learn to seek the benefits of international trade, not in the vain ambition of underselling other countries, and so making them pay tribute in gold and silver to the United States, but in that which constitutes its proper end and only rational purpose, the greater cheapening of commodities and the increased abundance and comfort which result to the whole family of mankind."

But the "world of commerce " in which we are invited to partake is a world in which Great Britain, by immense efforts,

warlike, industrial, diplomatic, social, and literary, — has been able to find markets for only about twelve hundred millions of dollars in value of the products of her mechanical and manufacturing industries; while our own market, which we are invited to share with Great Britain, is now some four or five times as great, and pretty sure to be ten times as great in twenty-five years. The invitation has a humorous aspect, and might be passed over with a good-natured smile, if the matter were not one of such transcendant importance. Any attempt to put his recommendations in practice would place in peril a large proportion of our capital and industry, and also the high rate of real wages which we have thus far been able to sustain. The farmer is not very likely to sanction it. He knows too well what protection he gets from the removal of nearly half the population from the soil; and he knows too well how his farm rises in value when the mill or the forge settles down beside him. No! the men who thoughtlessly favor such movements are professional and literary men and the possessors of incomes. All these are apt to think it would be well if they could get their clothing and other conveniences cheaply from England. They forget that with a diminution of the rate of wages must also come a diminution of fees, salaries, profits, and incomes. When the incomes from mills, forges, railroads, houses, all fell off, they would lament the day that they assisted to inaugurate so perilous, so pernicious, an experiment.

Professor Cairnes tells us that protection does nothing to diversify industries. His reasoning has been found exceedingly liable to error in other instances, and is exceedingly unsubstantial in this. Facts all over the world confute him.

Let us now turn over the leaves of a livelier author, M. Bastiat. He, at all events, entertains us. He gives us a most amusing petition from the manufacturers of gas for the abolition of sunshine. We laugh; but we remember that no one proposes to employ labor to produce an inferior substitute for what can be had for nothing. Nor does anybody propose to raise pineapples under glass as a substitute for the tropical product. The climate is too much against us, except indeed when the article to be produced is of sufficient importance to make it worth our while to set civilization against sunshine, as was done in the case of sugar from the beet, and done with complete success.

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Another point which Bastiat urges with great wit and vivacity is that our object in building railroads and steamships and telegraphs is to facilitate intercourse, to remove impediments to intercourse. But the moment we have done this we set about undoing it, by enacting protective and prohibitory tariffs, which are equivalent to breaking up the railroad or burning the steamship, or at least the equivalent of a serious diminution of their utility. But when we build a railroad or a steamship we know that these beneficent instruments, like most others, may be perverted to pernicious uses. They are excellent for carrying passengers; but it does not follow that they should be used by every passenger. A thief, a spy, a murderer, a person afflicted with the smallpox, may surely be refused a passage, without subjecting the directors to a charge of absurdity. They are also excellent for carrying freight; but they do not become any less excellent when their managers forbid infectious or dangerous or injurious commodities being conveyed by them.

We form these instruments of locomotion to promote such commerce as for good and sufficient reasons we deem advantageous, and the multiplication of railroads and steamships and their good dividends bear witness to the fact that there is plenty for them to do, in spite of the wicked and absurd protective laws. Men have not yet found reason to adopt the general proposition, that Whatever traffic is carried on by railroads or steamships is ipso facto and necessarily beneficial!

Nor yet this other general proposition, To forbid any traffic which is carried on by means of a railroad or steamship is: absurd and ridiculous. Such arguments, when stripped of the wit and rhetoric by which Bastiat and his imitators have covered them up, need no refutation. To show them as they are is sufficient.

One who reads Bastiat's admirable chapter upon Capital and Interest is filled with wonder at the venerable blunders found in other parts of his work. As one example, he says:

"On what depends the demand for labor? On the quantity of disposable national capital. And the law which says, 'Such or such an article shall be limited to home production and no longer imported from foreign countries,' can it in any degree increase this capital? Not in the least. This law may withdraw it from one course and transfer it to another, but cannot increase it one penny. Then it cannot increase the demand for labor."

