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to get them from abroad and let D sit idle.

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"But D is a

monopolist!" cries A. "No;" reply the rest of the alphabet, "D is faithfully working in his special field, and he is gaining skill yearly. It is our will that his field, although not the most fertile the society possesses, shall be cultivated. We believe that in this way we shall altogether be a wealthier society than if we follow A's suggestion. Let A convince us to the contrary, and we will do as A proposes; but calling D a monopolist does not seem to us to have any bearing upon the calculation. It is simply the throwing of mud. It would seem that A's arguments must be weak and few, if he finds himself reduced to such expedients.' "But," says A," it is the natural right of every man to do what he pleases with his own property." Again reply B, C, D, etc., "This is not the question. before us. The question is, How shall we all enjoy the greatest abundance? If you fly away from the question we shall conclude that you have nothing relevant to offer." "But," rejoins A, "political economy and common sense tell us that to secure the greatest abundance we have only to buy in the cheapest market. It is absurd to buy of D at four dollars what you can have from abroad for three dollars." "This," say B, C, D, etc., "may be your political economy and your common sense; but it is not ours. D will take payment in that which we have to give; he pays his landlord, his butcher, his baker, his tailor, his clergyman, his lawyer, his physician, his laborers, with our products, or with money which is expended for our products; whereas, the foreign producer of D's commodity can consume, or cause to be consumed, only a tenth part as much of our products. We can, therefore, have from D more of his products than we can have from D's foreign competitor, and we enable D to support himself; whereas, in the other case, he must be supported by us. D is not producing pineapples under glass, nor doing any other absurdity: he is only producing something which nominally costs perhaps a third more than it is offered at by your foreign friends, but which really, taking all things into account, costs less, and will cost a great deal less when D has acquired greater skill. This is our political economy. Convince us that we are wrong and we

will act accordingly; but you will never convince us we arc wrong by calling D a monopolist, a robber, a thief, a liver upon public charity, a man actuated by the spirit of a slaveholder, etc.; nor will you convince us by talking about the shame of preventing our poor laborers from spending their hardly earned wages as they please. We recognize all such twistings and turnings as the tricks of the rhetorician. If you cannot convince us by good sound logic and common sense, you are at liberty to depart out of our prosperous society. There are plenty of people who will be glad to buy you out."

M. Bastiat writes:

"You, Messrs. Monopolists, maintain that facts are for you, and that we, on our side, have only theory. You even flatter yourselves that this long series of public acts, this old experience of Europe which you invoke, appeared imposing to M. Say; and I confess that he has not refuted you with his usual sagacity.

"I, for my part, cannot consent to give up to you the domain of facts; for, while on your side you can advance only limited and special facts, we can oppose to them universal facts, the free and voluntary acts of all men.

"What do we maintain? And what do you maintain?

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"We maintain that it is best to buy from others what we can ourselves produce only at a higher price.'

"You maintain that it is best to make for ourselves, even though it should cost us more than to buy from others.'

"Now, gentlemen, putting aside theory, demonstration, reasoning (things which seem to nauseate you), which of these assertions is sanctioned by universal practice?"

M. Bastiat was in error. Nothing would delight us more than sound theory and reasoning; nothing more than a real demonstration; but theory which is built up by drawing universal conclusions from particular premises, reasoning which violates every canon of logic, a demonstration drawn from an identical proposition, these certainly do turn our stomachs. We deny that "it is always best to buy from others what we can ourselves produce only at a higher price." The distribution of the individuals in a community, under the régime

of the division of occupations, is not found to be so perfect that each person finds employment all the time in his peculiar calling. Many find themselves out of work much of the time; and this leisure those who are thrifty employ to the best advantage they can. The product, if sold in the market, might not net more than half as much per day as they earn at their occupations when they are at work; but it is clear gain. They are good economists in so employing themselves - rather than sit idle and repine at the want of work.

