Our meeting will have originated the system of _drawbacks_, and it will be its eternal glory.
What branch of manufacturing can lose hereafter, when we have two so simple means of turning losses into gains--the _tariff_ and _drawbacks_.
The meeting is adjourned." Some supernatural vision must have shown me in a dream the coming appearance of the _bounty_ (who knows if I did not suggest the thought to M.Dupin ?), when some months ago I wrote the following words: "It seems evident to me that protection, without changing its nature or effects, might take the form of a direct tax levied by the State, and distributed in indemnifying bounties to privileged manufacturers." And after having compared protective duties with the bounty: "I frankly avow my preference for the latter system; it seems to me more just, more economical, and more truthful.

More just, because if society wishes to give gratuities to some of its members, all should contribute; more economical, because it would save much of the expense of collection, and do away with many obstacles; and, finally, more truthful, because the public could see the operation plainly, and would know what was done." Since the opportunity is so kindly offered us, let us study this _robbery by bounties_.

What is said of it will also apply to _robbery by tariff_, and as it is a little better disguised, the direct will enable us to understand the indirect, cheating.

Thus the mind proceeds from the simple to the complex.
But is there no simpler variety of robbery?
Certainly, there is _highway robbery_, and all it needs is to be legalized, or, as they say now-a-days, _organized_.
I once read the following in somebody's travels: "When we reached the Kingdom of A---- we found all industrial pursuits suffering.

Agriculture groaned, manufactures complained, commerce murmured, the navy growled, and the government did not know whom to listen to.