^ LIB'' vKY 
 nivcrsity California 
 
 IRVINE
 
 REVIEW 
 
 OF 
 
 BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. /. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE BASIL DIXWELL. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 
 Slnibtrsits Prtss. 
 1883.
 
 fiF 
 
 Copyright, 1883. 
 By George Basil Dixwelu 
 
 University Press: 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridgb.
 
 REVIEW 
 
 or 
 
 BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 The preface tells us that " the primary object of the League 
 is to educate public opiuion, 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 refereuce to that 
 Jluctuation of -policy which struck down the great iron manufacture, at 
 the monient 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 OF 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 Martiueau 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 which is to be proved. The pretty alliteration
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 5 
 
 miglit 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 w^here 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 
 press, 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 pi-eviously, with a 
 fully employed population, it could use itself. But whether
 
 6 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 it gets its small pittance cheaply or dearly, 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 circhng 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 OF 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 strike 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, wdiich 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 fliey 
 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 were 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 Facihties of 
 Production."
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF 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 sufiQcient 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.
 
 10 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF 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 im'portation, 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 OF PROTECTION. 11 
 
 sian speculators producing oranges at ten times the cost of 
 importing them from Portugal, and being protected by a duty 
 of nine hundred per cent. This is also trifling : it has noth- 
 ino- 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 furnish 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 with 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 upon an equal footing.' " 
 
 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 4~ I ^i- The whole population, both agricultural 
 and mechanical and manufacturing, will then have one third 
 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 third more of 
 their products than can be had under free trade ; and, as skill 
 increases, they will give more and more ; and their shill 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 war 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 
 50 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, aZso, 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 OP BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OP 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 sa3^s. 
 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 124,000,000 
 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 they 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 home 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 ma}'- well 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 OF 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 k 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 exi§t 
 many years without financial convulsion. 
 
 Chapter VII. is entitled " Petition from the Manufacturers 
 of Candles, Wax-lights, Lamps, Chandeliers, Reflectors,
 
 16 REVIEW 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 unworthy 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 desiralJle and 
 beneficent communication. It was not built to facilitate the 
 passage of foreign soldiers to Paris, nor to facilitate 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 communication is productive of 
 opulence. 
 
 M. Bastiat says : — 
 
 " Frankly, is it not humiliating to the nineteenth century that it 
 should be destined to transmit to future ages the example of such 
 puerilities seriously and gravely practised ? " 
 
 We reply, Frankljs it will he humiliating to the nineteenth 
 century to have to transmit to future ages Bastiat's puerilities 
 in reasoning as examples of what could be thought worthy 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 tariifs. 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 XL is entitled " Absolute Prices." He says : — 
 
 3
 
 18 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 " If we wish to judge between freedom of trade and protection, to 
 calculate the probable effect of any political 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 notabl}'' 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. But the tariff also is higher. 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: — 
 
 " But justice, &imT[)\Q justice, — 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 sura 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 truths 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-
 
 REVIEW 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 wages. 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 charitable 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." 
 
 I 
 
 Very true. He continues thus : —
 
 20 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 
 
 " On what depends tlie 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 tlian 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 under 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 
 Frenph 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 OP 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 communit}^ 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 OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 
 
 shoes, whether by increasing the popuhation or by increasing 
 the proportion of the population Avhich 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 that 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, narrower 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 wliich 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 morp fully occupied, the gross 
 annual product is augmented, and the purposes to which 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 OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 23 
 
 for the products of the old industries, and enable them to 
 increase their production and the capital emploj'ed 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 contrar}', it is capital which is limited 
 by the limitation of the field of employment. Introduce the 
 new industry, and the capital necessary for its develoj)ment 
 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 unemploj^ed 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 OP castiat's sophisms of protection. 
 
 We will suppose that it uses largely of woollen goods pro- 
 cured from abroad. The people, 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 w^oollen 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 jihilosophers 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 iu 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 $2-10,000,000 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 \fill 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 saj's 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 which 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 sj'stem, its number of industrial pursuits is certainly 
 multiplied, but their importance is diminished. In propor- 
 tion to their number they become less productive, /or 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? " /so toe " 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 unemplo3'ed ; and its prod- 
 ucts, when established, constitute an additional market for 
 the products of the old industries, enabling them all to increase 
 their production. 
 
