d to foreign nations, be taken
from our ordinary produce, calculated at fifty millions, the
thirty-five millions of merchandise which remain, not being sufficient
for the ordinary demand, will increase in price to the value of fifty
millions. The revenue of the country will thus represent fifteen
millions more in value.... There will then be an increase of fifteen
millions in the riches of the country; precisely the amount of the
importation of money."

This is droll enough! If a country has made in the course of the year
fifty millions of revenue in harvests and merchandise, she need but
sell one-quarter to foreign nations, in order to make herself
one-quarter richer than before! If then she sold the half, she would
increase her riches by one-half; and if the last hair of her wool, the
last grain of her wheat, were to be changed for cash, she would thus
raise her product to one hundred millions, where before it was but
fifty! A singular manner, certainly, of becoming rich. Unlimited price
produced by unlimited scarcity!

To sum up our judgment of the two systems, let us contemplate their
different effects when pushed to the most exaggerated extreme.

According to the protectionist just quoted, the French would be quite
as rich, that is to say, as well provided with everything, if they
had but a thousandth part of their annual produce, because this part
would then be worth a thousand times its natural value! So much for
looking at prices alone.

According to us, the French would be infinitely rich if their annual
produce were infinitely abundant, and consequently bearing no value at
all.

CHAPTER XII.

DOES PROTECTION RAISE THE RATE OF WAGES?

When we hear our beardless scribblers, romancers, reformers, our
perfumed magazine writers, stuffed with ices and champagne, as they
carefully place in their portfolios the sentimental scissorings which
fill the current literature of the day, or cause to be decorated with
gilded ornaments their tirades against the egotism and the
individualism of the age; when we hear them declaiming against social
abuses, and groaning over deficient wages and needy families; when we
see them raising their eyes to heaven and weeping over the
wretchedness of the laboring classes, while they never visit this
wretchedness unless it be to draw lucrative sketches of its scenes of
misery, we are tempted to say to them: The sight of you is enough to
make me sicken of attempting to teach