It is still then but the question of equalizing the facilities of production.

We have but to say that the tax is an artificial obstacle, which has exactly the same effect as a natural obstacle, i.e.the increasing of the price.

If this increase is so great that there is more loss in producing the article in question than in attracting it from foreign parts by the production of an equivalent value, let it alone.

Individual interest will soon learn to choose the lesser of two evils.

I might refer the reader to the preceding demonstration for an answer to this Sophism; but it is one which recurs so often in the complaints and the petitions, I had almost said the demands, of the protectionist school, that it deserves a special discussion.
If the tax in question should be one of a special kind, directed against fixed articles of production, I agree that it is perfectly reasonable that foreign produce should be subjected to it.