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 SUNDRY FREE TRADE ARGUMENTS. 
 
 By GEORGE BASIL DIXWELL 
 
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REYIEWS 
 
 OF 
 
 BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION, 
 
 OF 
 
 PROFESSOR SUMNER'S "ARGUMENT AGAINST 
 PROTECTIVE TAXES," 
 
 AND OF 
 
 PROFESSOR PERRY'S "FARMERS AND THE TARIFF." 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE BASIL DIXWELL. 
 
 [Repeinted feom the Bulletin of the National Wool 
 Association.] 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 
 SSniiJcrsits ilress. 
 1882. 
 

 ;Z>^ /cr^ 
 
f :.' H i V E E 
 
 REVIEW 
 
 OF 
 
 BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 The preface tells us that " the primary object of the League 
 is to educate public opinion, to convince the people of the 
 United States of the folly and wrongfulness of the protective 
 system." It quotes Senator Morrill as saying that " the year 
 1860 was a year of as large production and as much general 
 prosperity as any, perhaps, in our history " ; but these words 
 would probably bear a different aspect if read with the con- 
 text, as the condition of that year was very differently de- 
 scribed by H. C. Carey as follows : — 
 
 " What it is which may be positively affirmed in reference to that 
 fiuctuation of policy which struck down the great iron manufacture, at 
 the moment at which it had just begun to exhibit its power for good, 
 would seem to be this: that in the British monopoly system which 
 thereafter followed, we added something less than forty per cent, to our 
 population ; seventy, to our machinery for water transportation ; and five 
 hundred, to that required for transportation by land ; meanwhile ma- 
 terially diminishing the quantity of iron applied to works of production. 
 When you shall have carefully studied all this, you may perhaps find 
 yourself enabled to account for the facts, that in the closing year of 
 the free trade period, railroad property that had cost more than a 
 thousand millions could not have been sold for three hundred and 
 fifty ; that ships had become ruinous to nearly all their owners ; that 
 factories, furnaces, mills, mines, and workshops had been everywhere 
 deserted ; that hundreds of thousands of working men had been 
 everywhere seeking, and vainly seeking, to sell their labor; that 
 
4 REVIEW OP BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 
 
 immigration had heavily declined ; that pauperism had existed to an 
 extent wholly unknown since the great free trade crisis of 1842 ; that 
 bankruptcies had become general throughout the Union; that power 
 to contribute to the public revenue had greatly diminished ; and 
 finally, that the slave power had felt itself to have become so greatly 
 strengthened as to warrant it in entering on the Great Rebellion." 
 
 So much for one of the premises of the preface. Another 
 of the premises is a quotation from Miss Martineau made to 
 show that the superiority of Great Britain in manufactures 
 was not attained by means of protection, but that protection 
 had brought Great Britain to the verge of ruin in 1842. 
 
 But the superiority of Great Britain was gained long before 
 1842. The troubles at that time were the result of over- 
 trading, of over-pushing of the manufacturing industries. 
 Sir Robert Peel afterwards lost his head, and yielded to the 
 Free Trade League, who were waging war upon the land- 
 owners, and seeking to make the prosperity of England 
 hang, as Carlyle forcibly said, upon being able to manufac- 
 ture cottons a farthing a yard cheaper than other people. 
 The millocracy triumphed over the landowners, and, for- 
 tunately for England, the gold of California and Australia 
 brought about a general improvement in trade, which post- 
 poned the consequences for a long period. But they are 
 seen now in Ireland, and may soon be seen in England. 
 Meanwhile free trade has not prevented scenes in England 
 quite equal to those pictured by Miss Martineau. They 
 occurred from 1866 to 1870 ; but quotations would need- 
 lessly swell this article. 
 
 The preface adds, — 
 
 " Again, it is said there is need of diversifying our industries, as 
 though industry would not diversify itself sufficiently through the 
 diverse tastes and predilections of individuals, — as though it was 
 necessary to supplement the work of the Creator in this behalf by 
 human enactments founded upon reciprocal rapine." 
 
 The " work of the Creator " and " reciprocal rapine " are 
 good rhetoric : they are not logic. They take for granted the 
 question Avhich is to be proved. The pretty alliteration 
 
REVIEW OP BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 5 
 
 might delight a doctrinaire : it would produce no effect 
 upon the masculine judgment of a Napoleon, against whom 
 Bastiat modestly puts himself. 
 
 We come now to Chapter I., entitled, "Abundance, — 
 Scarcity." 
 
 Throughout this chapter M. Bastiat supposes that abun- 
 dance and cheapness are necessarily coexistent. He does not 
 know, or he does not appear to know, that a low price is 
 perfectly compatible with great scarcity ; that abundance 
 exists only where a large supply is co-existent with a large 
 effective demand ; that it is in vain to offer things for a little 
 money to one who has no money, and no work by which to 
 earn money. At the end he says : — 
 
 " But it is answered, if we are inundated with foreign goods and 
 
 produce, our coin will leave the country Well, and what 
 
 matters that ? Man is not fed with coin. He does not dress in gold, 
 nor warm himself with silver. What difference does it make whether 
 there be more or less coin in the country, provided there be more 
 bread in the cupboard, more meat in the larder, more clothing in the 
 \[)ress, and more wood in the cellar ? " 
 
 Yes ! provided ; but how would it be provided there was 
 much less of all these things ? 
 
 Did not M. Bastiat know that the very fact of the coin 
 leaving the country proved that the home industries were 
 not adequate to pay for the importations, and that these 
 must therefore cease as soon as the coin was exhausted ? 
 A country has perchance four thousand millions of mechani- 
 cal and manufactured products, the result of its own industry. 
 It hankers after cheapness, and opens its ports. It is deluged. 
 It gets products at first more cheaply. But the industries 
 in which it has an advantage furnish only, OR can be taken 
 only to the extent of, one thousand millions. When its 
 treasure is gone, it must satisfy itself with one thousand 
 millions. These it may or may not thereafter get cheaply. 
 Probably it will get them very dearly by reason of the low 
 price at which it will have to sell what previously, with a 
 fully employed population, it could use itself. But whether 
 
6 REYIEW OP BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 it gets its small pittance cheaply or clearly, it must go without 
 the other three thousand millions. This is what it will get 
 for mistaking cheapness for abundance. 
 Bastiat concludes as follows : — 
 
 " To restrictive laws I offer this dilemma, — Either you allow that 
 you produce scarcity, or you do not allow it. If you allow it, you 
 confess at once that your end is to injure the people as much as 
 possible. If you do not allow it, then you deny your power to dim- 
 inish the supply, to raise the price, and consequently you deny having 
 favored the producer. You are either injurious or inefficient. You 
 can never be useful." 
 
 M. Bastiat evidently thought he had used brilliant logic. 
 But restrictive laws have for their object to produce abun- 
 dance, and they effect their object : if they raise the price, 
 they increase in a much greater degree the effective demand, 
 — the ability to pay the price. The limitation of the for- 
 eign market makes it simply impossible to employ the whole 
 working force of the United States upon those industries 
 in which it has a decided advantage. The rest must be 
 employed upon fields, less advantageous perhaps, but infin- 
 itely more advantageous than living in the poorhouse or 
 helping somebody do what he can perfectly well do alone. 
 
 Napoleon hit the mark when he said that " if an empire 
 were made of adamant, the economists would grind it to 
 powder." 
 
 Bastiat desires the consumer to have everything offered to 
 him at a cheap rate ; he is entirely indifferent about his 
 having or not having the means of buying. In fact, the 
 consumer of the free trader was described by Homer, under 
 the name of Tantalus : — 
 
 " Then Tantalus along the Stygian bounds ; 
 Pours out deep groans ; with groans all hell resounds. 
 From circling floods in vain refreshment craves, 
 And pines with thirst amidst a sea of waves ; 
 "When to the water he his lip applies, 
 Back from his lip the treacherous water flies. 
 
REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 7 
 
 Above, beneath, around his hapless head, 
 
 Trees of all kinds delicious fruitage spread ; 
 
 There figs, sky -dyed, a purple hue disclose ; 
 
 Green looks the olive, the pomegranate glows ; 
 
 There dangling pears exalted scents unfold. 
 
 And yellow apples ripen into gold. 
 
 The fruit he strives to seize ; but blasts arise, 
 
 Toss it on high, and whirl it to the skies." — Pope^s Odyssey. 
 
 For nineteen twentieths, nay the whole of the commu- 
 nity, production is the condition precedent of consumption. 
 That which a nation can consume in a year is its annual 
 product. Strike to the earth a third part of its industries, and 
 you by the very act stril^e off a third of the average indi- 
 vidual income. The economist who is not aware of these 
 things has studied to little purpose either Adam Smith or 
 J. B. Say : he has gathered in their chaff, and left the wheat 
 untouched. Abundance is impossible to the man of the 
 empty purse. 
 
 After the Bastiat fashion, I will offer a dilemma to the 
 free-traders. Either they know the above, or they do not 
 know it. If they know it, they must cease preaching free- 
 trade ; if they do not know it, they should come to the 
 people of the United States to learn, but not to teach, politi- 
 cal economy. 
 
 Chapter II. is entitled " Obstacle — Cause." 
 In this chapter Bastiat misses entirely the perception of 
 the protectionist doctrine, which is not that wants are riches, 
 or that labor is riches, but that the ability to satisfy wants 
 is riches. The gross annual product of the nation being A, 
 will not be diminished by the introduction of machinery. It 
 will be diminished by substituting a foreign for a domestic 
 product, unless the foreign product is so much cheaper as to 
 immensely increase consumption in spite of the diminished 
 means of purchase, and unless also the relations of the two 
 nations financially are such that the imports will be paid 
 for by exports : and even then the new arrangement leaves 
 the country less independent ; withdraws from it the possi- 
 
8 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 
 
 bility — nay, probability — of afterwards reducing the cost by 
 increased skill and by invention ; lessens the diversification 
 of industries ; and takes from the nation the incidental advan- 
 tages which often spring from the stimulating effect of one 
 industry upon others. Who can measure the effect in the 
 United States of the introduction of the cotton manufacture 
 upon the other industries in which machinery assists labor ? 
 If we had never had the cotton manufacture, it is not likely 
 that even our agriculture would have reached anything like 
 its present efficiency ; and many other arts would probably 
 not have been acquired at all up to the present day. 
 
 In this chapter Bastiat says, with italics, that " labor is 
 never without employment.^'' This is flying in the face of facts 
 with a vengeance. What can be the value of the method of 
 reasoning which conducts a clever man to such a conclusion 
 in spite of his eyes and ears? 
 
 Chapter III. is entitled " Effort — Result." 
 
 In this chapter Bastiat quotes a number of French legis- 
 lators ; and if he quotes them correctly, the reasons fhey 
 gave for their votes or measures were not very wise, and 
 furnished an opportunity for an easy victory. But it often 
 happens that practical men are not introspective, not accus- 
 tomed to put into words the real reasons which underlie their 
 actions. When called upon to do so, they fumble about in 
 their minds, and end in producing, not their real reason, but 
 some very inadequate substitute of it. A " smart " writer 
 like M. Bastiat at once falls upon their alleged reasons, 
 demolishes them, and concludes that their authors were 
 fools, when very likely they w^ere in reality far wiser than 
 he who felt himself entitled to sit in judgment. It may well 
 be, taking all things into consideration, that the opulence of 
 France, altogether, is increased rather than diminished by 
 herself producing iron at sixteen francs which she could buy 
 of England at eight : her safety and independence are cer- 
 tainly promoted. 
 
 Chapter IV. is entitled " Equalizing of the Facilities of 
 Production." 
 
REVIEW OP BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 9 
 
 M. Bastiat first quarrels with the phrase, which has not 
 certainly mathematical exactitude, but which can easily 
 enough be understood by any one whose object is to get at 
 ideas, and not to triumph over words. It means that where 
 one nation has an advantage over another as to cheapness of 
 production^ — such as Great Britain has over the United 
 States by reason of cheaper labor, not yet compensated by 
 greater skill upon our part, — she can beat down and annihi- 
 late our efforts to help ourselves and to acquire greater skill. 
 She has been prevented from doing this by our protective 
 duties ; and in many articles we have already acquired a 
 skill sufficient to give us here at home the articles, even at a 
 cheaper monied price than we could import them. In some 
 we have not succeeded as yet so well ; and in some we prob- 
 ably never shall, so long as we strive to keep up among us 
 that higher rate of real wages which is our chief hope for the 
 future. But the higher price will be much more than com- 
 pensated to the nation by the double production provoked by 
 a home exchange, as against the single production provoked 
 by a foreign exchange ; as also by our greater security both 
 in peace and in war, and also by the incidental stimulus 
 which one industry gives to others. 
 
