stedness? And is it supposed that the public does not see
with disgust that this affected language blackens precisely those
pages for which it is compelled to pay highest? Affectation is truly
the malady of this age.

What! because comfort and peace are correlative things; because it has
pleased God to establish this beautiful harmony in the moral world;
you are not willing that we should admire and adore His providence,
and accept with gratitude laws which make justice the condition of
happiness. You wish peace only so far as it is destructive to comfort;
and liberty burdens you because it imposes no sacrifices on you. If
self-renunciation has so many claims for you, who prevents your
carrying it into private life? Society will be grateful to you for it,
for some one, at least, will receive the benefit of it; but to wish to
impose it on humanity as a principle is the height of absurdity, for
the abnegation of everything is the sacrifice of everything--it is
evil set up in theory.

But, thank Heaven, men may write and read a great deal of such talk,
without causing the world to refrain on that account from rendering
obedience to its motive-power, which is, whether they will or no,
_interest_. After all, it is singular enough to see sentiments of the
most sublime abnegation invoked in favor of plunder itself. Just see
to what this ostentatious disinterestedness tends. These men, so
poetically delicate that they do not wish for peace itself, if it is
founded on the base interest of men, put their hands in the pockets of
others, and, above all, of the poor; for what section of the tariff
protects the poor?

Well, gentlemen, dispose according to your own judgment of what
belongs to yourselves, but allow us also to dispose of the fruit of
the sweat of our brows, to avail ourselves of exchange at our own
pleasure. Talk away about self-renunciation, for that is beautiful;
but at the same time practice a little honesty.

CHAPTER XX.

HUMAN LABOR--NATIONAL LABOR.

To break machines, to reject foreign merchandise--are two acts
proceeding from the same doctrine.

We see men who clap their hands when a great invention is made known
to the world, who nevertheless adhere to the protective system. Such
men are highly inconsistent.

With what do they upbraid freedom of commerce? With getting foreigners
more skilful or better situated than ourselves to produce articles,
which, but for them, we should produce ourselves