icle of production. The portion of Nature is
always gratuitous; that of labor alone regulates the price.

"If a Lisbon orange can be sold at half the price of a Parisian one, it
is because a natural and gratuitous heat does for the one, what the
other only obtains from an artificial and consequently expensive one.

"When, therefore, we purchase a Portuguese orange, we may say that we
obtain it half gratuitously and half by the right of labor; in other
words, at _half price_ compared to those of Paris.

"Now it is precisely on account of this _demi-gratuity_ (excuse the
word) that you argue in favor of exclusion. How, you say, could national
labor sustain the competition of foreign labor, when the first has every
thing to do, and the last is rid of half the trouble, the sun taking the
rest of the business upon himself? If then the _demi-gratuity_ can
determine you to check competition, on what principle can the _entire
gratuity_ be alleged as a reason for admitting it? You are no logicians
if, refusing the demi-gratuity as hurtful to human labor, you do not _a
fortiori_, and with double zeal, reject the full gratuity.

"Again, when any article, as coal, iron, cheese, or cloth, comes to us
from foreign countries with less labor than if we produced it ourselves,
the difference in price is a _gratuitous gift_ conferred upon us; and
the gift is more or less considerable, according as the difference is
greater or less. It is the quarter, the half, or the three-quarters of
the value of the produce, in proportion as the foreign merchant requires
the three-quarters, the half, or the quarter of the price. It is as
complete as possible when the producer offers, as the sun does with
light, the whole in free gift. The question is, and we put it formally,
whether you wish for France the benefit of gratuitous consumption, or
the supposed advantages of laborious production. Choose, but be
consistent. And does it not argue the greatest inconsistency to check as
you do the importation of coal, iron, cheese, and goods of foreign
manufacture, merely because and even in proportion as their price
approaches _zero_, while at the same time you freely admit, and without
limitation, the light of the sun, whose price is during the whole day at
_zero_?"

VIII.

DISCRIMINATING DUTIES.

A poor laborer of Gironde had raised, with the greatest possible care
and attention, a nursery of vines, from which, after much labor, he at
last suc