 Bastiat says that in this case, as in all, " the protectionists 
 favor the producer, while the poor consumer seems entirely to 
 have escaped their attention." He seems to forget that nearly 
 all of the poor consumers are consumers only in consequence 
 of their being able to produce ; and that those few who do 
 not produce themselves are dependent upon the profits of 
 productive instruments, which would cease to yield a profit 
 if the producing consumers could not produce, and therefore 
 could not consume. If the consumers' means of buying 
 were rained down miraculously from the sky, the Bastiat 
 philosophy might be excellent ; but as long as their means of 
 buying are entirely dependent upon their first producing, it 
 would seem that the individual should be considered in both 
 relations. 
 
 Bastiat contends, first, that equalizing the facilities of pro- 
 duction is to attack the foundations of all trade. 
 
 2 
 
10 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 
 
 To attempt to equalize all facilities — say, rather, to counter 
 balance all advantages — might be open to his objection. But 
 the American protectionist, for whose conversion the volume 
 under review was published, does not propose to compensate 
 great differences growing out of soil and climate. He does 
 not propose to grow pineapples under glass at ten times the 
 cost of importation, nor to do any other of the like absurdities 
 imagined by Bastiat. What he does propose is, to balance 
 the altogether artificial advantages arising out of accidental 
 superiority in skill until we can ourselves acquire the like 
 skill ; to balance the difference arising out of our dearer 
 labor and capital ; and to protect our industries from the 
 mischievous attacks in which products are sold under cost 
 for the very object of destroying competitors. We have full 
 faith that the competition of fifty millions of people will suf- 
 fice to bring as low prices and as much skill as are possible 
 under the circumstances ; and that the result will be that we 
 shall produce everything which our climate and soil permit 
 at considerably less sacrifice of labor and abstinence than 
 the same things cost when brought from abroad. 
 
 M. Bastiat says, second, that it is not true that the labor 
 of one country can be crushed by the competition of more 
 favored climates. 
 
 But it is quite true that domestic arts and manufactures, 
 which are most important to possess, can be crushed by the 
 competition of countries having cheaper labor and equal or 
 greater skill. If he meant his No. 2 to assert or insinuate 
 the contrary, the hardihood of the assertion or insinuation 
 would hardly require an answer. Deductive reasoning shows 
 that it can, and history shows that it does. 
 
 He says, third, that protective duties cannot equalize the 
 facilities of production ; fourth, that freedom of trade equal- 
 izes these conditions as much as possible ; and, fifth, that 
 the countries which are the least favored by nature are those 
 which profit most by freedom of trade. 
 
 In all this he chooses to misunderstand what is meant by 
 equalizing the facilities of production. This is simple trifling. 
 Next he exemplifies his position by supposing a case of Pari- 
 
REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 11 
 
 sian speculators producing oranges at ten times the cost of 
 importing tliem from Portugal, and being protected by a duty 
 of nine hundred per cent. This is also trifling : it has noth- 
 ing to do whatever with any actual question as to protection. 
 Then follow several excellent paragraphs, showing how any 
 improvement in production spreads itself to the advantage of 
 the whole community, and showing how natural advantages, 
 and also, finally, the advantages arising from inventions, come 
 to be enjoyed by consumers gratis, they paying only the 
 necessary wages of labor and abstinence. But after all those 
 excellent and really eloquent paragraphs comes this : — 
 
 " Hence we see the enormous absurdity of the consuming country, 
 which rejects produce precisely because it is cheap. It is as though 
 we should say, ' We will have nothing of that which Nature gives you. 
 You ask of us an effort equal to two, in order to famish ourselves with 
 articles only attainable at home by an effort equal to four. You can 
 do it because with you Nature does half the work. But we will have 
 nothing to do Avith it; we will wait till your climate, becoming more 
 inclement, forces you to ask of us a labor equal to four, and then we 
 can treat with you vpon an equal footing J " 
 
 This is one of Bastiat's extreme cases, but under certain 
 circumstances it would not be altogether so absurd as he ap- 
 pears to imagine, e. g. : — 
 
 The products in which the United States have an advantage 
 are agricultural. They can produce enough for themselves 
 and as much more. Call the possible product 2 A. Suppose 
 that what they cannot produce except at a double effort are 
 mechanical and manufactured products. Call these M. There 
 is a foreign demand for |- A. Under free trade there can be 
 produced and imported 1|- A ; M imported being equal to 
 |- A ; and the country will have for consumption A + M. 
 Now remove one half of the population from agriculture to 
 the mechanical and manufacturing arts. The half who are 
 left can still produce 1 A, or enough agricultural products 
 for the whole population ; and the other half can produce M 
 by a double effort. There will then be for consumption 
 A -{- M, notwithstanding the double effort. But suppose 
 
12 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 the required effort not double, but 1|^. The product will 
 then be A + |- M. The whole population, both agricultural 
 and mechanical and manufacturing, will then have 50 per cent 
 more of M under protection than under free trade, even if the 
 effort necessary be 50 per cent greater to produce M. It the 
 effort (measured by labor and abstinence) be the same, then 
 the product under protection will be A + 2 M. 
 
 The mechanical and manufacturing arts then which are 
 introduced under a duty of 50 per cent in such circum- 
 stances, will at once give the whole country one half more of 
 their products than can be had under free trade ; and, as skill 
 increases, they will give more and more ; and their skill will 
 react upon agriculture, rendering its processes more effectual, 
 and enabling a still greater withdrawal of men from agricul- 
 ture to the arts. And the home market will be alwaj^s safe 
 against Avar and against excessive foreign crops ; and, more- 
 over, it will grow step by step with the population, which the 
 foreign market never can, 
 
 M. Bastiat makes a great friend of Nature : but it is not 
 against Nature that the American protectionist raises his bul- 
 warks. He imports many tropical products free of duty, but 
 he intrenches against the foreign skill which is not natural 
 but purely artificial, and which is speedily overtaken by our 
 own ; and he intrenches against the lower wages current 
 abroad, which we do not wish to imitate here. In spite of a 
 60 per cent duty, the whole country is richer immediately, and 
 gains more and more as skill is acquired. 
 
 M. Bastiat says that we call the free traders theorists, and 
 he retorts the accusation ; but he mistakes us. We do not 
 complain of them for being theorists, but for being bad the- 
 orists, blundering theorists, theorists who use arguments in 
 every case which are only applicable in one of all possible 
 cases, to wit, in the case where the whole population can be 
 fully occupied in those industries in which it has an advan- 
 tage, and where, also^ their whole surplus can find steady, 
 sure, uninterrupted markets. In this very exceptional case, 
 to buy in the cheapest market is best in a purely financial 
 aspect. Their proposition is not universal, not one of even 
 
REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 13 
 
 frequent application. To argue from it as if it were a uni- 
 versal proposition, as the free traders do, is to violate one of 
 the fundamental maxims of logic. 
 
 Chapter V, — " Our Productions are overloaded with 
 Taxes." 
 
 Here is more bad theory. We are taxed heavily, he says. 
 How absurd, then, to add another tax which makes France 
 pay twelve francs for iron which it can get from England for 
 eight. The blunder here consists in not perceiving that, 
 although the extra price of iron may in a certain sense be 
 called a tax, yet it is of an entirely different nature from the 
 other things called by the same name. Suppose, for instance, 
 that France is using 2,000,000 of tons of iron produced in 
 France and costing twelve dollars a ton. Here are $24,000,000 
 of products which are paid for by other $24,000,000 of various 
 French products. The result is commodities worth $48,000,000, 
 every dollar of which is net individual income to some French 
 citizen, as has been well shown by J. B. Say. The totality 
 of French industries is in equilibrium. Each employs all the 
 capital and all the industry it can, and carries along its nor- 
 mal surplus stock. The expansion of each industry, both as 
 to capital and quantity of labor employed, is limited by the 
 extent of the market. Now open the ports and bring in the 
 2,000,000 tons of English iron at eight dollars. The imme- 
 diate effect upon the consumers of iron is that the}^ save 
 $8,000,000 : but the general demand for French products is 
 diminished $32,000,000. The importation of iron selling for 
 $16,000,000 provokes a French production of $16,000,000. 
 The homic production of the iron, on the contrary, gave a total 
 home product of $48,000,000, — a difference of $32,000,000. 
 It is true that the community saves $8,000,000 in the price of 
 the iron, but on the other hand its aggregate ability to con- 
 sume is reduced $32,000,000; and under these circumstances 
 it may w^ell happen that its ability to consume imported iron 
 at eight dollars will be less than its ability to consume home- 
 made iron at twelve dollars. The free-traders call the sums 
 collected to pay the interest on the national debt and the ex- 
 
14 REVIEW OP BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 
 
 penses of government taxes^ and they call the extra price 
 (when there is an extra price) paid for home-made products 
 also taxes. But they are entirely different; almost as different 
 as the files of a carpenter and the files of a regiment. The tax 
 arising out of protective laws, in the instance under examina- 
 tion, takes from the French consumers four dollars a ton ; 
 but it gives them twelve : the net result is that they are 
 better off by eight, or twice the amount of the so-called tax. 
 This flows inevitably from Say's proposition that the whole 
 price of everything produced in a country is net individual 
 income to some citizen of that country. If the free-traders 
 would make the other " taxes " produce a similar result, we 
 would all clamor for more taxes. 
 
 Chapter VI. is called "Balance of Trade." He begins as 
 follows : — 
 
 " Our adversaries have adopted a system of tactics which embar- 
 rasses us not a little. Do we prove our doctrine ? They admit the 
 truth of it in the most respectful manner. Do we attack their princi- 
 ples ? They abandon them with the best possible grace. They only 
 ask that our doctrine, which they acknowledge to be true, should be 
 confined to books ; and that their principles, which they allow to be 
 false, should be established in practice. If we will give up to them 
 the regulation of our tariffs, they will leave us triumphant in the do- 
 main of theory." 
 
 M. Bastiat was in error as to the attitude of protectionists 
 generally. They do not admit that the theory of the free- 
 traders is correct, nor their own practice wrong ; but when 
 worried by much beating of gongs — represented to be logical 
 instruments — and by much assumption of superiority in 
 reasoning, they have often been inclined to reply : " You 
 puzzle us with sophistical riddles. We feel them to be 
 wrong, but have not the time, perhaps not the ability, to 
 show wherein they are wrong. We have seen your own 
 chiefs perplexed with the fallacy of Achilles and the tortoise, 
 and some of them declaring it to be insoluble, — that being an 
 argument known to be erroneous, but one of which no one 
 
REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 15 
 
 has ever yet given a wholly satisfactory explanation. Now, 
 we feel that your arguments are sophistical ; we are so sure 
 of it that we are ready to risk our fortunes upon the belief. 
 We are not able to talk you down, and are willing you should 
 theorize to your hearts' content, so long as you will confine 
 yourselves to theory." Such is the feeling of many. It is 
 not the feeling of the writer. It is as absurd as anything 
 well can be to say, " So and so may be very well in theory, 
 but it will not do in practice." If it will not do in practice, 
 it most assuredly is not good in theory. It may be good in 
 pseudo-theory ; but true theory must explain practice, or be 
 in accord with it. Sound theory and sound practice are 
 Siamese twins. As was said before, we do not, as you have 
 the presumption to say, object to you as theorists : we only 
 object to you as bad theorists. 
 
 M. Bastiat gives us examples in which every merchant will 
 find errors ; upon which, however, it is not worth while to 
 expend time and patience, — the main object of the chap- 
 ter being to show, what everybody knew before, namely, 
 that an unusually successful voyage brings into a country a 
 much larger value than it takes out. But there are also very 
 unsuccessful voyages, which bring in much less than they 
 take out ; and everybody who knows anything of commerce 
 is aware that the average result is cost, expenses, — and a 
 profit not greater than what is usual in other kinds of busi- 
 ness. This is fact ; and this also is the result which the 
 reasoning of all respectable economists, from Adam Smith 
 down, points out as what must necessarily be fact. The 
 balance of trade in our days is so complicated by the transfer 
 of securities, and by the remittances of the profits upon 
 foreign investments, that no certain conclusion can be drawn 
 from custom-house statistics ; but for all that, an exportation 
 of treasure, exceeding greatly the product of the country, 
 indicates an adverse balance of trade, which cannot exist 
 many years without financial convulsion. 
 
 Chapter VII. is entitled " Petition from the Manufacturers 
 of Candles, Wax-lights, Lamps, Chandeliers, Reflectors, 
 
16 EEVIEW OP BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 
 
 Snuffers, Extinguishers ; and from the Producers of Tallow, 
 Oil, Resin, Alcohol, and generally of Everything used for 
 Lights." 
 
 This is a petition against sunshine, and regarded as per- 
 siflage, it is excellent. Considered as an economical argu- 
 ment, it can impose upon no one who has the least com- 
 mon-sense, or the least logic, which is only common sense 
 put into a formula. As the sun does not give us light, 
 through the twenty-four hours, artificial light must be had 
 and can be had only through labor. If the circumstances 
 are such that by procuring it from abroad the gross annual 
 product is greater than it is by producing it at home, then, 
 financially considered, it is better to procure it from abroad. 
 But this case seldom occurs, as has already been sufficiently 
 shown. 
 
