted
a corresponding amount of labour from other employments, you are not longer permitted to demand a reform.
If you point to the obstacle you are told of the amount
of labour to which it has given employment. And if
you rejoin that this labour is not created, but displaced,
you are answered in the words of the Esprit Public, "The
impoverishment alone is certain and immediate; as to
our enrichment, it is more than problematical."
This reminds me of a Chinese story, which I will relate
to you.
There were in China two large towns, called Tchin
and Tchan. A magnificent canal united them. The
Emperor thought fit to order enormous blocks of stone to
be thrown into it for the purpose of rendering it useless.
On seeing this, Kouang, his first mandarin, said to
him:
"Son of Heaven! this is a mistake."
To which the Emperor replied: —
"Kouang, you talk nonsense."
I give you only the substance of their conversation.
At the end of three months the Celestial Emperor sent
again for the mandarin, and said to him  -
"Kouang, behold I!"
And Kouang opened his eyes, and looked.
And he saw at some distance from the canal a multitude
of men at work. Some were excavating, others were




A CHINESE STORY


I63


filling up hollows, levelling and paving. And the
mandarin, who was very cultivated, said to himself: They
are making a highway.
When other three months had elapsed the Emperor
again sent for Kouang, and said to him:"Look I"
And Kouang looked.
And he saw the road completed, and from one end
of it to the other he saw here and there inns for
travellers erected. Crowds of pedestrians, carts, palanquins, came and went, and innumerable Chinese, overcome with fatigue, carried backwards and forwards heavy
burdens from Tchin to Tchan, and from Tchan to Tchin.
And Kouang said to himself: It is the destruction of
the canal which gives employment to these poor people.
But the idea never struck him that their labour was
simply diverted from other employments.
Three months more passed, and the Emperor said to
Kouang:"Look! "
And Kouang looked.
And he saw that the hostelries were full of travellers,
and that to supply their wants there were grouped around
them butchers' and bakers' stalls, shops for the sale of
edible birds' nests.  He also saw that, the artisans
having need of clothing, there had settled among them
tailors, shoemakers, and those who sold parasols and
fans; and as they could not sleep in the open air, even
in the Celestial Empire, there were also masons, carpenters, and slaters. Then there were officers of police,
judges, fakirs; in a word, a town with its suburbs had
risen round each hostelry.
And the Emperor asked Kouang what he thought of
all this.
And Kouang said that he never could have imagined




164


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


that the destruction of a canal could have provided employment for so many people; for the thought never
struck him that this was not employment created but
labour diverted from other employments, and that men
would have eaten and drank in passing along the canal
as well as in passing along the highroad.
However, to the astonishment of the Chinese, the Son
of Heaven at length died and was buried.
His successor sent for Kouang, and ordered him to
have the canal cleared out and restored.
And Kouang said to the new Emperor:
"Son of Heaven! you commit a blunder."
And the Emperor replied: —
"Kouang, you talk nonsense."
But Kouang persisted, and said: "Sire, what is your
object? "
"Mv object is to facilitate the transit of goods and
passengers between Tchin and Tchan, to render carriage
less expensive, in order that the people may have tea
and clothing cheaper."
But Kouang was ready with his answer. He had
received the night before several numbers of the Moniteur
Industriel, a Chinese newspaper.  Knowing his lesson
well, he asked and obtained permission to reply, and
after having prostrated himself nine times, he said:"Sire, your object is, by increased facility of transit,
to reduce the price of articles of consumption, and bring
them within reach of the people; and to effect that you
begin by taking away from them all the employment to
which the destruction of the canal had given rise. Sire,
in political economy, nominal cheapness- "
The Emperor: "I believe you are repeating by rote."
Kouang: "True, Sire; and it will be better to read
what I have to say." So, producing the Esprit Public,
he read as follows: "In political economy, the nominal




A CHINESE STORY


cheapness of articles of consumption is only a secondary
question. The problem is to establish an equilibrium
between the price of labour and that of the means of
subsistence.  The abundance of labour constitutes the
wealth of nations; and the best economic system is that
which supplies the people with the greatest amount of
employment. The question is not whether it is better to
pay four or eight cash for a cup of tea, or five or ten
taels (Chinese money) for a shirt. These are puerilities
unworthy of a thinking mind. Nobody disputes your
proposition. The question is whether it is better to pay
dearer for a commodity you want to buy, and have,
through the abundance of employment and the higher
price of labour, the means of acquiring it; or whether it
is better to limit the sources of employment, and with
them the mass of the national population, in order to
transport, by improved means of transit, the objects of
consumption, cheaper, it is true, but taking away at the
same time from many of our people the means of purchasing these objects even at their reduced price.
Seeing the Emperor still unconvinced, Kouang added:
"Sire, deign to give me your attention. I have still the
Moniteur Industriel to bring under your notice."
But the Emperor said:"I don't require your Chinese journals to enable me
to find out that to create obstacles is to divert and misapply labour.  But that is not my mission.  Go and
clear out the canal; and we shall reform the custom house
afterwards."
And Kouang went away tearing his beard, and appealing to his God, "O Fol take pity on thy people; for we
have now got an Emperor of the English school, and I see
clearly that in a short time we shall be in want of everything, for we shall no longer require to do anything."




CHAPTER VI


POST HOC, ERGO PROPTER HOC
THIS is the greatest and most common fallacy in reasoning.
Real sufferings, for example, have manifested themselves in England.'
These sufferings come in the train of two other
phenomena:
1St, The reformed tariff;
2nd, Two bad harvests in succession.
To which of these two last circumstances are we to
attribute the first?
The protectionists exclaim
It is this accursed free trade which does all the harm.
It promised us wonderful things; we accepted it; and here
are our manufactures at a standstill, and the people suffering: Cum hoc, ergo propter hoc.
Free trade distributes in the most uniform and equitable manner the fruits which Providence accords to human
labour. If we are deprived of part of these fruits by
natural causes, such as a succession of bad seasons, free
trade does not fail to distribute in the same manner what
remains. Men are, no doubt, not so well provided with
what they want; but are we to impute this to free trade, or
to the bad harvests?
Liberty acts on the same principle as insurance. When
an accident, like a fire, happens, insurance spreads over a
great number of men and a great number of years, losses
which, in the absence of insurance, would have fallen all
at once upon one individual. But will anyone undertake
'This was written in December, 1846.-FRENCH EDITOR.
i66




POST HOC, ERGO PROPTER HOC


i67


to affirm that fire has become a greater evil since the
introduction of insurance?
In I842, I843, and i844, the reduction of taxes began
in England. At the same time the harvests were very
abundant; and we are led to conclude that these two
circumstances concurred in producing the unparalleled
prosperity which England enjoyed during that period.
In i845 the harvest was bad, and in i846 worse still.
Provisions rose in price; and the people were forced
to expend their resources on necessaries, and to limit
their consumption of other commodities. Clothing was
less in demand, manufactories had less work, and wages
tended to fall.
Fortunately, in that same year, the barriers of restriction were still more effectually removed, and an enormous
quantity of provisions reached the English market. Had
this not been so, it is nearly certain that a formidable
revolution would have taken place.
And yet free trade is blamed for disasters which it
tended to prevent, and in part, at least, to repair!
A poor leper lived in solitude. Whatever he happened
to touch, no one else would touch. Obliged to pine in
solitude, he led a miserable existence. An eminent physician cured him, and now our poor hermit was admitted
to all the benefits of free trade, and had full liberty to
effect exchanges. What brilliant prospects were opened
to him I He delighted in calculating the advantages
which, through his restored intercourse with his fellowmen, he was able to derive from his own vigorous exertions. He happened to break both his arms, and was
landed in poverty and misery. The journalists who were
witnesses of that misery said, "See to what. this liberty of
making exchanges has reduced him I Verily, he was less
to be pitied when he lived alone." "What! " said the
physician, "do you make no allowance for his broken




i68      FALLACIES OF PROTECTION
arms? Has that accident nothing to do with his present
unhappy state? His misfortune arises from his having
lost the use of his hands, and not from his having been
cured of his leprosy. He would have been a fitter subject
for your compassion had he been lame and leprous into the
bargain."
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Beware of that fallacy.




CHAPTER VII


THE PREMIUM THEFT
THIS little book of FALLACIES is found to be too theoretical,
scientific, and metaphysical. Be it so. Let us try the
effect of a more trivial and hackneyed, and, if necessary, a
ruder style. Convinced that the public is duped in this
matter of protection, I have endeavoured to prove it. But
if outcry is preferred to argument, let us vociferate,
"King Midas has a snout, and asses' ears." 1
A burst of plain speaking has more effect frequently
than the most polished circumlocution. You remember
Oronte, and the difficulty which the Misanthrope had in
convincing him of his folly.'
ALCESTE. On s'expose a jouer un mauvais personnage.
ORONTE. Est-ce aue vous voulez me declarer nar 1I


Que j'.ai tort de vouloir..
Je ne dis pas cela.


ALCESTE.


Mais
ORONTE. Est-ce que j' cris mal?
ALCESTE.                     Je ne dis pas cela.


ORONTE.
ALCESTE.


Mais enfin
Miais ne puis-je savoir ce que dans mon sonnet?
Franchement, il est bon i mettre au Cabinet.


To speak plainly, Good Public I you are robbed. This
is speaking bluntly, but the thing is very evident. It is
crude, but clear.
The words theft, to steal, robbery, thief, may appear
ugly words to many people. I ask such people, as Har" Ariculas asini Mida rex habet."-Persius, sat. i. The line as
given in the text is from Dryden's translation.-TRANSLATOR.
' See Moliire's play of The Misanthrope. —TRANsLATOR.
169




i70


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


pagon asks Elise,1 "Is it the word or the thing which
frightens you? "
"Whoever has possessed himself fraudulently of a
thing which does not belong to him is guilty of theft."
(C. Pdn., art. 379.)
To steal: To take by stealth or by force. (Dictionnaire
de l'Acaddmie.)
Thief: He who exacts more than is due to him. (Ib.)
Now, does not the monopolist, who, by a law of his
own making, obliges me to pay him 20 francs for what I
could get elsewhere for 15, take from me fraudulently
5 francs which belonged to me?
Does he not take them by stealth or by force?
Does he not exact more than is due to him?
He takes, purloins, exacts, it may be said; but not
by stealth or by force, which are the characteristics of
theft.
When our bulletins de contributions have included
in them 5 francs for the premium which the monopolist
takes, exacts, or abstracts, what can be more stealthy
for the unsuspecting?   And for those who are not
dupes, and who do suspect, what savours more of force,
seeing that on the first refusal the taxgatherer's bailiff
is at the door?
But let monopolists take courage. Premium thefts,
tariff thefts, if they violate equity as much as theft d
l'Amdricaine, do not violate the law; on the contrary, they
are perpetrated according to law; and if they are worse
than common thefts, they do not come under the cognizance of the magistrate.
Besides, willingly or unwillingly, we are all robbed
or robbers in this business. The author of this volume
might very well cry "Stop, thief! " when he buys; and
with equal reason he might have that cry addressed to
1 See Molibre's play of L'AvarC.-TRANSLATOR.




