"To sleep amid its forests dank and lone,"
for to improve the navigation of the Mississippi will favor the introduction of New Orleans products to the injury of St. Louis, and an inundation of the products of St. Louis to the detriment of New Orleans.
We have said that when, unfortunately, we place ourselves at the point of view of the producer's interest, we cannot fail to clash with the general interest, because the producer, as such, demands only efforts, wants, and obstacles.
When the Atlantic and Great Western Railway is finished, the question will arise, "Should connection be broken at Pittsburg?" This the Pittsburgers will answer affirmatively, for a multitude of reasons, but for this among others; the railroad from New York to St. Louis ought to have an interruption at Pittsburg, in order that merchandise and travellers compelled to stop in the city may leave in it fees to the hackmen, pedlars, errand-boys, consignees, hotel-keepers, etc.
It is clear, that here again the interest of the agent of labor is placed before the interest of the consumer.
But if Pittsburg ought to profit by the interruption, and if the profit is conformable with public interest, Harrisburg, Dayton, Indianapolis, Columbus, much more all the intermediate points, ought to demand stoppages, and that in the general interest, in the widely extended interest of national labor, for the more they are multiplied, the more will consignments, commissions, transportations, be multiplied on all points of the line. With this system we arrive at a railroad of successive stoppages, to a negative railroad.
Whether the protectionists wish it or not, it is not the less certain that the principle of restriction is the same as the principle of gaps, the sacrifice of the consumers to the producer, of the end to the means.
We cannot be too much astonished at the facility with which men resign themselves to be ignorant of what is most important for them to know, and we may feel sure that they have decided to go to sleep in their ignorance when they have brought themselves to proclaim this axiom: There are no absolute principles.
Enter the Halls of Congress. The question under discussion is whether the law shall interdict or allow international exchanges.
Mr. C****** rises and says:
"If you tolerate these exchanges, the foreigner will inundate you with his products, the English with cotton and iron goods, the Nova-Scotian with coal, the Spaniard with wool, the Italian with silk, the Canadian with cattle, the Swede with iron, the Newfoundlander with salt-fish. Industrial pursuits will thus be destroyed."
Mr. G***** replies:
"If you prohibit these exchanges, the varied benefits which nature has lavished on different climates will be, to you, as though they were not. You will not participate in the mechanical skill of the English, nor in the riches of the Nova-Scotian mines, in the abundance of Canadian pasturage, in the cheapness of Spanish labor, in the fervor of the Italian climate; and you will be obliged to ask through a forced production that which you might by exchange have obtained through a readier production."
Assuredly, one of the senators deceives himself. But which? It is well worth while to ascertain; for we are not dealing with opinions only. You stand at the entrance of two roads; you must choose; one of them leads necessarily to misery.
To escape from this embarrassment it is said: There are no absolute principles.
This axiom, so much in vogue in our day, not only serves laziness, it is also in accord with ambition.
If the theory of prohibition should prevail, or again, if the doctrine of liberty should triumph, a very small amount of law would suffice for our economic code. In the first case it would stand—All foreign exchange is forbidden; in the second, All exchange with abroad is free, and many great personages would lose their importance.
But if exchange has not a nature proper to itself; if it is governed by no natural law; if it is capriciously useful or injurious; if it does not find its spring in the good it accomplishes, its limit when it ceases to do good; if its effects cannot be appreciated by those who execute them; in one word, if there are no absolute principles, we are compelled to measure, weigh, regulate transactions, to equalize the conditions of labor, to look for the level of profits—colossal task, well suited to give great entertainments, and high influence to those who undertake it.
Here in New York are a million of human beings who would all die within a few days, if the abundant provisioning of nature were not flowing towards this great metropolis.
Imagination takes fright in the effort to appreciate the immense multiplicity of articles which must cross the Bay, the Hudson, the Harlem, and the East rivers, to-morrow, if the lives of its inhabitants are not to become the prey of famine, riot, and pillage. Yet, as we write, all are sleeping; and their quiet slumbers are not disturbed for a moment by the thought of so frightful a perspective. On the other hand, forty-five States and Territories have worked to-day, without concert, without mutual understanding, to provision New York. How is it that every day brings in what is needed, neither more nor less, to this gigantic market? What is the intelligent and secret power which presides over the astonishing regularity of movements so complicated—a regularity in which each one has a faith so undoubting, though comfort and life are at stake.