 Chapter VIII. is entitled " Discriminating Duties." 
 This is a particular case, made up with just such circum- 
 stances as might lead a poor wine-grower to draw from it 
 illegitimately an universal conclusion. As rhetoric, intended 
 to deceive, it is very good. It is entirely unw^orthy of one 
 who is seriously investigating national interests. 
 
 Chapter IX. is entitled " Wonderful Discovery." 
 In this, M. Bastiat discovers that a railroad has been made 
 between Paris and Brussels in order to obviate or overcome 
 natural obstacles to trade, but that the duty on goods be- 
 tween the two places was an artificial obstacle, and conse- 
 quently absurd. The answer is, that the railroad was built 
 with the intention of removing obstacles from desirable and 
 beneficent communication. It was not built to facilitate the 
 passage of foreign soldiers to Paris, nor to facihtate the 
 invasion of the markets of France by produce that is not 
 desirable. Whether the introduction of the produce be 
 desirable or not, must be determined b}'' other reasons than 
 the fact that a railroad exists by which it can be conveyed. 
 Distance is an obstacle to every sort of communication. 
 That we take measures to overcome the obstacle does not 
 
REVIEW OP BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 17 
 
 prove that every sort of communicatigja^ is prod active of 
 opulence. /^A^^^trk^'^$\ 
 
 M. Bastiat says : — /^^ 'T I V E R S I T Y ll 
 
 "Frankly, is it not liurailiating to tm^.^ liinetee^tii feent 
 should be destined to transmit to future age^ tbei'feii.s 
 puerilities seriously and gravely practised ? " 
 
 We reply, Frankly, it tvill be humiliating to the nineteenth 
 century to have to transmit to future ages Bastiat's puerilities 
 in reasoning as examples of what could be thought Avorthy of 
 being presented to France, England, and the United States 
 by a person claiming to be, and by many even highly edu- 
 cated persons held out to be, an eminent logician. 
 
 Chapter X., entitled " Reciprocity," is in the same vein. 
 A swamp, a bog, a rut, a steep hill, stormy oceans, etc. are 
 veritable protective tariffs. By the railroad, the steamship, 
 etc. we do all we can to remove the other obstacles ; but the 
 artificial obstacle, which it will cost nothing to remove, we 
 suffer to remain. Why do we suffer it to remain ? Because 
 we believe that this particular obstacle to intercourse is not 
 an obstacle, but an aid, to acquiring opulence. Whether it 
 is or is not so cannot be determined by giving it the same 
 name, putting it in the same class, with other things which 
 we recognize as pernicious. If there were a tunnel formed 
 between England and France, it would not be absurd to take 
 such measures as would prevent its being used for the pas- 
 sage of hostile forces. When we build railroads and steam- 
 ships, we do not logically bind ourselves to allow them to be 
 used for every conceivable purpose, whether useful or per- 
 nicious ; and the fact that the railroad or the steamship may 
 be made to subserve a certain purpose, affords no ground for 
 inferring that such purpose is or is not desirable. This must 
 be ascertained by quite another sort of logic. Opium and 
 rum, the smallpox and the yellow fever, are not necessarily 
 beneficial because distributed by steamships and railroads. 
 
 Chapter XI. is entitled " Absolute Prices." He says : — 
 
 3 
 
18 REVIEW OP BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 " If we wish to judge between freedom of trade and protection, to 
 calculate the probable effect of any j^olitical phenomenon, we should 
 notice how far its influence tends to the production of abundance or 
 scarcity. We must beware of trusting to absolute prices ; it would 
 lead to inextricable confusion." 
 
 He assumes throughout the chapter that protection pro- 
 duces scarcity, and free-trade abundance. Cases might exist 
 where it would do so. Generally it does the reverse, and it 
 is notably so in the United States. Why is this ? Because, 
 when the population is fully occupied, much is produced ; 
 there is much to divide. When a considerable proportion is 
 unoccupied, little comparatively is produced ; there is less to 
 divide. We saw the latter from 1873 to 1879 : wages and 
 profits were both low. We see the former now in 1881 : 
 the people are more fully occupied, and both wages and 
 profits are higher. The tariff has been the same. The 
 difference has arisen from the abandonment in 1873 of the 
 active formation of instruments, and from the resumption of 
 the movement in 1880. But the larger production is con- 
 comitant with high prices, and the smaller production was 
 concomitant with low prices. Cheapness, then, may exist 
 without abundance, and abundance may exist without cheap- 
 ness, however much this may astonish the free-trader. 
 
 Chapter XII. is entitled, " Does Protection raise the Rate 
 of Wages ? " 
 
 M. Bastiat says to the working-man: — 
 
 " ^ni justice, simple yMSi/ce, — nobody thinks of rendering you this. 
 For would it not be just that after a long day's labor, when you have 
 received your little wages, you should be permitted to exchange them 
 for the largest possible sum of comforts that you can obtain voluntarily 
 from any man whatsoever upon the face of the earth?" 
 
 M. Bastiat put himself forward as a logician, and also as a 
 sincere expositor of truth. He desired and intended, so he 
 implied, to teach the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
 the truth ; and yet we here have him commencing his argu- 
 ment from the middle of the economical fact he was examin- 
 
EEVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 19 
 
 ing. He commences with the poor laborer when he has got 
 his little wages : then, truly, it would be well for him to get 
 as much in exchange for them as possible. But M. Bastiat 
 carefully keeps out of sight that it is the protective policy 
 which has given the man his employment, and consequently 
 his wao-es. M. Bastiat may have believed that the man 
 would get as good or better employment under a regime of 
 free-trade ; but if so, that was the point at issue. To assume 
 it would seem to show M. Bastiat to have been more anxious 
 to gain his point than to ascertain the truth. 
 M. Bastiat continues : — 
 
 " Is it true that protection, which avowedly raises prices, and thus 
 injures you, raises proportionately the rate of wages?" 
 
 Here is the same rhetorical trick repeated. It is assumed 
 that the man will get work under free trade the same as 
 under a protective policy. To assume this is to take the 
 whole free-trade theory for granted, without any proof or 
 argument. M. Bastiat, however, to give everyone his due, 
 seems really to believe he is right ; and he sometimes does 
 argue the question effectively from the premises which he 
 assumes. These, however (unfortunately for free-trade phil- 
 osophy), are simple blunders. They are venerable blunders, 
 it is true, as they can claim the respectable paternity of 
 Adam Smith more than a hundred years ago ; but they are 
 very evident blunders for all that. We may borrow here 
 Quinctilian's chaiitable remark about Homer, and say, " Some- 
 times the good Adam Smith nods," Unfortunately, he nod- 
 ded at a very important point ; and he did the sleeping scene 
 so naturally and effectively in his pages that every free- 
 trade economist for a century and over has fallen into a 
 slumber just where he did. 
 
 Bastiat says : — 
 
 " The rate of wages depends upon the proportion which the supply 
 of labor bears to the demand." 
 
 Very true. He continues thus : — 
 
20 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 " On what depends the demand for labor ? On the quantity of dis- 
 posable national capital. And the law which says ' Such or such an 
 article shall be limited to home production, and no longer imported 
 from foreign countries,' can it in any way increase that capital ? Not 
 in the least. The law may withdraw it from one course, and transfer 
 it to another ; but cannot increase it one penny. Then it cannot in- 
 crease the demand for labor." 
 
 This is the fundamental position of the free traders. It was 
 taken by Adam Smith more than a hundred years ago, was 
 repeated by Mr. John Stuart Mill some thirty years ago, 
 again repeated by M. Bastiat, and is now presented to the 
 American people by the Free Trade League of New York 
 in the translation of M. Bastiat's " Sophisms of Protection " 
 now tinder review. If this position can be maintained, the 
 free-trade doctrine stands. If it cannot be maintained, the 
 free-trade doctrine falls. It has been already examined as 
 presented by Adam Smith, and again examined as presented 
 by Mr. Mill. Let us now examine it as put forward by M. 
 Bastiat. He, of course, uses the word " capital " in the 
 French sense, as signifying everything which can be used to 
 assist or support labor ; and his proposition is therefore 
 somewhat broader than that of the English authors, who 
 limited the words to the funds set apart for the support of 
 'productive labor. 
 
 To get at the bottom of this question, we must see what 
 is the normal condition of an industrial community. Evid- 
 ently it must be possessed of certain industries. A, B, C, 
 D, etc. Let us examine industry A. It was commenced for 
 the sake of profit. The same motive led to its increase con- 
 tinually, so long as the satisfactory profit was attainable ; 
 but, finally, it over-ran the market, as was evidenced by 
 a portion of its products remaining unsold (or a portion of 
 its materials remaining unconverted into finished products) 
 by reason of a lack of demand. The producers then find a 
 portion of their capital locked up, either in finished products 
 or in unconverted material, or in both, and are compelled to 
 cease augmenting their production. Some stock they find it, 
 upon the whole, convenient to carry rather than be unpre- 
 
REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 21 
 
 pared for fluctuations in the demand ; and they naturally 
 carry as large a stock as they can without reducing profits 
 below the point which satisfies the existing " effective de- 
 mand for accumulation." Industry A, then, normally car- 
 ries on a certain stock of products, and this stock locks up a 
 portion of the capital employed in the industry. This stock 
 is unemployed capital, and is recognized as such by Mr, John 
 Stuart Mill, who, however, failed to observe the significance 
 of the fact, or its important bearing upon economical reason- 
 ing. What is true of industry A is true of B, C, D, and 
 all the others acquired by the community, which thus is seen 
 to contain a multitude of industries, whose aggregate stocks 
 of finished products and materials compose the aggregate 
 unemployed capital of the community. It is the function of 
 this unemployed capital to regulate the movement of in- 
 dustry. When the stocks increase, they enforce a slower 
 movement ; when they are diminished, prices rise, and the 
 industrial movement is stimulated to greater activity. We 
 come, then, inevitably to the conclusion that in an industrial 
 community the increase of industry is not limited by capital, 
 but that the increase of both industry and capital is limited 
 by the " field of employment." 
 
 But what limits the field of employment ? Evidently, the 
 limits which exist to effective demand. Let us confine our 
 attention to a single industry, say the shoe manufacture. 
 The desire of men for shoes is in itself limited. If they 
 could be had without effort or sacrifice, a certain number of 
 human beings would use only a certain number of shoes. 
 Interpose a difficulty of attainment, the necessity for effort 
 or sacrifice, and less will be used. There is, then, a limit to 
 the shoe manufacture, even in a community where every 
 person could find a sale for his labor if he desired to find 
 one ; and the field is narrowed still further if a portion of 
 the community is not able to find employment. Evidently, 
 only a certain number of shoes can be profitably made at 
 any cost you choose to fix upon. Reduce profits ever so 
 low, and still the manufacture has its limits. Increase now 
 the aggregate means of the community for the purchase of 
 
22 REVIEW OP bastiat's sophisms of protection. 
 
 shoes, whether by increasing the population or by increasing 
 the proportion of the population which can find a sale for its 
 labor, and the demand for shoes will increase, their exchange- 
 able value will rise, the profits of the manufacture will 
 augment, and it will be enlarged to meet the changed con- 
 ditions. It will find its new limits in the production which 
 again reduces the exchangeable value of shoes to tliat point 
 where the profits fall to the rate usual in the community. 
 The moment profits are such as to enable the manufacturers 
 to save, and add to their capital an annual percentage, 
 greater than that by which the population increases, they 
 will increase their production faster than the population 
 increases ; when profits are less, they will allow the popu- 
 lation to gain upon the production. There is, evidently, a 
 limit to the field of employment open to this industry. It 
 will be wider under certain circumstances, narroAver under 
 others. But it is this limit, — the limit of the field of employ- 
 ment, — which regulates both the quantity of labor and the 
 quantity of capital which will be employed in it. But what is 
 true of shoes is true of every other commodity, and of every 
 service known to the community. It would seem, then, that 
 the normal condition of an improving community was this. 
 Skill, dexterity, judgment, machinery are constantly dimin- 
 ishing the sacrifice at which men can procure the commodities 
 produced by its industries ; but they are also constantly in- 
 creasing the mass of unemployed capital, and forcing it to 
 search for new commodities and new services, which may 
 tempt the capitalists, great and small, to increase their con- 
 sumption, so as to keep pace with the increasing capacity for 
 production. Each new commodity, convenience, and amuse- 
 ment furnishes a new market for the existing industries, and 
 enlarges the effective demand. The field of employment is 
 increased, the people are more fully occupied, the gross 
 annual product is augmented, and the purposes to M'hich an 
 additional fixed and floating capital can be applied are mul- 
 tiplied. This is a society in which the introduction of a new 
 industry finds ample unemployed capital for its development, 
 and in which its products immediately enlarge the market 
 
REVIEW OP BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 23 
 
 for the products of the old industries, and enable them to 
 increase their production and the capital employed by them. 
 
