Economic Sophisms/69



Total, 35 francs, representing cost price at Paris.

Now, I ask, would we not have attained the same result by lowering the tariff by 5 francs? We should then have—

Total, 35 francs, representing cost price at Paris.

And by this process we should have saved the 200 millions which the raillway cost, plus the expense of Customhouse surveillance, for this last would be reduced in proportion to the diminished encouragement held out to smuggling.

But it will be said that the duty is necessary to protect Parisian industry. Be it so; but then you destroy the effect of your railway.

For, if you persist in desiring that the Belgian product should cost at Paris 40 francs, you must raise your duty to 15 francs, and then you have—

Total, 40 francs, being the equalized price.

Then, I venture to ask, what, under such circumstances, is the good of your railway?

In sober earnestness, let me ask, is it not humiliating that the nineteenth century should make itself a laughing-stock to future ages by such puerilities, practised with such imperturbable gravity? To be the dupe of other people is not very pleasant, but to employ a vast representative apparatus in order to dupe, and double dupe, ourselves—and that, too, in an affair of arithmetic—should surely humble the pride of this age of enlightenment.