If anyone tells you that there are no absolute principles, no inflexible
rules; that prohibition may be bad and yet that restriction may be good,
reply, "Restriction prohibits all that it hinders from being
imported."
If anyone says that agriculture is the mother's milk of the country,
reply, "What nourishes the country is not exactly agriculture, but
wheat."
If anyone tells you that the basis of the food of the people is
agriculture, reply, "The basis of the people's food is wheat. This is
the reason why a law that gives us, by agricultural labor, two quarters of
wheat, when we could have obtained four quarters without such labor, and by
means of labor applied to manufactures, is a law not for feeding but for
starving the people."
If anyone remarks that restriction upon the importation of foreign wheat
gives rise to a more extensive culture, and consequently to increased home
production, reply, "It induces men to sow grain on comparatively barren
and ungrateful soils. To milk a cow and go on milking her, puts a little more
into the pail, for it is difficult to say when you will come to the last
drop. But that drop costs dear."
If anyone tells you that when bread is dear, the agriculturist, having
become rich, enriches the manufacturer, reply, "Bread is dear when it is
scarce, and then men are poor, or, if you like it better, they become rich
starvelings."
If you are further told that when bread gets dearer, wages rise, reply by
pointing out that in April 1847, five-sixths of our workmen were receiving
charity.
If you are told that the wages of labor should rise with the increased
price of provisions, reply, "This is as much as to say that in a ship
without provisions, everybody will have as much biscuit as if the vessel were
fully victualled."
If you are told that it is necessary to secure a good price to the man who
sells wheat, reply, "That in that case it is also necessary to secure
good wages to the man who buys it."
If it is said that the proprietors, who make the laws, have raised the
price of bread without taking thought about wages, because they know that
when bread rises wages naturally rise, reply, "Upon the same principle,
when the workmen come to make the laws, don't blame them if they fix a high
rate of wages without busying themselves about protecting wheat, because they
know that when wages rise, provisions naturally rise also."
If you are asked, "What, then, is to be done?" reply, "Be
just to everybody."
If you are told that it is essential that every great country should
produce iron, reply, "What is essential is, that every great country
should have iron."
If you are told that it is indispensable that every great country should
produce cloth, reply, "The indispensable thing is that the citizens of
every great country should have cloth."
If it be said that labor is wealth, reply, "This is not true."
And, by way of development, add, "Letting blood is not health, and
the proof of it is that it is resorted to for the purpose of restoring
health."
If it is said, "To force men to mine rocks, and extract an ounce of
iron from a hundredweight of ore, is to increase their labor and consequently
their wealth," reply, "To force men to dig wells by prohibiting
them from taking water from the brook is to increase their useless labor, but
not their wealth."
If you are told that the sun gives you his heat and light without
remuneration, reply, "So much the better for me, for it costs me nothing
to see clearly."
And if you are answered that industry in general loses what would have been
paid for artificial light, rejoin, "No; for having paid nothing to the
sun, what he saves me enables me to buy clothes, furniture, and
candles."
In the same way, if you are told that these rascally English possess
capital that is dormant, reply, "So much the better for us; they will
not make us pay interest for it."
If it is said, "These perfidious English find coal and iron in the
same pit," reply, "So much the better for us; they will charge us
nothing for bringing them together."
If you are told that the Swiss have rich pasturages, which cost little,
reply, "The advantage is ours, for they will demand a smaller amount of
our labor in return for giving an impetus to our agriculture, and supplying
us with provisions."
If they tell you that the lands of the Crimea have no value, and pay no
taxes, reply, "The profit is ours, who buy corn free from such
charges."
If they tell you that the serfs of Poland work without wages, reply,
"The misfortune is theirs and the profit is ours, since their labor does
not enter into the price of the wheat their masters sell us."
Finally, if they tell you that other nations have many advantages over us,
reply, "By means of exchange, they are forced to allow us to participate
in these advantages."
If they tell you that under free trade we are about to be inundated with
bread, beef a la mode, coal, and winter clothing, reply, "In that
case we shall be neither hungry nor thirsty."
If they ask, "How we are to pay for these things?" reply,
"Don't let that disquiet you. If we are inundated, it is a sign we have
the means of paying for the inundation; and if we have not the means of
paying, we shall not be inundated."
