The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sophisms of the Protectionists, by Frederic Bastiat.

—Yes, comparatively. They bear the same relation to each other that the arc of the circle does to the circle.

—Because, since liberty would accomplish the same result with less labor, this apparent diminution of labor frightens them.

—Because, if the total of the comforts of France could be gained with a diminution of one-tenth on the total of its labor, no one could determine what comforts it would procure with the labor remaining at its disposal. One person would prefer to be better clothed, another better fed, another better taught, and another more amused.

—It is not an easy matter. Before taking hold of a complicated instance, it must be studied in the simplest one.

—Do you recollect how Robinson Crusoe, having no saw, set to work to make a plank?

—Yes. He cut down a tree, and then with his ax hewed the trunk on both sides until he got it down to the thickness of a board.

—Very good; but there is one thing which, perhaps, you do not know. At the moment that Robinson gave the first blow with his ax, he saw a plank which the waves had cast up on the shore.

"If I go after this plank, it will cost me but the labor of carrying it and the time spent in going to and returning from the shore.

"But if I make a plank with my ax, I shall in the first place obtain work for fifteen days, then I shall wear out my ax, which will give me an opportunity of repairing it, and I shall consume my provisions, which will be a third source of labor, since they must be replaced. Now, labor is wealth. It is plain that I will ruin myself if I pick up this stranded board. It is important to protect my personal labor, and now that I think of it, I can create myself additional labor by kicking this board back into the sea."

—Certainly. Nevertheless it is that adopted by every nation which protects itself by prohibition. It rejects the plank which is offered it in exchange for a little labor, in order to give itself more labor. It sees a gain even in the labor of the custom house officer. This answers to the trouble which Robinson took to give back to the waves the present they wished to make him. Consider the nation a collective being, and you will not find an atom of difference between its reasoning and that of Robinson.

—Did not Robinson see that he could use the time saved in doing something else?

—So long as one has wants and time, one has always something to do. I am not bound to specify the labor that he could undertake.

—I assert, that Robinson, with incredible blindness, confounded labor with its result, the end with the means, and I will prove it to you.

—It is not necessary. But this is the restrictive or prohibitory system in its simplest form. If it appears absurd to you, thus stated, it is because the two qualities of producer and consumer are here united in the same person.

—Willingly. Some time after all this, Robinson having met Friday, they united, and began to work in common. They hunted for six hours each morning and brought home four hampers of game. They worked in the garden for six hours each afternoon, and obtained four baskets of vegetables.

One day a canoe touched at the Island of Despair. A good-looking stranger landed, and was allowed to dine with our two hermits. He tasted, and praised the products of the garden, and before taking leave of his hosts, said to them:

"Generous Islanders, I dwell in a country much richer in game than this, but where horticulture is unknown. It would be easy for me to bring you every evening four hampers of game if you would give me only two baskets of vegetables."

At these words Robinson and Friday stepped on one side, to have a consultation, and the debate which followed is too interesting not to be given in extenso:

Robinson. It is all calculated. Hunting, crushed out by competition, will be a lost branch of industry for us.

Friday. The four hampers of game cost us six hours' labor. The stranger gives them to us for two baskets of vegetables, which take us but three hours. Thus three hours remain at our disposal.

Robinson. Say rather that they are taken from our activity. There is our loss. Labor is wealth, and if we lose a fourth of our time we are one-fourth poorer.

Friday. Friend, you make an enormous mistake. The same amount of game and vegetables and three free hours to boot make progress, or there is none in the world.

Robinson. Ah, now I have you. You can specify nothing. It is very easy to say something else—something else.

Friday. Friend, you are in a vicious circle. I speak of a rest which diminishes neither our gains nor our vegetables. You always forget that by means of our commerce with this stranger, nine hours of labor will give us as much food as twelve now do.

Robinson. It is easy to see that you were not reared in Europe. Perhaps you have never read the Moniteur Industriel? It would have taught you this: "All time saved is a dear loss. Eating is not the important matter, but working. Nothing which we consume counts, if it is not the product of our labor. Do you wish to know whether you are rich? Do not look at your comforts, but at your trouble." This is what the Moniteur Industriel would have taught you. I, who am not a theorist, see but the loss of our hunting.

Robinson. No buts. Besides, there are political reasons for rejecting the interested offers of this perfidious stranger.

Robinson. Yes. In the first place he makes these offers only because they are for his advantage.

Friday. And he on us. We need his game, he our vegetables, and we will live in good friendship.

Robinson. Supposing that the stranger learns to cultivate a garden, and that his island is more fertile than ours. Do you see the consequences?

Friday. Yes. Our relations with the stranger will stop. He will take no more vegetables from us, since he can get them at home with less trouble. He will bring us no more game, since we will have nothing to give in exchange, and we will be then just where you want us to be now.

Robinson. Short-sighted savage! You do not see that after having destroyed our hunting, by inundating us with game, he will kill our gardening by overwhelming us with vegetables.

Friday. But he will do that only so long as we give him something else; that is to say, so long as we find something else to produce, which will economize our labor.

Robinson. Something else—something else! You always come back to that. You are very vague, friend Friday; there is nothing practical in your views.

The contest lasted a long time, and, as often happens, left each one convinced that he was right. However, Robinson having great influence over Friday, his views prevailed, and when the stranger came for an answer, Robinson said to him:

"Stranger, in order that your proposition may be accepted, we must be quite sure of two things:

"The first is, that your island is not richer in game than ours, for we will struggle but with equal arms.

"The second is, that you will lose by the bargain. For, as in every exchange there is necessarily a gainer and a loser, we would be cheated, if you were not. What have you to say?".

