For instance, the question is to determine whether foreign purchases are useful or hurtful.

You answer, hurtful.

And why?
Because they render us _tributary_ to foreigners.
Truly here is a word, which begs the question at once.
How has this delusive figure of speech introduced itself into the rhetoric of monopolists?
Money is _withdrawn from the country_ to satisfy the rapacity of a victorious enemy: money is also _withdrawn from the country_ to pay for merchandise.

The analogy is established between the two cases, calculating only the point of resemblance and abstracting that by which they differ.
And yet it is certainly true, that the non-reimbursement in the first case, and the reimbursement freely agreed upon in the second, establishes between them so decided a difference, as to render it impossible to class them under the same category.

To be obliged, with a dagger at your throat, to give a hundred francs, or to give them willingly in order to obtain a desired object,--truly these are cases in which we can perceive little similarity.