 The normal condition of the society imagined by Adam 
 Smith, and by John Stuart Mill in his first volume, and by 
 Bastiat, is one where the field of employment is checked by 
 the want of capital. Deductive reasoning leads us to the 
 conviction that they put the cart before the horse ; to the 
 conviction that, on the contrary, it is capital which is limited 
 by the limitation of the field of employment. Introduce the 
 new industry, and the capital necessary for its development 
 will be found waiting for the work, and will be rapidly repro- 
 duced and more than reproduced by the augmented activity 
 of the previously acquired industries. There will be a de- 
 mand for more labor, and the increased annual product will 
 reward the labor with higher wages. 
 
 Pure reasoning would have led to the conclusion that in a 
 community possessed of a considerable variety of industries 
 there must be an enormous aggregate of commodities unsold 
 or unconverted, or, in other words, of unemployed capital ; 
 and an inquiry in Wall Street or State Street would have re- 
 vealed that such was the fact. The free traders missed the 
 fact, because they did not stop to reason, but preferred to 
 jump at conclusions. 
 
 M. Bastiat's assertion, then, that a protective law, which 
 says such or such an article shall be limited to home produc- 
 tion, cannot increase disposable capital a single penny is simply 
 a blunder. It can increase it in the United States many hun- 
 dred millions of dollars a year. The surplus stocks of the 
 existing industries will immediately supply the capital re- 
 quired, and will be replaced in an exceedingly short time by 
 the stimulated activity of those industries ; and, meanwhile, 
 the people will have had paid to them for labor about twice the 
 amount of capital invested in the new industry. Take the 
 following as an illustration. Let us suppose that a country 
 exists (call it, if you please, the United States) where the 
 annual product is six thousand millions of dollars, and the 
 normal surplus stock of commodities is equal to a consump- 
 tion of sixty days, • — a value of about one thousand millions. 
 
24 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 We will suppose that it uses largely of woollen goods pro- 
 cured from abroad. The peoj)le, looking round, perceive that 
 the climate is in no way unfavorable to the woollen industry ; 
 that they themselves are by no means wanting in general 
 aptitude to mechanical and manufacturing industries; that 
 there is every reason to suppose the requisite skill can be 
 attained ; and that well-directed efforts to import the industry 
 will end in our producing, here, close at hand, as good or 
 better cloths at a somewhat lower cost of labor and abstinence 
 than they cost when imported from abroad. Accordingly the 
 people say, let a law be passed giving a protection of say fifty 
 per cent to woollens. The law is passed, and here and there 
 all over the country woollen mills are commenced by the 
 combined capital of a multitude of individuals. Gradually, 
 as the mills are built, they pay in their subscriptions. Some 
 draw out of the savings banks, which hold over a thousand 
 millions ; some have money with other banks or bankers, the 
 deposits with whom exceed another thousand millions ; some 
 sell stocks or property. Twenty millions a month over the 
 whole country will not make a ripple in the money market. 
 Suppose, then, the operations are to the extent of twenty 
 millions a month. As soon as gathered in they are paid out 
 for labor and spent by labor in buying commodities. The 
 producers of commodities now find their stocks diminishing, 
 — that is, a part of their unemployed capital is set free. They 
 will know this if the free-trade philosophers do not, and they 
 will employ more labor to meet the increased demand for 
 commodities. They will be able to pay out twenty millions 
 a month more for labor, and this will bring about an addi- 
 tional production of more than forty millions, — more than 
 sufficient to pay for the additional labor and the construction 
 of the woollen mills besides. This is warranted by the facts 
 given in the United States Census for 1870, which showed 
 that the mechanical and manufacturing industries in the 
 United States added $1,744,000,000 to the value of the mate- 
 rial used, and that of this $776,000,000 went to labor. It 
 would seem, then, that $240,000,000 a year would be invested 
 in woollen mills in the year without diminishing the floating 
 
REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 25 
 
 capital of the country a cent. At the end of the year the 
 country will have woollen mills which cost $240,000,000 as 
 an addition to its fixed capital, and the laboring classes will 
 have had $480,000,000 additional to spend. The investors 
 in mills will have withdrawn $240,000,000 from the monied 
 reserves, but the master mechanics and manufacturers will 
 have added an equal or somewhat larger amount. The nation 
 altogether will be richer by $240,000,000 in the shape of 
 woollen mills, although it has had and spent $480,000,000 
 more within the year ; and this is the result of giving fuller 
 occupation to the people. More commodities are made and 
 there are more consumed. 
 
 This is the effect of the law which Bastiat says cannot 
 add a single cent to the wages of labor. Let business men, 
 who understand accounts, examine the above theory of the 
 protectionists, and compare it with the theory of the free- 
 traders, and then decide Avhich represents and explains the 
 actual course of financial affairs as they go on continually 
 before our eyes, and which ought to be taught to young men 
 who are preparing for practical life. 
 
 Bastiat says that " when a nation isolates itself by the pro- 
 hibitive system, its number of industrial pursuits is certainly 
 multiplied, but their importance is diminished. In propor- 
 tion to their number they become less productive, for the same 
 capital and same skill are obliged to meet a greater number 
 of difficulties. The fixed capital absorbs a greater part of 
 the circulating capital ; that is to say, a greater part of the 
 funds destined to the payment of wages. 
 
 Was this a man capable of teaching the people of the United 
 States? "isoZa^e " is a good piece of rhetoric. The abomi- 
 nable, absurd, suicidal, ridiculous, impoverishing tariff of the 
 United States has so " isolated " the nation that it sends 
 abroad for sale an annual value of about nine hundred mil- 
 lions, and keeps five or six times as much at home. It is so 
 poor that its average annual individual income exceeds that 
 of any other country in the world, not even excepting Great 
 Britain. It has on its hands no starving Ireland, no starving 
 Orissa, no starving Behar ; nor would it have were those 
 
 4 
 
26 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 
 
 countries transferred to its dominion. For "starving" would 
 then have to be substituted, in every case the words "flour- 
 ishing," "contented," "prosperous;" for they would be 
 protected from hostile industries as much as from hostile 
 armies. 
 
 M. Bastiat imagined that a new industry would be estab- 
 lished by capital drawn from the old industries, which would 
 be thus cramped and diminished, whereas the new industry 
 would be established and equipped by capital already existing, 
 and replaced during the period of its introduction by labor 
 which would otherwise have been unemployed ; and its prod- 
 ucts, when established, constitute an additional market for 
 the products of the old industries, enabling them all to increase 
 their production. 
 
 The writer might try to drag the reader through the rest 
 of the review, chapter by chapter ; but it has been long since 
 wisely observed that humanity is the best policy : the porten- 
 tous length of the article might be thought disproportionate 
 to the importance of the author, and might insure that no 
 part of it would ever be read. And it is not necessary to 
 protract the examination. The remaining chapters are only 
 variations upon the same ideas, which are twisted and turned 
 and distorted and made to stand on their heads and peep out 
 from between their own legs in a manner marvellous to con- 
 template, but in no way either instructive or amusing. The 
 ideas are : — 
 
 1. That industry is limited by capital, whereas both are lim- 
 
 ited by the field of employment. 
 
 2. That human labor is never without employment. 
 
 3. That the w^ages fund is a fixed amount, equal to the ex- 
 
 isting capital, and the whole of it always employed. 
 
 4. That protective laws, which cause more people to be em- 
 
 ployed with increased production, are the same in effect 
 as dull axes, obstructed canals, working with the left 
 hand, amputating one hand, etc., which would cause 
 more people to be employed witJiout increased produc- 
 tion. 
 
REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OP PEOTECTION. 27 
 
 6. That inasmuch as many obstacles to exchanges are also 
 obstacles to opulence, therefore all obstacles to exchanges 
 are obstacles to opulence. 
 
 In short, the argumentative portion of the book displays 
 a neglect of every canon of logic, both inductive and deduc- 
 tive. The rest is rhetoric, and is good of its kind, — witty, 
 vivacious, impressive, and well suited to impose upon those 
 who are not quick-witted enough to see that it proves noth- 
 ing, and is totally inapplicable to any existing society or to 
 any society which could exist while man is constituted as 
 he is. 
 
 Common sense is unconscious logic ; logic not yet intro- 
 spective ; logic which has not yet named its processes, but 
 which sees and casts aside a blunder intuitively ; and there 
 is too much of this sort of logic in the brains of the working 
 people of America to allow much harm to come from such a 
 book as Bastiat's " Sophisms of Protection." 
 
REVIEW 
 
 Of Professor Sumner's article in the March number of the Princeton Review, entitled, —> 
 
 "The Argument against Peotective Taxes." 
 
 A peotectionist cannot even pass by the title without ob- 
 jection. A tax is not necessarily a burden. If the money 
 be well and economically expended, and gives us good roads, 
 good water-works, good police, and good government at what 
 they ought to cost, then a tax is a great blessing and sav- 
 ing; but, unfortunately, the money is often expended reck- 
 lessly and foolishly, and so, through abuses, the very name 
 of tax becomes offensive. The free-trader who writes 
 about " Protective Taxes " avails himself of this existing pre- 
 judice, with the effect of disgusting the reader with protection 
 at the outset, in advance of all argument in respect to it. 
 The word tax also gives two false impressions : first, that /] 
 all protected articles cost the consumer more than they would 
 if not protected ; and, second, that when they cost more, the 
 consumer gets no counterbalancing or greatly overbalancing 
 advantage. In this sense Professor Sumner writes that, — 
 
 " Every cent paid in protective taxes lessens the power of the cit- 
 izen to pay revenue taxes for the discharge of the public burdens. 
 Hence the fact that we have heavy public burdens is just the reason 
 why we cannot afford to squander our means in paying taxes to our 
 neighbors for carrying on (as they themselves allege) unproductive 
 industries." 
 
 This argument was used by Adam Smith one hundred and 
 thirty years ago in the lectures whicli afterwards were thrown 
 into the form of the famous " Enquiry into the Nature and 
 Causes of the Wealth of jS'ations] " but the human race ought 
 
2 REVIEW OF PROFESSOR SUMNER'S 
 
 to have learned something in one hundred and thirty years, 
 and it has been many times shown, or at all events is easily 
 shown, that where a protective law causes labor and capital, 
 otherwise not occupied, to produce an article for 11.25 which 
 could be imported for $1.00, the nation does not lose twenty- 
 five cents but gains the dollar. The tax gives to the totality 
 of consumers five times what it takes from them. To this 
 it may be replied that labor never need be unoccupied where 
 there is much land to be had for the asking, that it can 
 always go to farming ; but here comes in the fallacy of sup- 
 posing that when we all went to farming there would be the 
 same favorable market for our products that exists now. 
 Agriculture, it is true, is the field in which we have the 
 greatest advantage over Europe ; but we might easily have 
 so pressed the cultivation of this field as to have transferred 
 the whole advantage to Europe and have kept no part of it 
 for ourselves, — to have been compelled to eat Indian corn 
 and rye, while we exported our wheat to buy a very small 
 modicum of conveniences. We have had wisdom enough 
 to stop short of this supreme folly, by turning a portion 
 of our population upon other fields in which we are at some 
 disadvantage as compared to Europe ; and, by doing so, we 
 have made the whole body of our labor vastly more produc- 
 tive, — more productive per man than that of any other coun- 
 try in this planet. Here a free-trader would point out some 
 particular article which — perhaps only for the moment, but 
 perhaps even permanently — costs in wheat, at the present 
 price of wheat, more than it could be imported for ; and he 
 says to the individual farmer: " See how much more cheaply 
 you could get this from abroad ! " and he persuades the farmer 
 (and himself too) that the fact is the same with regard to 
 every article ; and, even then, he does not see that he is mis- 
 leading himself and the farmer by means of the "fallacy 
 of division." Farmer A, things being as they are, could 
 get what he wants through wheat somewhat more cheaply 
 than he now does ; so could Farmer B ; so could each one 
 of the others ; but they all of them together cannot, for wheat 
 would fall to perhaps half its present price and, with twice as 
 
" ARGUMENT AGAINST PROTECTIVE TAXES." 3 
 
 many farmers, only a very small portion of the surplus of 
 wheat would be salable at any price. Such questions are prac- 
 tical questions, depending upon the possible foreign demand 
 and the population of the country in question ; and no man 
 who carefully considers the subject, will come to the conclusion 
 that the people of the United States, if confined to those in- 
 dustries in which we have an advantage, could produce any- 
 thing like the gross annual exchangeable value they are now 
 producing. Here it may be urged that when farming ceased 
 to be profitable, the other industries would establish them- 
 selves naturally and healthfully by the action of individual 
 interests ; but this assumption was disposed of fifty years ago 
 by John Rae.* 
 
 In his opening paragraph Professor Sumner shows very cor- 
 rectly that it is absurd to say that free trade may be good 
 in theory but not in practice. Theory must be competent 
 to explain observed facts, or it is no true theory ; or at all 
 events lies under grievous suspicion of being faulty in some 
 undiscovered point. Professor Sumner reads it the other 
 way, namely, that no one can be sure of facts unless he be able 
 to disentangle every train of argumentation, claiming to be 
 theory, which seems to contradict the facts or show them 
 to be impossible. Adam Smith, more than a hundred years 
 ago, argued thus: — 
 
 " The general industry of the society never can exceed what the 
 capital of the society can employ. As the number of workmen that 
 can be kep^ in employment by every particular person must bear 
 a certain proportion to his capital, so the number of those that can 
 be continually employed by all the members of a great society must 
 bear a certain proportion to the whole capital of that society, and 
 never can exceed that proportion. No regulation of commerce can 
 
 * Rae shows very conclusively that an individual actinaj wisely for his own 
 interests could never undertake the introduction ot Ibreign arts except in the 
 very rare cases where, with assistance, such arts might have been domesticated 
 with advantage at a much earlier date. 
 