"Nothing, nothing," replied the stranger, who burst out laughing, and returned to his canoe.

—Oh, there is a great difference. You suppose one solitary man, or, what comes to the same thing, two men living together. This is not our world; the diversity of occupations, and the intervention of merchants and money, change the question materially.

—Commerce is but a multitude of exchanges; the real nature of the exchange is identical with the real nature of commerce, as small labor is of the same nature with great, and as the gravitation which impels an atom is of the same nature as that which attracts a world.

—Thus, according to you, these arguments, which in Robinson's mouth are so false, are no less so in the mouths of our protectionists?

—Very well; in France, in view of custom and the exigencies of the climate, cloth is an useful article. Is it the essential thing to make it, or to have it?

—That is not necessary. It is certain that to have it some one must make it; but it is not necessary that the person or country using it should make it. You did not produce that which clothes you so well, nor France the coffee it uses for breakfast.

—Then it is in reality your labor that you exchange for cloth, and French labor that is exchanged for coffee?

—In other words, France has two ways of procuring a given quantity of cloth. The first is to make it, and the second is to make something else, and exchange that something else abroad for cloth. Of these two ways, which is the best?

—Is it not that which, for a fixed amount of labor, gives the greatest quantity of cloth?

—Which is best for a nation, to have the choice of these two ways, or to have the law forbid its using one of them at the risk of rejecting the best?

—It seems to me that it would be best for the nation to have the choice, since in these matters it always makes a good selection.

—The law which prohibits the introduction of foreign cloth, decides, then, that if France wants cloth, it must make it at home, and that it is forbidden to make that something else with which it could purchase foreign cloth?

—And as it is obliged to make cloth, and forbidden to make something else, just because the other thing would require less labor (without which France would have no occasion to do anything with it), the law virtually decrees, that for a certain amount of labor, France shall have but one yard of cloth, making it itself, when, for the same amount of labor, it could have had two yards, by making something else.

—No matter what. Being free to choose, it will make something else only so long as there is something else to make.

—That is possible; but I cannot rid myself of the idea that the foreigners may send us cloth and not take something else, in which case we shall be prettily caught. Under all circumstances, this is the objection, even from your own point of view. You admit that France will make this something else, which is to be exchanged for cloth, with less labor than if it had made the cloth itself?

—Yes; but people will be no worse clothed—a little circumstance which causes the whole misunderstanding. Robinson lost sight of it, and our protectionists do not see it, or pretend not to. The stranded plank thus paralyzed for fifteen days Robinson's labor, so far as it was applied to the making of a plank, but it did not deprive him of it. Distinguish, then, between these two kinds of diminution of labor, one resulting in privation, and the other in comfort. These two things are very different, and if you assimilate them, you reason like Robinson. In the most complicated, as in the most simple instances, the sophism consists in this: Judging of the utility of labor by its duration and intensity, and not by its results, which leads to this economic policy, a reduction of the results of labor, in order to increase its duration and intensity.

XV.

THE LITTLE ARSENAL OF THE FREE TRADER.

—If they say to you: There are no absolute principles; prohibition may be bad, and restriction good—

—If they say to you: The basis of the sustenance of the people is agriculture—

Reply: The basis of the sustenance of the people is grain. Thus a law which causes two bushels of grain to be obtained by agricultural labor at the expense of four bushels, which the same labor would have produced but for it, far from being a law of sustenance, is a law of starvation.

—If they say to you: A restriction on the admission of foreign grain leads to more cultivation, and, consequently, to a greater home production—

Reply: It leads to sowing on the rocks of the mountains and the sands of the sea. To milk and steadily milk, a cow gives more milk; for who can tell the moment when not a drop more can be obtained? But the drop costs dear.

—If they say to you: Let bread be dear, and the wealthy farmer will enrich the artisans—

Reply: Bread is dear when there is little of it, a thing which can make but poor, or, if you please, rich people who are starving.

Reply by showing that in April, 1847, five-sixths of the workingmen were beggars.

—If they say to you: The profits of the workingmen must rise with the dearness of food—

Reply: This is equivalent to saying that in an unprovisioned vessel everybody has the same number of biscuits whether he has any or not.

—If they say to you: The land owners, who make the law, have raised the price of food without troubling themselves about wages, because they know that when food becomes dear, wages naturally rise—

Reply: On this principle, when workingmen come to make the law, do not blame them if they fix a high rate of wages without troubling themselves to protect grain, for they know that if wages are raised, articles of food will naturally rise in price.

—If they say to you: It is essential that a great country should manufacture iron—

—If they say to you: It is necessary that a great country should manufacture cloth.

Reply: It is more necessary that the citizens of this great country should have cloth.

And, by way of developing this, add: A bleeding is not health, and the proof of it is, that it is done to restore health.

—If they say to you: To compel men to work over rocks and get an ounce of iron from a ton of ore, is to increase their labor, and, consequently, their wealth—

Reply: To compel men to dig wells, by denying them the use of river water, is to add to their useless labor, but not their wealth.

—If they say to you: The sun gives his heat and light without requiring remuneration—

—And if they reply to you: Industry in general loses what you would have paid for lights—

Retort: No, for having paid nothing to the sun, I use that which it saves me in paying for clothes, furniture and candles.

—So, if they say to you: These English rascals have capital which pays them nothing—

—If they say to you: These perfidious Englishmen find iron and coal at the same spot—

Reply: So much the better for us; they will not make us pay anything for bringing them together.

Reply: The advantage is on our side, for they will ask for a lesser quantity of our labor to furnish our farmers oxen and our stomachs food.

