Such are the circumstances under which I would allow upon any foreign article a duty, _not protecting_ but fiscal.
But the supposition that a nation, because it is subjected to heavier imposts than those of another neighboring nation, should protect itself by tariffs against the competition of its rival, is a Sophism, which it is now my purpose to attack.
I have said more than once, that I am opposing only the theory of the protectionists, with the hope of discovering the source of their errors.
Were I disposed to enter into controversy with them, I would say: Why direct your tariffs principally against England and Belgium, both countries more overloaded with taxes than any in the world?
Have I not a right to look upon your argument as a mere pretext?
But I am not of the number of those who believe that prohibitionists are guided by interest, and not by conviction.

The doctrine of Protection is too popular not to be sincere.

If the majority could believe in freedom, we would be free.

Without doubt it is individual interest which weighs us down with tariffs; but it acts upon conviction.
The State may make either a good or a bad use of taxes; it makes a good use of them when it renders to the public services equivalent to the value received from them; it makes a bad use of them when it expends this value, giving nothing in return.
To say in the first case that they place the country which pays them in more disadvantageous conditions for production, than the country which is free from them, is a Sophism.

We pay, it is true, twenty millions for the administration of justice, and the maintenance of the police, but we have justice and the police; we have the security which they give, the time which they save for us; and it is most probable that production is neither more easy nor more active among nations, where (if there be such) each individual takes the administration of justice into his own hands.