The portion of Nature is always gratuitous; that of labor alone regulates the price.
"If a Lisbon orange can be sold at one hundredth the price of a New York one, it is because a natural and gratuitous heat does for the one, what the other only obtains from an artificial and consequently expensive one.
"When, therefore, we purchase a Portuguese orange, we may say that we obtain it 99/100 gratuitously and 1/100 by the right of labor; in other words, at a mere song compared to those of New York.
"Now it is precisely on account of this 99/100 _gratuity_ (excuse the phrase) that you argue in favor of exclusion.

How, you say, could national labor sustain the competition of foreign labor, when the first has every thing to do, and the last is rid of nearly all the trouble, the sun taking the rest of the business upon himself?
If then the 99/100 _gratuity_ can determine you to check competition, on what principle can the _entire gratuity_ be alleged as a reason for admitting it?
You are no logicians if, refusing the 99/100 gratuity as hurtful to human labor, you do not _a fortiori_, and with double zeal, reject the full gratuity.
"Again, when any article, as coal, iron, cheese, or cloth, comes to us from foreign countries with less labor than if we produced it ourselves, the difference in price is a _gratuitous gift_ conferred upon us; and the gift is more or less considerable, according as the difference is greater or less.

It is the quarter, the half, or the three-quarters of the value of the produce, in proportion as the foreign merchant requires the three-quarters, the half, or the quarter of the price.

It is as complete as possible when the producer offers, as the sun does with light, the whole, in free gift.

The question is, and we put it formally, whether you wish for the United States the benefit of gratuitous consumption, or the supposed advantages of laborious production.