conquest, and heavy imposts are blessings;

Your theory will have the more success, because you will be able to base
it upon indisputable facts.

But we, for our part, cannot stop at a cause and its immediate effect;
for we know that this effect may in its turn become itself a cause. To
judge of a measure, it is necessary that we should follow it from step
to step, from result to result, until through the successive links of
the chain of events we arrive at the final effect. We must, in short,
_reason_.

But here we are assailed by clamorous exclamations: You are theorists,
metaphysicians, ideologists, utopians, men of maxims! and immediately
all the prejudices of the public are against us.

What then shall we do? We must invoke the patience and candor of the
reader, giving to our deductions, if we are capable of it, sufficient
clearness to throw forward at once, without disguise or palliation, the
true and the false, in order, once for all, to determine whether the
victory should be for Restriction or Free Trade.

I wish here to make a remark of some importance.

Some extracts from this volume have appeared in the "_Journal des
Economistes_."

In an article otherwise quite complimentary published by the Viscount de
Romanet (see _Moniteur Industriel_ of the 15th and 18th of May, 1845),
he intimates that I ask for the _suppression of custom houses_. Mr. de
Romanet is mistaken. I ask for the suppression of the _protective
policy_. We do not dispute the right of _government_ to impose taxes,
but would, if possible, dissuade _producers_ from taxing one another. It
was said by Napoleon that duties should never be a fiscal instrument,
but a means of protecting industry. We plead the contrary, and say, that
duties should never be made an instrument of reciprocal rapine; but that
they may be employed as a useful fiscal machine. I am so far from asking
for the suppression of duties, that I look upon them as the anchor on
which the future salvation of our finances will depend. I believe that
they may bring immense receipts into the treasury, and, to give my
entire and undisguised opinion, I am inclined, from the slow progress of
healthy, economical doctrines, and from the magnitude of our budget, to
hope more for the cause of commercial reform from the necessities of
the Treasury than from the force of an enlightened public opinion.

I.

ABUNDANCE--SCARCITY.

Which is the best for man or for society, abundanc