This power is an absolute principle, the principle of freedom of operation, the principle of free conduct.
We have faith in that innate light which Providence has placed in the hearts of all men, to which he has confided the preservation and improvement of our race-interest (since we must call it by its name), which is so active, so vigilant, so provident, when its action is free. What would become of you, inhabitants of New York, if a Congressional majority should take a fancy to substitute for this power the combinations of their genius, however superior it may be supposed to be; if they imagined they could submit this prodigious mechanism to its supreme direction, unite all its resources in their own hands, and decide when, where, how, and on what conditions everything should be produced, transported, exchanged, and consumed? Ah! though there may be much suffering within your bounds, though misery, despair, and perhaps hungry exhaustion may cause more tears to flow than your ardent charity can dry, it is probable, it is certain, we dare to affirm, that the arbitrary intervention of government would multiply these sufferings infinitely, and would extend to you all, those evils which at present are confined to a small portion of your number.
We all have faith in this principle where our internal transactions are concerned; why should we not have faith in the same principle applied to our international operations, which are, assuredly, less numerous, less delicate, and less complicated. And if it is not necessary that the Mayor and Common Council of New York should regulate our industries, weigh our change, our profits, and our losses, occupy themselves with the regulation of prices, equalize the conditions of our labor in internal commerce—why is it necessary that the custom-house, proceeding on its fiscal mission, should pretend to exercise protective action upon our exterior commerce?
Among the arguments which are considered of weight in favor of the restriction system, we must not forget that drawn from national independence.
"What shall we do in case of war," say they, "if we have placed ourselves at the mercy of Great Britain for iron and coal?"
English monopolists did not fail on their side to exclaim, when the corn-laws were repealed, "What will become of Great Britain in time of war if she depends on the United States for food?"
One thing they fail to observe: it is that this sort of dependence, which results from exchange, from commercial operations, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot depend on the foreigner unless the foreigner depends on us. This is the very essence of society. We do not place ourselves in a state of independence by breaking natural relations, but in a state of isolation.
Remark also: we isolate ourselves in the anticipation of war; but the very act of isolation is the commencement of war. It renders it more easy, less burdensome, therefore less unpopular. Let nations become permanent recipient customers each of the other, let the interruption of their relations inflict upon them the double suffering of privation and surfeit, and they will no longer require the powerful navies which ruin them, the great armies which crush them; the peace of the world will no longer be compromised by the caprice of a Napoleon or of a Bismarck, and war will disappear through lack of aliment, resources, motive, pretext, and popular sympathy.
We know well that we shall be reproached (in the cant of the day) for proposing interest, vile and prosaic interest, as a foundation for the fraternity of nations. It would be preferred that it should have its foundation in charity, in love, even in self-renunciation, and that, demolishing the material comfort of man, it should have the merit of a generous sacrifice.
When shall we have done with such puerile talk? When shall we banish charlatanry from science? When shall we cease to manifest this disgusting contradiction between our writings and our conduct? We hoot at and spit upon interest, that is to say, the useful, the right (for to say that all nations are interested in a thing, is to say that that thing is good in itself), as if interest were not the necessary, eternal, indestructible instrument to which Providence has intrusted human perfectibility. Would not one suppose us all angels of disinterestedness? And is it supposed that the public does not see with disgust that this affected language blackens precisely those pages for which it is compelled to pay highest? Affectation is truly the malady of this age.
What! because comfort and peace are correlative things; because it has pleased God to establish this beautiful harmony in the moral world; you are not willing that we should admire and adore His providence, and accept with gratitude laws which make justice the condition of happiness. You wish peace only so far as it is destructive to comfort; and liberty burdens you because it imposes no sacrifices on you. If self-renunciation has so many claims for you, who prevents your carrying it into private life? Society will be grateful to you for it, for some one, at least, will receive the benefit of it; but to wish to impose it on humanity as a principle is the height of absurdity, for the abnegation of everything is the sacrifice of everything—it is evil set up in theory.
But, thank Heaven, men may write and read a great deal of such talk, without causing the world to refrain on that account from rendering obedience to its motive-power, which is, whether they will or no, interest. After all, it is singular enough to see sentiments of the most sublime abnegation invoked in favor of plunder itself. Just see to what this ostentatious disinterestedness tends. These men, so poetically delicate that they do not wish for peace itself, if it is founded on the base interest of men, put their hands in the pockets of others, and, above all, of the poor; for what section of the tariff protects the poor?
