For my own part I do not believe in it, because I think that the price of labor, like everything else, is governed by the proportion existing between the supply and the demand.

Now I can perfectly well understand that _restriction_ will diminish the supply of produce, and consequently raise its price; but I do not as clearly see that it increases the demand for labor, thereby raising the rate of wages.

This is the less conceivable to me, because the sum of labor required depends upon the quantity of disposable capital; and protection, while it may change the direction of capital, and transfer it from one business to another, cannot increase it one penny.
This question, which is of the highest interest, we will examine elsewhere.

I return to the discussion of _absolute prices_, and declare that there is no absurdity which cannot be rendered specious by such reasoning as that which is commonly resorted to by protectionists.
Imagine an isolated nation possessing a given quantity of cash, and every year wantonly burning the half of its produce; I will undertake to prove by the protective theory that this nation will not be the less rich in consequence of such a procedure.

For, the result of the conflagration must be, that everything would double in price.