And you compel me, a carpenter, to buy the workmanship of your dull hatchet! Consider France a laborer, obliged to live by his daily toil, and desiring, among other things, to purchase cloth.

There are two means of doing this.

The first is to card the wool and weave the cloth himself; the second is to manufacture clocks, or wines, or wall-paper, or something of the sort, and exchange them in Belgium for cloth.
The process which gives the larger result may be represented by the sharp hatchet; the other process by the dull one.
You will not deny that at the present day in France it is more difficult to manufacture cloth than to cultivate the vine--the former is the dull hatchet, the latter the sharp one--on the contrary, you make this greater difficulty the very reason why you recommend to us the worst of the two hatchets.
Now, then, be consistent, if you will not be just, and treat the poor carpenters as well as you treat yourself.

Make a law which shall read: "It is forbidden to use beams or shingles which have not been fashioned by dull hatchets." And you will immediately perceive the result.
Where we now strike an hundred blows with the ax, we shall be obliged to give three hundred.

What a powerful encouragement to industry! Apprentices, journeymen and masters, we should suffer no more.