Well, gentlemen, dispose according to your own judgment of what belongs to yourselves, but allow us also to dispose of the fruit of the sweat of our brows, to avail ourselves of exchange at our own pleasure. Talk away about self-renunciation, for that is beautiful; but at the same time practice a little honesty.
To break machines, to reject foreign merchandise—are two acts proceeding from the same doctrine.
We see men who clap their hands when a great invention is made known to the world, who nevertheless adhere to the protective system. Such men are highly inconsistent.
With what do they upbraid freedom of commerce? With getting foreigners more skilful or better situated than ourselves to produce articles, which, but for them, we should produce ourselves. In one word, they accuse us of damaging national labor.
Might they not as well reproach machines for accomplishing, by natural agents, work which, without them, we could perform with our own arms, and, in consequence, damaging human labor?
The foreign workman who is more favorably situated than the American laborer, is, in respect to the latter, a veritable economic machine, which injures him by competition. In the same manner, a machine which executes a piece of work at a less price than can be done by a certain number of arms, is, relatively to those arms, a true competing foreigner, who paralyzes them by his rivalry.
If, then, it is needful to protect national labor against the competition of foreign labor, it is not less so, to protect human labor against the rivalry of mechanical labor.
So, he who adheres to the protective policy, if he has but a small amount of logic in his brain, must not stop when he has prohibited foreign products; he must farther proscribe the shuttle and the plough.
And that is the reason why we prefer the logic of those men who, declaiming against the invasion of exotic merchandise, have, at least, the courage to declaim as well against the excess of production due to the inventive power of the human mind.
Hear such a Conservative:—"One of the strongest arguments against liberty of commerce, and the too great employment of machines, is, that very many workmen are deprived of work, either by foreign competition, which is destructive to their manufactures, or by machines, which take the place of men in the workshops."
This gentleman perfectly sees the analogy, or rather, let us say, the identity, existing between importations and machines; that is the reason he proscribes both: and truly there is some pleasure in having to do with reasonings, which, even in error, pursue an argument to the end.
Let us look at the difficulty in the way of its soundness.
If it be true, à priori, that the domain of invention and that of labor cannot be extended, except at the expense of one or the other, it is in the place where there are most machines, Lancaster or Lowell, for example, that we shall meet with the fewest workmen. And if, on the contrary, we prove a fact, that mechanical and hand work co-exist in a greater degree among wealthy nations than among savages, we must necessarily conclude that these two powers do not exclude each other.
It is not easy to explain how a thinking being can taste repose in presence of this dilemma:
Either—"The inventions of man do not injure labor, as general facts attest, since there are more of both among the English and Americans than among the Hottentots and Cherokees. In that case I have made a false reckoning, though I know neither where nor when I got astray. I should commit the crime of treason to humanity if I should introduce my error into the legislation of my country."
Or else—"The discoveries of the mind limit the work of the arms, as some particular facts seem to indicate; for I see daily a machine do the labor of from twenty to a hundred workmen, and thus I am forced to prove a flagrant, eternal, incurable antithesis between the intellectual and physical ability of man; between his progress and his comfort; and I cannot forbear saying that the Creator of man ought to have given him either reason or arms, moral force, or brutal force, but that he has played with him in conferring upon him opposing faculties which destroy one another."
The difficulty is pressing. Do you know how they get rid of it? By this singular apothegm:
"In political economy there are no absolute principles."
In intelligible and vulgar language, that means: "I do not know where is the true nor the false; I am ignorant of what constitutes general good or evil; I give myself no trouble about it. The only law which I consent to recognize, is the immediate effect of each measure upon my personal comfort."
No absolute principles! You might as well say, there are no absolute facts; for principles are only the summing up of well proven facts.
Machines, importations, have certainly consequences. These consequences are good or bad. On this point there may be difference of opinion. But whichever of these we adopt, we express it in one of these two principles: "machines are a benefit," or "machines are an evil." "Importations are favorable," or "importations are injurious." But to say "there are no principles," is the lowest degree of abasement to which the human mind can descend; and we confess we blush for our country when we hear so monstrous a heresy uttered in the presence of the American people, with their consent; that is to say, in the presence and with the consent of the greater part of our fellow-citizens, in order to justify Congress for imposing laws on us, in perfect ignorance of the reasons for them or against them.
But then we shall be told, "destroy the sophism; prove that machines do not injure human labor, nor importations national industry."