 Chapter XIII. is called "Theory — Practice." 
 In this chapter M. Bastiat claims for each individual the 
 '■''free disposition of his own property^ 
 
 This is a proposition in law or in social science. It has 
 nothing to do with political economy, which is an inquiry 
 into the means of increasing national opulence. If it were 
 shown that protection was one means, it would be no answer 
 to say that protection invaded natural rights. Either legal 
 or social science would laugh at any such pretension.^ A cer- 
 tain society has come to the belief that the opulence of all 
 and each of its members will be promoted by a regulation 
 that while A is employed by B, C, D, etc., he shall in turn 
 use the products of B, C, D, etc. A does not like the regula- 
 tion. His particular industry is such that B, C, D, etc., must 
 employ him, while he has discovered that D's product can 
 be got a little cheaper outside the society. A would like to 
 work for the society and enjoy all the advantages of their 
 custom ; but he would prefer not to give any custom in re- 
 turn. He maintains that by an opposite arrangement the 
 society altogether will grow rich. B, C, D, etc., reply that if 
 the industry of D be abolished, D will have to be supported 
 by the rest ; and that in the particular circumstances of their 
 society it is vastly cheaper to get the products through D than 
 
 1 See note 1, page 79.
 
 EEVIEW OP BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 27 
 
 to get them from abroad and let D sit idle. " But D is a 
 monopolist ! " cries A. " No ; " reply the rest of the alphabet, 
 " D is faithfully working in his special field, and he is gaining 
 skill yearly. It is our will that his field, although not the most 
 fertile the society possesses, shall be cultivated. We believe 
 that in this Avay we shall altogether be a wealthier society 
 than if we follow A's suggestion. Let A convince us to the 
 contrar}-, and we will do as A proposes ; but calling D a monop- 
 olist does not seem to us to have any bearing upon the cal- 
 culation. It is simply the throwing of mud. It would seem 
 that A's arguments must be weak and few, if he finds himself 
 reduced to such expedients." " But," says A, " it is the natural 
 right of every man to do what he pleases Avith his own prop- 
 erty." Again reply B, C, D, etc., "This is not the question 
 before us. The question is. How shall we all enjoy the greatest 
 abundance ? If you fly away from the question we shall con- 
 clude that you have notliing relevant to offer." " But," rejoins 
 A, " political economy and common sense tell us that to secure 
 the greatest abundance we have only to buy in the cheapest 
 market. It is absurd to buy of D at four dollars what you 
 can have from abroad for three dollars." " This," say B, C, D, 
 etc., " may be your political economy and your common sense ; 
 but it is not ours. D will take payment in that which we 
 have to give ; he pays his landlord, his butcher, his baker, his 
 tailor, his clergyman, his lawyer, his physician, his laborers, 
 with our products, or with money which is expended for our 
 products ; whereas, the foreign producer of D's commodity can 
 consume, or cause to be consumed, only a tenth part as much 
 of our products. We can, therefore, have from D more of 
 his products than we can have from D's foreign competitor, 
 and we enable D to support himself; whereas, in the other, 
 case, he must be supported by us. D is not producing pine- 
 apples under glass, nor doing any other absurdity : he is only 
 producing something which nominally costs perhaps a tliird 
 more than it is offered at by your foreign friends, but which 
 really, taking all things into account, costs less, and will cost a 
 great deal less when D has acquired greater skill. This is our 
 political economy. Convince us that we are wrong and we
 
 28 REVIEW OP bastiat's sophisms op protection. 
 
 will act accordingly ; but you will never convince us we arc 
 wrong by calling D a monopolist, a robber, a thief, a liver 
 upon public charity, a man actuated by the spirit of a slave- 
 holder, etc. ; nor will you convince us by talking about the 
 shame of preventing our poor laborers from spending their 
 hardly earned wages as they please. We recognize all such 
 twistings and turnings as the tricks of the rhetorician. If 
 you cannot convince us by good sound logic and common 
 sense, you are at liberty to depart out of our prosperous 
 society. There are plenty of people who will be glad to buy 
 you out." 
 
 M. Bastiat writes : — 
 
 " You, Messrs. Monopolists, maintain that facts are for you, and 
 that we, on our siile, have only theory. You even flatter yourselves 
 that this long series of public acts, this old experience of Euro|)e 
 which you invoke, appeared imposing to M. Say ; and I confess that 
 he has not refuted you with his usual sagacity. 
 
 " I, for my part, cannot consent to give up to you the domain of 
 facts ; for, while on your side you can advance only limited and special 
 facts, we can oppose to them universal facts, the free and voluntary 
 acts of all men, 
 
 " What do we maintain ? And what do you maintain ? 
 
 " We maintain that ' it is best to buy from others what we can our- 
 selves produce oidy at a higher price.' 
 
 " You maintain that ' it is best to make for ourselves, even though 
 it should cost us more than to buy from others.' 
 