—If they say to you: The lands in the Crimea are worth nothing, and pay no taxes—

Reply: The loss is theirs and the gain is ours, since their labor is deducted from the price of the grain which their masters sell us.

—If they say to you: With liberty we shall be swamped with bread, beef a la mode, coal, and coats—

Reply: Do not be troubled about that. If we are to be inundated, it will be because we are able to pay. If we cannot pay we will not be inundated.

—If they say to you: I would allow free trade, if a stranger, in bringing us one thing, took away another; but he will carry off our specie—

Reply: Neither specie nor coffee grow in the fields of Beauce or come out of the manufactories of Elbeuf. For us to pay a foreigner with specie is like paying him with coffee.

—If they say to you, like the Presse: When you have not the money to buy bread with, buy beef—

Reply: This advice is as wise as that of Vautour to his tenant, "If a person has not money to pay his rent with, he ought to have a house of his own."

—If they say to you, like the Presse: The State ought to teach the people why and how it should eat meat—

Reply: Only let the State allow the meat free entrance, and the most civilized people in the world are old enough to learn to eat it without any teacher.

—If they say to you: The State ought to know everything, and foresee everything, to guide the people, and the people have only to let themselves be guided—

Reply: Is there a State outside of the people, and a human foresight outside of humanity? Archimedes might have repeated all the days of his life, "With a lever and a fulcrum I will move the world," but he could not have moved it, for want of those two things. The fulcrum of the State is the nation, and nothing is madder than to build so many hopes on the State; that is to say, to assume a collective science and foresight, after having established individual folly and short-sightedness.

—If they say to you: My God! I ask no favors, but only a duty on grain and meat, which may compensate for the heavy taxes to which France is subjected; a mere little duty, equal to what these taxes add to the cost of my grain—

Reply: A thousand pardons, but I, too, pay taxes. If, then, the protection which you vote yourself results in burdening for me, your grain with your proportion of the taxes, your insinuating demand aims at nothing less than the establishment between us of the following arrangement, thus worded by yourself: "Since the public burdens are heavy, I, who sell grain, will pay nothing at all; and you, my neighbor, the buyer, shall pay two parts, to wit, your share and mine." My neighbor, the grain dealer, you may have power on your side, but not reason.

—If they say to you: It is, however, very hard for me, a tax payer, to compete in my own market with foreigners who pay none—

Reply: First, This is not your market, but our market. I who live on grain, and pay for it, must be counted for something.

Thirdly. If the tax which you vote repays to you, in roads, canals and safety, more than it costs you, you are not justified in driving away, at my expense, the competition of foreigners who do not pay the tax but who do not have the safety, roads and canals. It is the same as saying: I want a compensating duty, because I have fine clothes, stronger horses and better plows than the Russian laborer.

Fifthly. If, after you have voted a tax, it is your pleasure to escape its operation, invent a system which will throw it on foreigners. But the tariff only throws your proportion on me, when I already have enough of my own.

—If they say to you: Freedom of commerce is necessary among the Russians that they may exchange their products with advantage (opinion of M. Thiers, April, 1847)—

—If they say to you: Each country has its wants; it is according to that that it must act (M. Thiers)—

—If they say to you: Since we have no sheet iron, its admission must be allowed (M. Thiers)—

—If they say to you: Our merchant marine must have freight; owing to the lack of return cargoes our vessels cannot compete with foreign ones—

Reply: When you want to do everything at home, you can have cargoes neither going nor coming. It is as absurd to wish for a navy under a prohibitory system as to wish for carts where all transportation is forbidden.

—If they say to you: Supposing that protection is unjust, everything is founded on it; there are moneys invested, and rights acquired, and it cannot be abandoned without suffering—

Reply: Every injustice profits some one (except, perhaps, restriction, which in the long run profits no one), and to use as an argument the disturbance which the cessation of the injustice causes to the person profiting by it, is to say that an injustice, only because it has existed for a moment, should be eternal.

XVI.

THE RIGHT AND THE LEFT HAND.

Sire—When we see these men of the Libre Echange audaciously disseminating their doctrines, and maintaining that the right of buying and selling is implied by that of ownership (a piece of insolence that M. Billault has criticised like a true lawyer), we may be allowed to entertain serious fears as to the destiny of national labor; for what will Frenchmen do with their arms and intelligences when they are free?

The Ministry which you have honored with your confidence has naturally paid great attention to so serious a subject, and has sought in its wisdom for a protection which might be substituted for that which appears compromised. It proposes to you to forbid your faithful subjects the use of the right hand.

Sire, do not wrong us so far as to think that we lightly adopted a measure which, at the first glance, may appear odd. Deep study of the protective system has revealed to us this syllogism, on which it entirely rests:

What is protection, really, but an ingenious application of this formal reasoning, which is so compact that it would resist the subtlety of M. Billault himself?

Let us personify the country. Let us look on it as a collective being, with thirty million mouths, and, consequently, sixty million arms. This being makes a clock, which he proposes to exchange in Belgium for ten quintals of iron. "But," we say to him, "make the iron yourself." "I cannot," says he; "it would take me too much time, and I could not make five quintals while I can make one clock." "Utopist!" we reply; "for this very reason we forbid your making the clock, and order you to make the iron. Do not you see that we create you labor?"

Sire, it will not have escaped your sagacity, that it is just as if we said to the country, Labor with the left hand, and not with the right.

The creation of obstacles to furnish labor an opportunity to develop itself, is the principle of the restriction which is dying. It is also the principle of the restriction which is about to be created. Sire, to make such regulations is not to innovate, but to preserve.

