ts future growth to smother Protection, at once with Fourierism, Saint
Simonism, Commonism, and the various other schools whose object is to
exclude the law of COMPETITION from the government of the world.
Competition, no doubt, considering man as producer, must often interfere
with his individual and _immediate_ interests. But if we consider the
great object of all labor, the universal good, in a word, _Consumption_,
we cannot fail to find that Competition is to the moral world what the
law of equilibrium is to the material one. It is the foundation of true
Commonism, of true Socialism, of the equality of comforts and condition,
so much sought after in our day; and if so many sincere reformers, so
many earnest friends to the public rights, seek to reach their end by
commercial _legislation_, it is only because they do not yet understand
_commercial freedom_.

V.

OUR PRODUCTIONS ARE OVERLOADED WITH TAXES.

This is but a new wording of the last Sophism. The demand made is, that
the foreign article should be taxed, in order to neutralize the effects
of the tax, which weighs down national produce. It is still then but the
question of equalizing the facilities of production. We have but to say
that the tax is an artificial obstacle, which has exactly the same
effect as a natural obstacle, i.e. the increasing of the price. If this
increase is so great that there is more loss in producing the article in
question than in attracting it from foreign parts by the production of
an equivalent value, let it alone. Individual interest will soon learn
to choose the lesser of two evils. I might refer the reader to the
preceding demonstration for an answer to this Sophism; but it is one
which recurs so often in the complaints and the petitions, I had almost
said the demands, of the protectionist school, that it deserves a
special discussion.

If the tax in question should be one of a special kind, directed against
fixed articles of production, I agree that it is perfectly reasonable
that foreign produce should be subjected to it. For instance, it would
be absurd to free foreign salt from impost duty; not that in an
economical point of view France would lose any thing by it; on the
contrary, whatever may be said, principles are invariable, and France
would gain by it, as she must always gain by avoiding an obstacle
whether natural or artificial. But here the obstacle has been raised
with a fiscal object. It is necessary that