Economic Sophisms/235

223 compensating duty because I have finer clothes, stronger horses, and better ploughs than the hard-working peasant of Russia.'

"4th, If the tax does not repay you for what it costs, don't vote it. "5th, In short, after having voted the tax, do you wish to get free from it? Try to frame a law which will throw it on the foreigner. But your tariff makes your share of it fall upon me, who have already my own burden to bear." If any one says, "For the Russians free-trade is necessary to enable them to exchange their products with advantage" (Opinion de M. Thiers dans les Bureaux, April 1847),

Reply: "Liberty is necessary everywhere, and for the same reason."

If you are told, "Each country has its wants, and we must be guided by that in what we do " (M. Thiers),

Reply: "Each country acts thus of its own accord, if you don't throw obstacles in the way."

If they tell you, "We have no sheet-iron, and we must allow it to be imported " (M. Thiers),

Reply: "Many thanks."

If you are told, "We have no freights for our merchant shipping. The want of return cargoes prevents our shipping from competing with foreigners " (M. Thiers),

Reply: "When a country wishes to have everything produced at home, there can be no freights either for exports or imports. It is just as absurd to desire to have a mercantile marine under a system of prohibition, as it would be to have carts when there is nothing to carry."

If you are told that assuming protection to be unjust, everything has been arranged on that footing; capital has been embarked; rights have been acquired; and the system cannot be changed without suffering to individuals and classes,

Reply: "All injustice is profitable to somebody (except, perhaps, restriction, which in the long run benefits no one). To argue from the derangement which the cessation of injustice may occasion to the man who profits by it, is as much as to say that a system of injustice, for no other reason than that it has had a temporary existence, ought to exist for ever."