 Besides, it seems certainly wiser to pain the foreign arts by a system which 
 keeps agriculture profitable, than to wait until stern necessity ywces the ruined 
 farmer to betake himself to other employments. 
 
4 REVIEW OF PROFESSOR SUMNER'S 
 
 increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital 
 can maintain. It can only divert a part of it into a direction into 
 which it might not otherwise have gone ; and it is by no means cer- 
 tain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous 
 to the society than that into which it would have gone of its own 
 accord." 
 
 Thirty years ago Mr. John Stuart Mill repeated this argu- 
 ment, with variations, thus: — 
 
 " There can be no more industry than is supplied with materials 
 to work up and food to eat. Self-evident as the thing is, it is often 
 forgotten that the people of a country are maintained and have 
 their wants supplied, not by the produce of present labor but of past. 
 They consume what has been produced, not what is about to be pro- 
 duced. Now of what has been produced, a part only has been allotted 
 to the support of productive labor; and there will not and cannot 
 be more of that labor than the portions so allotted (which is the 
 capital of the country) can feed and provide with the materials of 
 production." 
 
 " Yet, in disregard of a fact so evident, it long continued to be be- 
 lieved that laws and governments, without creating capital, could 
 create labor." 
 
 In the article under review, Professor Sumner repeats and 
 varies the argument thus : — 
 
 " Any favor or encouragement which the protective system exerts 
 on one group of its population must be won by an equivalent oppres- 
 sion exerted on some other group. To suppose the contrary is to deny 
 the most obvious application of the conservation of energy to economic 
 forces. If the legislation did not simply transfer capital it would have 
 to create capital out of nothing.. Now the transfer is not simply an equal 
 redistribution ; there is loss and waste in the case of any tax whatso- 
 ever. There is especial loss and waste in the case of a protective tax. 
 We cannot collect taxes and redistribute them without loss ; much 
 less can we produce forced monopolies and distorted industrial relations 
 without loss." 
 
 This is the theory which has, for one hundred and thirty 
 years, deterred men from trusting either their eyes and ears, or 
 
" ARGUMENT AGAINST PROTECTIVE TAXES." 5 
 
 that intuitive reason which conducts nine tenths of human 
 affairs. Let us examine the reasoning. First, capital is defined 
 to be those funds allotted to the support of productive labor ; 
 then it is said that there cannot be more industry than this 
 capital can support. These two propositions together affirm, 
 then, that industry never can be greater than it can be, — an 
 identical proposition, which nobody can deny to the end of time, 
 but which does not and cannot convey any information what- 
 soever. It leaves the whole question still unsolved before us. 
 It is very true that the industry of the society cannot 
 be greater than its capital, real and potential, can support ; 
 but what we are concerned to know is whether the industry 
 of the society cannot be greater than its capital does suj)port. 
 If the normal condition of an industrial community be one 
 in which a considerable portion of its capital is locked up in 
 unsold goods, in which there are large amounts also capable 
 of being turned on the instant from unproductive to produc- 
 tive purposes, then a protective law will find ample means 
 for the inauguration of its new industry 
 
 To Adam Smith's argument above quoted it has been 
 replied that — 
 
 The number of workmen that can be kept in employment 
 by any particular individual does not bear a certain pro- 
 portion to his capital. When the market for his products 
 is dull, a large part of his capital is locked up in unsold 
 goods ; he must then lessen his production and dismiss some 
 of his workmen ; and the same is true of society taken all to- 
 gether. In a normal condition of things there may be, for 
 instance, a stock of goods equal to two months' consumption 
 of the whole community, — a value in the United States 
 at the present time (1881) considerably exceeding one thou- 
 sand millions of dollars ; and observe that these stocks of com- 
 modities are the very thhigs — the food, the raiment, the tools, 
 &c. — which are requisite, and in fact used, in carrying out 
 new undertakings ; and, besides these, there are also immense 
 sums lying in the banks awaiting investment. The proposition, 
 then, that industry never can exceed what the capital of the 
 society can support, is totally irrelevant. It never can, for 
 
6 . EEVIEW OP PROFESSOR SUMNER'S 
 
 any considerable time, be nearly as great as the capital can 
 support ; for, if it were, there would be no stock of commod- 
 ities, and this would cause such high prices and such high 
 rates of interest as must check consumption on the one hand, 
 and quicken production on the other. 
 
 One half of the capital normally unemployed is ample for 
 the inauguration of gigantic enterprises ; and these, if within 
 the strength of the community, will not prevent anything 
 being done which would otherwise have been done. On the 
 contrary, the previously existing industries will be stimulated 
 to larger production. 
 
 Let us suppose that the United States at the end of 1879 
 was producing and consuming commodities equal to a value 
 of six thousand millions for the year, with a surplus stock 
 equal to the value of one thousand millions. The bank de- 
 posits of money are known to exceed one thousand milhons. 
 If, at that time, they commenced forming new instruments 
 (mills, forges, farms, houses, railroads, &c.) to the annual 
 value of three hundred millions over and beyond the regular 
 and normal movement, there would be, as we see, one thousand 
 millions of unemployed floating capital, and immense moneyed 
 reserves, to answer to the subscribed funds ; but these 
 subscriptions would go to recompense the producers of the 
 new instruments, and would be by them expended, for the 
 most part, for commodities, — thus relieving the capitalists of 
 a portion of their stocks, and placing them in a j)Osition 
 to employ more labor for the sake of enlarging their i^roduc- 
 tion of commodities. But whatever they thus expended 
 in labor would lead to the production of more than twice 
 the value expended in labor, as is shown by the returns of the 
 census of 1870. This gives the total value added to materials 
 by the manufacturing and mechanical industries of the 
 United States as 1,744 millions, of which 776 millions went 
 directly to labor. It might well, then, have happened that 
 at the end of 1880 the gap made in the stock of unemployed 
 floating capital was quite repaired, and the country as ready 
 to continue a similar movement in 1881 as it was to com- 
 mence it a year before. Meanwhile the extra recompense 
 
" ARGUMENT AGAINST PROTECTIVE TAXES." 7 
 
 to labor during the year might have been not less than six 
 hundred millions. 
 
 Vary the amounts as you please, but you will find that 
 any new enterprise, not out of" proportion to the existing sur- 
 plus stock of commodities, will result, first, in an enlarged 
 employment of laborers; and second, in the creation of new 
 subsidiary capital, — or, say rather, of new instruments of pro- 
 duction, which would not otherwise have come into exist- 
 ence. But a free-trader may aslv : How do you know that 
 there is any surplus stock of commodities? And we should 
 reply that, in the first place, we know it as a matter of fact, 
 which can be verified in State Street any day when produc- 
 tion and consumption are in their normal condition. But, 
 as our free-trade brethren do not like facts, nor believe 
 in them unless they agree with conclusions deduced from 
 postulates admitted by their own authors, we will try to show 
 that in an industrial community there must be normally 
 a stock of commodities or of unemployed capital. 
 
 First, then, take Industrj^ A. Those who commenced it 
 did so for the sake of profit. But so long as they obtained 
 a satisfactory profit, the same motive would lead them to en- 
 large their production. If one man did not, another would ; 
 and so the increase of the industry would go on until it over- 
 ran the demand. A stock would then accumulate, bringing 
 down profits and locking up a portion of the producers' 
 capital at the same moment. But what is true of Industry 
 A, is true of B, C, D, &c. ; and we thus arrive at the conclu- 
 sion that each carries along a surplus stock. When this 
 stock is diminished by a novel or increased demand, prices 
 rise ; when the stock is increased, prices fall, and the indus- 
 try is checked. 
 
 No economist, as far as we know, has noticed the vast 
 aggregate of these stocks, nor tlie manner in which tliey 
 regulate the play of the industrial forces ; and yet, without 
 knowing about them, it is impossible to understand wliat 
 happens upon the commencement of a great war or of a great 
 industrial movement. When we have ascertained what the 
 ordinary average stock is, whether equal to two, three, or more 
 
8 REVIEW OF PROFESSOR SUMNER'S 
 
 months' consumption, it may become possible to form a 
 rational opinion as to how far any industrial movement can 
 be pushed without bringing on a scarcity of floating capital 
 and a stringency in the money market ; but, meanwhile, 
 it is something to have satisfied ourselves that such stocks 
 must and do exist, and that systems framed in ignorance or 
 disregard of them are necessarily erroneous. 
 
 Such a system is that of Adam Smith in his third para- 
 graph above quoted. He starts with the self-evident axiom 
 that " the general industry of the society never can exceed 
 what the capital of the society can employ." He then repeats 
 the idea, in different words, three several times ; and then, 
 mistaking apparently this rhetorical artifice for logic, he 
 draws his conclusion that " a regulation of commerce can 
 only divert a portion of the capital of the society into direc- 
 tions into which it might not otherwise have gone." This 
 conclusion will follow from his axiom whenever an industrial 
 community shall be found in which there exists no unem- 
 ployed capital, and no funds, which, though originally in- 
 tended for private expenditure, are capable of being diverted 
 to the support of productive labor, the moment a protective 
 law affords a sufficient motive for doing so. 
 
 Professor Sumner's argument appears to be only a varia- 
 tion of that of Adam Smith and Mr. J. S. Mill. He ureses 
 that if a law can do anything more than transfer, to the pro- 
 tected industry, capital that was or would have been applied 
 to some of the old industries, then the law must create capital 
 out of nothing. 
 
 This would be true if in civilized communities there were 
 no capital seeking investment (a portion of the one thousand 
 millions of bank deposits), and no capital locked up in com- 
 modities awaiting a demand, or materials delayed in conver- 
 sion into commodities on account of the dulness of the de- 
 mand ; but it would seem to be untrue in the actual world 
 we live in. 
 
 I respectfully invite Professor Sumner to examine this 
 matter to the bottom, and see whether, in his theory, he does 
 not overlook facts which, when taken into account, will neces- 
 
" ARGUMENT AGAINST PROTECTIVE TAXES." 9 
 
 sitate another and very different theory. It is true that the 
 argumentation on which his theory is built has stood more 
 than a century without being picked to pieces ; but the doc- 
 trine that the world was flat stood a great many centuries. 
 The antiquity of an argumentation, the fact that it had been 
 found satisfactory by three or four generations, was sufficient 
 to warrant its acceptance by a teacher and its communica- 
 tion to pupils ; but if it has been shown to be erroneous, 
 both it and its corollaries ought surely to be abandoned 
 forthwith. 
 
 The writer has no pecuniary bias in this matter, and no 
 desire except to arrive at the truth ; and he abhors, as much 
 as Professor Sumner can, whatever is mystical, misty, indis- 
 tinct, — everything in short which will not stand the test of 
 the most minute and searching examination. 
 
 This leads me to object (without any disrespect to Pro- 
 fessor Sumner) to such sentences as the following : — 
 
 " We cannot collect taxes and redistribute them without loss ; much 
 less can we produce forced monopoHes and distorted industrial rela- 
 tions without loss." 
 
 Such words appear to me to mislead both writer and 
 reader. They assume that under the regime of free compe- 
 tition in a nation of fifty millions there can be monopolies, and 
 they assume that industrial relations, different from what 
 would arise by themselves, are productive of national loss ; 
 and these assumptions appear to me to take for granted the 
 doctrines of free trade, which are the very things under 
 discussion. 
 
 Again, Professor Sumner remarks that — 
 
 " The notion that the Legislature has a wisdom greater than that of 
 the people, and can point out the industries they ought to pursue, has 
 been often refuted; but the protective theory assumes more than that; 
 it assumes that the law can enlighten the desire for profit, and make 
 it a more trustworthy guide than it would be under freedom." 
 