THE PREMIUM THEFT


171


him when he sells; 1 and if he is in a situation different
from that of many of his countrymen, the difference consists in this, that he knows that he loses more than he
gains by the game, and they don't know it.     If they
knew it, the game would soon be given up.
Nor do I boast of being the first to give the thing
its right name. Adam Smith said, sixty years ago, that
"when manufacturers hold meetings, we may be sure a plot
is hatching against the pockets of the public." Can we be
surprised at this, when the public says nothing?
Well, then, suppose a meeting of manufacturers deliberating formally, under the title of general councils.
What takes place, and what is resolved upon?
Here is a very abridged report of one of their meetings:
"SHIPOWNER: Our shipping is at the lowest ebb.
That is not to be wondered at. I cannot construct ships
without iron. I can buy it in the market of the world
at IO francs; but by law the French ironmaster forces
me to pay him 15 francs, which takes 5 francs out of my
pocket. I demand liberty to purchase iron wherever I see
proper.
"IRONMASTER: In the market of the world I find
freights at 20 francs. By law I am obliged to pay the
French shipowner 30; he takes io francs out of my pocket.
He robs me, and I rob him; all quite right.
"STATESMAN: The shipowner has arrived at an unwise
conclusion. Let us cultivate the union which constitutes
our strength. If we give up a single point of the theory
of protection, the whole theory falls to the ground.
"SHIPOWNER: For us shipowners protection has been
a failure. I repeat that shipping is at its lowest ebb.
1 Possessing some landed property, on which he lives, he belongs to
the Protected class. This circumstance should disarm criticism. It shows
that if he uses hard words, they are directed against the thing itself, and
not against men's intentions or motives.




172


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


"SHIPMASTER: Well, let us raise the surtaxe,' and let
the shipowner who now exacts 30 francs from the public
for his freight charge 40.
"A MINISTER: The government will make all the use
they can of the beautiful mechanism of the surtaxe; but I
fear that will not be sufficient.
"A GOVERNMENT FUNCTIONARY: You are all very easily
frightened. Does the tariff alone protect you? and do you
lay taxation out of account? If the consumer is kind and
benevolent, the taxpayer is not less so. Let us heap taxes
upon him, and let the shipowner be satisfied. I propose
a premium of 5 francs to be levied from the public taxpayers, to be handed over to the shipbuilder for each cwt.
of iron he shall employ.
"Confused voices: Agreed! agreed! An agriculturist: Three francs premium upon each hectolitre of corn
for me! A manufacturer: Two francs premium on each
yard of cloth for me! etc., etc.
"THE PRESIDENT: This then is what we have agreed
upon. Our session has instituted a system of premiums,
and it will be its eternal honour. What branch of industry
can possibly henceforth be a loser, since we have two
means, and both so very simple, of converting our losses
into gains-the tariff and the premium? The sitting is
adjourned."
I really think some supernatural vision must have foreshadowed to me in a dream the near approach of the
premium (who knows but I may have first suggested the
idea to M. Dupin?) when six months ago I wrote these
words:
"It appears evident to me that protection, without
changing its nature or the effects which it produces, might
take the form of a direct tax, levied by the state, and dis[1 A discriminating duty on goods coming in under a foreign flag.]




THE PREMIUM THEFT


I73


tributed in premiums of indemnification among privileged
branches of industry."
And after comparing a protective duty to a premium,
I added:
"I confess candidly my preference for the last system.
It seems to me juster, more economical, and more fair.
Juster, because if society desires to make presents to some
of its members, all ought to bear the expense; more
economical, because it would save a great deal in the cost
of collection, and do away with many of the trammels
with which trade is hampered; more fair, because the
public would see clearly the nature of the operation, and
act accordingly." 1
Since the occasion presents itself to us so opportunely,
let us study this system of plunder by premium; for all we
say of it applies equally to the system of plunder by tariff;
and as the latter is a little better concealed, the direct may
help us to detect and expose the indirect system of cheating. The mind will thus be led from what is simple to
what is more complicated.
But it may be asked: Is there not a species of theft
which is more simple still? Undoubtedly; there is highway robbery, which wants only to be legalised, and made
a monopoly of, or, in the language of the present day,
organised.
I have been reading what follows in a book of travels:
"When we reached the kingdom of A., all branches of
industry declared themselves in a state of suffering. Agriculture groaned, manufactures complained, trade murmured, the shipping interest grumbled, and the government were at a loss what to do. First of all, the idea was
to lay a pretty smart tax on all the malcontents, and afterwards to divide the proceeds among them after retaining
its own quota; this would have been on the principle of
1 First series, ch. v. ante.




174


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


the Spanish lottery. There are a thousand of you, and
the State takes a piastre from each; then by sleight of
hand it conveys away 250 piastres, and divides the remaining 750 in larger and smaller proportions among the ticketholders. The gallant Hidalgo who gets three-fourths of
a piastre, forgetting that he had contributed a whole
piastre, cannot conceal his delight, and rushes off to spend
his fifteen reals at the alehouse. This is very much the
same thing as we see taking place in France. But the
government had overrated the stupidity of the population
when it endeavoured to make them accept such a species
of protection, and at length it lighted upon the following
expedient.
"The country was covered with a network of highroads.
The government had these roads accurately measured; and
then it announced to the agriculturist: ' All that you can
steal from travellers between these two points is yours;
let that serve as a premium for your protection and encouragement.' Afterwards it assigned to each manufacturer, to each shipowner, a certain portion of road, to
be made available for their profit, according to this
formula:
Done tibi et concedo
Virtutem et puissantiam
Volandi,
Pillandi,
Derobandi,
Filoutandi,
Et escroquandi,
Impunf per totam istam
Viam."
Now it has come to pass that the natives of the kingdom of A. have become so habituated to this system, that
they take into account only what they are enabled to steal,
not what is stolen from them, being so determined to
regard pillage only from the standpoint of the thief, that




THE PREMIUM THEFT


I75


they look upon the sum total of individual thefts as a
national gain, and refuse to abandon a system of protection, without which they say no branch of industry
could support itself.
You demur to this. It is not possible, you exclaim,
that a whole people should be led to ascribe a redundancy
of wealth to mutual robbery.
And why not? We see that this conviction pervades
France, and that we are constantly organising and improving the system of reciprocal robbery under the respectable names of premiums and protective tariffs.
We must not, however, be guilty of exaggeration. As
regards the mode of levying, and other collateral circumstances, the system adopted in the kingdom of A. may
be worse than ours; but we must at the same time admit
that, as regards the principle and its necessary consequences, there is not an atom of difference between all
these species of theft, which are organised by law for
the purpose of supplementing the profits of particular
branches of industry.
Remark also, that if highway robbery presents some
inconveniences in its actual perpetration, it has likewise
some advantages which we do not find in robbery by
tariff.
For example, it is possible to make an equitable division
among all the producers. It is not so in the case of
customs duties. The latter are incapable of protecting certain classes of society, such as artisans, shopkeepers, men
of letters, lawyers, soldiers, labourers, etc.
It is true that the robbery by premium assumes an infinite number of shapes, and in this respect is not inferior
to highway robbery; but, on the other hand, it leads fre.
quently to results so whimsical and awkward that the
natives of the kingdom of A. may well laugh at us.
'What the victim of a highway robbery loses the thief




176


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


gains, and the articles stolen remain in the country. But
under the system of robbery by premium, what the tax
exacts from the Frenchman is conferred frequently on
the Chinese, on the Hottentots, on the Caffres, etc., and
here is the way in which this takes place:
A piece of cloth, we will suppose, is worth Ioo francs
at Bordeaux. It cannot be sold below that price without
a loss. It is impossible to sell it above that price because
the competition of merchants prevents the price rising.
In these circumstances, if a Frenchman desires to have
the cloth, he must pay Ioo francs, or want it. But if it
is an Englishman who wants the cloth, the government
steps in, and says to the merchant, "Sell your cloth, and
we will get you 20 francs from the taxpayers." The merchant who could not get more than Ioo francs for his cloth,
sells it to the Englishman for 80. This sum, added to the
20 francs produced by the premium theft, makes all square.
This is exactly the same case as if the taxpayers had given
20 francs to the Englishman, upon condition of his buying
French cloth at 20 francs discount, at 20 francs below the
cost of production, at 20 francs below what it has cost
ourselves. The robbery by premium, then, has this peculiarity, that the people robbed are resident in the country
which tolerates it, while the people who profit by the
robbery are scattered over the world.
Verily, it is marvellous that people should persist in
maintaining that all which an individual steals from the
masses is a general gain. Perpetual motion, the philosopher's stone, the quadrature of the circle, are antiquated
problems; but the theory of progress by plunder is still
held in honour. A priori, we should have thought that, of
all imaginable puerilities, it was the least likely to survive.
Some people will say, You are partisans, then, of the
letting alone economists of the school of Smith and Say?
You do not desire the organisation of labour. Yes,




THE PREMIUM THEFT


177


gentlemen, organise labour as much as you choose, but
have the goodness not to organise theft.
Another, and a more numerous, set keep repeating,
premiums, tariffs, all that has been exaggerated. We
should use them without abusing them. A judicious
liberty, combined with a moderate protection, that is what
discreet and practical men desire. Let us steer clear of
fixed principles.
This is precisely what the traveller tells us takes place
in the kingdom of A. "Highway robbery," say the sages,
"is neither good nor bad in itself; that depends upon circumstances. All we are concerned with is to weigh things,
and see our functionaries well paid for the work of weighing. It may be that we have given too great latitude to
-pillage; perhaps we have not given enough. Let us examine and balance the accounts of each man employed in
the work of pillage. To those who do not earn enough,
let us assign a larger portion of the road. To those who
gain too much, we must limit the hours, days or months
of pillage."
Those who talk in this way gain a great reputation for
moderation, prudence, and good sense. They never fail
to attain to the highest offices in the state.
Those who say: Repress all injustice, whether on a
greater or a smaller scale, suffer no dishonesty, to however small an extent, are marked down for iddologues, idle
dreamers, who keep repeating over and over again the
same thing. The people, moreover, find their arguments
too clear, and why should they be expected to believe
what is so easily understood?