In an essay of this nature such demonstrations cannot be complete. Our aim is more to propose difficulties than to solve them; to excite reflection, than to satisfy it. No conviction of the mind is well acquired, excepting that which it gains by its own labor. We will try, nevertheless, to place it before you.
The opponents of importations and machines are mistaken, because they judge by immediate and transitory consequences, instead of looking at general and final ones.
The immediate effect of an ingenious machine is to economize, towards a given result, a certain amount of handwork. But its action does not stop there: inasmuch as this result is obtained with less effort, it is given to the public for a lower price; and the amount of the savings thus realized by all the purchasers, enables them to procure other gratifications—that is to say, to encourage handwork in general, equal in amount to that subtracted from the special handwork lately improved upon—so that the level of work has not fallen, though that of gratification has risen. Let us make this connection of consequences evident by an example.
Suppose that in the United States ten millions of hats are sold at five dollars each: this affords to the hatters' trade an income of fifty millions. A machine is invented which allows hats to be afforded at three dollars each. The receipts are reduced to thirty millions, admitting that the consumption does not increase. But, for all that, the other twenty millions are not subtracted from human labor. Economized by the purchasers of hats, they will serve them in satisfying other needs, and by consequence will, to that amount, remunerate collective industry. With these two dollars saved, John will purchase a pair of shoes, James a book, William a piece of furniture, etc. Human labor, in the general, will thus continue to be encouraged to the amount of fifty millions; but this sum, beside giving the same number of hats as before, will add the gratifications obtained by the twenty millions which the machine has spared. These gratifications are the net products which America has gained by the invention. It is a gratuitous gift, a tax, which the genius of man has imposed on Nature. We do not deny that, in the course of the change, a certain amount of labor may have been displaced; but we cannot agree that it has been destroyed, or even diminished. The same holds true of importations.
We will resume the hypothesis. America makes ten millions of hats, of which the price was five dollars each. The foreigner invaded our market in furnishing us with hats at three dollars. We say that national labor will be not at all diminished. For it will have to produce to the amount of thirty millions, in order to pay for ten millions of hats at three dollars. And then there will remain to each purchaser two dollars saved on each hat, or a total of twenty millions, which will compensate for other enjoyments; that is to say, for other work. So the total of labor remains what it was; and the supplementary enjoyments, represented by twenty millions economized on the hats, will form the net profit of the importations, or of free trade.
No one need attempt to horrify us by a picture of the sufferings, which, in this hypothesis, will accompany the displacement of labor. For if prohibition had never existed, labor would have classed itself in accordance with the law of exchange, and no displacement would have taken place. If, on the contrary, prohibition has brought in an artificial and unproductive kind of work, it is prohibition, and not free trade, which is responsible for the inevitable displacement, in the transition from wrong to right.
Unless, indeed, it should be contended that, because an abuse cannot be destroyed without hurting those who profit by it, its existence for a single moment is reason enough why it should endure forever.
It is said that the most advantageous commerce consists in the exchange of manufactured goods for raw material, because this raw material is a spur to national labor.
And then the conclusion is drawn, that the best custom-house regulation would be that which should give the utmost possible facility to the entry of raw material, and oppose the greatest obstacles to articles which have received their first manipulation by labor.
No sophism of political economy is more widely spread than the foregoing. It supports not only the protectionists, but, much more, and above all, the pretended liberalists. This is to be regretted; for the worst which can happen to a good cause is not to be severely attacked, but to be badly defended.
Commercial freedom will probably have the fate of all freedom; it will not be introduced into our laws until after it has taken possession of our minds. But if it be true that a reform must be generally understood, in order that it may be solidly established, it follows that nothing can retard it so much as that which misleads public opinion; and what is more likely to mislead it than those writings which seem to favor freedom by upholding the doctrines of monopoly?
Several years ago, three large cities of France—Lyons, Bordeaux, and Havre—were greatly agitated against the restrictive policy. The nation, and indeed all Europe, was moved at seeing a banner raised, which they supposed to be that of free trade. Alas! it was still the banner of monopoly; of a monopoly a little more niggardly, and a great deal more absurd, than that which they appeared to wish to overturn. Owing to the sophism which we are about to unveil, the petitioners merely reproduced the doctrine of protection to national labor, adding to it, however, another folly.
What is, in effect, the prohibitive system? Let us listen to the protectionist: "Labor constitutes the wealth of a people, because it alone creates those material things which our necessities demand, and because general comfort depends upon these."