If anyone says, "I should approve of free trade, if the foreigner, in
sending us his products, would take our products in exchange; but he carries
off our money," reply, "Neither money nor coffee grows in the
fields of Beauce, nor are they turned out by the workshops of Elbeuf. So far
as we are concerned, to pay the foreigner with money is the same thing as paying
him with coffee."
If they bid you eat butcher's meat, reply, "Allow it to be
imported."
If they say to you, in the words of La Presse, "When one has
not the means to buy bread, he is forced to buy beef," reply, "This
is advice quite as judicious as that given by M. Vautour to his tenant:
Quand on n'a pas de quoi payer son terme,
Il faut avoir une maison a soi.
If, again, they say to you, in the words of La Presse, "The
government should teach the people how and why they must eat beef,"
reply, "The government has only to allow the beef to be imported, and
the most civilized people in the world will know how to use it without being
taught by a master."
If they tell you that the government should know everything, and foresee
everything, in order to direct the people, and that the people have simply to
allow themselves to be led, reply by asking, "Is there a state apart
from the people? Is there a human foresight apart from humanity? Archimedes
might repeat every day of his life, 'With a fulcrum and lever I can move the
world; but he never did move it, for want of a fulcrum and lever. The lever
of the state is the nation, and nothing can be more foolish than to found so
many hopes upon the state, which is simply to take for granted the existence
of collective science and foresight, after having set out with the assumption
of individual imbecility and improvidence."
If anyone says, "I ask no favor, but only such a duty on bread and
meat as shall compensate the heavy taxes to which I am subjected; only a
small duty equal to what the taxes add to the cost price of my wheat,"
reply, "A thousand pardons; but I also pay taxes. If, then, the
protection you vote in your own favor has the effect of burdening me as a purchaser
of corn with exactly your share of the taxes, your modest demand amounts to
nothing less than establishing this arrangement as formulated by you: 'Seeing
that the public charges are heavy, I, as a seller of wheat, am to pay
nothing, and you my neighbor, as a buyer of wheat, are to pay double, viz.,
your own share and mine into the bargain.' Mr. Grain-merchant, my good
friend, you may have force at your command, but assuredly you have not reason
on your side."
If anyone says to you, "It is, however, exceedingly hard upon me, who
pays taxes, to have to compete in my own market with the foreigner, who pays
none," reply, "In the first place, it is not your market, but our
market. I who live upon wheat and pay for it, should surely be taken into
account."
"Second, Few foreigners at the present day are exempt from
taxes."
"Third, If the taxes you vote yield you in roads, canals, security,
etc., more than they cost you, you are not justified in repelling, at my
expense, the competition of foreigners, who, if they do not pay taxes, have
not the advantages you enjoy in roads, canals, and security. You might as
well say, 'I demand a compensating duty because I have finer clothes,
stronger horses, and better ploughs than the hard-working peasant of
Russia.'"
"Fourth, If the tax does not repay you for what it costs, don't vote
it."
"Fifth, In short, after having voted the tax, do you wish to get free
from it? Try to frame a law that will throw it on the foreigner. But your
tariff makes your share of it fall upon me, who have already my own burden to
bear."
If anyone says, "For the Russians free trade is necessary to enable
them to exchange their products with advantage" (Opinion of M. Thiers in
the Bureaux, April, 1847), reply, "Liberty is necessary everywhere, and
for the same reason."
If you are told, "Each country has its wants, and we must be guided
by that in what we do" (M. Thiers), reply, "Each country acts thus
of its own accord, if you don't throw obstacles in the way."
If they tell you, "We have no sheet-iron, and we must allow it to be
imported" (M. Thiers), reply, "Many thanks."
If you are told, "We have no freights for our merchant shipping. The
want of return cargoes prevents our shipping from competing with
foreigners" (M. Thiers), reply, "When a country wishes to have
everything produced at home, there can be no freights either for exports or
imports. It is just as absurd to desire to have a mercantile marine under a
system of prohibition as it would be to have carts when there is nothing to
carry."
If you are told that, assuming protection to be unjust, everything has
been arranged on that footing; capital has been embarked; rights have been
acquired; and the system cannot be changed without suffering to individuals
and classes, reply, "All injustice is profitable to somebody (except,
perhaps, restriction, which in the long run benefits no one). To argue from
the derangement that the cessation of injustice may occasion to the man who
profits by it is as much as to say that a system of injustice, for no other
reason than that it has had a temporary existence, ought to exist for
ever."