 But the question does not seem to be whether the Legis- 
 lature has greater wisdom than the people, but whether the 
 
10 REVIEW OF PROFESSOR SUMNER'S 
 
 untrammelled action of each individual necessarily produces 
 the best possible result, — such as cannot be improved by the 
 collective wisdom ; whether, in short, in this one field of 
 human affairs, judgment and observation and study are 
 utterl}^ impotent to improve the accidental or, if you please, 
 the natural course of events. I am not aware that the 
 opinion that the collective action of the whole nation may 
 produce advantageous results has been often or ever refuted. 
 The most persuasive argument in favor of a negative decision, 
 that 1 have seen, is contained in the Enquiry into the Nature 
 and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book IV. chap. 11, 
 § 4, et seq.f and it is very persuasive ; but if Professor Sum- 
 ner will examine it narrowly, and apply to it the logic which 
 the article under review shows him to be master of, he will 
 see the supposed demonstration crumble to pieces. To 
 examine it in this article would exceed the limits of space 
 and the patience of readers. Protection does not, I think, 
 presume to enlighten the desire for profit, but only to place 
 within the reach of unoccupied capital and labor an addi- 
 tional field of employment which they can take possession of 
 with benefit to the ivhole community. 
 
 In the foregoing I have endeavored to show where and 
 how protection exerts an effect on production, to increase it. 
 I must now ask the indulgence of the reader, and of Professor 
 Sumner, while I endeavor to show where and how free trade 
 may exert an effect on production, to diminish it. 
 
 Let us take the three industries of cottons, woollens, and 
 iron, and let us suppose, for the sake of illustration, that 
 their aggregate product sells for one thousand millions ; and 
 let us farther suppose, for the sake of illustration, that the same 
 products could be purchased abroad for seven hundred mil- 
 lions. The gross annual product of the United States I find 
 set down in a Free-Trade Book, '' The Balance Sheet of 
 Nations," at £1,400,000,000 sterling, or say seven thousand 
 millions of dollars, which appears to be not an unreasonable 
 estimate. 
 
 It would seem that this seven thousand millions must pay all 
 rents, all profits, all wages ; must pay all productive laborers, 
 
" ARGUMENT AGAINST PROTECTIVE TAXES." 11 
 
 so-called, and all recipients of salaries, fees, or wages for ser- 
 vices which do not issue either in commodities or in instru- 
 ments of production. It would seem that the proportion of 
 the gross product which would fall to any capitalist for the use 
 of his particular instrument of production, or which would fall 
 to any salaried man for the services he renders, must depend 
 upon supply and demand; e. g. upon the number of per- 
 sons offering to give instruction, compared with the demand 
 of the community for that much-honored service. Let us call 
 the share of the gross product falling to any one, X. Now in 
 the cases of the instructor, the clergyman, the lawyer, the 
 physician, or any other recipient of fees or salaries, it would 
 seem that they must be benefited by the drawing off, into the 
 cotton, woollen, andiron industries, of a multitude of men who 
 would otherwise be pressing into the professions. It would 
 seem that for each person in those professions the share repre- 
 sented by X must be greater by reason of the existence of 
 those industries, unless, upon their suppression, an equal field 
 would be found for that class of persons. 
 
 But the three industries in question produce (by the sup- 
 position) one thousand millions, or one seventh part of the 
 total annual product ; that is, they support something over 
 seven millions of people. Every dollar gets into the hands of 
 either the producers of commodities and instruments of pro- 
 duction (capital), or else into the hands of those who render 
 services — every dollar, save and except the comparatively 
 small sum expended for foreign products. Substantially, the 
 whole one thousand millions are expended for other American 
 products and services, and the amount expended for services 
 would be again expended for commodities or for capital ; so 
 that in the end the thousand millions of those three indus- 
 tries would be paid for by one thousand millions of other 
 American products. 
 
 But, by the supposition, seven hundred millions of the other 
 American products would, at present prices, procure, if sent 
 abroad, the same amount of cottons and woollens and iron now 
 enjoyed and consumed. Suppress the cotton and woollen and 
 iron industries and — if the exchangeable value of our oivn 
 
12 REVIEW OF PROFESSOR SUMNER's 
 
 products remained undiminished when offered abroad in such 
 greater quantities, and if also the exchangeable value of foreign 
 cottons, woollens, and iron remained unenhanced wlien called 
 for in such great quantities — we should thereafter get the cot- 
 tons and woollens and iron as much as we now get them, but 
 the seven millions of people, supported directly and indirectly 
 by the three industries, would be without means of support; 
 they would then have, as Mr. Mill expresses it, either to go 
 without food and necessaries, or squeeze them by competition 
 from the shares of other laborers. 
 
 But, to bring about even this result, we have had to sup- 
 pose that the addition of seven hundred millions (to our pres- 
 ent export of eight or nine hundred millions) would not depress 
 the exchangeable value of the whole. If it did dej)ress it, even 
 fifteen per cent, then our cottons and woollens and iron would 
 cost as much as now, and leave us our seven millions of unoccu- 
 pied people besides ; and, if the foreign iron and woollens and 
 cottons advanced in exchangeable value, we should be worse 
 off still. But it has been urged that the seven millions, or 
 those who support the seven millions, would find occupation 
 about " something else — " that they would build houses and 
 wagons, &c. ; but the effective demand of the community for 
 houses and wagons, &c., will, by supposition, be diminished by 
 the seven hundred millions sent abroad to buv cottons and 
 woollens and iron before made at home ; and, although houses 
 and wagons " are never imported," their exchangeable value 
 depends upon the effective demand. 
 
 Let us now try again to imagine how salaried men would be 
 affected by the suppression of the three industries in ques- 
 tion. Evidently the educated men, now employed in and 
 about those industries, would become competitors over and 
 above those now competing for pulpits, professorships, seats 
 upon the bench, and other dignified occupations yielding 
 salaries. The X representing any particular salary must 
 then, after a while, come to be a smaller proportion of the total 
 annual product available for home consumption, as already 
 observed ; and this last being, by the supposition, reduced by 
 the one tenth part sent abroad, the particular salary would 
 
" ARGUMENT AGAINST PROTECTIVE TAXES." 13 
 
 soon come to be not only a dirainisbed proportion of the 
 previous annual product, but a diminished proportion of 
 nine tenths of the previous product. In short, less being 
 produced in the country, there would be less to divide between 
 rent, profits, and wages. 
 
 It is only a couple of weeks since I became aware that 
 Professor Sumner had published in March the article now 
 under review ; and the present paper has been written in 
 response to his request conveyed in the following sen- 
 tence : — 
 
 " If this be not so, let some protectionist analyze the operation of 
 his system, and show, by reference to undisputed ecouomical principles, 
 where and how it exerts any effect on production to increase it." 
 
 In return I have only to request that, if this paper has not 
 duly met his requisition, he will point out with precision 
 exactly where and how it is erroneous or defective. The sub- 
 ject is one of tremendous importance, and there are thousands 
 of honest and intellio^ent men who desire to be shown exactlv 
 what is and what is not true with regard to it. 
 
 I have endeavored to avoid all side issues, and to go direct 
 to the chief point in which the scholastic political economy 
 appears to be erroneous. This is a small matter, indeed, when 
 once pointed out ; but it has been nevertheless sufficient to 
 paralyze the keen intellects of its professors, sufficient to 
 prevent their improving political economy into a real science, 
 and sufficient to force them to conclusions the reverse of 
 those drawn by the practical man from the industrial phe- 
 nomena which he is obliged every day and hour to interpret, 
 under the penalty of ruin if he fail to interpret correctly. 
 
REVIEW 
 
 Of an article hj Prof. Artlmr L. Perry, Williams College, Willlamstown, 
 Mass., in the Journal of the American Agricultural Association for Julj 
 and October, 1881, entitled, — 
 
 " Farmers and the Tariff." 
 
 Professor Perry states substantially as follows (liis state- 
 ments being merely condensed) that — 
 
 " the war of the American Revolution was waged mainly in the in- 
 terests of a free trade ; that one of the first acts of the thirteen colo- 
 nies, April 6, 1776, was to estabhsh free trade, which substantially 
 continued until the present government was established in 1789 ; that 
 no ill effects followed, and that the country was not flooded at that 
 time with the cheap goods of foreigners, because the only way that can 
 be brought about is for the natives to flood the foreigners with cheap 
 native goods in exchange. In 1789 shrewd members of the first Con- 
 gress, mostly from New England, at the instance and under the pres- 
 sure of certain men who thought thereby to raise the price artificially 
 of their own special home products, by means of lobbying and log- 
 rolling, caused to pass the first tai-iff bill, of which the preamble was : 
 ' Whereas, it is necessary for the support of the Government, for the 
 discharge of the debts of the United States, and the encouragement 
 and protection of manufactures, that duties be laid,' and so on. The 
 duties were low, but they introduced a false principle, — that a man's 
 neighbors may be taxed indefinitely to hire him to carry on an alleged 
 unprofitable business ; and this utterly false principle has bi'ought on 
 the protective system, which has grown so unjust, onerous, and abomi- 
 nable that no other free people would submit for a single year. It 
 was well understood in 1789 that this system would be hostile to the 
 interest of the farmers as such ; the fallacy that a home market in 
 some mysterious way compensates the farmers was not then invented, 
 and can now be exploded by a few words. These words are : * Unless 
 it can be shown that protection — that is to say, restriction — increases 
 
2 REVIEW OP phofessor perry's 
 
 the number of births or diminishes the number of deaths, it is in vain 
 to claim that there are any more mouths to be fed by the farmers 
 than there would be under freedom.' 
 
 " Fisher Ames said in 1789 : ' From the different situation of man- 
 ufacturers in Europe and America, encouragement is necessary. In 
 Europe the artisan is driven to labor for his bread. Stern Necessity 
 with her iron rod compels his exertion. In America, invitation and 
 encourasfement are needed. Without them the infant manufacture 
 droops, and those who might be employed in it seek with success a 
 competency from our cheap and fertile soil.' 
 
 " This lets the protectionist cat right out of her bag. Our people 
 are not poor enough, and never were, to carry on unprofitable branches 
 of industry to support which the whole community has to be taxed, 
 and particularly the agricultural classes. What then is to be done ? 
 Why, drag down agriculture by abominable taxes to the level of the 
 alleged unprofitable infant manufactures. ' Protection assumed at 
 the outset, and has maintained to this day, an attitude of unceasing 
 hostility to the tillers of the soil. Protectionist manufacturers, who 
 are a mere fraction of the population, have cajoled the farmers, who are 
 one half the population, to consent to pay for their supplies prices artifi- 
 cially enhanced by law, and to sell their produce at prices artificially 
 depressed by law.' Tliere never was a worse delusion than tiiis on the 
 part of the farmers, and there never was a worse swindle than this on 
 the part of the party of the other part. But the manufacturers as a 
 body are not benefited ; many of them lose two dollars by protection 
 for every one dollar which they gain ; so that the fx'ee-traders of this 
 country are fighting a battle in behalf of the manufacturers them- 
 selves (selfishness is always short-sighted) as well as in behalf of the 
 farmers. That protective duties are a great burden is shown by the 
 fact that the protectionist manufacturers never like to pay them them- 
 selves ; it seems that what is sauce for the agricultural goose is not 
 good for the protectionist gander. Whether the formers see their true 
 interest or not the fact remains that they are the ass that bears most 
 of the burden and eats least of the hay of protection." 
 
 Let us first examine the historical portion of this document. 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that one object of the War of the 
 Revolution was to free the trade of the colonies from the re- 
 strictions which Great Britain had placed upon it for the benefit 
 of her own commerce and manufactures. It was, therefore, in 
 
" FARMERS AND THE TARIFF." 8 
 
 one sense waged " in the interests of a free trade." But it was 
 not waged in tlie interests of any such free trade as Professor 
 Perry advocates, — a free trade which denies the right of a 
 nation to place any restrictions having in view the encourage- 
 ment of industries deemed necessary or useful to the whole 
 community. On the contrary, the colonies strove for the right 
 to regulate their own commerce and industry as they pleased, 
 and, as soon as independent, they proceeded to exercise the 
 right. It was found, however, that the action of Virginia was 
 ineffectual without the co-operation of Maryland, and that 
 those two could not act effectually without Pennsylvania, nor 
 those three without New York, and so on. Mr. Madison, 
 writing to Joseph C. Cabell, Sept. 18, 1828, records these facts, 
 and adds in illustration the following : — 
 
 " There is a passage in Mr. Necker's work on the finances of France 
 which affords a signal ilhistration of the difficulty of collecting in con- 
 tiguons communities indirect taxes when not the same in all, by the 
 violent means resorted to against smu2f2flin"r from one to another of 
 them. Previous to the late revolutionary war in that country, the 
 taxes were of very different rates in the different provinces. . . . The 
 consequence was that the standing army of patrols against smuggling 
 had swollen to the number of twenty-three thousand ; the annual 
 arrests of men, women, and children engaged in smuggling, to five 
 thousand five hundred and fifty, . . . more than three hundred of 
 whom were consigned to the terrible punishment of the galleys." 
 
