royed
or even diminished.

The case is the same with regard to importations. I will resume my
hypothesis.

France, according to our supposition, manufactured ten millions of hats
at fifteen francs each. Let us now suppose that a foreign producer
brings them into our market at ten francs. I maintain that _national
labor_ is thus in no wise diminished. It will be obliged to produce the
equivalent of the hundred millions which go to pay for the ten millions
of hats at ten francs, and then there remains to each buyer five francs,
saved on the purchase of his hat, or, in total, fifty millions, which
serve for the acquisition of other comforts, and the encouragement of
other labor.

The mass of labor remains, then, what it was, and the additional
comforts accruing from the fifty millions saved in the purchase of hats,
are the net profit of importation or free trade.

It is no argument to try and alarm us by a picture of the sufferings
which, in this hypothesis, would result from the displacement or change
of labor.

For, if prohibition had never existed, labor would have classed itself
in accordance with the laws of trade, and no displacement would have
taken place.

If prohibition has led to an artificial and unproductive classification
of labor, then it is prohibition, and not free trade, which is
responsible for the inevitable displacement which must result in the
transition from evil to good.

It is a rather singular argument to maintain that, because an abuse
which has been permitted a temporary existence, cannot be corrected
without wounding the interests of those who have profited by it, it
ought, therefore, to claim perpetual duration.

XXI.

RAW MATERIAL.

It is said that no commerce is so advantageous as that in which
manufactured articles are exchanged for raw material; because the latter
furnishes aliment for _national labor_.

And it is hence concluded:

That the best regulation of duties, would be to give the greatest
possible facilities to the importation of raw material, and at the same
time to check that of the finished article.

There is, in political economy, no more generally accredited Sophism
than this. It serves for argument not only to the protectionists, but
also to the pretended free trade school; and it is in the latter
capacity that its most mischievous tendencies are called into action.
For a good cause suffers much less in being attacked, than in being
badly defended.