Whatever Nature has done towards the production of the articles exchanged, is given on both sides _gratuitously_; from whence it necessarily follows, that the most advantageous commerce is transacted with those countries which are the most favored by Nature.
* * * * * The theory of which I have attempted, in this chapter, to trace the outlines, would require great developments.

But perhaps the attentive reader will have perceived in it the fruitful seed which is destined in its future growth to smother Protection, at once with Fourierism, Saint Simonism, Commonism, and the various other schools whose object is to exclude the law of COMPETITION from the government of the world.
Competition, no doubt, considering man as producer, must often interfere with his individual and _immediate_ interests.

But if we consider the great object of all labor, the universal good, in a word, _Consumption_, we cannot fail to find that Competition is to the moral world what the law of equilibrium is to the material one.

It is the foundation of true Commonism, of true Socialism, of the equality of comforts and condition, so much sought after in our day; and if so many sincere reformers, so many earnest friends to the public rights, seek to reach their end by commercial _legislation_, it is only because they do not yet understand _commercial freedom_.
V.
OUR PRODUCTIONS ARE OVERLOADED WITH TAXES.
This is but a new wording of the last Sophism.

The demand made is, that the foreign article should be taxed, in order to neutralize the effects of the tax, which weighs down national produce.