This is the principle.
"But this abundance must be the product of national labor. Should it be the product of foreign labor, national labor would stop at once."
This is the mistake. (See the close of the last chapter.)
"What shall be done, then, in an agricultural and manufacturing country?"
This is the question.
"Restrict its market to the products of its own soil, and its own industry."
This is the end proposed.
"And for this end, restrain by prohibitive duties the entrance of the products of the industry of other nations."
These are the means.
Let us reconcile with this system that of the petition from Bordeaux.
It divided merchandise into three classes:
"The first includes articles of food, and raw material free from all human labor. A wise economy would require that this class should not be taxed."
Here there is no labor; consequently no protection.
"The second is composed of articles which have undergone some preparation. This preparation warrants us in charging it with some tax."
Here protection commences, because, according to the petitioners, national labor commences.
"The third comprises perfected articles which can in no way serve national labor; we consider these the most taxable."
Here, labor, and with it protection, reach their maximum.
The petitioners assert that foreign labor injures national labor; this is the error of the prohibitive school.
They demanded that the French market should be restricted to French labor; this is the end of the prohibitive system.
They insisted that foreign labor should be subject to restriction and taxation; these are the means of the prohibitive system.
What difference, then, is it possible to discover between the petitioners of Bordeaux and the advocate of American restriction? One alone: the greater or less extent given to the word labor.
The protectionist extends it to everything—so he wishes to protect everything.
"Labor constitutes all the wealth of a people," says he; "to protect national industry, all national industry, manufacturing industry, all manufacturing industry, is the idea which should always be kept before the people." The petitioners saw no labor excepting that of manufacturers; so they would admit that alone to the favors of protection. They said:
"Raw material is devoid of all human labor. For that reason we should not tax it. Fabricated articles can no longer occupy national labor. We consider them the most taxable."
We are not inquiring whether protection to national labor is reasonable. The protectionist and the Bordelais agree upon this point, and we, as has been seen in the preceding chapters, differ from both.
The question is to ascertain which of the two—the protectionists or the raw-materialists of Bordeaux—give its just acceptation to the word "labor."
Now, upon this ground, it must be said, the protectionist is, by all odds, right; for observe the dialogue which might take place between them:
The Protectionist: "You agree that national labor ought to be protected. You agree that no foreign labor can be introduced into our market without destroying therein an equal amount of our national labor. Yet you assert that there is a host of merchandise possessed of value (since it sells), which is, however, free from human labor. And, among other things, you name wheat, corn, meats, cattle, lard, salt, iron, brass, lead, coal, wool, furs, seeds, etc. If you can prove to me that the value of these things is not due to labor, I will agree that it is useless to protect them. But, again, if I demonstrate to you that there is as much labor in a hundred dollars' worth of wool as in a hundred dollars' worth of cloth, you must acknowledge that protection is as much due to the one as to the other. Now, why is this bag of wool worth a hundred dollars? Is it not because that sum is the price of production? And is the price of production anything but that which it has been necessary to distribute in wages, salaries, manual labor, interest, to all the workmen and capitalists who have concurred in producing the article?"
The Raw-Materialist: "It is true, that in regard to wool, you may be right. But a bag of wheat, an ingot of iron, a quintal of coal—are they the produce of labor? Did not Nature create them?"
The Protectionist: "Without doubt Nature creates the elements of all things; but it is labor which produces their value. I was wrong myself in saying that labor creates material objects, and this faulty phrase has led the way to many other errors. It does not belong to man, either manufacturer or cultivator, to create, to make something out of nothing; if, by production, we understand creation, all our labors will be unproductive; that of merchants more so than any other, except, perhaps, that of law-makers. The farmer has no claim to have created wheat, but he may claim to have created its value: he has transformed into wheat substances which in no wise resembled it, by his own labor with that of his ploughmen and reapers. What more does the miller effect who converts it into flour, the baker who turns it into bread? Because man must clothe himself in cloth, a host of operations is necessary. Before the intervention of any human labor, the true raw materials of this product (cloth) are air, water, gas, light, the chemical substances which must enter into its composition. These are truly the raw materials which are untouched by human labor; therefore, they are of no value, and I do not think of protecting them. But a first labor converts these substances into hay, straw, etc., a second into wool, a third into thread, a fourth into cloth, a fifth into clothing—who will dare to say that every step in this work is not labor, from the first stroke of the plough, which begins, to the last stroke of the needle, which terminates it? And because, in order to secure more celerity and perfection in the accomplishment of a definite work, such as a garment, the labors are divided among several classes of industry, you wish, by an arbitrary distinction, that the order of succession of these labors should be the only reason for their importance; so much so that the first shall not deserve even the name of labor, and that the last work pre-eminently, shall alone be worthy of the favors of protection!"
