the rôle of general philanthropist. A multitude of opulent nations would still have a vast international trade, - probably much larger in actual volume (though less, perhaps, in proportion to the total annual products) than can be supported between the same nations impoverished by free trade.

There is no call, then, for M. Bastiat's rhapsodies and declamations about horrible blasphemy, liberty, utility, justice, peace, and the manifestation of the wisdom of God as shown in the sublime harmony of material creation. The sober and clear-headed American people are not likely to be fooled in this way.

Chapter XV. is entitled "Reciprocity Again."

This chapter argues that an individual in a nation having no external relations sells his product for money, "casts his product into the national circulation," and by means of money withdraws a like value; that if thereafter the exchanges of the nation be opened — made free — with other nations, the individual will in like manner cast his product into the larger market, that of the world.

But induction from facts and deductive reasoning alike show that the individual may find the universal market smaller than the national. The farmer may have an advantage not only in growing wheat, cotton, and tobacco, but also in growing green crops and market products not susceptible of distant conveyance. He wishes to exchange these for manufactured goods which can be brought from the ends of the earth. He throws them into the market of the world; but the world market for them is bounded by a radius of a few tens of miles. He can produce of them (his most profitable crops) only what can be taken by the population occupying the limited area. Put a cotton or woollen mill or any other manufacturing establishment near the farmer and his possible production of salable articles, and consequently his possible consumption is increased greatly. The laissez-faire system produces here a smaller product for the individual, for his immediate vicinity, for his nation, and for the world. If he buys that which comes from a great distance, he must raise

that which can be carried to a great distance, that is, a few articles, for which the distant markets are very limited. Bastiat next reasons from individual action to national, forgetting that nations are few and individuals many. A casts his individual product into the national market, and sells it. Innumerable producers compete to supply him with what he needs. Frequent combinations among them to fleece him are beyond the range of probability; and any occurrence which should stop his supply is scarcely possible. It is not so with nations. They are few, and the possible events which might stop a foreign supply are very many.

Finally, Bastiat says that if the supply and demand from abroad should stop, we should only be forced upon isolation, to reach which is the ideal of the protective system.

But it has been already observed that protection does not aim at nor tend to isolation. It aims at and accomplishes a comparative independence as to the great necessaries of life, and brings about a great increase of opulence, from which springs the ability to enjoy a thousand luxuries which can really be got to better advantage elsewhere. The products which the United States throws into the market of the world. are thirty times greater (per head) than free-trade India throws; they are many times greater than those of Portugal, Turkey, Ireland, and nearly equal to those of Great Britain's American colonies, being $16.70 per head to $19.04 per head. This last is a remarkable fact. The United States makes for herself vastly more, per head, than those colonies consume, and still sells in the market of the world a surplus as great, or nearly as great, as theirs under free trade.

We say that this is a fact. You cannot deny it. But you deny that the fact has any connection with protection. We reply that by deductive reasoning we show that such a fact ought to occur under protection; and by observations which you cannot and do not deny, we show that it does occur. You reply that you have shown by deductive reasoning that no such fact could follow such a cause. We answer, in turn, that we have pointed out errors in your deductions, errors which absolutely annihilate them; while you have not found

any errors in our deductions, but answer them only by a repetition of your own (just as if they had never been confuted), and by a vast amount of declamation and rhetoric. You do not prove the contradictory of our propositions, but only the contradictory of some other propositions, which you put into our mouths, but which we ourselves never dreamed of.

Chapter XVI.,-"Obstructed Rivers pleading for the Prohibitionists."

This is the case of the Douro, which, according to M. Bastiat, neither Spain nor Portugal was willing to improve, for fear that grain would pass between the two countries. The chapter does not give sufficient facts to enable a protectionist to decide whether, under the circumstances, it was or was not desirable to expend money in removing the obstructions. To M. Bastiat the case appeared simple. He was for removing all obstructions to individual action. To protectionists, who do not believe that individual action necessarily leads to the best result for a community, the case is not so clear. We believe that Adam Smith was right in advocating the regulation by the society of individual action regarding the currency, and that Mr. John Stuart Mill was right in advocating similar regulations regarding a variety of matters touching the general good. We believe that laissez faire and giving perfect freedom to individual action is not good in theory, and has never yet anywhere been adopted in practice.