CHAPTER VIII


THE TAXGATHERER
JACQUES BONHOMME, a Vinedresser.
M. LASOUCHE, Taxgatherer.
L.: You have secured twenty tuns of wine?
J.: Yes, by dint of my own skill and labour.
L.: Have the goodness to deliver up to me six of
the best.
J.: Six tuns out of twenty! Good Heaven I you are
going to ruin me. And please, Sir, for what purpose
do you intend them?
L.: The first will be handed over to the creditors of
the State. When people have debts, the least thing they
can do is to pay interest upon them.
J.: And what has become of the capital?
L.: That is too long a story to tell you at present.
One part was converted into cartridges, which emitted the
most beautiful smoke in the world. Another went to pay
the men who had got crippled in foreign countries after
having laid them waste.  Then, when this expenditure
brought invasion upon us, our polite friend, the enemy,
was unwilling to take leave of us without carrying away
some money, and this money had to be borrowed.
J.: And what benefit do I derive from this now?
L.: The satisfaction of sayingQue je suis fier d'etre Fransais
Quand je regarde Ia colonne!
J.: And the humiliation of leaving to my heirs an
estate burdened with a perpetual rent-charge. Still, it
is necessary to pay one's debts, whatever foolish use is
178




THE TAXGATHERER


179


made of the proceeds. So much for the disposal of one
tun; but what about the five others?
L.: One goes to support the public service, the civil
list, the judges who protect your property when your
neighbour wishes wrongfully to appropriate it, the
policemen who protect you from robbers when you are
asleep, the roadmen who maintain the highways, the
curd who baptises your children, the schoolmaster who
educates them, and, lastly, your humble servant, who
cannot be expected to work exactly for nothing.
J.: All right; service for service is quite fair, and I
have nothing to say against it. I should like quite as
well, no doubt, to deal directly with the rector and the
schoolmaster on my own account; but I don't stand upon
that. This accounts for the second tun-but we have
still other four to account for.
L.   V Would you consider two tuns as more than
your fair contribution to the expense of the army and
navy?
J.: Alas! that is a small affair, compared with what
the two services have cost me already, for they have
deprived me of two sons whom I dearly loved.
L.: It is necessary to maintain the balance of power.
J.: And would that balance not be quite as well maintained if the European powers were to reduce their forces
by one-half or three-fourths? We should preserve our
children and our money. All that is requisite is to come
to a common understanding.
L.: Yes; but they don't understand one another.
J.: It is that which fills me with astonishment, for
they suffer from it in common.
L.: It is partly your own doing, Jacques Bonhomme.
J.: You are joking, Mr. Taxgatherer. Have I any
voice in the matter?
L.: Whom did you vote for as deputy?




i8o


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


J.: A brave general officer, who will soon be a marshal,
if God spares him.
L.: And upon what does the gallant general live?
J.: Upon my six tuns, I should think.
L.: What would happen to him if he voted a reduction of the army, and of your contingent?
J.: Instead of being made a marshal he would be
forced to retire.
L.: Do you understand now that you have yourself
J.: Let us pass on to the fifth tun, if you please.
L.: That goes to Algeria.
J.: To Algeria! And yet they tell us that all the
Mussulmans are wine-haters, barbarians as they are! I
have often inquired whether it is their ignorance of claret
which has made them infidels, or their infidelity which
has made them ignorant of claret. And then, what service
do they render me in return for this nectar which has
cost me so much toil?
L.: None at all; nor is the wine destined for the
Mussulman, but for good Christians who spend their lives
in Barbary.
J.: And what service do they render me?
L.: They make razzias, and suffer from them in
their turn; they kill and are killed; they are seized with
dysentery and sent to the hospital; they make harbours
and roads, build villages, and people them with Maltese,
Italians, Spaniards, and Swiss, who live upon your wine;
for another supply of which, I can tell you, I shall soon
come back to you.
J.: Good gracious! that is too much. I give you a
flat refusal. A vinedresser who could be guilty of such
folly would be sent to Bedlam. To make roads through
Mount Atlas-good Heavens! when I can scarcely leave
my house for want of roads! To form harbours in Bar



THE   TAXGATHERER                I8i
bary, when the Garonne is silted up! To carry off my
children whom I love, and send them to torment the
Kabyles I To make me pay for houses, seed, and horses,
to be handed over to Greeks and Maltese, when we have
so many poor people to provide for at home!
L.: The poor! Just so; they rid the country of the
redundant population.
J.: And we are to send after them to Algeria the
capital on which they could live at home!
L.: But then you are laying the foundations of a
great empire, you carry civilisation into Africa, thus
crowning your country with immortal glory.
J.: You are a poet, Mr. Taxgatherer. I am a plain
vinedresser, and I refuse your demand.
L.: But think that in the course of some thousands
of years your present advances will be recouped and
repaid a hundredfold.  The men who direct the enterprise assure us that it will be so.
J.: In the meantime, in order to defray the expense,
they asked me first of all for one cask of wine, then for
two, then for three, and now I am taxed by the tun! I
persist in my refusal.
L.: Your refusal comes too late. Your representative
has stipulated for the whole quantity I demand.
J.: Too true. Cursed weakness on my part I Surely,
in making him my representative I was guilty of a piece
of folly; for what is there in common between a general
officer and a poor vinedresser?
L.: Oh, yes; there is something in common —namely,
your wine which he has voted to himself in your
name.
J.: You may well laugh at me, Mr. Taxgatherer, for
I richly deserve it. But be reasonable. Leave me at
least the sixth tun. You have already secured payment
of the interest of the debt, and provided for the civil




i82


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


list and the public service, besides perpetuating the war
in Africa. What more would you have?
L.: It is needless to higgle with me. Communicate
your views to the General, your representative. For the
present he has voted away your vintage.
J.: Confound the fellow! But tell me what you intend
to make of this last cask, the best of my whole stock?
Stay, taste this wine. How ripe, mellow and full-bodied
it is I
L.: Excellent! delicious! It will suit Mr. D., the
cloth manufacturer, admirably.
J r: Mr. D., the cloth manufacturer? What do you
mean?
L.: That he will reap the benefit.
J.: How? What? I'll be hanged if I understand
you I
L. Don't you know that Mr. D. has set on foot a
grand undertaking which will prove most useful to the
country, but which, when everything is taken into account,
causes each year a considerable pecuniary loss?
J.: I am sorry to hear it, but what can I do?
L.: The Chamber has come to the conclusion that,
if this state of things continues, Mr. D. will be under
the necessity of either working more profitably, or of
shutting up his manufacturing establishment altogether.
J.: But what have these losing speculations of
Mr. D. to do with my wine?
L.: The Chamber has found out that, by making
over to Mr. D. some wine taken from your cellar, some
corn taken from your neighbour's granaries, some money
taken from the workmen's wages, the losses of D. may be
converted into profits.
J.: The -recipe is as infallible as it is ingenious. But,
zounds! it is awfully iniquitous. Mr. D., forsooth, is to
make up his losses by laying hold of my wine I




THE TAXGATHERER


I83


L.: Not exactly of the wine, but of its price. This
is what we denominate premiums of encouragement, or
bounties. Don't you see the great service you are rendering to the country?
J.: You mean to Mr. D.?
L.: To the country. Mr. D. assures us that his manufacture prospers in consequence of this arrangement, and
in this way he says the country is enriched. He said so
the other day in the Chamber, of which he is a member.
J.: This is a wretched quibble! A speculator enters
into a losing trade, and dissipates his capital; and if
he extorts from me and from my neighbours wine and
corn of sufficient value, not only to repair his losses, but
afford him a profit, this is represented as a gain to the
country at large.
L.: Your representative having come to this conclusion
you have nothing more to do but to deliver up to me
the six tuns of wine which I demand, and sell the
remaining fourteen tuns to the best advantage.
J.: That is my business.
L.: It will be unfortunate if you do not realise a
large price.
J.: I will think of it.
L.: For this price will enable you to meet many
more things.
J.: I am aware of that, Sir.
L.: In the first place, if you purchase iron to renew
your ploughs and your spades, the law decrees that you
must pay the ironmaster double what the commodity is
worth.
J.: Yes, this is very consolatory.
L.: Then you have need of coal, of butchers' meat,
of cloth, of oil, of wood, of sugar, and for each of these
commodities the law makes you pay double.
J.: It is horrible, frightful, abominable




184


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


L.: Why should you indulge in complaints? You
yourself, through your representative
J.: Say nothing more of my representative. I am
singularly represented, it is true. But they will not impose
upon me a second time. I shall be represented by a
good and honest peasant.
L.: Bah I you will re-elect the gallant General.
J.: Shall I re-elect him to divide my wine among
Africans and manufacturers?
L.: I tell you, you will re-elect him.
J.: This is too much. I am free to re..elect him or
not, as I choose.
L.: But you will so choose.
J.: Let him   come forward again, and he will find
whom he has to deal with. %
L.: Well, we shall see. Farewell. I carry away your
six tuns of wine, to be distributed as your friend, the
General, has determined.'
I See vol. i., Collected Works, Letter to M. Larnac; and vol. v.,
Parliamentary Incompatibilities.-FRENCH EDITOR.




CHAPTER IX


PROTECTION; OR, THE THREE CITY ALDERMEN
DEMONSTRATION IN FOUR TABLEAUX
SCENE I.-House of Master Peter.-Window     looking
out on a fine park.-Three gentlemen seated near
a good fire.
PETER: Bravo! Nothing like a good fire after a good
dinner. It does feel so comfortable. But alas! how many
honest folks, like the Rio d'Yvetot,
"Soufflent, faute de bois,
Dans leurs,doigts."
Miserable creatures! A charitable thought has just come
into my head. You see these fine trees; I am about to
fell them, and distribute the timber among the poor.
PAUL and JOHN: What! gratis?
PETER: Not exactly. My good works would soon
have an end were I to dissipate my fortune. I estimate
my park as worth ~;,ooo. By cutting down the trees
I shall pocket much more.
PAUL: Wrong. Your wood as it stands is worth
more than that of the neighbouring forests, for it renders
services which they cannot render. When cut down it
will be only good for firewood, like any other, and will
not bring a penny more the load.
PETER: Oh I oh! Mr. Theorist, you forget that I am
a practical man. My reputation as a speculator is sufficiently well established, I believe, to prevent me from
being taken for a noodle. Do you imagine I am going
to amuse myself by selling my timber at the price of
float-wood?




i86


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


PAUL: It would seem so.
PETER: Simpleton I And what if I can hinder floatwood from being brought into Paris?
PAUL: That alters the case.  But how   can you
manage it?
PETER: Here is the whole secret. You know that
float-wood on entering the city pays 5d. the load. Tomorrow I induce the commune to raise the duty to ~4,
~8, ~12-in short, sufficiently high to prevent the entry
of a single log. Now, do you follow me? If the good
people are not to die of cold they have no alternative
but to come to my woodyard. They will bid against
each other for my wood, and I will sell it for a high
price; and this act of charity, successfully carried out,
will put me in a situation to do other acts of charity.
PAUL: A fine invention, truly!  It suggests to me
another of the same kind.
JOHN: And what is that?   Is philanthropy to be
again brought into play?
PAUL: How do you like this Normandy butter?
JOHN: Excellent.
PAUL: Hitherto I have thought it passable. But do
you not think it is a little strong? I could make better
butter in Paris. I shall have four or five hundred cows,
and distribute milk, butter and cheese among the poor.
PETER and JOHN.: What! in charity?
PAUL: Bah I let us put charity always in the foreground. It is so fine a figure that its very mask is a
good passport. I shall give my butter to the people,
and they will give me their money.  Is that what is
called selling?
JOHN: No; not according to the Bourgeois Gentilhomme. But call it what you please, you will ruin
yourself. How can Paris ever compete with Normandy
in dairy produce?