 " Now, gentlemen, putting aside theory, demonstration, reasoning 
 (things which seem to nauseate you), which of these assertions is 
 sanctioned by universal practice?" 
 
 M. Bastiat was in error. Nothincj would delioht us more 
 than sound theory and reasoning ; nothing more than a real 
 demonstration ; but theory which is built up by drawing uni- 
 versal conclusions from particular premises, reasoning which 
 violates every canon of logic, a demonstration drawn from an 
 identical proposition, — these certainly do turn our stomachs. 
 
 We deny that " it is always best to buy from others wdiat 
 we can ourselves produce only at a higher price." The dis- 
 tribution of the individuals in a community, under the regime
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 29 
 
 of the division of occupations, is not found to be so perfect 
 that each person finds employment all the time in his peculiar 
 calling. Many find themselves out of work much of the 
 time ; and this leisure those who are thrift}' employ to the 
 best advantage they can. The product, if sold in the market, 
 might not net more than half as much per day as they earn 
 at their occupations when they are at work ; but it is clear 
 gain. They are good economists in so employing themselves 
 rather than sit idle and repine at the want of work. 
 
 We protectionists do 7iot maintain the general proposition 
 which you thrust upon us. We do not maintain that " it 
 is best to make for ourselves, even though it should cost us 
 more than to buy of others." The proposition, by an artful 
 misuse of words, begs the whole question. Costs us more 
 than to buy of others ! What does this mean? What is the 
 cost to an individual of a piece of work done when he would 
 otherwise have done nothing ? What is the cost to a nation 
 of work done by labor otherwise unoccupied assisted by cap- 
 ital otherwise unemployed ? What we do maintain is, that 
 for an individual it is best to do something for himself or 
 others during the days when his special trade or art leaves 
 him unoccupied ; and that, for a nation, it is best to promote 
 that distribution of labor and capital which evolves the 
 greatest gross annual product ; for the gross annual product 
 is the sum of the net individual incomes, as has been recog- 
 nized both by Adam Smith and J. B. Say. The individual 
 must be left, in his local position, to find out what is best for 
 him to do. He will do one thing under free trade — quite 
 another thing under protective laws. What he does under 
 one system affords no evidence of the goodness or badness 
 of the other ; nor can the fact that he does this or that afford 
 any evidence that this or that will promote the general in- 
 terest. Adam Smith, indeed, after adducing a few instances 
 in which he thought individuals acting solely with a view to 
 their own interests would, nevertheless, unintentionall}^ pro- 
 mote tliat of the societ}'', added the words, — "and he (the 
 individual) is in tliis, as in many other cases, led by an in- 
 visible hand to promote an end which was no part of his
 
 30 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 
 
 intention ; " but it will be observed that Adam Smith had not 
 the folly to put this forth as a true induction. He threw it 
 out as a rhetorical flourish, knowing well that a thoughtless 
 crowd ivould seize upon it as a general proposition revealing 
 the deep plans of Providence ; and that, having so seized upon 
 it, they would be too innocent of logic to be shaken in tlieir 
 faith by any number of negative instances. But fortunately 
 all men are not imposed upon by a rhetorical flourish. Indeed, 
 Adam Smith did not thus impose upon himself, for he advo- 
 cated government restraints upon the issues of banks, and 
 defended it in Book II., Chapter II., of the " Wealth of Na- 
 tions " (towards tlie end), in the following words : — 
 
 " To restrain private people, it may be said, from receiving in pay- 
 ment the promissory notes of a banker, for any sum, whether great or 
 small, when they themselves are willing to receive them ; or to 
 restrain a banker from issuing such notes, when all his neighbors are 
 willing to accept them, is a manifest violation of that natural liberty 
 which it is the proper business of law, not to infringe, but to sup- 
 port. Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some 
 respect a violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the 
 natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security 
 of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of 
 all governments, — of the most free as well as of the most despotical. 
 The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent communi- 
 cation of fire, is a violation of natural liberty, exactly of the same 
 kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here 
 proposed." 
 
 But if it did not impose upon Adam Smith himself, it did 
 upon many others, as may be inferred from the following 
 extract from Mr. John Stuart Mill's " Political Economy," 
 Book v., Chapter XI., paragraph 12 : — 
 
 " Mr. "Wakefield therefore proposed to check the premature occupa- 
 tion of land, and dispersion of the people, by putting upon all unap- 
 propriated lands a rather high price, the proceeds of which were to be 
 expended in conveying emigrant laborers from the mother country. 
 