Let us see. A nation is, as before supposed, producing annually commodities worth $6,000,000,000, and it has normally in stock $1,000,000,000, being commodities in the hands of producers or dealers and advanced upon by banks or moneyed

men.

Now the law steps in and says: There is an article (say woollen goods) for which there is a large demand in the country, but which has hitherto been brought from abroad. We are under no disability as to climate. When we have acquired the requisite skill, we can produce with as little cost (in labor and abstinence) as any other country. Let there be a duty placed upon importations sufficient to amply protect the new industry.

Under these encouragements capitalists all over the country subscribe to establish woollen mills, to build the mills and furnish the floating capital, and then to proceed to work. Let the movement be of large dimensions, say to the extent of $300,000,000 the first year paid away to workThe $1,000,000,000 of unemployed capital is ample without disturbing any previous industry. It is more than three times what is ample. So far, so good! But the

men.

money paid out for labor will nearly all be spent by the laborers for what? For the very commodities which constitute the unemployed capital. The producers of these, finding an extra demand to the extent of nearly a third of their stocks, are all along in condition to increase their production by employing more labor and paying more wages. They may do this to nearly the extent of $300,000,000, with the result of producing commodities worth more than twice the wages disbursed. Here, then, the community at the end of the year finds its floating capital about the same as at the beginning, and its fixed capital increased $300,000,000; and its laborers have had and used during the year $600,000,000 more than they would have had without the law. But M. Bastiat, as we have seen above, lays it down as the indubitable teaching of his science, that the law cannot increase the capital disposable for the payment of wages a single penny. This is the patriarch of free-trade sophisms or blunders, having been born in the house of Adam Smith more than a hundred years ago.

As another example of venerable blunders, take the following. He says:

"France, according to our supposition, manufactures 10,000,000 of hats at fifteen francs each. Let us now suppose that a foreign producer brings them into our market at ten francs. I maintain that national labor is thus in no wise diminished. It will be obliged to produce the equivalent of the 100,000,000 francs which go to pay for the 10,000,000 of hats at ten francs, and then there remains to each buyer five francs, saved on the purchase of his hat, or, in total, 50,000,000 francs, which serve for the acquisition of other comforts and the encouragement of other labor."

Let us see. France, according to his first supposition, produced 10,000,000 of hats selling for 150,000,000 francs; but the recipients of these 150,000,000 francs did not eat or drink or live in them. They exchanged them for other 150,000,000 francs of products. Here, then, were 300,000,000 francs of French products, every franc of which (see M. J. B. Say) was net income to some Frenchman. Total net income, then, under this supposition, 300,000,000 francs.

Under the other supposition, foreigners bring in 10,000,000 hats and receive French products worth 100,000,000 francs. The French consumers get their hats the same as before ; and, if they spend the whole of the 50,000,000 francs saved by the change to a foreign producer, there will be an additional demand for 50,000,000 francs of varied products. The total French product, then, under this supposition, will be 150,000,000 francs, every franc of which will be net individual income to somebody. Total net income, then, under this supposition, 150,000,000 francs. The aggregate of the French incomes, then, has been reduced 150,000,000 francs by the change from a French to a foreign producer.

But the hat-makers, you may say, will do something else. But in saying this you introduce a new element into the question; and, moreover, you are by no means warranted in your assumption. Mr. John Stuart Mill ought to be a good enough authority for free-traders, and he says, in regard to a similar case (see book i. chap. v. sec. 9) :—

"The very sum which the consumer now employs in buying velvet (for velvet, read English hats) formerly passed into the hands of journeymen bricklayers (for journeymen bricklayers, read French hatmakers), who expended it in food and necessaries, which they now either go without or squeeze, by their competition, from the shares of other laborers."

The change of the demand for hats from France to, say, England does not increase the demand for other French products a single franc, even on the supposition that the hat consumers spend all they save in the price of hats upon other products. If they capitalize any of their savings, the gross demand for other French products will be less than before. The hypothesis, then, finds no funds for the support of the displaced French hat-makers. They must starve, or squeeze a living (by competition) out of the remuneration of other laborers.

This is not only a venerable blunder; but worse still, it is a dead blunder. It was killed by Sir John Barnard Byles in the "Sophisms of Free-Trade," in 1849, and witness was borne to its peaceful interment by William Lucas Sargant in