The Raw-Materialist: "Yes, we begin to see that wheat no more than wool is entirely devoid of human labor; but, at least, the agriculturist has not, like the manufacturer, done all by himself and his workmen; Nature aids him, and if there is labor, it is not all labor in the wheat."
The Protectionist: "But all its value is in the labor it has cost. I admit that Nature has assisted in the material formation of wheat. I admit even that it may be exclusively her work; but confess that I have controlled it by my labor; and when I sell you some wheat, observe this well: that it is not the work of Nature for which I make you pay, but my own; and, on your supposition, manufactured articles would be no more the product of labor than agricultural ones. Does not the manufacturer, too, rely upon Nature to second him? Does he not avail himself of the weight of the atmosphere in aid of the steam-engine, as I avail myself of its humidity in aid of the plough? Did he create the laws of gravitation, of correlation of forces, of affinities?"
The Raw-Materialist: "Come, let the wool go too. But coal is assuredly the work, and the exclusive work, of Nature, unaided by any human labor."
The Protectionist: "Yes, Nature made coal, but labor makes its value. Coal had no value during the thousands of years during which it was hidden, unknown, a hundred feet below the soil. It was necessary to look for it there—that is a labor: it was necessary to transport it to market; that is another labor: and once more, the price which you pay for it in the market is nothing else than the remuneration for these labors of digging and transportation."
We see that thus far the protectionist has all the advantage on his side; that the value of raw material, as well as that of manufactured material, represents the expense of production, that is to say, of labor; that it is impossible to conceive of a material possessed of value while totally unindebted to human labor; that the distinction which the raw-materialists make is wholly futile, in theory; that, as a basis for an unequal division of favors, it would be iniquitous in practice; because the result would be that one-third of the people, engaged in manufactures, would obtain the sweets of monopoly, for the reason that they produced by labor, while the other two-thirds, that is to say the agriculturists, would be abandoned to competition, under pretext that they produced without labor.
It will be urged that it is of more advantage to a nation to import the materials called raw, whether they are or are not the product of labor, and to export manufactured articles.
This is a strongly accredited opinion.
"The more abundant raw materials are," said the petition from Bordeaux, "the more manufactories are multiplied and extended." It said again, that "raw material opens an unlimited field of labor to the inhabitants of the country from which it is imported."
"Raw material," said the other petition, that from Havre, "being the aliment of labor, must be submitted to a different system, and admitted at once at the lowest duty." The same petition would have the protection on manufactured articles reduced, not one after another, but at an undetermined time; not to the lowest duty, but to twenty per cent.
"Among other articles which necessity requires to be abundant and cheap," said the third petition, that from Lyons, "the manufacturers name all raw material."
This all rests on an illusion. We have seen that all value represents labor. Now, it is true that labor increases ten-fold, sometimes a hundred-fold, the value of a rough product, that is to say, expands ten-fold, a hundred-fold, the products of a nation. Thence it is reasoned, "The production of a bale of cotton causes workmen of all classes to earn one hundred dollars only. The conversion of this bale into lace collars raises their profits to ten thousand dollars; and will you dare to say that the nation is not more interested in encouraging labor worth ten thousand than that worth one hundred dollars?"
We forget that international exchanges, no more than individual exchanges, work by weight or measure. We do not exchange a bale of cotton for a bale of lace collars, nor a pound of wool in the grease for a pound of wool in cashmere; but a certain value of one of these things for an equal value of the other. Now to barter equal value against equal value is to barter equal work against equal work. It is not true, then, that the nation which gives for a hundred dollars cashmere or collars, gains more than the nation which delivers for a hundred dollars wool or cotton.
In a country where no law can be adopted, no impost established, without the consent of those whom this law is to govern, the public cannot be robbed without being first deceived. Our ignorance is the "raw material" of all extortion which is practised upon us, and we may be sure in advance that every sophism is the forerunner of a spoliation. Good public, when you see a sophism, clap your hand on your pocket; for that is certainly the point at which it aims. What was the secret thought which the shipowners of Bordeaux and of Havre, and the manufacturers of Lyons, conceived in this distinction between agricultural products and manufactured articles?