 " This salutary provision, however, has been objected to, in the 
 name and on the authority of what was represented as the great prin- 
 ciple of political economy, that individuals are the best judges of their
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 31 
 
 own interest. It was said that when things are left to themselves, land 
 is appropriated and occupied by the spontaneous choice of individuals, in 
 the quantities and at the times most advantageous to each person, and 
 therefore to the community generally ; and that to interpose artificial 
 obstacles to their obtaining laud is to prevent them from adopting the 
 course which, in their own judgment, is most beneficial to them, from a 
 self-conceited notion of the legislator, that he knows what is most for 
 their interests, better than they do themselves. Now this is a complete 
 misunderstanding, either of the system itself, or of the principle with 
 which it is alleged to conflict. The oversight is similar to that which we 
 have just seen exemplified on the subject of hours of labor. However 
 beneficial it might be to the colony in the aggregate, and to each individ- 
 ual composing it, that no one should occupy more land than he can 
 properly cultivate, nor become a proprietor until there are other laborers 
 ready to take his place in working for hire, it can never be the interest 
 of an individual to exercise this forbearance, unless he is assured that 
 others will do so too. Surrounded by settlers who have each their 
 thousand acres, how is he benefited by restricting himself to fifty ? or 
 what does he gain by deferring the acquisition for a few years, if all 
 other laborers rush to convert their first earnings into estates in the 
 wilderness, several miles apart from one another ? If they, by seizing 
 on land, prevent the formation of a class of laborers for wages, he will 
 not, by postponing the time of his becoming a proprietor, be enabled 
 to employ the land to any greater advantage when he does obtain it ; 
 to what end should he place himself in what will appear to him and 
 others a position of inferiority, by remaining a laborer when all 
 around him are proprietors? It is the interest of each to do what is 
 good for all, but only if others will do likewise. 
 
 " The principle that each is the best judge of his own interest, 
 understood as these objectors understand it, would prove that govern- 
 ments ought not to fulfil any of their acknowledged duties, — ought 
 not, in fact, to exist at all. It is greatly the interest of the community, 
 collectively and individually, not to rob or defraud one another ; but 
 there is not the less necessity for laws to punish robbery and fraud ; 
 because, although it is the interest of each that nobody should rob or 
 cheat, it cannot be any one's interest to refrain from robbing and 
 cheating others when all others are permitted to rob and cheat him. 
 Penal laws exist at all, chiefly for this reason, because an even unani- 
 mous opinion that a certain line of conduct is for the general interest, 
 does not make it people's individual interest to adhere to that line of 
 conduct."
 
 32 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 By parity of reasoning, we must say that when it is the 
 interest of the community, collectively and individually, to 
 build up a home market by buj-ing " each of the other," there 
 is not the less necessity for protective law^s ; because although 
 it is the interest of each that nobody should buy some article 
 abroad, it cannot be any one's interest to refrain from buying 
 abroad when all others are permitted to do so. 
 
 It will be seen that both Adam Smith and Mr. Mill take 
 the pretty little dream of the invisible hand, and the doctrine 
 that individuals can judge best about their own interests, at 
 their true value. They may be used to support a position 
 which they wish to establish ; but they are really of no im- 
 portance. They neither of them put forward Bastiat's 
 absurdity that each individual by the right of property is 
 invested with power to veto the action of the whole com- 
 munity. 
 
 M. Bastiat continues: — 
 
 " You are not then sustained hj practice, since it would be impossible, 
 were you to search the world, to show us a single man who acts accord- 
 ing to your principle." 
 
 As we have seen that every prudent and thrifty individual 
 acts contrary to the principles laid down by M. Bastiat as 
 those of free trade, and in accordance with the real principles 
 of the protective theory, the intrepidity of the above assertion 
 is marvellous. 
 
 The rest of the chapter is full of similar intrepidity ; im- 
 puting admissions and arguments which protectionists never 
 make, and then securing to himself an easy victory over his 
 men of straw. He concludes as follows : — 
 
 " And all this for what ? To prove to us that we consumers, — we 
 are your property ; that we belong to you, soul and body ; that you 
 have an exclusive right on our stomachs and our limbs ; that it is your 
 right to feed and dress us at your own price, however great your 
 ignorance, your rapacity, or the inferiority of your work ! Truly, then, 
 your system is one not founded upon practice ; it is one of abstraction 
 — of extortion."
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 83 
 
