Part 63

"There is no need. Here we have the system of restriction or prohibition in its simplest form. If it appear to you absurd when so put, it is because the two capacities of producer and consumer are in this case mixed up in the same individual."

"Let us pass on, therefore, to a more complicated example."

"With all my heart. Some time afterwards, Robinson having met with Friday, they united their labour in a common work. In the morning they hunted for six hours, and brought home four baskets of game. In the evening they worked in the garden for six hours, and obtained four baskets of vegetables.

"One day a canoe touched at the island. A good-looking foreigner landed, and was admitted to the table of our two recluses. He tasted and commended very much the produce of the garden, and before taking leave of his entertainers, spoke as follows:--

"'Generous islanders, I inhabit a country where game is much more plentiful than here, but where horticulture is quite unknown. It would be an easy matter to bring you every evening four baskets of game, if you would give me in exchange two baskets of vegetables.'

"At these words Robinson and Friday retired to consult, and the argument that passed is too interesting not to be reported in extenso.

"Friday: What do you think of it?

"Robinson: If we close with the proposal, we are ruined.

"F.: Are you sure of that? Let us consider.

"R.: The case is clear. Crushed by competition, our hunting as a branch of industry is annihilated.

"F.: What matters it, if we have the game?

"R.: Theory! it will no longer be the product of our labour.

"F.: I beg your pardon, sir; for in order to have game we must part with vegetables.

"R.: Then, what shall we gain?

"F.:. The four baskets of game cost us six hours' work. The foreigner gives us them in exchange for two baskets of vegetables, which cost us only three hours' work. This places three hours at our disposal.

"R.: Say, rather, which are substracted from our exertions. In this will consist our loss. Labour is wealth, and if we lose a fourth part of our time, we shall be less rich by a fourth.

"F.: You are greatly mistaken, my good friend. We shall have as much game, and the same quantity of vegetables, and three hours at our disposal into the bargain. This is progress, or there is no such thing in-the world.

"R.: You lose yourself in generalities! What should we make of these three hours?

"F.: We would do something else.

"R.: Ah! I understand you. You cannot come to particulars. Something else, something else--this is easily said.

"F.: We can fish, we can ornament our cottage, we can read the Bible.

"R.: Utopia! Is there any certainty that we should do either the one or the other?

"F.: Very well, if we have no wants to satisfy we can rest. Is repose nothing?

"R.: But while we repose we may die of hunger.

"F.: My dear friend, you have got into a vicious circle. I speak of a repose which will subtract nothing from our supply of game and vegetables. You always forget that by means of our foreign trade nine hours' labour will give us the same quantity of provisions that we obtain at present with twelve.

"R: It is very evident, Friday, that you have not been educated in Europe, and that you have never read the Moniteur Industriel. If you had, it would have taught you this: that all time saved is sheer loss. The important thing is not to eat or consume, but to work. All that we consume, if it is not the direct produce of our labour, goes for nothing. Do you want to know whether you are rich? Never consider the satisfactions you enjoy, but the labour you undergo. This is what the Moniteur Industriel would teach you. For myself, who have no pretensions to be a theorist, the only thing I look at is the loss of our hunting.

"F.: What a strange conglomeration of ideas! but...

"R.: I will have no buts. Moreover, there are political reasons for rejecting the interested offers of the perfidious foreigner.