THE THREE ALDERMEN


i87


PAUL: I shall be able to save the cost of carriage.
JOHN: Be it so. Still, while paying that cost, the
Normans can beat the Parisians.
PAUL: To give a man something at a lower priceis that what you call beating him?
JOHN: It is the usual phrase; and you will always
find yourself beaten.
PAUL: Yes, as Don Quixote was beaten. The blows
will fall upon Sancho. John, my friend, you forget
the town dues.
JOHN: The town dues! What have they to do with
your butter?
PAUL: To-morrow I shall demand protection, and
induce the commune to prohibit butter being brought
into Paris from Normandy and Brittany. The people
must then either dispense with it, or purchase mine, and
at my own price, too.
JOHN: Upon my honour, gentlemen, your philanthropy has quite made a convert of me.
"-On apprend i hurler, dit l'autre, avec les loups."
My mind is made up. It shall not be said that I am an
unworthy alderman. Peter, this sparkling fire has inflamed
your soul. Paul, this butter has lubricated the springs
of your intelligence. I, too, feel stimulated by this piece
of salted pork; and to-morrow I shall vote, and cause
to be voted, the exclusion of swine, dead or alive. That
done, I shall construct superb sheds in the heart of Paris.
" Pour l'animal immonde aux H~breux ddfendu."
I shall become a pig-driver and pork-butcher. Let us
see how the good people of Paris can avoid coming to
provide themselves at my shop.
PETER: Softly, my good friends; if you enhance the
price of butter and salt meat to such an extent you cut
down beforehand the profit I expect from my wood.




188


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


PAUL: And my speculation will be no longer so
wondrously profitable if I am overcharged for my firewood and bacon.
JOHN: And I, what shall I gain by overcharging you
for my sausages if you overcharge me for my faggots
and bread and butter?
PETER: Very well, don't let us quarrel. Let us rather
put our heads together and make reciprocal concessions.
Moreover, it is not good to consult one's self-interest
exclusively-we must exercise humanity, and see that the
people do not want fuel.
PAUL: Very right; and it is proper that the people
should have butter to their bread.
JOHN: Undoubtedly; and a bit of bacon for the pot.
ALL: Three cheers for charity; three cheers for philanthropy; and to-morrow we take the town dues by assault.
PETER: Ah! I forgot. One word more; it is essential.
My good friends, in this age of selfishness the world is
distrustful, and the purest intentions are often misunderstood. Paul, you take the part of pleading for the wood;
John will do the same for the butter; and I shall devote
myself to the home-bred pig. It is necessary to prevent
malignant suspicions.
PAUL and JOHN (leaving): Upon my word, that is a
clever fellow.
SCENE II.-Council Chambet
PAUL: My dear colleagues, every day there are
brought to Paris great masses of firewood, which drain
away large sums of money. At this rate, we shall all be
ruined in three years, and what will become of the poorer
classes? (Cheers.) We must prohibit foreign timber. I
don't speak for myself, for all the wood I possess would
not make a tooth-pick. In what I mean to say, then, I
am entirely free from any personal interest or bias. (Hear,




THE THREE ALDERMEN


*89


hear.) But here is my friend Peter, who possesses a park,
and he will guarantee an adequate supply of fuel to our
fellow-citizens, who will no longer be dependent on the
charcoal-burners of the Yonne. Have you ever turned
your attention to the risk which we run of dying of
cold if the proprietors of forests abroad should take it
into their heads to send no more firewood to Paris?
Let us put a prohibition, then, on the bringing in of
wood. By this means we shall put a stop to the draining away of our money, create an independent interest
charged with supplying the city with firewood, and
open up to workmen a new source of employment and
remuneration. (Cheers.)
JOHN: I support the proposal of my honourable friend,
the preceding speaker, which is at once so philanthropic,
and, as he himself has explained, so entirely disinterested.
It is indeed high time that we should put an end to this
insolent laissez passer, which has brought immoderate
competition into our markets, and to such an extent that
there is no province which possesses any special facility
for providing us with a product, be it what it may, which
does not immediately inundate us, undersell us, and bring
ruin on the Parisian workman. It is the duty of Government to equalise the conditions of production by duties
wisely adapted to each case, so as not to allow to enter
from without anything which is not dearer than in Paris,
and so relieve us from an unequal struggle. How, for
example, can we possibly produce milk and butter in
Paris, with Brittany and Normandy at our door? Remember, gentlemen, that the agriculturists of Brittany
have cheaper land, a more abundant supply of hay, and
manual labour on more advantageous terms. Does not
common sense tell us that we must equalise the conditions
by a protective town tariff? I demand that the duty on
milk and butter should be raised by z,ooo per cent., and




90o


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


still higher if necessary. The workman's breakfast will
cost a little more, but see to what extent his wages will
be raised! We shall see rising around us cow-houses,
dairies, and barrel churns, and the foundations laid of
new sources of industry. Not that I have any interest in
this proposition. I am not a cowfeeder, nor have I any
wish to be so. The sole motive which actuates me is a
wish to be useful to the working classes. (Applause.)
PETER: I am delighted to see in this assembly statesmen so pure, so enlightened, and so devoted to the best
interests of the people. (Cheers.) I admire their.disinterestedness, and I cannot do better than imitate the
noble example which   has been set me.   I give their
motions my support, and I shall only add another, for
prohibiting the entry into Paris of the pigs of Poitou. I
have no desire, I assure you, to become a pig-driver or a
pork-butcher. In that case I should have made it a matter
of conscience to be silent. But is it not shameful, gentlemen, that we should be the tributaries of the peasants of
Poitou, who have the audacity to come into our own
market and take possession of a branch of industry which
we ourselves have the means of carrying on? and who,
after having inundated us with their hams and sausages,
take perhaps nothing from us in return? At all events,
who will tell us that the balance of trade is not in their
favour, and that we are not obliged to pay them a
tribute in hard cash? Is it not evident that if the industry
of Poitou were transplanted to Paris it would open up
a steady demand for Parisian labour? And then, gentlemen, is it not very possible, as M. Lestiboudois has so
well remarked,1 that we may be buying the salt pork of
Poitou, not with our incomes, but with our capital?
Where will that land us? Let us not suffer, then, that
rivals who are at once avaricious, greedy, and perfidious,
'See ch. vi., first series.-FRENCH EDITOR.




THE THREE ALDERMEN


I9I


should come here to undersell us, and put it out of our
power to provide ourselves with the same commodities.
Gentlemen, Paris has reposed in you her confidence; it
is. for you to justify that confidence. The people are
without employment; it is for you to create employment
for them; and if salt pork shall cost them a somewhat
higher price, we have, at least, the- consciousness of
having sacrificed our own interests to those of the masses,
as every good magistrate ought to do. (Loud and longcontinued cheers.)
A VOICE: I have heard much talk of the poor; but
under pretext of affording them employment you begin
by depriving them of what is worth more than employment itself-,namely, butter, firewood, and meat.
PETER, PAUL and JOHN: Vote, vote! Down with
Utopian dreamers, theorists, generalisers! Vote, vote!
(The three motions are carried.)
SCENE III.-Twenty years afterwards
SON: Father, make up your mind; we must leave
Paris. Nobody can any longer live here-no work, and
everything dear.
FATHER: You don't know, my son, how much it
costs one to leave the place where he was born.
SON: The worst thing of all is to perish from want.
FATHER: Go you, then, and search for a more hospitable country.  For myself, I will not leave the place
where are the graves of your mother, and of your
brothers and sisters. I long to obtain with them that
repose which has been denied me in this city of desolation.
SON: Courage, father; we shall find employment somewhere else-in Poitou, or Normandy, or Brittany. It is
said that all the manufactures of Paris are being removed
by degrees to these distant provinces.




192


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


FATHER: And naturally so. Not being able to sell
firewood and provisions, the people of these provinces
have ceased to produce them beyond what their own
wants call for. The time and capital at their disposal
are devoted to making for themselves those articles with
which we were accustomed formerly to furnish them.
SON: Just as at Paris they have given up making pretty
dresses and furniture, and betaken themselves to the planting of trees and the rearing of pigs and cows. Although
still young, I have lived to see vast warehouses, sumptuous
parts of the city, and quays once teeming with life and
animation on the banks of the Seine turned into meadows
and copses.
FATHER: While towns are spread over the provinces,
Paris is turned into country. What a deplorable revolution! And this terrible calamity has been brought upon
us by three magistrates, backed by public ignorance.
SON: Pray tell me the history of this change.
FATHER: It is short -and simple. Under pretext of
planting in Paris three new branches of industry, and
by this means giving employment to the working classes,
these men got the commune to prohibit the entry into
Paris of firewood, butter, and meat. They claimed for
themselves the right of providing for their fellow-citizens.
These commodities rose at first to exorbitant prices. No
one earned enough to procure them, and the limited number
of those who could procure them spent all their income on
them, and had no longer the means of buying anything
else. A check was thus given at once to all other industries, and all the more quickly that the provinces no
longer afforded a market. Poverty, death, and emigration
then began to depopulate Paris.
SON: And when is this to stop?
FATHER: When Paris has become a forest and a
prairie.




THE THREE ALDERMEN


193


SON: The three magistrates must have made a large
fortune?
FATHER: At first they realised enormous profits, but
at length they fell into the common poverty.
SON: How did that happen?
FATHER: Look at that ruin  That was a magnificent
mansion-house surrounded with a beautiful park- If Paris
had continued to progress, Master Peter would have
realised more rent than his entire capital now amounts to.
SON: How can that be, seeing he has got rid of competition?
FATHER: Competition in selling has disappeared, but
competition in buying is also disappearing, and will continue every day to disappear more and more until Paris
becomes a bare field, and until the copses of Master Peter
have no more value than the copses of an equal extent of
land in the Forest of Bondy. It is thus that monopoly,
like every other system of injustice, carries in itself its
own punishment.
SON: That appears to me not very clear, but the decadence of Paris is an incontestable fact.  Is there no
means, then, of counteracting this iniquitous measure that
Peter and his colleagues got adopted twenty years ago?
FATHER: I am going to tell you a secret. I remain
in Paris on purpose.  I shall call in the people to my
assistance. It rests with them to replace the town dues
on their ancient basis, and get quit of that fatal principle
which was engrafted on them, and which still vegetates
there like a parasitical fungus.
SON: You must succeed in this at once.
FATHER: On the contrary, the work will be difficult
and laborious. Peter, Paul, and John understand one
another marvellously. They will do anything rather than
allow firewood, butter, and butchers' meat to enter Paris.
They have on their side the people, who see clearly the
N




I94


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


employment which these three protected branches of industry afford, who know well to how many cow-feeders
and wood-merchants they give employment, but who have
by no means the same exact idea of the labour which would
be developed in the grand air of liberty.
SON: If that is all, you will soon enlighten them.
FATHER: At your age, my son, one doubts of nothing.
If I write, the people will not read; for, to support their
miserable existence, they have no vacant time at their
disposal. If I speak, the aldermen will shut my mouth.
The people, therefore, will long remain under their fatal
mistake. Political parties, whose hopes are founded on
popular passions, will set themselves, not to dissipate their
prejudices, but to make use of them.  I shall have to
combat at one and the same time the powerful men of
the day, the people, and the political parties. In truth,
I see a frightful storm ready to burst over the head of the
bold man who shall venture to protest against an iniquity
so deeply rooted in this country.
SON: You will have truth and justice on your side.
FATHER: And they will have force and calumny on
theirs. Were I but young again; but age and suffering
have exhausted my strength!
SON: Very well, father; what strength remains to you,
devote it to the service of the country. Begin this work
of enfranchisement, and leave to me the task of finishing it.
SCENE IV.-The Agitation
JACQUES BONHOMME: Parisians, let us insist upon a
reform of the town duties; let us demand that they be
instantly put back to what they were. Let every citizen
be FREE to buy his firewood, butter, and butchers' meat
where he sees fit.
THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Liberty I
PETER: Parisians, don't allow yourselves to be seduced




