It will be obliged to produce the equivalent of the hundred millions which go to pay for the ten millions of hats at ten francs, and then there remains to each buyer five francs, saved on the purchase of his hat, or, in total, fifty millions, which serve for the acquisition of other comforts, and the encouragement of other labor.
The mass of labor remains, then, what it was, and the additional comforts accruing from the fifty millions saved in the purchase of hats, are the net profit of importation or free trade.
It is no argument to try and alarm us by a picture of the sufferings which, in this hypothesis, would result from the displacement or change of labor.
For, if prohibition had never existed, labor would have classed itself in accordance with the laws of trade, and no displacement would have taken place.
If prohibition has led to an artificial and unproductive classification of labor, then it is prohibition, and not free trade, which is responsible for the inevitable displacement which must result in the transition from evil to good.
It is a rather singular argument to maintain that, because an abuse which has been permitted a temporary existence, cannot be corrected without wounding the interests of those who have profited by it, it ought, therefore, to claim perpetual duration.
XXI.
RAW MATERIAL.
It is said that no commerce is so advantageous as that in which manufactured articles are exchanged for raw material; because the latter furnishes aliment for _national labor_.
And it is hence concluded: That the best regulation of duties, would be to give the greatest possible facilities to the importation of raw material, and at the same time to check that of the finished article.
There is, in political economy, no more generally accredited Sophism than this.

It serves for argument not only to the protectionists, but also to the pretended free trade school; and it is in the latter capacity that its most mischievous tendencies are called into action.
For a good cause suffers much less in being attacked, than in being badly defended.
Commercial liberty must probably pass through the same ordeal as liberty in every other form.

It can only dictate laws, after having first taken thorough possession of men's minds.

If, then, it be true that a reform, to be firmly established, must be generally understood, it follows that nothing can so much retard it, as the misleading of public opinion.

And what more calculated to mislead opinion than writings, which, while they proclaim free trade, support the doctrines of monopoly?
It is some years since three great cities of France, viz., Lyons, Bordeaux, and Havre, combined in opposition to the restrictive system.
France, all Europe, looked anxiously and suspiciously at this apparent declaration in favor of free trade.