you would
blame me when I admire and adore his decrees, and for accepting with
gratitude his laws, which make justice a requisite for happiness! You
will consent to have peace only when it clashes with your welfare, and
liberty is irksome if it imposes no sacrifices! What then prevents you,
if self-denial has so many charms, from exercising it as much as you
desire in your private actions? Society will be benefited by your so
doing, for some one must profit by your sacrifices. But it is the height
of absurdity to wish to impose such a principle upon mankind generally;
for the self-denial of all, is the sacrifice of all. This is evil
systematized into theory.

But, thanks be to Heaven! these declamations may be written and read,
and the world continues nevertheless to obey its great mover, its great
cause of action, which, spite of all denials, is _interest_.

It is singular enough, too, to hear sentiments of such sublime
self-abnegation quoted in support even of Spoliation; and yet to this
tends all this pompous show of disinterestedness! These men so
sensitively delicate, that they are determined not to enjoy even peace,
if it must be propped by the vile _interest_ of men, do not hesitate to
pick the pockets of other men, and above all of poor men. For what
tariff protects the poor? Gentlemen, we pray you, dispose as you please
of what belongs to yourselves, but let us entreat you to allow us to
use, or to exchange, according to our own fancy, the fruit of our own
labor, the sweat of our own brows. Declaim as you will about
self-sacrifice; that is all pretty enough; but we beg of you, do not at
the same time forget to be honest.

XX.

HUMAN LABOR--NATIONAL LABOR.

Destruction of machinery--prohibition of foreign goods. These are two
acts proceeding from the same doctrine.

We do meet with men who, while they rejoice over the revelation of any
great invention, favor nevertheless the protective policy; but such men
are very inconsistent.

What is the objection they adduce against free trade? That it causes us
to seek from foreign and more easy production, what would otherwise be
the result of home production. In a word, that it injures domestic
industry.

On the same principle, can it not be objected to machinery, that it
accomplishes through natural agents what would otherwise be the result
of manual labor, and that it is thus injurious to human labor?

The foreign laborer, enjoying greater faciliti