The efficacy of the measure is incontestable. It is difficult—much more difficult than one thinks—to do with the left hand what one was accustomed to do with the right. You will convince yourself of it, Sire, if you will condescend to try our system on something which is familiar to you,—like shuffling cards, for instance. We can then flatter ourselves that we have opened an illimitable career to labor.

When workmen of all kinds are reduced to their left hands, consider, Sire, the immense number that will be required to meet the present consumption, supposing it to be invariable, which we always do when we compare differing systems of production. So prodigious a demand for manual labor cannot fail to bring about a considerable increase in wages; and pauperism will disappear from the country as if by enchantment.

Sire, your paternal heart will rejoice at the thought that the benefits of this regulation will extend over that interesting portion of the great family whose fate excites your liveliest solicitude.

What is the destiny of women in France? That sex which is the boldest and most hardened to fatigue, is, insensibly, driving them from all fields of labor.

Formerly they found a refuge in the lottery offices. These have been closed by a pitiless philanthropy; and under what pretext? "To save," said they, "the money of the poor." Alas! has a poor man ever obtained from a piece of money enjoyments as sweet and innocent as those which the mysterious urn of fortune contained for him? Cut off from all the sweets of life, how many delicious hours did he introduce into the bosom of his family when, every two weeks, he put the value of a day's labor on a quatern. Hope had always her place at the domestic hearth. The garret was peopled with illusions; the wife promised herself that she would eclipse her neighbors with the splendor of her attire; the son saw himself drum-major, and the daughter felt herself carried toward the altar in the arms of her betrothed. To have a beautiful dream is certainly something.

The lottery dead, what means have we of providing for our proteges?—tobacco, and the postal service.

Tobacco, certainly; it progresses, thanks to Heaven, and the distinguished habits which august examples have been enabled to introduce among our elegant youth.

But the postal service! We will say nothing of that, but make it the subject of a special report.

Then what is left to your female subjects except tobacco? Nothing, except embroidery, knitting, and sewing, pitiful resources, which are more and more restricted by that barbarous science, mechanics.

But as soon as your ordinance has appeared, as soon as the right hands are cut off or tied up, everything will change face. Twenty, thirty times more embroiderers, washers and ironers, seamstresses and shirt-makers, would not meet the consumption (honi soit qui mal y pense) of the kingdom; always assuming that it is invariable, according to our way of reasoning.

It is true that this supposition might be denied by cold-blooded theorists, for dresses and shirts would be dearer. But they say the same thing of the iron which France gets from our mines, compared to the vintage it could get on our hillsides. This argument can, therefore, be no more entertained against left-handedness than against protection; for this very dearness is the result and the sign of the excess of efforts and of labors, which is precisely the basis on which, in one case, as in the other, we claim to found the prosperity of the working classes.

Yes, we make a touching picture of the prosperity of the sewing business. What movement! What activity! What life! Each dress will busy a hundred fingers instead of ten. No longer will there be an idle young girl, and we need not, Sire, point out to your perspicacity the moral results of this great revolution. Not only will there be more women employed, but each one of them will earn more, for they cannot meet the demand, and if competition still shows itself, it will no longer be among the workingwomen who make the dresses, but the beautiful ladies who wear them.

You see, Sire, that our proposition is not only conformable to the economic traditions of the government, but it is also essentially moral and democratic.

To appreciate its effect, let us suppose it realized; let us transport ourselves in thought into the future; let us imagine the system in action for twenty years. Idleness is banished from the country; ease and concord, contentment and morality, have entered all families together with labor; there is no more misery and no more prostitution. The left hand being very clumsy at its work, there is a superabundance of labor, and the pay is satisfactory. Everything is based on this, and, as a consequence, the workshops are filled. Is it not true, Sire, that if Utopians were to suddenly demand the freedom of the right hand, they would spread alarm throughout the country? Is it not true that this pretended reform would overthrow all existences? Then our system is good, since it cannot be overthrown without causing great distress.

However, we have a sad presentiment that some day (so great is the perversity of man) an association will be organized to secure the liberty of right hands.

It seems to us that we already hear these free-right-handers speak as follows in the Salle Montesquieu:

"People, you believe yourselves richer because they have taken from you one hand; you see but the increase of labor which results to you from it. But look also at the dearness it causes, and the forced decrease in the consumption of all articles. This measure has not made capital, which is the source of wages, more abundant. The waters which flow from this great reservoir are directed into other channels; the quantity is not increased, and the definite result is, for the nation, as a whole, a loss of comfort equal to the excess of the production of several millions of right hands, over several millions of left hands. Then let us form a league, and, at the expense of some inevitable disturbances, let us conquer the right of working with both hands."

Happily, Sire, there will be organized an association for the defense of left-handed labor, and the Sinistrists will have no trouble in reducing to nothing all these generalities and realities, suppositions and abstractions, reveries and Utopias. They need only to exhume the Moniteur Industriel of 1846, and they will find, ready-made, arguments against free trade, which destroy so admirably this liberty of the right hand, that all that is required is to substitute one word for another.

"The Parisian Free Trade League never doubted but that it would have the assistance of the workingmen. But the workingmen can no longer be led by the nose. They have their eyes open, and they know political economy better than our diplomaed professors. Free trade, they replied, will take from us our labor, and labor is our real, great, sovereign property; with labor, with much labor, the price of articles of merchandise is never beyond reach. But without labor, even if bread should cost but a penny a pound, the workingman is compelled to die of hunger. Now, your doctrines, instead of increasing the amount of labor in France, diminish it; that is to say, you reduce us to misery." (Number of October 13, 1846.)

