If you can prove that the increase of price resulting from protection, falls upon the foreign producer, I grant something specious in your argument.

But if it be true that the French people paid the tax before the passing of the protective duty, and afterwards that it has paid not only the tax, but the protective duty also, truly I do not perceive wherein it has profited.
But I go much further, and maintain that the more oppressive our taxes are, the more anxiously ought we to open our ports and frontiers to foreign nations, less burthened than ourselves.

And why?
In order that we may share with them, as much as possible, the burthen which we bear.
Is it not an incontestable maxim in political economy, that taxes must, in the end, fall upon the consumer?
The greater then our commerce, the greater the portion which will be reimbursed to us, of taxes incorporated in the produce, which we will have sold to foreign consumers; whilst we, on our part, will have made to them only a lesser reimbursement, because (according to our hypothesis) their produce is less taxed than ours.
Again, finally, has it ever occurred to you to ask yourself, whether these heavy taxes which you adduce as a reason for keeping up the prohibitive system, may not be the result of this very system itself?
To what purpose would be our great standing armies, and our powerful navies, if commerce were free?
VI.
BALANCE OF TRADE.
Our adversaries have adopted a system of tactics, which embarrasses us not a little.

Do we prove our doctrine?
They admit the truth of it in the most respectful manner.

Do we attack their principles?
They abandon them with the best possible grace.