ter in our day; and if so
many sincere reformers, so many earnest friends to public right, seek
to reach their end by _commercial legislation_, it is only because
they do not yet understand _commercial freedom_.

CHAPTER V.

OUR PRODUCTIONS ARE OVERLOADED WITH INTERNAL TAXES--

This is but a new wording of the Sophism before noticed. The
demand made is, that the foreign article should be taxed, in order to
neutralize the effects of the internal tax, which weighs down domestic
produce. It is still then but the question of equalizing the
facilities of production. We have but to say that the tax is an
artificial obstacle, which has exactly the same effect as a natural
obstacle, i.e. the increasing of the price. If this increase is so
great that there is more loss in producing the article in question at
home than in attracting it from foreign parts by the production of an
equivalent value of something else--_laissez faire_. Individual
interest will soon learn to choose the lesser of two evils. I might
refer the reader to the preceding demonstration for an answer to this
Sophism; but it is one which recurs so often, that it deserves a
special discussion.

I have said more than once, that I am opposing only the theory of the
protectionists, with the hope of discovering the source of their
errors. Were I disposed to enter into controversy with them, I would
say: Why direct your tariffs principally against England, a country
more overloaded with taxes than any in the world? Have I not a right
to look upon your argument as a mere pretext? But I am not of the
number of those who believe that prohibitionists are guided by
interest, and not by conviction. The doctrine of Protection is too
popular not to be sincere. If the majority could believe in freedom,
we would be free. Without doubt it is individual interest which weighs
us down with tariffs; but it acts upon conviction. "The will (said
Pascal) is one of the principal organs of belief." But belief does not
the less exist because it is rooted in the will and in the secret
inspirations of egotism.

We will return to the Sophism drawn from internal taxes.

The government may make either a good or a bad use of taxes; it makes
a good use of them when it renders to the public services equivalent
to the value received from them; it makes a bad use of them when it
expends this value, giving nothing in return. To say in the first case
that they place the country which p