"It is true, that when there are too many manufactured articles to sell, their price falls; but as wages decrease when these articles sink in value, the result is, that, instead of being able to buy them, we can buy nothing. Thus, when they are cheapest, the workingman is most unhappy." (Gauthier de Rumilly, Moniteur Industriel of November 17.)

It would not be ill for the Sinistrists to mingle some threats with their beautiful theories. This is a sample:

"What! to desire to substitute the labor of the right hand for that of the left, and thus to cause a forced reduction, if not an annihilation of wages, the sole resource of almost the entire nation!

"And this at the moment when poor harvests already impose painful sacrifices on the workingman, disquiet him as to his future, and make him more accessible to bad counsels and ready to abandon the wise course of conduct he had hitherto adhered to!"

We are confident, Sire, that thanks to such wise reasonings, if a struggle takes place, the left hand will come out of it victorious.

Perhaps, also, an association will be formed in order to ascertain whether the right and the left hand are not both wrong, and if there is not a third hand between them, in order to conciliate all.

After having described the Dexterists as seduced by the apparent liberality of a principle, the correctness of which has not yet been verified by experience, and the Sinistrists as encamping in the positions they have gained, it will say:

"And yet they deny that there is a third course to pursue in the midst of the conflict; and they do not see that the working classes have to defend themselves, at the same moment, against those who wish to change nothing in the present situation, because they find their advantage in it, and against those who dream of an economic revolution of which they have calculated neither the extent nor the significance." (National of October 16.)

We do not desire, however, to hide from your Majesty the fact that our plan has a vulnerable side. They may say to us: In twenty years all left hands will be as skilled as right ones are now, and you can no longer count on left-handedness to increase the national labor.

We reply to this, that, according to learned physicians, the left side of the body has a natural weakness, which is very reassuring for the future of labor.

Finally, Sire, consent to sign the law, and a great principle will have prevailed: All wealth comes from the intensity of labor. It will be easy for us to extend it, and vary its application. We will declare, for instance, that it shall be allowable to work only with the feet. This is no more impossible (for there have been instances) than to extract iron from the mud of the Seine. There have even been men who wrote with their backs. You see, Sire, that we do not lack means of increasing national labor. If they do begin to fail us, there remains the boundless resource of amputation.

If this report, Sire, was not intended for publication, we would call your attention to the great influence which systems analogous to the one we submit to you, are capable of giving to men in power. But this is a subject which we reserve for consideration in private counsel.

XVII.

SUPREMACY BY LABOR.

"As in a time of war, supremacy is attained by superiority in arms, can, in a time of peace, supremacy be secured by superiority in labor?"

This question is of the greatest interest at a time when no one seems to doubt that in the field of industry, as on that of battle, the stronger crushes the weaker.

This must result from the discovery of some sad and discouraging analogy between labor, which exercises itself on things, and violence, which exercises itself on men; for how could these two things be identical in their effects, if they were opposed in their nature?

And if it is true that in manufacturing as in war, supremacy is the necessary result of superiority, why need we occupy ourselves with progress or social economy, since we are in a world where all has been so arranged by Providence that one and the same result, oppression, necessarily flows from the most antagonistic principles?

Referring to the new policy toward which commercial freedom is drawing England, many persons make this objection, which, I admit, occupies the sincerest minds. "Is England doing anything more than pursuing the same end by different means? Does she not constantly aspire to universal supremacy? Sure of the superiority of her capital and labor, does she not call in free competition to stifle the industry of the continent, reign as a sovereign, and conquer the privilege of feeding and clothing the ruined peoples?"

It would be easy for me to demonstrate that these alarms are chimerical; that our pretended inferiority is greatly exaggerated; that all our great branches of industry not only resist foreign competition, but develop themselves under its influence, and that its infallible effect is to bring about an increase in general consumption capable of absorbing both foreign and domestic products.

To-day I desire to attack this objection directly, leaving it all its power and the advantage of the ground it has chosen. Putting English and French on one side, I will try to find out in a general way, if, even though by superiority in one branch of industry, one nation has crushed out similar industrial pursuits in another one, this nation has made a step toward supremacy, and that one toward dependence; in other words, if both do not gain by the operation, and if the conquered do not gain the most by it.

If we see in any product but a cause of labor, it is certain that the alarm of the protectionists is well founded. If we consider iron, for instance, only in connection with the masters of forges, it might be feared that the competition of a country where iron was a gratuitous gift of nature, would extinguish the furnaces of another country, where ore and fuel were scarce.

But is this a complete view of the subject? Are there relations only between iron and those who make it? Has it none with those who use it? Is its definite and only destination to be produced? And if it is useful, not on account of the labor which it causes, but on account of the qualities which it possesses, and the numerous services for which its hardness and malleability fit it, does it not follow that foreigners cannot reduce its price, even so far as to prevent its production among us, without doing us more good, under the last statement of the case, than it injures us, under the first?

Please consider well that there are many things which foreigners, owing to the natural advantages which surround them, hinder us from producing directly, and in regard to which we are placed, in reality, in the hypothetical position which we examined relative to iron. We produce at home neither tea, coffee, gold nor silver. Does it follow that our labor, as a whole, is thereby diminished? No; only to create the equivalent of these things, to acquire them by way of exchange, we detach from our general labor a smaller portion than we would require to produce them ourselves. More remains to us to use for other things. We are so much the richer and stronger. All that external rivalry can do, even in cases where it absolutely keeps us from any certain form of labor, is to encourage our labor, and increase our productive power. Is that the road to supremacy, for foreigners?

