t it has been destroyed, or even diminished. The same holds true of
importations.

We will resume the hypothesis. America makes ten millions of hats, of
which the price was five dollars each. The foreigner invaded our
market in furnishing us with hats at three dollars. We say that
national labor will be not at all diminished. For it will have to
produce to the amount of thirty millions, in order to pay for ten
millions of hats at three dollars. And then there will remain to each
purchaser two dollars saved on each hat, or a total of twenty
millions, which will compensate for other enjoyments; that is to say,
for other work. So the total of labor remains what it was; and the
supplementary enjoyments, represented by twenty millions economized on
the hats, will form the net profit of the importations, or of free
trade.

No one need attempt to horrify us by a picture of the sufferings,
which, in this hypothesis, will accompany the displacement of labor.
For if prohibition had never existed, labor would have classed itself
in accordance with the law of exchange, and no displacement would have
taken place. If, on the contrary, prohibition has brought in an
artificial and unproductive kind of work, it is prohibition, and not
free trade, which is responsible for the inevitable displacement, in
the transition from wrong to right.

Unless, indeed, it should be contended that, because an abuse cannot
be destroyed without hurting those who profit by it, its existence for
a single moment is reason enough why it should endure forever.

CHAPTER XXI.

RAW MATERIAL.

It is said that the most advantageous commerce consists in the
exchange of manufactured goods for raw material, because this raw
material is a spur to _national labor_.

And then the conclusion is drawn, that the best custom-house
regulation would be that which should give the utmost possible
facility to the entry of _raw material_, and oppose the greatest
obstacles to articles which have received their first manipulation by
labor.

No sophism of political economy is more widely spread than the
foregoing. It supports not only the protectionists, but, much more,
and above all, the pretended liberalists. This is to be regretted; for
the worst which can happen to a good cause is not to be severely
attacked, but to be badly defended.

Commercial freedom will probably have the fate of all freedom; it will
not be introduced into our laws until after it has ta