Sophisms of the Protectionists Part 35

--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_.

--If they say to you: Labor is wealth--

Reply: It is false.

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--

Reply: So much the better for me, since it costs me nothing to see distinctly.

--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--

Reply: So much the better for us; they will not make us pay interest.

--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.

--If they say to you: The Swiss have rich pastures which cost little--

Reply: The advantage is on our side, for they will ask for a lesser quant.i.ty 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 gain is on our side, since we buy grain free from those charges.

--If they say to you: The serfs of Poland work without wages--

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.

--Then, if they say to you: Other nations have many advantages over us--

Reply: By exchange, they are forced to let us share in them.

--If they say to you: With liberty we shall be swamped with bread, beef _a la mode_, coal, and coats--

Reply: We shall be neither cold nor hungry.

--If they say to you: With what shall we pay?

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: Eat meat--

Reply: Let it come in.

--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 a.s.sume a collective science and foresight, after having established individual folly and short-sightedness.

--If they say to you: My G.o.d! 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.

Secondly. Few foreigners at this time are free from taxes.

Thirdly. If the tax which you vote repays to you, in roads, ca.n.a.ls and safety, more than it costs you, you are not justified in driving away, at my expense, the compet.i.tion of foreigners who do not pay the tax but who do not have the safety, roads and ca.n.a.ls. 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.

Fourthly. If the tax does not repay what it costs, do not vote it.

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)--

Reply: This freedom is necessary everywhere, and for the same reason.

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

Reply: It is according to that that _it acts of itself_ when no one hinders it.

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