_artificial dearness_. But we do not say
that they always realize the hopes of those who initiate them. It is
certain that they inflict on the consumer all the evils of dearness. It
is not certain that the producer gets the profit. Why? Because if they
diminish the supply they also diminish the _demand_.

This proves that in the economical arrangement of this world there is a
moral force, a _vis medicatrix_, which in the long run causes inordinate
ambition to become the prey of a delusion.

Pray, notice, sir, that one of the elements of the prosperity of each
special branch of industry is the general prosperity. The rent of a
house is not merely in proportion to what it has cost, but also to the
number and means of the tenants. Do two houses which are precisely alike
necessarily rent for the same sum? Certainly not, if one is in Paris and
the other in Lower Brittany. Let us never speak of a price without
regarding the _conditions_, and let us understand that there is nothing
more futile than to try to build the prosperity of the parts on the ruin
of the whole. This is the attempt of the restrictive system.

Competition always has been, and always will be, disagreeable to those
who are affected by it. Thus we see that in all times and in all places
men try to get rid of it. We know, and you too, perhaps, a municipal
council where the resident merchants make a furious war on the foreign
ones. Their projectiles are import duties, fines, etc., etc.

Now, just think what would have become of Paris, for instance, if this
war had been carried on there with success.

Suppose that the first shoemaker who settled there had succeeded in
keeping out all others, and that the first tailor, the first mason, the
first printer, the first watchmaker, the first hair-dresser, the first
physician, the first baker, had been equally fortunate. Paris would
still be a village, with twelve or fifteen hundred inhabitants. But it
was not thus. Each one, except those whom you still keep away, came to
make money in this market, and that is precisely what has built it up.
It has been a long series of collisions for the enemies of competition,
and from one collision after another, Paris has become a city of a
million inhabitants. The general prosperity has gained by this,
doubtless, but have the shoemakers and tailors, individually, lost
anything by it? For you, this is the question. As competitors came, you
said: The price of boots will fail. Has