THE THREE ALDERMEN


195


by that word, liberty. What good can result from liberty
to purchase if you want the means, and how can you have
the means if you are out of employment? Can Paris produce firewood as cheaply as the Forest of Bondy? meat as
cheaply as Poitou? butter as cheaply as Normandy? If
you open your gates freely to these rival products, what
will become of the cow-feeders, woodcutters, and porkbutchers? They cannot dispense with protection.
THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Protection!
JACQUES BONHOMME: Protection! but who protects you
workmen? Do you not compete with one another? Let
the wood-merchants, then, be subject to competition in
their turn. They ought not to have right by law to raise
the price of firewood, unless the rate of wages is also raised
by law. Are you no longer in love with equality?
THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Equality!
PETER: Don't listen to these agitators. We have, it is
true, raised the price of firewood, butchers' meat, and
butter; but we have done so for the express purpose of
being enabled to give good wages to the workmen. We
are actuated by motives of charity.
THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Charity!
JACQUES BONHOMME: Cause the rate of wages to be
raised by the town dues, if you can, or cease to use them
to raise the prices of commodities. We Parisians ask for
no charity-we demand justice.
THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Justice!
PETER: It is precisely the high price of commodities
which will lead, indirectly, to a rise of wages.
THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Dearness!
JACQUES BONHOMME: If butter is dear, it is not because
you pay high wages to the workmen, it is not even because you make exorbitant profits, it is solely because
Paris is ill-adapted for that branch of industry; it is
because you have wished to make in the town what should




I96


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


be made in the country, and in the country what should
be made in the town. The people have not more employment-only they have employment of a different kind.
They have no higher wages; while they can no longer
buy commodities as cheaply as formerly.
THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Cheapness!
PETER: This man seduces you with fine words. Let
us place the question before you in all its simplicity. Is
it, or is it not, true, that if we admit firewood, meat,
and butter freely or at a lower duty, our markets will be
inundated? Believe me there is no other means of preserving ourselves from this new species of invasion but
to keep the door shut, and to maintain the prices of commodities by rendering them artificially scarce.
A VERY FEW VOICES IN THE CROWD: Hurrah for
Scarcity!
JACQUES BONHOMME: Let us bring the question to the
simple test of truth. You cannot divide among the people
of Paris commodities which are not in Paris. If there be
less meat, less firewood, less butter, the share falling to
each will be smaller. Now there must be less if we prohibit what should be allowed to enter the city. Parisians,
abundance for each of you can be secured only by general
abundance.
THE PEOPLE: Hurrah for Abundance!
PETER: It is in vain that this man tries to persuade you
that it is your interest to be subjected to unbridled competition.
THE PEOPLE: Down with Competition!
JACQUES BONHOMME: It is in vain that this man tries
to make you fall in love with restriction.
THE PEOPLE: Down with Restriction!
PETER: I declare, for my own part, if you deprive the
poor cow-feeders and pig-drivers of their daily bread, if
you sacrifice them to theories, I can no longer be answer



THE THREE      ALDERMEN             197
able for public order. Workmen, distrust that man. He
is the agent of perfidious Normandy, and is prompted by
the foreigner. He is a traitor, and ought to be hanged!
(The people preserve silence.)
JACQUES BONHOMME: Parisians, what I have told you
to-day, I told you twenty years ago, when Peter set himself to work the town dues for his own profit and to your
detriment. I am not, then, an agent of Normandy. Hang
me, if you will, but that will not make oppression anything
else than oppression. Friends, it is neither Jacques nor
Peter that you must kill, but liberty if you fear it, or
restriction if it does you harm.
THE PEOPLE: Hang nobody, and set everybody free.




CHAPTER X


SOMETHING ELSE
"WHAT is restriction?"
"It is partial prohibition."
" What is prohibition?"
"Absolute restriction."
"So that what holds true of the one, holds true of the
other?"
"Yes; the difference is only one of degree. There is
between them the same relation as there is between a circle
and the arc of a circle."
"Then, if prohibition is bad, restriction cannot be
good?"
"No more than the arc can be correct if the circle is
irregular."
"What is the name which is common to restriction
and prohibition?"
"Protection."
"What is the definitive effect of protection?"
"To exact from men a greater amount of labour for the
same result."
"Why are men attached to the system of protection? "
" Because as liberty enables us to obtain the same result
with less labour, this apparent diminution of employment
frightens them."
"Why do you say apparent?"
"Because all labour saved can be applied to something
else."
"To what?"
198




SOMETHING ELSE


199


"That I cannot specify, nor is there any need to
specify it."
"Why?"
"Because if the amount of satisfactions which the
country at present enjoys could be obtained with onetenth less labour, no one can enumerate the new enjoyments which men would desire to obtain from the labour
left disposable.  One man would desire to be better
clothed, another better fed, another better educated,
another better amused."
"Explain to me the mechanism and the effects of protection."
"That is not an easy matter. Before entering on consideration of the more complicated cases, we must study it
in a very simple oine."
"Take as simple a case as you choose."
"You remember how Robinson Crusoe managed to
make a plank when he had no saw "
"Yes; he felled a tree, and then, cutting the trunk right
and lett with his hatchet, he reduced it to the thickness of
a board."
"And that cost him much labour?"
"Fifteen whole days' work"
"And what did he live on during that time? "
"He had provisions."
"What happened to the hatchet?"
"It was blunted by the work."
"Yes; but you perhaps do not know this: that at the
moment when Robinson was beginning the work he perceived a plank thrown by the tide upon the seashore "
"Happy accident   He of course ran to appropriate
it?"
"That was his first impulse; but he stopped short, and
began to reason thus with himself:
"' If I get this plank, it will cost me only the trouble




200


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


of carrying it, and the time needed to descend and remount
the cliff.
"'But if I form a plank with my hatchet, first of all,
it will procure me fifteen days' employment; then my
hatchet will get blunt, which will furnish me with the
additional employment of sharpening it; then I shall consume my stock of provisions, which will be a third source
of employment in replacing them. Now, labour is wealth.
It is clear that I should ruin myself by getting the plank.
I must protect my personal labour; and, now that I think
of it, I can even increase that labour by throwing back the
plank into the sea.'"
"But this reasoning was absurd."
"No doubt. It is nevertheless the reasoning of every
nation which protects itself by prohibition.  It throws
back the plank which is offered in exchange for a small
amount of labour in order to exert a greater amount
of labour.  Even in the labour of the Custom-house
officials it discovers a gain.  That gain is represented
by the pains which Robinson takes to render back to
the waves the gift which they had offered him Consider
the nation as a collective being, and you will not find
between its reasoning and that of Robinson an atom of
difference."
"Did Robinson not see that he could devote the time
saved to something else?"
"What else?"
"As long as a man has wants to satisfy and time at his
disposal, there is always something to be done. I am not
bound to specify the kind of labour he would in such a
case undertake."
"I see clearly what labour he could have escaped."
"And I maintain that Robinson, with incredible blindness, confounded the labour with its result, the end with
the means, and I am going to prove to you..."




SOMETHING ELSE


201I


"There is no need. Here we have the system of restriction or prohibition in its simplest form. If it appear
to you absurd when so put, it is because the two capacities
of producer and consumer are in this case mixed up in
the same individual."
"Let us pass on, therefore, to a more complicated
example."
"With all my heart. Some time afterwards, Robinson
having met with Friday, they united their labour in a
common work. In the morning they hunted for six hours,
and brought home four baskets of game. In the evening
they worked in the garden for six hours, and obtained
four baskets of vegetables.
"One day a canoe touched at the island. A goodlooking foreigner landed, and was admitted to the table of
our two recluses. He tasted and commended very much
the produce of the garden, and before taking leave of his
entertainers, spoke as follows:
"' Generous islanders, I inhabit a country where game
is much more plentiful than here, but where horticulture
is quite unknown. It would be an easy matter to bring
you every evening four baskets of game, if you will give
me in exchange two baskets of vegetables.'
"At these words Robinson and Friday retired to consult, and the debate that took place is too interesting not
to be reported in extenso.
"FRIDAY: What do you think of it?
"ROBINSON: If we close with the proposal, we are
ruined.
F.: Are you sure of that? Let us consider.
"R.: The case is clear. Crushed by competition, our
hunting as a branch of industry is annihilated.
"F.: What matters it, if we have the game?
"R.: Theory! It will no longer be the product of
our labour.




202


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


"F.: I beg your pardon, sir; for in order to have game
we must part with vegetables.
"R R.: Then, what shall we gain?
"F.: The four baskets of game cost us six hours' work.
The foreigner gives us them in exchange for two baskets
of vegetables, which cost us only three hours' work. This
places three hours at our disposal.
"R.: Say, rather, which are subtracted from our exertions.  There is our loss.  Labour is wealth, and if we
lose a fourth part of our time we shall be less rich by
a fourth.
"F: You are greatly mistaken, my good friend. We
shall have as much game, and the same quantity of vegetables, and three hours at our disposal into the bargain
This is progress, or there is no such thing in the world.
"R.: You lose yourself in generalities! What should
we -make of these three hours?
"F.: We would do something else.
"R.: Ah! I understand you. You cannot come to
particulars.  Something else, something else-that is
easily said.
"F: We can fish, we can ornament our cottage, we
can read the Bible
"R.: Utopia! Is there any certainty that we should
do either the one or the other?
"F.: Very well, if we have no wants to satisfy we can
rest. Is repose nothing? "
"R.: But while we repose we may die of hunger.
"F. My dear friend, you have got into a vicious
circle.  I speak of a repose which will subtract nothing
from our supply of game and vegetables. You always
forget that by means of our foreign trade nine hours'
labour will give us the same quantity of provisions that
we obtain at present with twelve.
" R.: It is very evident, Friday, that you have not been




SOMETHING ELSE


203


educated in Europe, and that you have never read the
Moniteur Industriel. If you had, it would have taught
you this: that all time saved is sheer loss. The important
thing is not to eat or consume, but to work. All that we
consume, if it is not the direct produce of our labour, goes
for nothing. Do you want to'know whether you are rich?
Never consider the enjoyments you obtain, but the labour
you undergo. This is what the Moniteur Industriel would
teach you. For myself, who have no pretensions to be
a theorist, the only thing I look at is the loss of our
hunting.
"F.: What a strange turning upside down of ideas!
But...
"R.: No buts. Moreover, there are political reasons
for rejecting the interested offers of the perfidious foreigner.
"F.: Political reasons I
"R.: Yes, he only makes us these offers because they
are advantageous to him.
"F.: So much the better, since they are for our advantage likewise.
"R.: Then by this traffic we should place ourselves in
a situation of dependence upon him.
"F.: And he would place himself in dependence on
us. We should have need of his game, and he of our
vegetables, and we should live on terms of friendship.
" R.: System! Do you want me to shut your mouth?
"F.: We shall see about that. I have as yet heard
no good reason.
"R.: Suppose the foreigner learns to cultivate a
garden, and that his island should prove more fertile
than ours. Do you see the consequence?
"F.: Yes; our relations with the foreigner would
cease. He would take from us no more vegetables, since
he could have them at home with less labour. He would
bring us no more game, since we should have nothing to