If a mine of gold were to be discovered in France, it does not follow that it would be for our interests to work it. It is even certain that the enterprise ought to be neglected, if each ounce of gold absorbed more of our labor than an ounce of gold bought in Mexico with cloth. In this case, it would be better to keep on seeing our mines in our manufactories. What is true of gold is true of iron.

The illusion comes from the fact that one thing is not seen. That is, that foreign superiority prevents national labor, only under some certain form, and makes it superfluous under this form, but by putting at our disposal the very result of the labor thus annihilated. If men lived in diving-bells, under the water, and had to provide themselves with air by the use of pumps, there would be an immense source of labor. To destroy this labor, leaving men in this condition, would be to do them a terrible injury. But if labor ceases, because the necessity for it has gone; because men are placed in another position, where air reaches their lungs without an effort, then the loss of this labor is not to be regretted, except in the eyes of those who appreciate in labor, only the labor itself.

It is exactly this sort of labor which machines, commercial freedom, and progress of all sorts, gradually annihilate; not useful labor, but labor which has become superfluous, supernumerary, objectless, and without result. On the other hand, protection restores it to activity; it replaces us under the water, so as to give us an opportunity of pumping; it forces us to ask for gold from the inaccessible national mine, rather than from our national manufactories. All its effect is summed up in this phrase—loss of power.

It must be understood that I speak here of general effects, and not of the temporary disturbances occasioned by the transition from a bad to a good system. A momentary disarrangement necessarily accompanies all progress. This may be a reason for making the transition a gentle one, but not for systematically interdicting all progress, and still less for misunderstanding it.

They represent industry to us as a conflict. This is not true; or is true only when you confine yourself to considering each branch of industry in its effects on some similar branch—in isolating both, in the mind, from the rest of humanity. But there is something else; there are its effects on consumption, and the general well-being.

This is the reason why it is not allowable to assimilate labor to war as they do.

In labor, the strongest gives strength to the weakest. This radically destroys the analogy.

Though the English are strong and skilled; possess immense invested capital, and have at their disposal the two great powers of production, iron and fire, all this is converted into the cheapness of the product; and who gains by the cheapness of the product?—he who buys it.

It is not in their power to absolutely annihilate any portion of our labor. All that they can do is to make it superfluous through some result acquired—to give air at the same time that they suppress the pump; to increase thus the force at our disposal, and, which is a remarkable thing, to render their pretended supremacy more impossible, as their superiority becomes more undeniable.

Thus, by a rigorous and consoling demonstration, we reach this conclusion: That labor and violence, so opposed in their nature, are, whatever socialists and protectionists may say, no less so in their effects.

All we required, to do that, was to distinguish between annihilated labor and economized labor.

Having less iron because one works less, or having more iron although one works less, are things which are more than different,—they are opposites. The protectionists confound them; we do not. That is all.

Be convinced of one thing. If the English bring into play much activity, labor, capital, intelligence, and natural force, it is not for the love of us. It is to give themselves many comforts in exchange for their products. They certainly desire to receive at least as much as they give, and they make at home the payment for that which they buy elsewhere. If then, they inundate us with their products, it is because they expect to be inundated with ours. In this case, the best way to have much for ourselves is to be free to choose between these two methods of production: direct production or indirect production. All the British Machiavelism cannot lead us to make a bad choice.

Let us then stop assimilating industrial competition with war; a false assimilation, which is specious only when two rival branches of industry are isolated, in order to judge of the effects of competition. As soon as the effect produced on the general well-being is taken into consideration, the analogy disappears.

In a battle, he who is killed is thoroughly killed, and the army is weakened just that much. In manufactures, one manufactory succumbs only so far as the total of national labor replaces what it produced, with an excess. Imagine a state of affairs where for one man, stretched on the plain, two spring up full of force and vigor. If there is a planet where such things happen, it must be admitted that war is carried on there under conditions so different from those which obtain here below, that it does not even deserve that name.

Now, this is the distinguishing character of what they have so inappropriately called an industrial war.

Let the Belgians and English reduce the price of their iron, if they can, and keep on reducing it, until they bring it down to nothing. They may thereby put out one of our furnaces—kill one of our soldiers; but I defy them to hinder a thousand other industries, more profitable than the disabled one, immediately, and, as a necessary consequence of this very cheapness, resuscitating and developing themselves.

Let us decide that supremacy by labor is impossible and contradictory, since all superiority which manifests itself among a people is converted into cheapness, and results only in giving force to all others. Let us, then, banish from political economy all these expressions borrowed from the vocabulary of battles: to struggle with equal arms, to conquer, to crush out, to stifle, to be beaten, invasion, tribute. What do these words mean? Squeeze them, and nothing comes out of them. We are mistaken; there come from them absurd errors and fatal prejudices. These are the words which stop the blending of peoples, their peaceful, universal, indissoluble alliance, and the progress of humanity.

PART III.

SPOLIATION AND LAW.[16]

Gentlemen—Let us for a few moments interchange moderate and friendly opinions.

This is as though you were to say, "We are not willing that political economy should occupy itself with society, exchange, value, law, justice, property. We recognize only two principles—oppression and spoliation."

Can you possibly conceive of political economy without society? Or of society without exchange? Or of exchange without a relative value between the two articles, or the two services, exchanged? Can you possibly conceive the idea of value, except as the result of the free consent of the exchangers? Can you conceive of one product being worth another, if, in the barter, one of the parties is not free? Is it possible for you to conceive of the free consent of two parties without liberty? Can you possibly conceive that one of the contracting parties is deprived of his liberty unless he is oppressed by the other? Can you possibly conceive of an exchange between an oppressor and one oppressed, unless the equivalence of the services is altered, or unless, as a consequence, law, justice, and the rights of property have been violated?

