the restrictive rights of the whole people; if the protectionist doctrine be sound, the interference is eminently beneficial; but, in either case, there is nothing resembling the proposed communistic abolition of property which would be ruinous alike to individual owners and to the public.

The attempt, then, to smooch protection by coupling it with communism is simply a dishonest rhetorical artifice, disgraceful to the author and insulting to the readers whom he addresses. It is precisely equivalent to calling them fools.

And here we come to the end of a book which shows much wit, vivacity, ingenuity, and audacity, but which stands almost alone among transatlantic productions for the entire absence of that serious, earnest desire for truth which political economists usually display. Others may involve themselves in logical puzzles; but they appear to do so unintentionally. Possibly this may have also been the case with M. Bastiat, and the semblance of flippancy and insincerity may be rather apparent than real; but, at all events, one cannot rise from a diligent study of him without a profound conviction that no member of the Free Trade League can have carefully perused the book which they translated and printed in order" to educate public opinion in the United States, and convince the people of the folly and wrongfulness of the protective system."

Any other conviction would involve the gross insult of supposing them to be either exceedingly flat or exceedingly dishonest, or both.

Bastiat's sophistries are based chiefly upon the following erroneous propositions:

"1. That industry is limited by capital, whereas both are limited by the field of employment.

"2. That human labor is never without employment.

"3. That the wages fund is a fixed amount, equal to the existing capital, and the whole of it always employed.

"4. That protective laws, which cause more people to be employed with increased production, are the same in effect as dull axes, obstructed canals, working with the left hand, amputating one hand, etc., which would cause more people to be employed without increased production.

"5. That inasmuch as many obstacles to exchanges are also obstacles to opulence, therefore all obstacles to exchanges are obstacles to opulence."

In short, the argumentative portion of the book displays a neglect of every canon of logic, both inductive and deductive. The rest is rhetoric, and is good of its kind, witty, vivacious, impressive, and well suited to impose upon those who are not clever enough to see that it proves nothing, and is totally inapplicable to any existing society or to any society which could exist while man is constituted as he is.

Common sense is unconscious logic; logic not yet introspective; logic which has not yet named its processes, but which sees and casts aside a blunder intuitively; and there is too much of this sort of logic in the brains of the working people of America to allow much harm to come from such a book as Bastiat's "Sophisms of Protection."

1 My friend, Mr. David II. Mason, observes here: "That, in point of fact, individuals do not possess the claimed right, and have least of it where civilization is greatest. The disposition of one's own property is not a natural right, but a conventional right, - -a right limited by law or by custom, based on the views taken of the individual's obligations to the society of which he is a unit. Whatever may be said theoretically about the right of each individual to the free disposition of his own property, he does not in any civilized community possess such claimed right. Restraint, in a multitude of forms, confronts every member of the community in the disposition of his property. No person can legally dispose of his property in such a way as to interfere with the rights of his fellow-citizens. He cannot use his capital to erect a frame-building within the limits of a municipal fire-district. He cannot spend his money so as to commit a public nuisance; as, for example, by locating a bone or soap factory, with its noisome stench, amid the residence quarter of a town. He cannot, without incurring heavy penalties, invest his means in publishing clearly immoral newspapers or books, which operate to debauch public sentiment. If he is an apothecary, he cannot sell poisons indiscriminately, but is therein subjected to various restrictions. If he is a manufacturer, he cannot purchase for use in his business any machinery which infringes a patent, without making himself liable for exemplary damages. If he is a publisher, he cannot, without violating the law and incurring its punishment, print a book for sale which has been copyrighted in his country, and for which printing he does not possess the imprimatur of the author or the permission of the owner. If he is a shipmaster, he cannot sail his vessel into the harbor of destination according to his own separate will, but according to the will of the health-officer of the port, who may force him into detention at quarantine quarters. Formerly in the Southern States it was legal to dispose of negroes as property. That was then a conventional right; now it is a conventional wrong. A protective tariff rests upon the same general principle, that society is injured by permitting to individuals the free disposition of their property in purchase of or exchange for imported property."

2 Much protection was taken from pig-iron, the base of our iron and steel industries in 1870, and there was a heavy reduction of duties on a wide range of manufactures in 1872. But for these changes the country might perhaps have escaped the panic of 1873 in spite of the contraction of the currency, &c.

3 After all the treasure it can possibly spare is gone, government bonds, rail road bonds and stock, mortgages, &c., will go, and during all this process B will be unable to compete with A by manufacturing for herself. The industries in which she is inferior will be destroyed, and she will be kept continually in the condition of treasure-famine. She will never have enough of the precious metals to suffice as a basis for a safe and stable currency.

4 There is an exception when the individuals of a community invest largely in other lands; but this kind of wealth, as Adam Smith has observed, is of a very unstable and fugitive character.

REVIEW

Of Professor Sumner's article in the March number of the Princeton Review, entitled, —

"THE ARGUMENT AGAINST PROTECTIVE TAXES."

A PROTECTIONIST cannot even pass by the title without objection. A tax is not necessarily a burden. If the money be well and economically expended, and gives us good roads, good water-works, good police, and good government at what they ought to cost, then a tax is a great blessing and saving; but, unfortunately, the money is often expended recklessly and foolishly, and so, through abuses, the very name of tax becomes offensive. The free-trader who writes about "Protective Taxes" avails himself of this existing prejudice, with the effect of disgusting the reader with protection. at the outset, in advance of all argument in respect to it. The word tax also gives two false impressions: first, that all protected articles cost the consumer more than they would if not protected; and, second, that when they cost more, the consumer gets no counterbalancing or greatly overbalancing advantage. In this sense Professor Sumner writes that,

"Every cent paid in protective taxes lessens the power of the citizen to pay revenue taxes for the discharge of the public burdens. Hence the fact that we have heavy public burdens is just the reason why we cannot afford to squander our means in paying taxes to our neighbors for carrying on (as they themselves allege) unproductive industries."

This argument was used by Adam Smith one hundred and thirty years ago in the lectures which afterwards were thrown into the form of the famous "Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; " but the human race ought