204


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


give him in exchange, and we should then be in precisely
the situation that you wish us in now.
"R.: Improvident savage! You don't see that after
having annihilated our hunting by inundating us with
game, he would annihilate our gardening by inundating
us with vegetables.
" F.: But this would only last so long as we were in
a situation to give him something else; that is to say,
so long as we found something else which we could
produce with economy of labour for ourselves.
"R.: Something else, something elseI  You always
come back to that.  You are at sea, my good friend
Friday; there is nothing practical in your views.
"The debate was long prolonged, and, as often happens, each remained wedded to his own opinion. But
Robinson possessing a great influence over Friday, his
opinion prevailed, and when the foreigner arrived to
demand a reply, Robinson said to him:
"' Stranger, in order to induce us to accept your proposal, we must be assured of two things:
"' The first is, that your island is no better stocked with
game than ours, for we want to fight only with equal
weapons.
"'The second is that you will lose by the bargain.
For, as in every exchange there is necessarily a gaining
and a losing party, we should be dupes, if you were not
the loser. What have you got to say?'
"'Nothing,' replied the foreigner; and, bursting out
laughing, he regained his canoe.
"The story would not be amiss if Robinson were not
made to argue so very absurdly."
"He does not argue more absurdly than the committee
of the Rue Hauteville."
"Oh I the case is very different. Sometimes you suppose one man, and sometimes (which comes to the same




SOMETHING ELSE


205


thing) two men living in company. That does not tally
with the actual state of things. The division of labour
and the intervention of merchants and money change the
state of the question very much."
"That may complicate transactions, but does not
change their nature."
"What I you want to compare modern commerce with
a system of barter."
"Trade is nothing but a multiplicity of barters. Barter
is in its own nature identical with commerce, just as labour
on a small scale is identical with labour on a great scale,
or as the law of gravitation which moves an atom is identical with that same law of gravitation which moves a
world."
"So, according to you, these arguments, which are so
untenable in the mouth of Robinson, are equally untenable
when urged by our protectionists."
"Yes; only the error is better concealed under a complication of circumstances."
"Then, pray, let us have an example taken from the
present order of things."
"With pleasure. In France, owing to the exigencies
of climate and habits, cloth is a useful thing. Is the
essential thing to make it, or to get it? "
"A very sensible question, truly! In order to have it,
you must make it."
"Not necessarily. To have it, someone must make it,
that is certain; but it is not at all necessary that the same
person or the same country which consumes it should also
produce it. You have not made that stuff which clothes
you so well. France does not produce the coffee on which
our citizens breakfast."
"But I buy my cloth, and France her coffee."
"Exactly so; and with what?"
"With money."




200


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


"But neither you nor France produce the material of
money."
"We buy it."
"With what?
"With our products, which are sent to Peru."
"It is then, in fact, your labour which you exchange
for cloth, and French labour which is exchanged for
coffee."
" Undoubtedly."
" It is not absolutely necessary, therefore, to manufacture what you consume? "
"No; if we manufacture something else which we give
in exchange."
" In other words, France has two means of procuring a
given quantity of cloth.  The first is to make it; the
second is to make something else, and to exchange this
something else with the foreigner for cloth. Of these two
means, which is the best? "
"I don't very well know."
" Is it not that which, for a determinate amount of
labour, obtains the greater quantity of cloth?"
" It seems so."
"And which is best for a nation, to have the choice
between these two means, or that the law should prohibit one of them, on the chance of stumbling on the
better of the two? "
" It appears to me that it is better for the nation to have
the choice, inasmuch as in such matters it invariably
chooses right."
"The law, which prohibits the importation of foreign
cloth, decides, then, that if France wishes to have cloth,
she must make it, and she is prohibited from making the
something else with which she could purchase foreign
cloth."
" True."




SOMETHING ELSE


207


"And as the law obliges us to make the cloth, and forbids our making the something else, precisely because
that something else would exact less labour (but for which
reason the law would not interfere with it) the law virtually
decrees that for a determinate amount of labour, France
shall only have one yard of cloth, when for the same
amount of labour she might have two yards, by applying
that labour to something else."
"But the question recurs, ' What else? '
"And my question recurs, ' What does it signify?
Having the choice, she will only make the something else
to such an extent as there may be a demand for it."
"That is possible; but I cannot divest myself of the
idea that the foreigner will send us his cloth, and not
take from us the something else, in which case we would
be entrapped. At all events, this is the objection even
from your own point of view. You allow that France
could make this something else to exchange for cloth,
with a less expenditure of labour than if she had made the
cloth itself? "
"Undoubtedly."
"There would, then, be a certain amount of her labour
rendered inert? "
"Yes; but without her being less well provided with
clothes, a little circumstance which makes all the difference. Robinson lost sight of this, and our protectionists
either do not see it, or pretend not to see it. The shipwrecked plank rendered fifteen days of Robinson's labour
inert, in as far as that labour was applied to making a
plank, but it did not deprive him of it. Discriminate,
then, between these two kinds of diminished labour-the
diminution which has for effect privation, and that which
has for its cause satisfaction. These two things are very
different, and if you mix them up, you reason as Robinson
did. In the most complicated, as in the most simple cases,




208        FALLACIES OF PROTECTION
the fallacy consists in this: Judging of the utility of
labour by its duration and intensity, and not by its results;
which gives rise to this economic policy: To reduce the
results of labour for the purpose of augmenting its duration and intensity."1'
1 See ch. ii. and iii., first series; and Harmonies Economiques, ch. vi.
-FRENCH EDITOR.




CHAPTER XI


THE LITTLE ARSENAL OF THE FREE-TRADER
I anyone tells you that there are no absolute principles,
no inflexible rules; that prohibition may be bad and yet
that restriction may be good,
Reply: "Restriction prohibits all that it hinders from
being imported."
If anyone says that agriculture is the nursing-mother
of the country,
Reply: "What nourishes the country is not exactly
agriculture, but corn."
If anyone tells you that the basis of the food of the
people is agriculture,
Reply: "The basis of the people's food is corn. This
is the reason why a law which gives us, by agricultural
labour, two quarters of corn, when we could have obtained
four quarters without such labour, and by means of labour
applied to manufactures, is a law not for feeding, but for
starving the people."
If anyone remarks that restriction upon the importation
of foreign corn gives rise to a more extensive culture, and
consequently to increased home production,
Reply: "It induces men to sow grain on comparatively
barren and ungrateful soils. To milk a cow and go on
milking her, puts a little more into the pail, for it is
difficult to say when you will come to the last drop. But
that drop costs dear."
If anyone tells you that when bread is dear, the
agriculturist, having become rich, enriches the manufactu rer,


0


209




210


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


Reply: "Bread is dear when it is scarce, and then men
are poor, or, if you like it better, they become rich
starvelings."
If you are further told that when bread gets dearer,
wages rise,
Reply by pointing out that, in April, i847, five-sixths
of our workmen were receiving charity.
If you are told that the wages of labour should rise with
the increased price of provisions,
Reply: "This is as much as to say that in a ship without provisions, everybody will have as much biscuit as if
the vessel were fully victualled."
If you are told that it is necessary to secure a good price
to the man who sells corn,
Reply: "That in that case it is also necessary to secure
good wages to the man who buys it."
If it is said that the proprietors, who make the laws,
have raised the price of bread, without taking thought
about wages, because they know that when bread rises
wages naturally rise,
Reply: "Upon the same principle, when the workmen
come to make the laws, don't blame them if they fix a
high rate of wages without busying themselves about protecting corn, because they know that when wages rise,
provisions naturally rise also."
If you are asked what, then, is to be done?
Reply: "Be just to everybody."
If you are told that it is essential that every great
country should produce iron,
Reply: "What is essential is that every great country
should have iron."
If you are told that it is indispensable that every great
country should produce cloth,
Reply: "The indispensable thing is that the citizens
of every great country should have cloth."




ARSENAL OF THE FREE-TRADER


21II


If it be said that labour is wealth,
Reply: "This is not true."
And, by way of development, add: "Phlebotomy is
not health, and the proof of it is that bleeding is resorted
to for the purpose of restoring health."
If it is said: "To force men to cultivate rocks,
and extract an ounce of iron from a hundredweight of
ore, is to increase their labour and consequently their
wealth."
Reply: "To force men to dig wells by prohibiting them
from taking water from the brook, is to increase their
useless labour, but not their wealth."
If you are told that the sun gives you his heat and light
without remuneration,
Reply: "So much the better for me, for it costs me
nothing to see clearly."
And if you are answered that industry in general loses
what would have been paid for artificial light,
Rejoin: "No, for having paid nothing to the sun, what
he saves me enables me to buy clothes, furniture, and
candles."
In the same way, if you are told that these rascally
English possess capital which is dormant,
Reply: "So much the better for us; they will not make
us pay interest for it."
If it is said: "These perfidious English find coal and
iron in the same pit,"
Reply: "So much the better for us; they will charge
us nothing for bringing them together."
If you are told that the Swiss have rich pasturages,
which cost little:
Reply: "The advantage is ours, for they will demand
a smaller amount of our labour in return for giving an impetus to our agriculture, and supplying us with pro.
visions."




I21


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


If they tell you that the lands of the Crimea have no
value, and pay no taxes,
Reply: "The profit is ours, who buy corn free from
such charges."
If they tell you that the serfs of Poland work without
wages,
Reply: "The misfortune is theirs and the profit is ours,
since their labour does not enter into the price of the corn
which their masters sell us."
Finally, if they tell you that other nations have many
advantages over us,
Reply: "By means of exchange, they are forced to
allow us to participate in these advantages."
If they tell you that under free-trade we are about to be
inundated with bread, beef a' la mode, coal, and winter
clothing,
Reply: "In that case we shall be neither hungry nor
thirsty."
If they ask how we are to pay for these things?
Reply: "Don't let that disquiet you. If we are inundated, it is a sign we have the means of paying for the
inundation; and if we have not the means of paying, we
shall not be inundated."
If anyone says: I should approve of free trade, if the
foreigner, in sending us his products, would take our
products in exchange; but he carries off our money,
Reply: "Neither money nor coffee grows in the fields
of Beauce, nor are they turned out by the workshops of
Elbeuf. So far as we are concerned, to pay the foreigner
with money is the same thing as paying him with coffee."
If they bid you eat butcher's meat,
Reply: "Allow it to be imported."
If they say to you, in the words of La Presse, "When
one has not the means to buy bread, he is forced to buy
beef,"




ARSENAL OF THE FREE-TRADER


213


Reply: "This is advice quite as judicious as that given
by M. Vautour to his tenant:
"'Quand on n'a pas de quoi payer son terme,
II faut avoir une maison i soi.'"
If, again, they say to you, in the words of La Presse,
"The government should teach the people how and why
they must eat beef,"
Reply: "The government has only to allow the beef
to be imported, and the most civilised people in the world
will know how to use it without being taught by a master."
If they tell you that the government should know
everything, and foresee everything, in order to direct the
people, and that the people have simply to allow themselves to be led,
Reply by asking: "Is there a state apart from the
people? is there a human foresight apart from humanity?
Archimedes might repeat every day of his life, ' With a
fulcrum and lever I can move the world; ' but he never
did move it, for want of a fulcrum and lever. The lever
of the state is the nation; and nothing can be more foolish
than to found so many hopes upon the state, which is
simply to take for granted the existence of collective
science and foresight, after having set out with the assumption of individual imbecility and improvidence."
If anyone says, "I ask no favour, but only such a
duty on bread and meat as shall compensate the heavy
taxes to which I am subjected; only a small duty equal to
what the taxes add to the cost price of my corn,"
Reply: "A thousand pardons; but I also pay taxes.
If, then, the protection which you vote in your own favour
has the effect of burdening me as a purchaser of corn with
exactly your share of the taxes, your modest demand
amounts to nothing less than establishing this arrangement
as formulated by you: ' Seeing that the public charges