You desire, then, that it shall not be free? You desire, then, that trade shall be carried on under the influence of oppression? For if it is not carried on under the influence of oppression, it will be carried on under the influence of liberty, and that is what you do not desire.

Admit, then, that it is law and justice which embarrass you; that that which troubles you is property—not your own, to be sure, but another's. You are altogether unwilling to allow others to freely dispose of their own property (the essential condition of ownership); but you well understand how to dispose of your own—and of theirs.

And, accordingly, you ask the political economists to arrange this mass of absurdities and monstrosities in a definite and well-ordered system; to establish, in accordance with your practice, the theory of spoliation.

But they will never do it; for, in their eyes, spoliation is a principle of hatred and disorder, and the most particularly odious form which it can assume is the legal form.

And here, Mr. Benoit d' Azy, I take you to task. You are moderate, impartial, and generous. You are willing to sacrifice your interests and your fortune. This you constantly declare. Recently, in the General Council, you said: "If the rich had only to abandon their wealth to make the people rich we should all be ready to do it." [Hear, hear. It is true.] And yesterday, in the National Assembly, you said: "If I believed that it was in my power to give to the workingmen all the work they need, I would give all I possess to realize this blessing. Unfortunately, it is impossible."

Although it pains you that the sacrifice is so useless that it should not be made, and you exclaim, with Basile, "Money! money! I detest it—but I will keep it," assuredly no one will question a generosity so retentive, however barren. It is a virtue which loves to envelop itself in a veil of modesty, especially when it is purely latent and negative. As for you, you will lose no opportunity to proclaim it in the ears of all France from the tribune of the Luxembourg and the Palais Legislatif.

But no one desires you to abandon your fortune, and I admit that it would not solve the social problem.

You wish to be generous, but cannot. I only venture to ask that you will be just. Keep your fortune, but permit me also to keep mine. Respect my property as I respect yours. Is this too bold a request on my part?

Suppose we lived in a country under a free trade regime, where every one could dispose of his property and his labor at pleasure. Does this make your hair stand? Reassure yourself, this is only an hypothesis.

One would then be as free as the other. There would, indeed, be a law in the code, but this law, impartial and just, would not infringe our liberty, but would guarantee it, and it would take effect only when we sought to oppress each other. There would be officers of the law, magistrates and police; but they would only execute the law. Under such a state of affairs, suppose that you owned an iron foundry, and that I was a hatter. I should need iron for my business. Naturally I should seek to solve this problem: "How shall I best procure the iron necessary for my business with the least possible amount of labor?" Considering my situation, and my means of knowledge, I should discover that the best thing for me to do would be to make hats, and sell them to a Belgian who would give me iron in exchange.

But you, being the owner of an iron foundry, and considering my case, would say to yourself: "I shall be obliged to compel that fellow to come to my shop."

You, accordingly, take your sword and pistols, and, arming your numerous retinue, proceed to the frontier, and, at the moment I am engaged in making my trade, you cry out to me: "Stop that, or I will blow your brains out!" "But, my lord, I am in need of iron." "I have it to sell." "But, sir, you ask too much for it." "I have my reasons for that." "But, my good sir, I also have my reasons for preferring cheaper iron." "Well, we shall see who shall decide between your reasons and mine! Soldiers, advance!"

In short, you forbid the entry of the Belgian iron, and prevent the export of my hats.

Under the condition of things which we have supposed (that is, under a regime of liberty), you cannot deny that that would be, on your part, manifestly an act of oppression and spoliation.

Accordingly, I should resort to the law, the magistrate, and the power of the government. They would intervene. You would be tried, condemned, and justly punished.

But this circumstance would suggest to you a bright idea. You would say to yourself: "I have been very simple to give myself so much trouble. What! place myself in a position where I must kill some one, or be killed! degrade myself! put my domestics under arms! incur heavy expenses! give myself the character of a robber, and render myself liable to the laws of the country! And all this in order to compel a miserable hatter to come to my foundry to buy iron at my price! What if I should make the interest of the law, of the magistrate, of the public authorities, my interests? What if I could get them to perform the odious act on the frontier which I was about to do myself?"

Enchanted by this pleasing prospect, you secure a nomination to the Chambers, and obtain the passage of a law conceived in the following terms:

Section 1. There shall be a tax levied upon everybody (but especially upon that cursed hat-maker).

Sec. 2. The proceeds of this tax shall be applied to the payment of men to guard the frontier in the interest of iron-founders.

Sec. 3. It shall be their duty to prevent the exchange of hats or other articles of merchandise with the Belgians for iron.

Sec. 4. The ministers of the government, the prosecuting attorneys, jailers, customs officers, and all officials, are entrusted with the execution of this law.

I admit, sir, that in this form robbery would be far more lucrative, more agreeable, and less perilous than under the arrangements which you had at first determined upon. I admit that for you it would offer a very pleasant prospect. You could most assuredly laugh in your sleeve, for you would then have saddled all the expenses upon me.

But I affirm that you would have introduced into society a vicious principle, a principle of immorality, of disorder, of hatred, and of incessant revolutions; that you would have prepared the way for all the various schemes of socialism and communism.

You, doubtless, find my hypothesis a very bold one. Well, then, let us reverse the case. I consent for the sake of the demonstration.