Chapter XVII. is entitled "A Negative Railroad."

This chapter is a good specimen of M. Bastiat's reasoning. By diligent search or lively invention, he produces an absurd proposal that a railroad should have a break or terminus at Bordeaux, in order that goods and passengers should be thus forced to contribute to the profits of the boatmen, porters, commission-merchants, hotel-keepers, etc. He then argues that IF such profit be conformable to the public interest, there ought to be similar breaks elsewhere, and these too would be for the general good, and for the interest of national labor.

"For it is certain that in proportion to the number of these breaks or termini will be the increase in consignments, commissions, lading, unlading, etc." A protectionist would say at once that the first break was detrimental, and that many would utterly prevent all consignments, commissions, etc., coming thus to a conclusion the opposite of that which M. Bastiat says is certain, - a conclusion, by the way, which would not be certain, even if the premises were sound. M. Bastiat, however, insists

"that the restrictive principle is identical with that which would maintain this system of breaks; it is the sacrifice of the consumer to the producer, of the end to the means."

This shows, out of M. Bastiat's own mouth, that he had no conception of what protection does actually aim at. It aims at the greatest possible consumption, but recognizes (what M. Bastiat apparently did not) that, before an individual or a nation can consume largely, he or it must produce. Protectionists are as anxious as free-traders more anxious than free-traders to remove obstacles, to improve machinery, to improve tools, to improve the arrangement and organization of society. It aims at whatever will increase the gross annual product. Evidently M. Bastiat never learned such a doctrine; but he might have deduced it by easy economical reasoning from the sound parts of Adam Smith and J. B. Say. The trouble with him was that he gathered in their errors, and passed by their sound reasoning; that he took in sober earnest, and as universal generalizations, what they threw out as rhetorical flourishes. Tinsel caught his eye quicker than solid gold. So he swallowed laissez faire, and thought to build a science upon a proposition drawn from a few and uncertain instances, and forbidden by innumerable negative instances. M. Bastiat certainly profited little from the "Novum Organum," or from Mr. John Stuart Mill's "Logic."

Chapter XVIII.,—" There are no Absolute Principles." M. Bastiat scoffs at the idea that there are in political economy no absolute principles, and reaffirms that the free

dom of exchanges is an absolute principle. He deduces this from the provisioning of a great city. He says:

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Contemplating this great city of Paris, I have thought to myself: Here are a million of human beings, who would die in a few days if provisions of every kind did not flow towards this vast metropolis. The imagination is unable to contemplate the multiplicity of objects which to-morrow must enter its gates, to prevent the life of its inhabitants terminating in famine, riot, or pillage. And yet, at this moment all are asleep, without feeling one moment's uneasiness from the contemplation of this frightful possibility. On the other side, we see eighty departments who have this day labored, without concert, without mutual understanding, for the victualling of Paris. How can each day bring just what is necessary, nothing less, nothing more, to this gigantic market? What is the ingenious and secret power which presides over the astonishing regularity of such complicated movements, a regularity in which we all have so implicit, though thoughtless, a faith; on which our comfort, our very existence depends? This power is an absolute principle, the principle of freedom in exchanges. We have faith in that inner light which Providence has placed in the hearts of all men, confiding to it the preservation and amelioration of our species, — interest, since we must give its name, so vigilant, so active, having so much forecast, when allowed its free action."

M. Bastiat then declares that no minister, however superior his abilities, could arrange things so well, and that if he should attempt it, the actually existing misery would be infinitely increased, etc., etc.

This chapter may be good, considered as declamation or rhetoric, but we fear it would hardly stand a test by Mr. Mill's canons of inductive logic. What M. Bastiat undertook to prove was that in political economy it was an absolute (by which he must have meant a universal) proposition that freedom in exchanges is, in every case, promotive of opulence; or that every constraint put upon the freedom of exchanges is unfavorable to progress in opulence.

His method of proof was to present the case of a great city provisioned regularly without any supervision. He represents that there is never too much, never too little, etc., statements which it would be necessary to verify, and which