214


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


are heavy, I, as a seller of corn, am to pay nothing, and
you my neighbour, as a buyer of corn, are to pay double,
viz., your own share and mine into the bargain.' Mr.
Corn-merchant, my good friend, you may have force at
your command, but assuredly you have not reason on
your side."
If anyone says to you, "It is, however, exceedingly
hard upon me, who pay taxes, to have to compete in my
own market with the foreigner, who pays none,"
Reply:
" ISt, In the first place, it is not your market, but our
market. I who live upon corn and pay for it, should
surely be taken into account.
"2nd, Few foreigners at the present day are exempt
from taxes.
"3rd, If the taxes you vote yield you in roads, canals,
security, etc., more than they cost you, you are not justified in repelling, at my expense, the competition of
foreigners, who, if they do not pay taxes, have not the
advantages you enjoy in roads, canals, and security. You
might as well say, ' I demand a compensating duty because
I have finer clothes, stronger horses, and better ploughs
than the hard-working peasant of Russia.'
"4th, If the tax does not repay you for what it costs,
don't vote it.
"5th, In short, after having voted the tax, do you wish
to get free from it? Try to frame a law which will throw
it on the foreigner. But your tariff makes your share of
it fall upon me, who have already my own burden to bear."
If anyone says, "For the Russians free trade is necessary to enable them to exchange their products with advantage " (Opinion de AM. Thiers dans les Bureaux, April,
I847),
Reply: "Liberty is necessary everywhere, and for the
same reason."




ARSENAL OF THE FREE-TRADER


215


If you are told, "Each country has its wants, and we
must be guided by that in what we do " (M. Thiers),
Reply: "Each country acts thus of its own accord, if
you don't throw obstacles in the way."
If they tell you, "We have no sheet-iron, and we must
allow it to be imported " (M. Thiers),
Reply: "Many thanks."
If you are told, "We have no freights for our merchant
shipping. The want of return cargoes prevents our shipping from competing with foreigners " (M. Thiers),
Reply: "When a country wishes to have everything
produced at home, there can be no freights either for
exports or imports. It is just as absurd to desire to have
a mercantile marine under a system of prohibition, as it
would be to have carts when there is nothing to carry.'"
If you are told that, assuming protection to be unjust,
everything has been arranged on that footing; capital has
been embarked; rights have been acquired; and the system
cannot be changed without suffering to individuals and
classes,
Reply: "All injustice is profitable to somebody (except,
perhaps, restriction, which in the long run benefits no
one). To argue from the derangement which the cessation of injustice may occasion to the man who profits by it,
is as much as to say that a system of injustice, for no
other reason than that it has had a temporary existence,
ought to exist for ever."




CHAPTER XII


THE RIGHT HAND AND THE LEFT
Report Addressed to the King
(Written in I847)
SIRE,-When we observe these free trade advocates
boldly disseminating their doctrines, and maintaining that
the right of buying and selling is implied in the right
of property (as has been urged by M. Billault in the true
style of a special pleader), we may be permitted to feel
serious alarm as to the fate of our national labour; for
what would Frenchmen make of their heads and their
hands were they free?
The administration which you have honoured with your
confidence has turned its attention to this grave state of
things, and has sought in its wisdom to discover a species
of protection which may be substituted for that which
appears to be getting out of repute. They propose a law
TO PROHIBIT YOUR FAITHFUL SUBJECTS FROM USING THEIR
RIGHT HANDS.
Sire, we beseech you not to do us the injustice of supposing that we have adopted lightly and without due
deliberation a measure which at first sight may appear
somewhat whimsical. A profound study of the system of
protection has taught us this syllogism, upon which the
whole doctrine reposes:
The more men work, the richer they become;
The more difficulties there are to be overcome, the more
work;
Ergo, the more difficulties there are to be overcome,
the richer they become.
216




RIGHT HAND AND LEFT


217


In fact, what is protection, if it is not an ingenious
application of this reasoning-reasoning so close and conclusive as to balk the subtlety of M. Billault himself?
Let us personify the country, and regard it as a collective being with thirty millions of mouths, and, as a
natural consequence, with sixty millions of hands. Here
is a man who makes a French clock, which he can exchange in Belgium for ten hundredweights of iron. But
we tell him to make the iron himself. He replies, "I
cannot, it would occupy too much of my time; I should
produce only five hundredweights of iron during the time
I am occupied in making a clock." Utopian dreamer, we
reply, that is the very reason why we forbid you to make
the clock, and order you to make the iron. Don't you see
we are providing employment for you?
Sire, it cannot have escaped your sagacity that this is
exactly the same thing in effect as if we were to say to
the country, " Work with your left hand, and not with
the right."
To create obstacles in order to furnish labour with an
opportunity of developing itself, was the principle of the
old system of restriction, and it is the principle likewise
of the new system which is now being inaugurated. Sire,
to regulate industry in this way is not to innovate,
but to persevere.
As regards the efficiency of the measure, it is incontestable. It is difficult, much more difficult than one
would suppose, to do with the left hand what we have
been accustomed to do with the right. You will be convinced of this, Sire, if you will condescend to make trial
of our system in a process which must be familiar to you;
as, for example, in shuffling a pack of cards. For this
reason, we flatter ourselves that we are opening to labour
an unlimited career.
When workmen in all departments of industry are thus
o*




218


FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


confined to the use of the left hand, we may figure to
ourselves, Sire, the immense number of people that will
be wanted to supply the present consumption, assuming
it to continue invariable, as we always do when we compare two different systems of production with one another.
So prodigious a demand for manual labour cannot fail to
induce a great rise of wages, and pauperism will disappear
as if by enchantment.
Sire, your paternal heart will rejoice to think that this
new law of ours will extend its benefits to that interesting
part of the community whose destinies engage all your
solicitude. What is the present destiny of women in
France? The bolder and more hardy sex drives them insensibly out of every department of industry.
Formerly, they had the resource of the lottery offices.
These offices have been shut up by a pitiless philanthropy,
and on what pretext? "To save the money of the poor."
Alas! the poor man never obtained for a piece of money
enjoyments as sweet and innocent as those afforded by the
mysterious turn of fortune. Deprived of all the comforts
of life, when he, fortnight after fortnight, risked a day's
wages, how many delicious hours did he afford his family?
Hope was always present at his fireside. The garret was
peopled with illusions. The wife hoped to rival her neighbours in her style of living; the son saw himself the drummajor of a regiment; and the daughter fancied herself led
to the altar by her betrothed.
" C'est quelque chose encore que de faire un beau reve I"
The lottery was the poetry of the poor, and we have
lost it.
The lottery gone, what means have we of providing
for our protdgdes? Tobacco-shops and the post-office.
Tobacco, all right; its use progresses, thanks to distinguished examples.




RIGHT HAND AND LEFT


219


But the post-office!... We shall say nothing of it,
it will be the subject of a special report.
Except, then, the sale of tobacco, what employment
remains for your female subjects? Embroidery, network,
and sewing-melancholy resources, which the barbarous
science of mechanics goes on limiting more and more.
But the moment your new law comes into operation,
the moment right hands are amputated or tied up, the face
of everything will be changed.  Twenty times, thirty
times, more embroiderers, polishers, laundresses, seamstresses, milliners, shirtmakers, will not be sufficient to
supply the wants of the kingdom, always assuming, as
before, the consumption to be the same.
This assumption may very likely be disputed by some
cold theorists, for dress and everything else will then be
dearer. The same thing may be said of the iron which
we extract from our own mines, compared with the iron we
could obtain in exchange for our wines. This argument,
therefore, does not tell more against left-handed men than
against protection, for this very dearness is the effect and
the sign of an excess of work and exertion, which is
precisely the basis upon which, in both cases, we contend
that the prosperity of the working classes is founded.
Yes, we can make a touching picture of the prosperity
of the millinery business. What movement! What
activity! What life! Every dress will occupy a hundred
fingers, instead of ten. No young woman will be idle,
and we have no need, Sire, to indicate to your perspicacity
the moral consequences of this great revolution. Not only
will there be more young women employed, but each of
them will earn more, for they will be unable to supply the
demand; and if competition shall again show itself, it will
not be among the seamstresses who make the dresses, but
among the fine ladies who wear them.
You must see, then, Sire, that our proposal is not




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only in strict conformity with the economic traditions of
the government, but is in itself essentially moral and
popular.
To appreciate its effects, let us suppose the law passed
and in operation-let us transport ourselves in imagination
into the future-and assume the new system to have been
in operation for twenty years. Idleness is banished from
the country; ease and concord, contentment and morality,
have, with employment, been introduced into every family
-no more poverty, no more vice. The left hand being
very awkward at all work, employment will be abundant,
and the remuneration adequate. Everything is arranged
on this footing, and the workshops in consequence are
full. If, in such circumstances, Sire, Utopian dreamers
were all at once to agitate for the right hand being again
set free, would they not throw the whole country into
alarm? Would such a pretended reform not overturn the
whole existing state of things? Then our system must
be good, since it could not be put an end to without
universal suffering.
And yet we confess we have the melancholy presentiment (so great is human perversity) that some day there
will be formed an association for right-hand freedom.
We think that already we hear the free right-handers,
assembled in the Salle Montesquieu, holding this language:
"Good people, you think yourselves richer because the
use of one of your hands has been denied you; you take
account only of the additional employment which that
brings you.  But consider also the high prices which
result from it, and the forced diminution of consumption.
That measure has not made capital more abundant, and
capital is the fund from which wages are paid.  The
streams which flow from that great reservoir are directed
towards other channels; but their volume is not enlarged;




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221


and the ultimate effect, as far as the nation at large is
concerned, is the loss of all that wealth which millions of
right hands could produce, compared with what is now
produced by an equal number of left hands. At the risk
of some inevitable derangements, then, let us form an
association, and enforce our right to work with both
hands."
Fortunately, Sire, an association has been formed in
defence of left-hand labour, and the Left-handers will have
no difficulty in demolishing all these generalities, suppositions, abstractions, reveries, and utopias. They have only
to exhume the Moniteur Industriel for i846, and they will
find ready-made arguments against freedom of trade,
which refute so admirably all that has been urged in favour
of right-hand liberty that it is only necessary to substitute
one word for the other.
"The Parisian free-trade league has no doubt of securing the concurrence of the workmen. But the workmen
are no longer men who can be led by the nose. They
have their eyes open, and they know political economy
better than our professors.  Free trade, they say, will
deprive us of employment, and labour is our wealth.
With employment, with abundant employment, the price
of commodities never places them beyond our reach.
Without employment, were bread at a halfpenny a pound,
the workman would die of hunger. Now your doctrines,
instead of increasing the present amount of employment,
would diminish it, that is to say, would reduce us to
poverty.
"When there are too many commodities in the market,
their price falls, no doubt. But as wages always fall when
commodities are cheap, the result is that, instead of being
in a situation to purchase more, we are no longer able
to buy anything. It is when commodities are cheap that
the workman is worst off."