We protectionists do not maintain the general proposition which you thrust upon us. We do not maintain that “it is best to make for ourselves, even though it should cost us more than to buy of others." The proposition, by an artful misuse of words, begs the whole question. Costs us more than to buy of others! What does this mean? What is the cost to an individual of a piece of work done when he would otherwise have done nothing? What is the cost to a nation of work done by labor otherwise unoccupied assisted by capital otherwise unemployed? What we do maintain is, that for an individual it is best to do something for himself or others during the days when his special trade or art leaves him unoccupied; and that, for a nation, it is best to promote that distribution of labor and capital which evolves the greatest gross annual product; for the gross annual product is the sum of the net individual incomes, as has been recognized both by Adam Smith and J. B. Say. The individual must be left, in his local position, to find out what is best for him to do. He will do one thing under free trade quite another thing under protective laws. What he does under one system affords no evidence of the goodness or badness of the other; nor can the fact that he does this or that afford any evidence that this or that will promote the general interest. Adam Smith, indeed, after adducing a few instances in which he thought individuals acting solely with a view to their own interests would, nevertheless, unintentionally promote that of the society, added the words, — " and he (the individual) is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his

intention;" but it will be observed that Adam Smith had not the folly to put this forth as a true induction. He threw it ⚫ out as a rhetorical flourish, knowing well that a thoughtless crowd would seize upon it as a general proposition revealing the deep plans of Providence; and that, having so seized upon it, they would be too innocent of logic to be shaken in their faith by any number of negative instances. But fortunately all men are not imposed upon by a rhetorical flourish. Indeed, Adam Smith did not thus impose upon himself, for he advocated government restraints upon the issues of banks, and defended it in Book II., Chapter II., of the "Wealth of Nations" (towards the end), in the following words :

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"To restrain private people, it may be said, from receiving in payment the promissory notes of a banker, for any sum, whether great or small, when they themselves are willing to receive them; restrain a banker from issuing such notes, when all his neighbors are willing to accept them, is a manifest violation of that natural liberty which it is the proper business of law, not to infringe, but to support. Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respect a violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments, of the most free as well as of the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty, exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed."

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But if it did not impose upon Adam Smith himself, it did upon many others, as may be inferred from the following extract from Mr. John Stuart Mill's "Political Economy,' Book V., Chapter XI., paragraph 12:

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"Mr. Wakefield therefore proposed to check the premature occupation of land, and dispersion of the people, by putting upon all unappropriated lands a rather high price, the proceeds of which were to be expended in conveying emigrant laborers from the mother country.

"This salutary provision, however, has been objected to, in the name and on the authority of what was represented as the great principle of political economy, that individuals are the best judges of their

own interest. It was said that when things are left to themselves, land is appropriated and occupied by the spontaneous choice of individuals, in the quantities and at the times most advantageous to each person, and therefore to the community generally; and that to interpose artificial obstacles to their obtaining land is to prevent them from adopting the course which, in their own judgment, is most beneficial to them, from a self-conceited notion of the legislator, that he knows what is most for their interests, better than they do themselves. Now this is a complete misunderstanding, either of the system itself, or of the principle with which it is alleged to conflict. The oversight is similar to that which we have just seen exemplified on the subject of hours of labor. However beneficial it might be to the colony in the aggregate, and to each individual composing it, that no one should occupy more land than he can properly cultivate, nor become a proprietor until there are other laborers ready to take his place in working for hire, it can never be the interest of an individual to exercise this forbearance, unless he is assured that others will do so too. Surrounded by settlers who have each their thousand acres, how is he benefited by restricting himself to fifty? or what does he gain by deferring the acquisition for a few years, if all other laborers rush to convert their first earnings into estates in the wilderness, several miles apart from one another? If they, by seizing on land, prevent the formation of a class of laborers for wages, he will not, by postponing the time of his becoming a proprietor, be enabled to employ the land to any greater advantage when he does obtain it; to what end should he place himself in what will appear to him and others a position of inferiority, by remaining a laborer when all around him are proprietors? It is the interest of each to do what is good for all, but only if others will do likewise.

"The principle that each is the best judge of his own interest, understood as these objectors understand it, would prove that governments ought not to fulfil any of their acknowledged duties, ought not, in fact, to exist at all. It is greatly the interest of the community, collectively and individually, not to rob or defraud one another; but there is not the less necessity for laws to punish robbery and fraud; because, although it is the interest of each that nobody should rob or cheat, it cannot be any one's interest to refrain from robbing and cheating others when all others are permitted to rob and cheat him. Penal laws exist at all, chiefly for this reason, because an even unanimous opinion that a certain line of conduct is for the general interest, does not make it people's individual interest to adhere to that line of conduct."

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