We have just seen
that whatever increases the expense of conveying commodities from one country
to another — in other words, whatever renders transport more onerous — acts
in the same way as a protective duty; or if you prefer to put it in another
shape, that a protective duty acts in the same way as more onerous transport.
A tariff, then, may be regarded in the same light as a marsh, a rut, an
obstruction, a steep declivity — in a word, it is an obstacle, the effect of
which is to augment the difference between the price the producer of a
commodity receives and the price the consumer pays for it. In the same way,
it is undoubtedly true that marshes and quagmires are to be regarded in the
same light as protective tariffs.
There are people (few in number, it is true, but there are such people)
who begin to understand that obstacles are not less obstacles because they
are artificial, and that our mercantile prospects have more to gain from
liberty than from protection, and exactly for the same reason that makes a canal
more favorable to traffic than a steep, roundabout, and inconvenient road.
But they maintain that this liberty must be reciprocal. If we remove the
barriers we have erected against the admission of Spanish goods, for example,
Spain must remove the barriers she has erected against the admission of ours.
They are, therefore, the advocates of commercial treaties, on the basis of
exact reciprocity, concession for concession; let us make the sacrifice of
buying, say they, to obtain the advantage of selling.
People who reason in this way, I am sorry to say, are, whether they know
it or not, protectionists in principle; only, they are a little more
inconsistent than pure protectionists, as the latter are more inconsistent
than absolute prohibitionists.
The following apologue will demonstrate this.
Stulta and Puera
There were, no matter where, two towns called Stulta and Puera. They
completed at great cost a highway from the one town to the other. When this
was done, Stulta said to herself, "See how Puera inundates us with her
products; we must see to it." In consequence, they created and paid a
body of obstructives, so called because their business was to place obstacles
in the way of traffic coming from Puera. Soon afterwards Puera did the same.
At the end of some centuries, knowledge having in the interim made great
progress, the common sense of Puera enabled her to see that such reciprocal
obstacles could only be reciprocally hurtful. She therefore sent an envoy to
Stulta, who, laying aside official phraseology, spoke to this effect:
"We have made a highway, and now we throw obstacles in the way of using
it. This is absurd. It would have been better to have left things as they
were. We should not, in that case, have had to pay for making the road in the
first place, nor afterwards have incurred the expense of maintaining
obstructives. In the name of Puera, I come to propose to you, not to give up
opposing each other all at once — that would be to act upon a principle, and
we despise principles as much as you do — but to lessen somewhat the present
obstacles, taking care to estimate equitably the respective sacrifices we
make for this purpose." So spoke the envoy. Stulta asked for time to
consider the proposal, and proceeded to consult, in succession, her manufacturers
and agriculturists. At length, after the lapse of some years, she declared
that the negotiations were broken off.
On receiving this intimation, the inhabitants of Puera held a meeting. An
old gentleman (they always suspected he had been secretly bought by Stulta)
rose and said, "The obstacles created by Stulta injure our sales, which
is a misfortune. Those we have ourselves created injure our purchases, which
is another misfortune. With reference to the first, we are powerless; but the
second rests with ourselves. Let us, at least, get rid of one, since we
cannot rid ourselves of both evils. Let us suppress our obstructives without
requiring Stulta to do the same. Some day, no doubt, she will come to know
her own interests better."
A second counselor, a practical, matter-of-fact man, guiltless of any
acquaintance with principles, and brought up in the ways of his forefathers,
replied: "Don't listen to that Utopian dreamer, that theorist, that
innovator, that economist, that Stultomaniac. We shall all be undone if the
stoppages of the road are not equalized, weighed, and balanced between Stulta
and Puera. There would be greater difficulty in going than in coming, in
exporting than in importing. We should find ourselves in the same condition
of inferiority relatively to Stulta as Havre, Nantes, Bordeaux, Lisbon,
London, Hamburg, and New Orleans are with relation to the towns situated at
the sources of the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne, the Tagus, the Thames, the
Elbe, and the Mississippi, for it is more difficult for a ship to ascend than
to descend a river. (A Voice: Towns at the mouths of rivers prosper more than
towns at their source.)
"This is impossible. (Same Voice: But it is so.) Well, if it be so,
they have prospered contrary to rules." Reasoning so conclusive
convinced the assembly, and the orator followed up his victory by talking
largely of national independence, national honor, national dignity, national
labor, inundation of products, tributes, murderous competition. In short, he
carried the vote in favor of the maintenance of obstacles; and if you are at
all curious on the subject, I can point out to you countries where you will
see with your own eyes road makers and obstructives working together on the
most friendly terms possible, under the orders of the same legislative assembly,
and at the expense of the same taxpayers, the one set endeavoring to clear
the road, and the other set doing their utmost to render it impassable.