It would be a great advantage to me to buy hatchets cheap, and even to get them for nothing. And I know that there are hatchets and saws in your establishment. Accordingly, without any ceremony, I enter your warehouse and seize everything that I can lay my hands upon.

But, in the exercise of your legitimate right of self-defense, you at first resist force with force; afterwards, invoking the power of the law, the magistrate, and the constables, you throw me into prison—and you do well.

Oh! ho! the thought suggests itself to me that I have been very awkward in this business. When a person wishes to enjoy the property of other people, he will, unless he is a fool, act in accordance with the law, and not in violation of it. Consequently, just as you have made yourself a protectionist, I will make myself a socialist. Since you have laid claim to the right to profit, I claim the right to labor, or to the instruments of labor.

For the rest, I read my Louis Blanc in prison, and I know by heart this doctrine: "In order to disenthrall themselves, the common people have need of tools to work with; it is the function of the government to provide them." And again: "If one admits that, in order to be really free, a man requires the ability to exercise and to develop his faculties, the result is that society owes each of its members instruction, without which the human mind is incapable of development, and the instruments of labor, without which human activities have no field for their exercise. But by what means can society give to each one of its members the necessary instruction and the necessary instruments of labor, except by the intervention of the State?" So that if it becomes necessary to revolutionize the country, I also will force my way into the halls of legislation. I also will pervert the law, and make it perform in my behalf and at your expense the very act for which it just now punished me.

Section 1. There shall be taxes levied upon every citizen, and especially upon iron founders.

Sec. 2. The proceeds of this tax shall be applied to the creation of armed corps, to which the title of the fraternal constabulary shall be given.

Sec. 3. It shall be the duty of the fraternal constabulary to make their way into the warehouses of hatchets, saws, etc., to take possession of these tools, and to distribute them to such workingmen as may desire them.

Thanks to this ingenious device, you see, my lord, that I shall no longer be obliged to bear the risks, the costs, the odium, or the scruples of robbery. The State will rob for me as it has for you. We shall both be playing the same game.

It remains to be seen what would be the condition of French society on the realization of my second hypothesis, or what, at least, is the condition of it after the almost complete realization of the first hypothesis. I do not desire to discuss here the economy of the question. It is generally believed that in advocating free trade we are exclusively influenced by the desire to allow capital and labor to take the direction most advantageous to them. This is an error. This consideration is merely secondary. That which wounds, afflicts, and is revolting to us in the protective system, is the denial of right, of justice, of property; it is the fact that the system turns the law against justice and against property, when it ought to protect them; it is that it undermines and perverts the very conditions of society. And to the question in this aspect I invite your most serious consideration.

What is law, or at least what ought it to be? What is its rational and moral mission? Is it not to hold the balance even between all rights, all liberties, and all property? Is it not to cause justice to rule among all? Is it not to prevent and to repress oppression and robbery wherever they are found?

And are you not shocked at the immense, radical, and deplorable innovation introduced into the world by compelling the law itself to commit the very crimes to punish which is its especial mission—by turning the law in principle and in fact against liberty and property?

You deplore the condition of modern society. You groan over the disorder which prevails in institutions and ideas. But is it not your system which has perverted everything, both institutions and ideas?

What! the law is no longer the refuge of the oppressed, but the arm of the oppressor! The law is no longer a shield, but a sword! The law no longer holds in her august hands a scale, but false weights and measures! And you wish to have society well regulated!

Your system has written over the entrance of the legislative halls these words: "Whoever acquires any influence here can obtain his share of the legalized pillage."

And what has been the result? All classes of society have become demoralized by shouting around the gates of the palace: "Give me a share of the spoils."

After the revolution of February, when universal suffrage was proclaimed, I had for a moment hoped to have heard this sentiment: "No more pillage for any one, justice for all." And that would have been the real solution of the social problem. Such was not the case. The doctrine of protection had for generations too profoundly corrupted the age, public sentiments and ideas. No. In making inroads upon the National Assembly, each class, in accordance with your system, has endeavored to make the law an instrument of rapine. There have been demanded heavier imposts, gratuitous credit, the right to employment, the right to assistance, the guaranty of incomes and of minimum wages, gratuitous instruction, loans to industry, etc., etc.; in short, every one has endeavored to live and thrive at the expense of others. And upon what have these pretensions been based? Upon the authority of your precedents. What sophisms have been invoked? Those that you have propagated for two centuries. With you they have talked about equalizing the conditions of labor. With you they have declaimed against ruinous competition. With you they have ridiculed the let alone principle, that is to say, liberty. With you they have said that the law should not confine itself to being just, but should come to the aid of suffering industries, protect the feeble against the strong, secure profits to individuals at the expense of the community, etc., etc. In short, according to the expression of Mr. Charles Dupin, socialism has come to establish the theory of robbery. It has done what you have done, and that which you desire the professors of political economy to do for you.

Your cleverness is in vain, Messieurs Protectionists, it is useless to lower your tone, to boast of your latent generosity, or to deceive your opponents by sentiment. You cannot prevent logic from being logic.

You cannot prevent Mr. Billault from telling the legislators, "You have granted favors to one, you must grant them to all."

You cannot prevent Mr. Cremieux from telling the legislators: "You have enriched the manufacturers, you must enrich the common people."

You cannot prevent Mr. Nadeau from saying to the legislators: "You cannot refuse to do for the suffering classes that which you have done for the privileged classes."

You cannot even prevent the leader of your orchestra, Mr. Mimerel, from saying to the legislators: "I demand twenty-five thousand subsidies for the workingmen's savings banks;" and supporting his motion in this manner:

XIV.

SOMETHING ELSE.