CHAPTER X.
RECIPROCITY.
We have just seen that all which renders transportation difficult, acts in the same manner as protection; or, if the expression be preferred, that protection tends towards the same result as all obstacles to transportation.
A tariff may be truly spoken of as a swamp, a rut, a steep hill; in a word, an _obstacle_, whose effect is to augment the difference between the price of consumption and that of production.

It is equally incontestable that a swamp, a bog, &c., are veritable protective tariffs.
There are people (few in number, it is true, but such there are) who begin to understand that obstacles are not the less obstacles because they are artificially created, and that our well-being is more advanced by freedom of trade than by protection; precisely as a canal is more desirable than a sandy, hilly, and difficult road.
But they still say, this liberty ought to be reciprocal.

If we take off our taxes in favor of Canada, while Canada does not do the same towards us, it is evident that we are duped.

Let us, then, make _treaties of commerce_ upon the basis of a just reciprocity; let us yield where we are yielded to; let us make the _sacrifice_ of buying that we may obtain the advantage of selling.
Persons who reason thus, are (I am sorry to say), whether they know it or not, governed by the protectionist principle.

They are only a little more inconsistent than the pure protectionists, as these are more inconsistent than the absolute prohibitionists.
I will illustrate this by a fable: There were, it matters not where, two towns, N*w Y*rk and M*ntr**l, which, at great expense, had a road built, which connected them with each other.