NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE.

Among the arguments which are considered of weight in favor of the
restriction system, we must not forget that drawn from national
independence.

"What shall we do in case of war," say they, "if we have placed
ourselves at the mercy of Great Britain for iron and coal?"

English monopolists did not fail on their side to exclaim, when the
corn-laws were repealed, "What will become of Great Britain in time of
war if she depends on the United States for food?"

One thing they fail to observe: it is that this sort of dependence,
which results from exchange, from commercial operations, is a
_reciprocal_ dependence. We cannot depend on the foreigner unless the
foreigner depends on us. This is the very essence of _society_. We do
not place ourselves in a state of independence by breaking natural
relations, but in a state of isolation.

Remark also: we isolate ourselves in the anticipation of war; but the
very act of isolation is the commencement of war. It renders it more
easy, less burdensome, therefore less unpopular. Let nations become
permanent recipient customers each of the other, let the interruption
of their relations inflict upon them the double suffering of privation
and surfeit, and they will no longer require the powerful navies
which ruin them, the great armies which crush them; the peace of the
world will no longer be compromised by the caprice of a Napoleon or of
a Bismarck, and war will disappear through lack of aliment, resources,
motive, pretext, and popular sympathy.

We know well that we shall be reproached (in the cant of the day) for
proposing interest, vile and prosaic interest, as a foundation for the
fraternity of nations. It would be preferred that it should have its
foundation in charity, in love, even in self-renunciation, and that,
demolishing the material comfort of man, it should have the merit of a
generous sacrifice.

When shall we have done with such puerile talk? When shall we banish
charlatanry from science? When shall we cease to manifest this
disgusting contradiction between our writings and our conduct? We hoot
at and spit upon _interest_, that is to say, the useful, the right
(for to say that all nations are interested in a thing, is to say that
that thing is good in itself), as if interest were not the necessary,
eternal, indestructible instrument to which Providence has intrusted
human perfectibility. Would not one suppose us all angels of
disintere