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It will not be amiss for the Left-handers to intermingle
some menaces with their theories. Here is a model for
them:
"What! you desire to substitute right-hand for lefthand labour, and thus force down, or perhaps annihilate,
wages, the sole resource of the great bulk of the nation I
"And, at a time when a deficient harvest is imposing
painful privations on the workman, you wish to disquiet
him as to his future, and render him more accessible to
bad advice, and more ready to abandon that wise line of
conduct which has hitherto distinguished him."
After such conclusive reasoning as this, we entertain
a confident hope, Sire, that if the battle is once begun,
the left hand will come off victorious.
Perhaps an association may be formed for the purpose
of inquiring whether the right hand and the left are not
both wrong, and whether a third hand cannot be found
to conciliate everybody.
After having depicted the Right-handers as seduced by
the apparent liberality of a principle, the soundness of
which experience has not verified, and the Left-handers
as maintaining the position they have gained, they go on
to say:
"IIt is denied that there is any third position which it
is possible to take up in the midst of the battle I Is it not
evident that the workmen have to defend themselves at
one and the same time against those who desire to change
nothing in the present situation, because they find their
account in it, and against those who dream of an economic
revolution of which they have calculated neither the direction nor the extent? "
We cannot, however, conceal from your Majesty that
our project has a vulnerable side; for it may be said
that twenty years hence left hands will be as skilful as
right hands are at present, and that then you could no




RIGHT HAND AND LEFT


223


longer trust to left-handedness for an increase of national
employment.
To that we reply, that according to the most learned
physicians the left side of the body has a natural feebleness, which is quite reassuring as regards the labour of the
future.
Should your Majesty consent to pass the measure now
proposed, a great principle will be established: All wealth
proceeds from the intensity of labowr. It will be easy for
us to extend and vary the applications of this principle.
We may decree, for example, that it shall no longer be
permissible to work but with the foot; for this is no more
impossible (as we have seen) than to extract iron from
the mud of the Seine. You see, then, Sire, that the means
of increasing national labour can never fail. And after all
has been tried, we have still the practically exhaustless
resource of amputation.
To conclude, Sire, if this report were not intended for
publicity, we should take the liberty of soliciting your
attention to the great influence which measures of this kind
are calculated to confer on men in power. But that is a
matter which we must reserve for a private audience.




CHAPTER XIII


DOMINATION BY LABOUR
"IN the same way that in time of war we attain the mastery
by superiority in arms, can we not, in time of peace, arrive
at domination by superiority in labour? "
This is a question of the highest interest at a time
when no doubt seems to be entertained that in the field of
industry, as in the field of battle, the stronger crushes the
weaker.
To arrive at this conclusion, we must have discovered
between the labour which is applied to commodities and
the violence exercised upon men, a melancholy and discouraging analogy; for why should these two kinds of
operations be identical in their effects, if they are essentially different in their own nature?
And if it be true that in industry, as in war, domination is the necessary result of superiority, what have we to
do with progress or with social economy, seeing that we
inhabit a world where everything has been so arranged
by Providence that one and the same effect-namely,
oppression-proceeds necessarily from  two  opposite
principles?
With reference to the new policy towards which commercial freedom is drawing England, many persons make
this objection, which, I admit, preoccupies the most candid
minds among us: "Is England doing anything else than
pursuing the same end by different means? Does she not
always aspire at universal supremacy? Assured of her
superiority in capital and labour, does she not invite free
competition in order to stifle Continental industry, and so
224




DOMINATION BY LABOUR


225


put herself in a situation to reign as a sovereign, and
conquer the privilege of feeding and clothing the populations she has ruined? "
It would be easy to show that these alarms are
chimerical; that our alleged inferiority is much exaggerated; that our great branches of industry not only
maintain their ground, but are actually developed under
the action of external competition, and that the infallible
effect of such competition is to bring about an increase of
general consumption, capable of absorbing both home
and foreign products.
At present, I desire to make a direct answer to the
objection, leaving it all the strength and the advantage
of the ground it has chosen. Keeping out of view for the
present the special case of England and France, I shall
inquire in a general way whether, when, by its superiority
in one branch of industry, a nation comes to put down
a similar branch of industry existing among another
people, the former has advanced one step towards domination, or the latter towards dependence; in other words,
whether both nations do not gain by the operation, and
whether it is not the nation which is outrivalled that gains
the most.
If we saw in a product nothing more than an opportunity of working, the alarms of the protectionists would
undoubtedly be well founded. Were we to consider iron,
for example, only in its relations with ironmasters, we
might be led to fear that the competition of a country
where it is the gratuitous gift of nature would extinguish
the furnaces of another country where both ore and fuel
are scarce.
But is this a complete view of the subject? Has iron
relations only with those who make it? Has it no relations with those who use it? Is its sole and ultimate
destination to be produced? And if it is useful, not on




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account of the labour to which it gives employment, but
on account of the qualities it possesses, of the numerous
purposes to which its durability and malleabiltiy adapt it,
does it not follow that the foreigner cannot reduce its
price, even so far as to render its production here at home
unprofitable, without doing us more good in this last
respect than harm in the other?
Pray consider that there are many things which
foreigners, by reason of the natural advantages by which
they are surrounded, prevent our producing directly, and
with reference to which we are placed in reality in the
hypothetical position we have been examining with reference to iron. We produce at home neither tea nor coffee,
gold nor silver. Is our industry as a whole diminished in
consequence? No; only in order to create the countervalue of these imported commodities, in order to acquire
them by means of exchange, we detach from our national
labour a portion less great than would be required to
produce these things ourselves. More labour thus remains
to be devoted to the procuring of other enjoyments. We
are so much the richer and so much the stronger. All that
external competition can do, even in cases where it puts
an end absolutely to a particular branch of industry, is
to economise labour, and increase our productive power.
Is this, for the foreigner, the road to domination?
If we should find in France a gold mine, it does not
follow that it would be for our interest to work it. Nay,
it is certain that the enterprise should be neglected if each
ounce of gold absorbed more of our labour than an ounce
of gold purchased abroad with cloth. In this case we
should do better to find our mines in our workshops. And
what is true of gold is true of iron.
The illusion proceeds from our failure to see one thing,
which is, that foreign superiority never puts a stop to
national industry, except under a particular form, and




DOMINATION BY LABOUR


227


under that form only renders it superfluous by placing at
our disposal the result of the very labour thus superseded.
If men lived in diving-bells under water, and had to provide themselves with air by means of a pump, this would
be a great source of employment. To throw obstacles in
the way of such employment, as long as men were left in
this condition, would be to inflict upon them a frightful
injury. But if the labour ceases because the necessity for
its exertion no longer exists, because men are placed in a
medium where air is introduced into their lungs without
effort, then the loss of that labour is not to be regretted,
except in the eyes of men who obstinately persist in appreciating in labour nothing but labour in the abstract.
It is exactly this kind of labour which machinery, commercial freedom, progress of every kind, gradually supersedes; not useful labour, but labour become superfluous,
without object, and without result. On the contrary, protection sets that sort of useless labour to work; it places
us again under water, to bring the air-pump into play; it
forces us to apply for gold to the inaccessible national
mine, rather than to the national workshops. All the effect
is expressed by the words, loss of forces.
It will be understood that I am speaking here of
general effects, not of the temporary inconvenience which
is always caused by the transition from a bad system to
a good one. A momentary derangement accompanies
necessarily all progress. This may be a reason for making
the transition gently and gradually. It is no reason for
putting a stop systematically to all progress, still less for
misunderstanding it.
Industry is often represented as a struggle. That is
not a true representation of it, or only true when we confine
ourselves to the consideration of each branch of industry in
its effects upon a similar branch, regarding them both
apart from the interests of the rest of mankind. But there




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FALLACIES OF PROTECTION


is always something else to be considered, namely, the
effects upon consumption and upon general prosperity.
It is an error to apply to trade, as is but too often done,
phrases which are applicable to war.
In war the stronger overcomes the weaker.
In industry the stronger imparts force to the weaker.
This entirely does away with the analogy.
Let the English be as powerful and skilful as they are
represented, let them be possessed of as large an amount
of capital, and have as great a command of the two great
agents of production, iron and fuel, as they are supposed
to have; all this simply means cheapness. And who gains
by the cheapness of products? The man who buys them.
It is not in their power to annihilate any part whatever
of our national labour. All they can do is to render it
superfluous in the production of what has been already
acquired, to furnish us with air without the aid of the
pump, to enlarge in this way our disposable forces, and
so render their alleged domination by so much the more
impossible as their superiority becomes the more incontestable.
Thus, by a rigorous and consoling demonstration, we
arrive at this conclusion, that labour and violence, which
are so opposite in their nature, are riot less so in their
effects.
All we are called upon to do is to distinguish between
labour annihilated and labour economised.
To have less iron because we work less, and to have
less iron although we work less, are things not only
different, but opposed to each other. The protectionists
confound them; we do not. That is all.
We may be very certain of one thing, that if the
English employ a large amount of activity, labour, capital,
intelligence, and natural forces, it is not done for show.
It is done in order to procure a multitude of enjoyments in




DOMINATION BY LABOUR


229


exchange for their products. They most certainly expect
to receive at least as much as they give. What they produce at home is destined to pay for what they purchase
abroad. If they inundate us with their products, it is
because they expect to be inundated with ours in return.
That being so, the best means of having much for ourselves is to be free to choose between these two modes
of acquisition, direct production and indirect production.
British Machiavelism cannot force us to make a wrong
choice.
Let us give up, then, the puerility of applying to industrial competition phrases applicable to war-a false way
of speaking which is only specious when applied to competition between two rival trades. The moment we come
to take into account the effect produced on the general
prosperity, the analogy disappears.
In a battle everyone who is killed diminishes by so
much the strength of the army. In industry, a workshop
is shut up only when what it produced is obtained by
the public from another source and in greater abundance.
Picture a state of things where for one man killed on the
spot two should rise up full of life and vigour. Were such
a state of things possible, war would no longer merit its
name.
This, however, is the distinctive character of what is so
absurdly called industrial war.
Let the Belgians and the English lower the price of
their iron ever so much; let them, if they will, send it to
us for nothing; this might extinguish some of our blastfurnaces; but immediately, and as a necessary consequence
of this very cheapness, there would rise up a thousand
other branches of industry more profitable than the one
which had been superseded.
We arrive, then, at the conclusion that domination by
labour is impossible, and a contradiction in terms, seeing




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that all superiority which manifests itself among a people
means cheapness, and tends only to impart force to all
other nations. Let us banish, then, from political economy
all terms borrowed from the military vocabulary: to fight
with equal weapons, to conquer, to crush, to stifle, to be
beaten, invasion, tribute, etc. What do such phrases
mean? Squeeze them, and you obtain nothing....
Yes, you do obtain something; for from such words proceed absurd errors, and fatal and pestilent prejudices.
Such phrases tend to arrest the fusion of nations, are
inimical to their peaceful, universal, and indissoluble
alliance, and retard the progress of the human race.
THE END


PRINTED DY CASSELL & COMPANY, LiMlTr, LA BULLE SAUVAGa, LONDON, E.C.4