Part 65

"Not necessarily. To have it, some one must make it, that is certain; but it is not at all necessary that the same person or the same country which consumes it should also produce it. You have not made that stuff which clothes you so well. France does not produce the coffee on which our citizens breakfast."

"But I buy my cloth, and France her coffee."

"Exactly so; and with what?"

"With money."

"But neither you nor France produce the material of money."

"We buy it."

"With what?"

"With our products, which are sent to Peru."

"It is then, in fact, your labour which you exchange for cloth, and French labour which is exchanged for coffee."

"Undoubtedly."

"It is not absolutely necessary, therefore, to manufacture what you consume."

"No; if we manufacture something else which we give in exchange."

"In other words, France has two means of procuring a given quantity of cloth. The first is to make it; the second is to make something else, and to exchange this something else with the foreigner for cloth. Of these two means, which is the best?"

"I don't very well know."

"Is it not that which, for a determinate amount of labour, obtains the greater quantity of cloth?"

"It seems so."

"And which is best for a nation, to have the choice between these two means, or that the law should prohibit one of them, on the chance of stumbling on the better of the two?"

"It appears to me that it is better for the nation to have the choice, inasmuch as in such matters it invariably chooses right."

"The law, which prohibits the importation of foreign cloth, decides, then, that if France wishes to have cloth, she must make it in kind, and that she is prohibited from making the something else with which she could purchase foreign cloth."

"True."

"And as the law obliges us to make the cloth, and forbids our making the something else, precisely because that something else would exact less labour (but for which reason the law would not interfere with it) the law virtually decrees that for a determinate amount of labour, France shall only have one yard of cloth, when for the same amount of labour she might have two yards, by applying that labour to something else!" "But the question recurs, 'What else?"

"And my question recurs, 'What does it signify?' Having the choice, she will only make the something else to such an extent as there may be a demand for it."

"That is possible; but I cannot divest myself of the idea that the foreigner will send us his cloth, and not take from us the something else, in which case we would be entrapped. At all events, this is the objection even from your own point of view. You allow that France could make this something else to exchange for cloth, with a less expenditure of labour than if she had made the cloth itself?"

"Undoubtedly."

"There would, then, be a certain amount of her labour rendered inert?"

"Yes; but without her being less well provided with clothes, a little circumstance which makes all the difference. Robinson lost sight of this, and our protectionists either do not see it, or pretend not to see it. The shipwrecked plank rendered fifteen days of Robinson's labour inert, in as far as that labour was applied to making a plank, but it did not deprive him of it. Discriminate, then, between these two kinds of diminished labour--the diminution which has for effect privation, and that which has for its cause satisfaction. These two things are very different, and if you mix them up, you reason as Robinson did. In the most complicated, as in the most simple cases, the sophism consists in this: Judging of the utility of labour by its duration and intensity, and not by its results; which gives rise to this economic policy: To reduce the results of labour for the purpose of augmenting its duration and intensity." *

* See ch. ii. and iii. of Sophimes, first series; and Harmonies Économiques, ch. vi.

XV. THE LITTLE ARSENAL OF THE FREE-TRADER.