 The colonies, then, did not go to war to deprive themselves 
 of the right to regulate their own trade according to their own 
 notions of what is advantageous to the whole community ; and 
 Professor Perry's labored introduction tends to produce an im- 
 pression the reverse of what is true. 
 
 But this is a trifle to what follows, when he says that " no 
 ill effects followed this general liberty to buy and sell with 
 foreigners," <fec. 
 
 Tlie real facts are that upon the opening of the ports, after 
 the war, an immense quantity of foreign manufactures was in- 
 troduced ; and the people were tempted by the sudden cheap- 
 ness of imported goods to purchase beyond their capacity for 
 
i REVIEW OF PROFESSOR PERRY'S 
 
 payment. The bonds of men whose competency to pay their 
 debts was unquestionable could not be negotiated but at a dis- 
 count of thirty, forty, and fifty per cent ; real property was 
 scarcely vendible, and sales of any article for ready money 
 could only be made at a ruinous loss. Property, when brought 
 to sale under execution, sold at so low a price as frequently 
 to ruin the debtor without paying the creditor. A disposition 
 to resist the laws became common. Laws were passed by 
 which property of every kind was made a legal tender in the 
 payment of debts, though payable according to contract in gold 
 and silver. Other laws delayed payments, so that of sums 
 already due only a third, and afterwards only a fifth, was 
 annually recoverable in the courts of law. Silver and gold 
 departed to pay for the necessary and unnecessary commodities 
 imported. 
 
 In this condition of financial matters, the public securities fell 
 to fifteen, twelve, and even ten cents in the dollar, ruining 
 a large portion of the warmest friends of the Revolution, who 
 had risked their lives and embarked their entire property in its 
 support. 
 
 In every part of the States the scarcity of money had become 
 a common subject of complaint, and the difficulty of paying 
 debts had become so common, that riots and combinations 
 were formed in many places, and the operations of civil gov- 
 ernment were suspended. 
 
 The authorities for the above are, Dr. Hugh Williamson, 
 Minot's " History of the Insurrection in Massachusetts," pp. 
 2, 13 ; Marshall's " Life of Washington," pp. 75, 88, 121 ; 
 Ramsay's " South Carolina," vol. ii. p. 428 ; Belknap's " His- 
 tory of New Hampshire," vol. ii. pp. 352, 356, 429 ; Matthew 
 Carey's works, and the " Questions of the Day," by Dr. Elder. 
 
 But Professor Perry says that " no ill effects followed this 
 general liberty to buy and sell with foreigners," &c. 
 
 Let the reader pause a moment over this extraordinary mis- 
 representation. Had it been made by one who was impelled 
 by avarice or revenge, there would be nothing marvellous 
 about it ; but here is a very different case. A professor in a 
 respectable college, the author of a treatise on political economy 
 
" FARMERS AND THE TARIFF." 
 
 said to be used in many universities, a gentleman whose offi- 
 cial position makes him a trustee of the truth for the rising 
 generation, should not be accused of wilful untruthfulness. 
 No ! it is more courteous, more agreeable, and doubtless more 
 jujit, to trace the misstatement to an unfortunate habit of 
 hastily concluding that events did actually happen in this or 
 that manner, because, if his theories be correct, they must so 
 have happened. He feels perfectly sure of his doctrine ; and, 
 such being the doctrine, the events must have been as stated ; 
 but, unfortunately for the deduced history, the doctrine itself 
 cannot be maintaiued. Imports are not exchanged for ex- 
 ports. Imports are sold for money, and the money is there- 
 after either carried abroad or invested in exports, according 
 to circumstances ; or it may be invested in Government or 
 other securities, and so run the country in debt. But paying 
 in money or in securities has a limit which is speedily 
 reached ; and afterwards, imports must be limited by the 
 foreign demand for exports, even if this pays for only a fifth or 
 a tenth of what the country could produce and enjoy through 
 its own labor. But before the free-trade disease reaches this 
 chronic stage it must pass through the acute stage. There 
 are the export of treasure ; the contraction of all values as 
 measured by treasure ; the aggravation of all debts, public and 
 private ; forced liquidations ; widespread bankruptcy, and a 
 general diminution of employment to industry. 
 
 The theory which teaches that the only way in which a 
 country can be flooded with the cheap goods of foreigners is 
 for the natives to flood the foreigners with cheap goods in ex- 
 change is an incorrect theory ; and the history deduced from it 
 is consequently the opposite of the actual course of events, — all 
 which proves only what common sense would have seen at 
 once, namely, that history sliould not be inferred from theories, 
 but ascertained by reference to the written and printed records 
 of the times. 
 
 Another misstatement as to facts may be found in the alle- 
 gation that in 1789 men had not yet invented the theory that 
 protection would benefit farmers by enlarging the home 
 market. 
 
b REVIEW OP PROFESSOR PERRY S 
 
 In Adam Smith's lectures, afterwards published (in 1776) 
 under the title of " Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the 
 Wealth of Nations," the idea of the great advantage of the home 
 market crops out frequently, and may be found more particu- 
 larly in bk. iv. chap, ix., last paragraph but four, where he 
 says : — 
 
 " Whatever, then, tends to diminish in any country the number of 
 artificers and manufacturers tends to diminish the home market, — the 
 most important of all markets for the rude produce of the land." 
 
 The same idea appears frequently in Alexander Hamilton's 
 writings. He says : — 
 
 "There appear strong reasons to regard the foreign demand for 
 that (agricultural) surplus as too uncertain a reliance, and to desire a 
 substitute for it in an extensive domestic market. 
 
 " To secure such a market there is no other expedient than to pro- 
 mote manufacturing establishments. Manufacturers, who constitute 
 the most numerous class after the cultivators of the land, are for that 
 reason the principal consumers of the surplus of their labor. 
 
 " The idea of an extensive domestic market for the surplus prod- 
 uct of the soil is of the first consequence. It is, of all things, that 
 which most effectually conduces to a flourishing state of agriculture." 
 
 Benjamin Franklin, writing home from London in 1771, 
 
 says : — 
 
 " Every manufacturer encouraged in a country makes part of a home 
 market for jirovisions among ourselves, and saves so much money to 
 the country as must otherwise be exported to pay for the manufac- 
 tures he supplies. Here in England it is well known that wherever a 
 manufacture is established which employs a number of hands, it raises 
 the value of land in the country all around it. It seems, therefore, the 
 interest of our farmers and owners of land to encourage our young 
 manufactures in preference to foreign ones." 
 
 Professor Perry says that this doctrine, which he calls a 
 fallacy, had not been invented in 1789 ! The reader will see 
 that he is here again in error as to matters of fact. The doc- 
 trine was well established long before the date named, and has 
 
" FARMEES AND THE TARIFF." 7 
 
 never been shaken. Tt was reaffirmed by General Jackson in 
 his celebrated letter to Dr. Coleman in 1824, and by John 
 Stuart Mill, in his Political Economy, thirty years later. In- 
 deed, it is nearly self-evident ; bat Professor Perry denounces it 
 as a Mlacy which a few words will explode, and he gives us 
 the few words, which are : — 
 
 " Unless it can be shown that protection — that is to say, restriction — 
 increases the number of births or diminishes the number of deaths, it is 
 in vain to claim that there are any more mouths to be fed by the 
 formers than there would be under freedom." 
 
 This is a question about which a farmer is as good a judge 
 as any professor. In twenty-five years the population of the 
 United States will be doubled, — it will be 100,000,000, — capa- 
 ble, if all employed in agriculture, of producing food and raw 
 materials for 250,000,000 to 300,000,000 of people. Nowhere 
 on this planet are to be found the requisite number of purcha- 
 sers. In England and Scotland and Wales the people (less than 
 30,000,000) have been rash enough to make themselves largely 
 dependent upon foreign food ; but even their demand is liable 
 to very great variations. Other countries pursue the more 
 sensible policy of raising in ordinary seasons enough for them- 
 selves. 
 
 To repeat: in twenty-five years the population of the whole 
 country will be doubled ; that of the now less settled portions 
 will be increased three, four, or five fold. Let the farmer in 
 such portions consider whether he would prefer the increase of 
 population to be mostly farmers or mostly people who buy and 
 do not produce farm products. It will not take him long to 
 make up his mind, and his judgment will be worth as much as 
 that of all the political economists in Europe and America. 
 His judgment will agree with the mature and deliberate opinion 
 of such men as Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, 
 Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and the majority of the great 
 statesmen who have been the pride of our country. 
 
 The article now under review contains two argumentations 
 which it may be well to examine, coming as they do from a 
 noted political economist. 
 
8 REVIEW OF PROFESSOR PERRY's 
 
 The first is in favor of free trade. It runs thus : — 
 
 " Free trade does not compel anybody to trade ; it does not even 
 recommend anybody to trade ; it merely allows those persons to trade 
 who find it for their profit to do so. Unless it be profitable for them 
 to trade they will not trade. They have no motive to trade." 
 
 The original free-trade argument (by Adam Smith) went 
 farther, and maintained not only that each individual knew his 
 own interest (both immediate and permanent) better than any 
 statesman or law-giver could, but also that what the individual 
 elected to do must necessarily be that which best promoted the 
 national wealth. These extravagant propositions were re- 
 peatedly shown to be untenable, were abandoned by Mr. John 
 Stuart Mill, and are abandoned by Professor Perry, inasmuch 
 as in the very article now under review he maintains that 
 the manufacturers do not understand their own interests, that 
 the farmers do not understand theirs, and that a majority 
 of the American people have for a hundred years been pursuing 
 a pernicious and pauperizing policy. 
 
 But in place of these abandoned positions Professor Perry 
 gives us the following : — 
 
 " If it be profitable for any two persons to trade, and a law steps in 
 to prevent it, then that law destroys property, interferes with rights, 
 and makes the persons subject to it so far forth slaves." 
 
 But as the identity of individual and national interests has 
 been abundantly disproved, this proposition is exclusively one 
 regarding the rights of property. It is a proposition in law or 
 in social science. It cannot be maintained either in law or in 
 social science ; but if it could, it would still be out of place in 
 a discussion as to whether free trade or protection will best 
 promote the wealth of a particular nation. Both law and 
 social science demand that the individual interest shall give 
 way to the. national interest; with compensation, it is true, in 
 some cases, but not in those cases where the betterment out- 
 weighs the damage. To suppose that property confers the 
 right to nullify the social and economical regime under which 
 
" FARMERS AND THE TARIFF 
 
 ?> 
 
 it was acquired would, I think, have astonished Socrates or 
 any subsequent moralist ; and to expect that a discussion of 
 the rights of property will reveal the secrets of the nature and 
 causes of the wealth of nations would equally surprise all 
 political economists save Bastiat and his imitators. 
 
 The second and last argument which it will be necessary to 
 look at is the following : — 
 
 "Your protectionist thinks it is a very good thing for the farmers and 
 for the people generally to pay protective prices, but he never likes to 
 pay them himself. He has no scruple in evading them, if he can do 
 so by any possibility. He denies by his own actions, which speak 
 louder than words, what he is constantly alHrming in words, namely, 
 that protection is a good thing." 
 
 Let us test this method of reasoning. A just, efficient, and 
 economical government gives us good roads, good water, safe 
 buildings, defence against public and private violence, and a 
 thousand other desirable things ; but it costs money, and many 
 individuals, after enjoying its benefits, are unwilling to pay 
 their proportion of the expense. They thus deny by their 
 actions, which speak louder than words, what they are con- 
 stantly affirming in words, namely, that a just, efiicient, and 
 economical government is a good thing. 
 
 Again, laws against cheating and robl)ing are generally 
 thought to be good ; but many men, while they themselves 
 enjoy protection against cheating and robbing on the part of 
 others, will not hesitate, whenever they can, to cheat and rob ; 
 thus denying by actions, which speak louder than words, what 
 they are constantly affirming in words, that cheating and rob- 
 bing ought to be suppressed. 
 
 Again, if the protectionist doctrine be correct, the American 
 system vastly increases the gross annual product of the country, 
 which pays all rents, profits, fees, salaries, and wages, which 
 has endowed our institutions of learning, and brought our pros- 
 perity and civilization to its present height. Nevertheless, the 
 wealthier classes generally keep themselves in a fever because 
 under this system their champagnes, gloves, ribbons, silks, 
 satins, and fine broadcloths, brought from abroad, cost much 
 
10 REVIEW OF PROFESSOR PERRY'S 
 
 higher than they would were there no duties. They do not 
 Hke to pay the cost of the prosperity they enjoy. But this 
 does not prove that prosperity is a bad thing. Tlie farmer 
 sees that without protection he would have to go without three 
 fourths of the comforts he now possesses ; the rich do not see 
 that under free trade reduced incomes would compel them to 
 forego a large portion of their present luxuries. They deny 
 the allegation with emphasis ; but neither the denial nor the 
 emphasis proves anything. The proof must be sought from 
 combined observation and reasoning. Patient and truthful 
 search after facts, patient and truthful reasoning from them, 
 patient and truthful examination and re-examination of both 
 facts and reasoning, when they appear to disagree, may at some 
 future time build up a solid and enduring science of political 
 economy. Violence, denunciation, rhetoric, fierce onslaughts 
 upon individuals or classes, vehement appeals to the short- 
 sighted pocket, will in no way assist in its construction. 
 