"It is principally in this first class (that which comprehends raw material unmodified by human labor)," said the Raw-Materialists of Bordeaux, "that the chief aliment of our merchant marine is found. At the outset, a wise economy would require that this class should not be taxed. The second (articles which have received some preparation) may be charged; the third (articles on which no more work has to be done) we consider the most taxable."
"Consider," said those of Havre, "that it is indispensable to reduce all raw materials one after another to the lowest rate, in order that industry may successively bring into operation the naval forces which will furnish to it its first and indispensable means of labor." The manufacturers could not in exchange of politeness be behind the ship-owners; so the petition from Lyons demanded the free introduction of raw material, "in order to prove," said they, "that the interests of manufacturing towns are not always opposed to those of maritime ones!"
True; but it must be said that both interests were, understood as the petitioners understood them, terribly opposed to the interests of the country, of agriculture, and of consumers.
See, then, where you would come out! See the end of these subtle economical distinctions! You would legislate against allowing perfected produce to traverse the ocean, in order that the much more expensive transportation of rough materials, dirty, loaded with waste matter, may offer more employment to our merchant service, and put our naval force into wider operation. This is what these petitioners termed a wise economy. Why did they not demand that the firs of Russia should be brought to them with their branches, bark, and roots; the gold of California in its mineral state, and the hides from Buenos Ayres still attached to the bones of the tainted skeleton?
Industry, the navy, labor, have for their end, the general good, the public good. To create a useless industry, in order to favor superfluous transportation; to feed superfluous labor, not for the good of the public, but for the expense of the public—this is to realize a veritable begging the question. Work, in itself, is not a desirable thing; its result is; all work without result is a loss. To pay sailors for carrying useless waste matter across the sea is like paying them for skipping stones across the surface of the water. So we arrive at this result: that all economical sophisms, despite their infinite variety, have this in common, that they confound the means with the end, and develop one at the expense of the other.
Sometimes a sophism dilates itself, and penetrates through the whole extent of a long and heavy theory. More frequently it is compressed, contracted, becomes a principle, and is completely covered by a word. A good man once said: "God protect us from the devil and from metaphors!" In truth, it would be difficult to say which of the two creates the more evil upon our planet. It is the demon, say you; he alone, so long as we live, puts the spirit of spoliation in our hearts. Yes; but he does not prevent the repression of abuses by the resistance of those who suffer from them. Sophistry paralyzes this resistance. The sword which malice puts in the assailant's hand would be powerless, if sophistry did not break the shield upon the arm of the assailed; and it is with good reason that Malebranche has inscribed at the opening of his book, "Error is the cause of human misery."
See how it comes to pass. Ambitious hypocrites will have some sinister purpose; for example, sowing national hatred in the public mind. This fatal germ may develop, lead to general conflagration, arrest civilization, pour out torrents of blood, draw upon the land the most terrible of scourges—invasion. In every case of indulgence in such sentiments of hatred they lower us in the opinion of nations, and compel those Americans, who have retained some love of justice, to blush for their country. Certainly these are great evils; and in order that the public should protect itself from the guidance of those who would lead it into such risks, it is only necessary to give it a clear view of them. How do they succeed in veiling it from them? It is by metaphor. They alter, they force, they deprave the meaning of three or four words, and all is done.
Such a word is invasion itself. An owner of an American furnace says, "Preserve us from the invasion of English iron." An English landlord exclaims, "Let us repel the invasion of American wheat!" And so they propose to erect barriers between the two nations. Barriers constitute isolation, isolation leads to hatred, hatred to war, and war to invasion. "Suppose it does," say the two sophists; "is it not better to expose ourselves to the chance of an eventual invasion, than to accept a certain one?" And the people still believe, and the barriers still remain.
Yet what analogy is there between an exchange and an invasion? What resemblance can possibly be established between a vessel of war, which comes to pour fire, shot, and devastation into our cities, and a merchant ship, which comes to offer to barter with us freely, voluntarily, commodity for commodity?
