ll the natural advantages which are combined with these labors;
and it is evidently the most favored countries which can incorporate
into a given labor the largest proportion of these _natural advantages_.
Their produce representing less labor, receives less recompense; in
other words, is _cheaper_. If then all the liberality of Nature results
in cheapness, it is evidently not the producing, but the consuming
country, which profits by her benefits.

Hence we may see the enormous absurdity of the consuming country, which
rejects produce precisely because it is cheap. It is as though we should
say: "We will have nothing of that which Nature gives you. You ask of
us an effort equal to two, in order to furnish ourselves with articles
only attainable at home by an effort equal to four. You can do it
because with you Nature does half the work. But we will have nothing to
do with it; we will wait till your climate, becoming more inclement,
forces you to ask of us a labor equal to four, and then we can treat
with you _upon an equal footing_."

A is a favored country; B is maltreated by Nature. Mutual traffic then
is advantageous to both, but principally to B, because the exchange is
not between _utility_ and _utility_, but between _value_ and _value_.
Now A furnishes a greater _utility in a similar value_, because the
_utility_ of any article includes at once what Nature and what labor
have done; whereas the _value_ of it only corresponds to the portion
accomplished by labor. B then makes an entirely advantageous bargain;
for by simply paying the producer from A for his labor, it receives in
return not only the results of that labor, but in addition there is
thrown in whatever may have accrued from the superior bounty of Nature.

We will lay down the general rule.

Traffic is an exchange of _values_; and as value is reduced by
competition to the simple representation of labor, traffic is the
exchange of equal labors. Whatever Nature has done towards the
production of the articles exchanged, is given on both sides
_gratuitously_; from whence it necessarily follows, that the most
advantageous commerce is transacted with those countries which are the
most favored by Nature.

* * * * *

The theory of which I have attempted, in this chapter, to trace the
outlines, would require great developments. But perhaps the attentive
reader will have perceived in it the fruitful seed which is destined in
i