 Having examined Professor Perry's historical and logical 
 methods, we are in a position to form a correct judgment as to 
 the rest of his article. 
 
 He asserts that the manufacturers are so foolish as to sup- 
 port measures which do not benefit them at all as a whole 
 class. Some of the shrewdest and most unscrupulous are bene- 
 fited ; and these wicked, selfish, mendicant swindlers have 
 cajoled the farmers into consenting to pay for their supplies 
 prices artificially enhanced by law, and selling their produce 
 AT PRICES artificially DEPRESSED BY LAW. This they havc done 
 by lobbying and log-rolling, — that is, by either deceiving or 
 corrupting a majority of the Representatives and Senators in 
 Congress. A majority of the American people for a hundred 
 years have been either fools or knaves, or both ; and the farm- 
 ers especially are " the ass that bears most of the burden and 
 eats least of the hay of protection." The only pure, patriotic, 
 and intelligent people in the country are the free-traders. No 
 evil has ever been experienced from free trade; no good has 
 ever come from protection. 
 
 The actual liistory from beginning to end has been precisely 
 opposite to that which Professor Perry has laid before us. 
 
" FARMERS AND THE TARIFF." 11 
 
 In 1789 it was well known to thinking men that the steady 
 and permanent interests of farmers could be secured only by 
 increasing the proportion of the community which consumed 
 and did not produce farm products. 
 
 In the years immediately preceding 1789 free trade had 
 brought intolerable evils upon the country ; and it was for this 
 reason, as well as with the design of benefiting the farming in- 
 terest by adding to the number of their customers, that duties 
 were imposed upon imported manufactures. The Napoleonic 
 wars followed with a great demand for our exports, and then 
 came the period of the embargo and the war with England of 
 1812-15. During the period of non-intercourse and the war 
 our manufactures increased greatly ; but after peace was de- 
 clared there came a period of excessive importations similar to 
 that which followed the War of the Revolution. Although 
 free-traders assert that " the only way a country can be flooded 
 with the cheap goods of foreigners is for the natives to flood 
 the foreigners with cheap goods in exchange," the facts were 
 the reverse of those deduced from their theories. In point of 
 fact our country ivas flooded with cheap foreign goods ; in 
 point of fact we did buy enormously beyond the amount which 
 the foreigner would take pay for in goods ; in point of fact our 
 treasure ivas exported, and this (contrary again to free-trade 
 theories) did plunge the country into immeasurable distress, 
 destroying a vast number of our manufacturing establishments, 
 and affecting in a disastrous manner the farming interests as 
 
 well. 
 
 It was then perceived that the protection which the existing 
 tariff gave to manufactures was entirely insufficient in times 
 when English speculation or distress threw immense masses 
 of goods upon our shores ; and it was perceived that the ruin 
 brought down upon every interest by a short period of great 
 cheapness cost the country a hundred times what it gained by 
 the momentary and illusive advantage of a low-moneyed price. 
 It was in 1824 that General Jackson asked, " Where has the 
 American farmer a market for his surplus products ? " and rec- 
 ommended as a remedy to draw from agriculture the super- 
 abundant labor, and employ it in machinery and manufactures. 
 
12 REVIEW OP PROFESSOK PERRY's 
 
 It was to benefit the farmer that he proposed such higher duties 
 as would make the other industries safe in times of foreign 
 panics or periods of speculation. There would have been a 
 diverting scene had any one assured the clear-headed old war- 
 rior and statesman that commodities are alwaj's paid for with 
 commodities, and that no harm can come to a country from an 
 inundation of foreign goods. 
 
 In 1833, in consequence of the threatening attitude of several 
 of the Southern States which, under the slavery regime^ were 
 unable or unwilling to establish manufactures, the tariff was 
 reduced ; and in the ensuing panic of 1837 the lessons of 1786 
 and 1820 were repeated, and it again became apparent that the 
 farmer absolutely required the custom of the manufacturing and 
 mechanical classes, and that these could only be rendered safe 
 by duties sufficiently high to prevent foreign competition not 
 merely in ordinary times, but also and chiefly during periods of 
 financial disturbance in England. Any other policy would 
 be as wise as it would be for Holland to build her dikes only 
 high enough to exclude the ocean in ordinary weather, pre- 
 ferring occasional submergence to a somewhat more expensive 
 security. Nay, it would not be as wise, for the higher duty 
 does not entail higher prices. These, as regards such goods 
 as concern the great mass of the people, are determined by in- 
 ternal competition. They will be as low as they can be under 
 the circumstances of the country, whether the duty be forty 
 per cent or sixty per cent ; indeed, the higher duty would be 
 more likely to lower the price by giving a greater sense of 
 security, and tliereby attracting more capital to the industry. 
 I am not aware that any respectable economist, from Adam 
 Smith's days to ours, has written anything which contra- 
 dicts this proposition. The goods produced at home are in 
 a few years much cheaper than the foreign goods with duty 
 added, and they gradually grow cheaper and cheaper as skill 
 and the increasing use of machinery more and more counter- 
 balance, and in many cases overcome, the effect of a higher 
 rate of wages and a higher rate of interest. The heavier 
 cotton goods were long ago cheaper even in money than 
 they could be imported, duty free ; and free-trade writers 
 
" FARMERS AND THE TARIFF." 13 
 
 allege that heavy woollens have reached nearly an equality 
 in cost with foreign goods. To be sure, after making this 
 allegation they state that the duty is 135 per cent, and in- 
 vite the " hod-carrier and the poor sewing-girl " to believe 
 that they pay, and the manufacturer pockets, the 135 per cent ; 
 but everybody knows that any reasonable prospect of making 
 ten per cent a year would cause a lunidred millions to be in- 
 vested in new woollen mills ; and the inference is unavoidable 
 that the poor get their clothing at what it costs, and a profit 
 averaging about the same as is made in other industries. 
 
 In every industry the demand occasionally outruns the 
 power of production, and then there are large profits ; and 
 occasionally the power of production outruns the demand, 
 and then there are severe losses. The steel rails of Professor 
 Perry's article are in point. The productive capacity of Eng- 
 land in 1880 was about one million tons, and that of the United 
 States the same, with the prospect of reaching a million and a 
 half in 1882. Before steel rails were made in this country the 
 price was not less than $150 a ton, and the demand has so 
 suddenly outrun the means of supply, that the same price 
 would very probably have been reached again had we depended 
 upon England. Tbe present price in England is what answers 
 to a demand for one million of tons, and Professor Perry bases 
 his calculations upon the assumption that the price in Great 
 Britain would have been the same in the face of a demand for 
 two millions of tons, and in face of a knowledge that the Amer- 
 icans could not make a ton for themselves ! As it is, the 
 manufacturers of steel rails are making money, — perhaps a 
 great deal of money, — and the country is made to ring with 
 denunciations of the wicked and deplorable fact. By and by 
 they will be losing money, and then the free-trader will try to 
 gain influence with them by urging that they are being ruined 
 by the duties upon iron. But the country can console itself by 
 the reflection that whatsoever they make, be it much or little, 
 finds its way, every dollar of it (save and except what is spent 
 upon foreign goods) into the hands of the American working- 
 man. 
 
 The observations of Fisher Ames, which Professor Perry 
 
14 EEVIEW OP PROFESSOR PERRY'S 
 
 contrives to misunderstand, are simple enough. They assert 
 merely that where every man can be a farmer if he pleases, 
 and enjoy the competence and independence of that j^osition, it 
 is in vain to endeavor to form otlier classes unless the condition 
 of those other classes be made sufficiently profitable to compen- 
 sate them for leaving their farms or for abstaining from taking 
 farms. On these conditions we can have all that the whole 
 community can produce ; on any other terms we can have only 
 the food and raw products we ourselves need, and such amount 
 of manufactured articles as will pay for what raw products 
 foreigners desire to take from us. If we desire a far greater 
 value of their products than they desire of ours, the advantage 
 we possess in producing raw products will inure entirely to 
 them ; and, moreover, we shall obtain only a portion — in our 
 case only a small portion — of what we desire, and shall either 
 have large quantities of food to be given to animals or burned, 
 or else be discouraged from producing more than a fraction of 
 what we might produce under wiser arrangements. We should 
 then enjoy in some sense a competency, for we should not 
 starve ; but we could not enjoy our present comparative opu- 
 lence. If any one doubts this let him study Mr. J. S. Mill's 
 chapter on international trade. 
 
 Professor Perry is an admirer of Bastiat, a writer who en- 
 deavored to bolster a weak cause by importing into economical 
 questions the virulence of personal and class abuse, and the 
 inexhaustible resources of rhetorical inveracity ; a writer, how- 
 ever, of whose works one serves as a text-book at Harvard, 
 while another — the worst of the whole — is recommended to 
 youth by the authority of Yale. According to Bastiat, protec- 
 tionists are cheats, thieves, robbers, swindlers, &c., and the 
 denunciations of Professor Perry in the article under review 
 are of a similar quality. If these were merited it would be 
 high time that Harvard and Yale and our other universities 
 looked into their records to see how large a proportion of their 
 foundations had been derived from protectionists ; to what ex- 
 tent, in short, they have been receivers of stolen goods ; and 
 they should lose no time in coming to a solemn resolution to 
 accept nothing in future from so infamous and polluted a 
 
" FARMERS AND THE TARIFF." 15 
 
 source ! Meanwhile, it would gratify a natural curiosity if 
 some one would tell us who were the wicked and selfish men 
 who have for a hundred years cajoled the majority of the 
 American people. The men who introduced the cotton manu- 
 facture certainly did not answer to the description ; they were 
 men with large heads and large hearts, many of them the sons 
 of farmers, but quite able to comprehend and act upon the 
 broadest views of statesmanship. They were not wicked, nor 
 selfish, nor robbers, nor swindlers, nor men who would cajole 
 anybody. They engaged in an enterprise in which immense 
 capital was embarked, and so some of them became rich ; but 
 no one can truthfully allege that they used their wealth in a 
 mean or selfish manner. As to this point Harvard College 
 can be called as a witness. Certainly no more weighty witness 
 could be summoned ; but this grand old witness now testifies 
 emphatically to the truth of the free-trade doctrines. How is 
 this ? Is it not almost conclusive ? By no means ! It is a 
 transient humor. Her belief was very different in 1776 when 
 men were in earnest; it was very different during the greater 
 portion of the intervening years, and it will be different 
 again as soon as it shall be generally seen that Great Britain, 
 through her commercial, manufacturing, and educated classes, 
 organized in the Cobden Club, is assailing our prosperity as 
 perniciously as she could with shot and shell and ironclads 
 and all the barbarity and devastation of war. The persistent 
 pressure of transatlantic condescension will then cease to 
 sway our literary classes ; and we shall have not only free 
 farmers and free working-men, but a whole population which 
 will be free to reason for themselves, and which will bestow 
 upon the faithful journalist, author, and teacher the all-suffi- 
 cient reward of the sincere and enduring approbation of his 
 own fellow-citizens. 
 
 To return to Professor Perry's article. We have seen — 
 1st, That with regard to the Revolutionary War, it so states 
 the truth as to lead the reader inevitably to a false conclusion. 
 It does the same also witli regard to the opinions of Mr. 
 Madison, quoting words he used, but failing to quote the ex- 
 ceptions he insisted on. 
 
16 "farmers and the tariff." ^ 
 
 2d, That with regard to the effects of free trade before 
 1789, and in regard to the time when the theory of the home 
 market sprang up, it makes statements which are absolutely 
 contradicted by historical records. 
 
 3d, That its only argumentative portions will not bear to be 
 confronted with any known system of reasoning. 
 
 4th, That it speaks with indecorous and unwarrantable con- 
 tempt of the majority of the people and statesmen of the 
 United States, representing that the manufacturers are too 
 stupid to know their own interests, and yet are clever enough 
 to deceive or corrupt the statesmen and to cajole the farmers, 
 whom it calls " the ass that bears most of the burden and eats 
 least of the hay of protection." 
 
 5th, That its incautious author appears to have fallen into 
 these incongruities in consequence of reasoning which involved 
 a doctrine in political economy long since obsolete, — the doc- 
 trine, namely, that the immediate interests of the individual 
 are always necessarily identical with the immediate and per- 
 manent interests of the community to which he belongs. 
 This doctrine may linger in the seclusion of this or that uni- 
 versity ; but as each class emerges, animally, into the broad 
 daylight of actual life, its members will quickly discover that 
 those who would be leaders among men must possess them- 
 selves of some philosophy which does not flatly contradict all 
 that their eyes and ears reveal to them in the world of firm, 
 concrete, positive, indisputable fact. 
 
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