As much may be said of the word inundation. This word is generally taken in bad part, because inundations often ravage fields and crops. If, however, they deposit upon the soil a greater value than that which they take from it; as is the case in the inundations of the Nile, we might bless and deify them as the Egyptians do. Well! before declaiming against the inundation of foreign produces, before opposing to them restraining and costly obstacles, let us inquire if they are the inundations which ravage or those which fertilize? What should we think of Mehemet Ali, if, instead of building, at great expense, dams across the Nile for the purpose of extending its field of inundation, he should expend his money in digging for it a deeper bed, so that Egypt should not be defiled by this foreign slime, brought down from the Mountains of the Moon? We exhibit precisely the same amount of reason, when we wish, by the expenditure of millions, to preserve our country—From what? The advantages with which Nature has endowed other climates.
Among the metaphors which conceal an injurious theory, none is more common than that embodied in the words tribute, tributary.
These words are so much used that they have become synonymous with the words purchase, purchaser, and one is used indifferently for the other.
Yet a tribute or tax differs as much from purchase as a theft from an exchange, and we should like quite as well to hear it said, "Dick Turpin has broken open my safe, and has purchased out of it a thousand dollars," as we do to have it remarked by our sage representatives, "We have paid to England the tribute for a thousand gross of knives which she has sold to us."
For the reason why Turpin's act is not a purchase is, that he has not paid into my safe, with my consent, value equivalent to what he has taken from it, and the reason why the payment of five hundred thousand dollars, which we have made to England, is not a tribute, is simply because she has not received them gratuitously, but in exchange for the delivery to us of a thousand gross of knives, which we ourselves have judged worth five hundred thousand dollars.
But is it necessary to take up seriously such abuses of language? Why not, when they are seriously paraded in newspapers and in books?
Do not imagine that they escape from writers who are ignorant of their language; for one who abstains from them, we could point you to ten who employ them, and they persons of consideration—that is to say, men whose words are laws, and whose most shocking sophisms serve as the basis of administration for the country.
A celebrated modern philosopher has added to the categories of Aristotle, the sophism which consists in including in one word the begging of the question. He cites several examples. He should have added the word tributary to his vocabulary. In effect the question is, are purchases made abroad useful or injurious? "They are injurious," you say. And why? "Because they make us tributary to the foreigner." Here is certainly a word which presents as a fact that which is a question.
How is this abusive trope introduced into the rhetoric of monopolists?
Some specie goes out of a country to satisfy the rapacity of a victorious enemy—other specie, also, goes out of a country to settle an account for merchandise. The analogy between the two cases is established, by taking account of the one point in which they resemble one another, and leaving out of view that in which they differ.
This circumstance, however,—that is to say, non-reimbursement in the one case, and reimbursement freely agreed upon in the other—establishes such a difference between them, that it is not possible to class them under the same title. To deliver a hundred dollars by compulsion to him who says "Stand and deliver," or voluntarily to pay the same sum to him who sells you the object of your wishes—truly, these are things which cannot be made to assimilate. As well might you say, it is a matter of indifference whether you throw bread into the river or eat it, because in either case it is bread destroyed. The fault of this reasoning, as in that which the word tribute is made to imply, consists in founding an exact similitude between two cases on their points of resemblance, and omitting those of difference.
All the sophisms we have hitherto combated are connected with one single question: the restrictive system; and, out of pity for the reader, we pass by acquired rights, untimeliness, misuse of the currency, etc., etc.
But social economy is not confined to this narrow circle. Fourierism, Saint-Simonism, communism, mysticism, sentimentalism, false philanthropy, affected aspirations to equality and chimerical fraternity, questions relative to luxury, to salaries, to machines, to the pretended tyranny of capital, to distant territorial acquisitions, to outlets, to conquests, to population, to association, to emigration, to imposts, to loans, have encumbered the field of science with a host of parasitical sophisms, which demand the hoe and the sickle of the diligent economist. It is not because we do not recognize the fault of this plan, or rather of this absence of plan. To attack, one by one, so many incoherent sophisms which sometimes clash, although more frequently one runs into the other, is to condemn one's self to a disorderly, capricious struggle, and to expose one's self to perpetual repetitions.
How much we should prefer to say simply how things are, without occupying ourselves with the thousand aspects in which the ignorant see them! To explain the laws under which societies prosper or decay, is virtually to destroy all sophistry at once. When La Place had described all that can, as yet, be known of the movements of the heavenly bodies, he had dispersed, without even naming them, all the astrological dreams of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Hindoos, much more surely than he could have done by directly refuting them through innumerable volumes. Truth is one; the book which exposes it is an imposing and durable monument: