y opposed to your own
practice and the principle which guides your policy.

"Do you tell us, that if we gain by this protection, France will not
gain, because the consumer must pay the price of it?

"We answer you:

"You have no longer any right to cite the interest of the consumer. For
whenever this has been found to compete with that of the producer, you
have invariably sacrificed the first. You have done this to _encourage
labor_, to _increase the demand for labor_. The same reason should now
induce you to act in the same manner.

"You have yourselves already answered the objection. When you were told:
The consumer is interested in the free introduction of iron, coal, corn,
wheat, cloths, etc., your answer was: Yes, but the producer is
interested in their exclusion. Thus, also, if the consumer is interested
in the admission of light, we, the producers, pray for its
interdiction.

"You have also said, the producer and the consumer are one. If the
manufacturer gains by protection, he will cause the agriculturist to
gain also; if agriculture prospers, it opens a market for manufactured
goods. Thus we, if you confer upon us the monopoly of furnishing light
during the day, will as a first consequence buy large quantities of
tallow, coals, oil, resin, wax, alcohol, silver, iron, bronze, crystal,
for the supply of our business; and then we and our numerous contractors
having become rich, our consumption will be great, and will become a
means of contributing to the comfort and competency of the workers in
every branch of national labor.

"Will you say that the light of the sun is a gratuitous gift, and that
to repulse gratuitous gifts, is to repulse riches under pretence of
encouraging the means of obtaining them?

"Take care,--you carry the death-blow to your own policy. Remember that
hitherto you have always repulsed foreign produce, _because_ it was an
approach to a gratuitous gift, and _the more in proportion_ as this
approach was more close. You have, in obeying the wishes of other
monopolists, acted only from a _half-motive_; to grant our petition
there is a much _fuller inducement_. To repulse us, precisely for the
reason that our case is a more complete one than any which have preceded
it, would be to lay down the following equation: + x + =-; in other
words, it would be to accumulate absurdity upon absurdity.

"Labor and Nature concur in different proportions, according to country
and climate, in every art