be _just_ that after a long day's
labor, when you have received your little wages, you should be permitted
to exchange them for the largest possible sum of comforts that you can
obtain voluntarily from any man whatsoever upon the face of the earth?

Let us examine if _injustice_ is not done to you, by the legislative
limitation of the persons from whom you are allowed to buy those things
which you need; as bread, meat, cotton and woolen cloths, etc.; thus
fixing (so to express myself) the artificial price which these articles
must bear.

Is it true that protection, which avowedly raises prices, and thus
injures you, raises proportionably the rate of wages?

On what does the rate of wages depend?

One of your own class has energetically said: "When two workmen run
after a master, wages fall; when two masters run after a workman, wages
rise."

Allow me, in more laconic phrase, to employ a more scientific, though
perhaps a less striking expression: "The rate of wages depends upon the
proportion which the supply of labor bears to the demand."

On what depends the _demand_ for labor?

On the quantity of disposable national capital. And the law which says,
"such or such an article shall be limited to home production and no
longer imported from foreign countries," can it in any degree increase
this capital? Not in the least. This law may withdraw it from one
course, and transfer it to another; but cannot increase it one penny.
Then it cannot increase the demand for labor.

While we point with pride to some prosperous manufacture, can we answer,
from whence comes the capital with which it is founded and maintained?
Has it fallen from the moon? or rather is it not drawn either from
agriculture, or navigation, or other industry? We here see why, since
the reign of protective tariffs, if we see more workmen in our mines and
our manufacturing towns, we find also fewer sailors in our ports, and
fewer laborers and vine-growers in our fields and upon our hillsides.

I could speak at great length upon this subject, but prefer illustrating
my thought by an example.

A countryman had twenty acres of land, with a capital of 10,000 francs.
He divided his land into four parts, and adopted for it the following
changes of crops: 1st, maize; 2d, wheat; 3d, clover; and 4th, rye. As he
needed for himself and family but a small portion of the grain, meat,
and dairy-produce of the farm, he sold the surplus and bought oil, flax,
wine, e