What is good in detail--for instance: purchase rather than production, where purchase is more advantageous--is _bad_ in a society.

The political economy of individuals is not that of nations;" and other such stuff, _ejusdem farinae_.
And all this for what?
To prove to us, that we consumers, we are your property! that we belong to you, soul and body! that you have an exclusive right on our stomachs and our limbs! that it is your right to feed and dress us at your own price, however great your ignorance, your rapacity, or the inferiority of your work.
Truly, then, your system is one not founded upon practice; it is one of abstraction--of extortion.
XIV.
CONFLICTING PRINCIPLES.
There is one thing which embarrasses me not a little; and it is this: Sincere men, taking upon the subject of political economy the point of view of producers, have arrived at this double formula: "A government should dispose of consumers subject to its laws in favor of home industry." "It should subject to its laws foreign consumers, in order to dispose of them in favor of home industry." The first of the formulas is that of _Protection_; the second that of _Outlets_.
Both rest upon this proposition, called the _Balance of Trade_, that "A people is impoverished by importations and enriched by exportations." For if every foreign purchase is a _tribute paid_, a loss, nothing can be more natural than to restrain, even to prohibit importations.
And if every foreign sale is a _tribute received_, a gain, nothing more natural than to create _outlets_, even by force.
_Protective System; Colonial System._--These are only two aspects of the same theory.

To _prevent_ our citizens from buying from foreigners, and to _force_ foreigners to buy from our citizens.

Two consequences of one identical principle.
It is impossible not to perceive that according to this doctrine, if it be true, the welfare of a country depends upon _monopoly_ or domestic spoliation, and upon _conquest_ or foreign spoliation.
Let us take a glance into one of these huts, perched upon the side of our Pyrenean range.
The father of a family has received the little wages of his labor; but his half-naked children are shivering before a biting northern blast, beside a fireless hearth, and an empty table.

There is wool, and wood, and corn, on the other side of the mountain, but these are forbidden to them; for the other side of the mountain is not France.