 Pray who are these obstreperous consumers, in whose name 
 M. Bastiat presumes to speak? Nineteen twentieths of the 
 consumers, as already shown, are also producers, either of 
 commodities or services^ with whom the only means of pur- 
 chase are their products ; with whom to produce is the con- 
 dition precedent of consumption. He certainly had no reason 
 to speak for them. Nor is the case any better with the re- 
 maining twentieth. The gross annual product of commod- 
 ities must be consumed or there will ensue immediate glut 
 and stagnation. In the long run and upon an average of 
 years it is consumed ; being distributed in w^ages, profits, and 
 rent, in proportion to the relative importance to the com- 
 munity of the labor and the capital which each brings to the 
 service of the community. An augmented annual production 
 must then issue in an augmented recompense to both labor 
 and capital. The totality of consumers is benefited ; and 
 each is benefited in proportion to the importance the con- 
 tribution which his labor or his capital makes to the gross 
 product wdiich has to be divided. The manufacturer, then, 
 who, in these United States, is secretly sighing for a reduction 
 of wages which wall enable him to compete in the " great 
 market of the world " with Great Britain, is in reality sighing 
 for a gain which must bring with it a much greater loss in 
 the diminution of the vastly more extensive home market ; 
 and the clergyman, lawyer, physician, literary man, and all 
 receivers of salaries, etc., labor under a similar hallucination, 
 when they long for the cheaper products of cheaper labor 
 from across the Atlantic ; for with such cheaper products 
 must come less employment for the home population, and a 
 diminution in the gross annual product which pays not only 
 all labor but all salaries, all fees, all incomes. This might not 
 be true if the whole of our productive population (actual 
 and potential) could be employed upon the branches of 
 production in which we have an advantage, and emploj'ed 
 without overstocking the markets of the world ; but it appears 
 to be indubitably true in the actual situation in which the 
 United States and other nations are now placed. 
 
 Posdhly a world might exist where it would promote the 
 
 6
 
 34 REVIEW OP bastiat's sophisms of protection. 
 
 opulence of each nation, and of all nations, were each to con- 
 fine itself to those fields of production in which it has an 
 advantage ; but we are only concerned with the world as it is ; 
 and in this neither inductive nor deductive reasoning leads to 
 the conviction that the best possible arrangement springs 
 " natural!}^ " from the unregulated strife of individual com- 
 petition, — the clash of chaotic cupidities. The laws of 
 nature are manifold. Man studies them ; and, by artificial 
 collocation of materials and forces, brings those into play 
 which promote his ends. He does tliis in every other depart- 
 ment. Why should he not do it in the department which 
 aims at social opulence, at abundance ? He sees in other 
 nations arts which give a prodigious povrer over nature ; why 
 should he not seek to acquire them? Nature invites and re- 
 wards study with a most liberal hand in all other fields ; has 
 she forbidden him to study this ? No ; it is not nature that has 
 forbidden him, but only Adam Smith ! — a very sagacious and 
 eminent author indeed, but one hardly justified in warning off 
 the human mind from a most important field of investigation, 
 — perhaps, indeed, the most important so far as material well- 
 being is concerned. That individual interest can rarely lead 
 to the acquirement of those arts has been- admirably shown 
 by John Ray in a work which the writer has just referred to 
 with delight and instruction. That is the work of a philoso- 
 pher and seeker after truth : everywhere cool logic, veracity, 
 dignity ; earnestness, indeed, but earnestness to discover what 
 is right, not earnestness to prove this or that preconcep- 
 tion to be right. There is no appeal to the passions, to anger, 
 to pity, to envy, to greed, nor even to religious prejudices. 
 He never misrepresents the arguments or ideas of Adam 
 Smith, with whom he differs ; never puts into his mouth what 
 he did not say ; never bursts into passionate rhetorical spasms, 
 like Bastiat. He neither disgraces himself nor affronts his 
 readers by the exercise of any such arts. If a similar work 
 is to be found upon the free-trade side of political economy, 
 it is a pity the League should have paid so poor a compliment 
 to the good sense of the American people as to have preferred 
 presenting them with the " Sophisms " of Bastiat.
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 35 
 
 Chapter XIV. is entitled " Conflicting Principles." 
 In this M. Bastiat starts from this premise: — 
 
 '* The disposing by law of consumers, forcing them to the support 
 of home industry, is an encroachment upon their liberty, the forbid- 
 ding of an action (mutual exchange) which is in no way opposed to 
 morality. In a word, it is an act of injustice." 
 
 Under the regime of the division of employments, each 
 individual produces a certain article or articles with which to 
 buy whatever he requires. Tlie greater the value of what he 
 produces, the greater the amount that he can consume. If 
 by buying of A he gets more than by buying of B, he does 
 so. His interests as a consumer are identical with his interests 
 as a producer. 
 
 But has a nation no rights ? There is a nation called the 
 United States : fifty millions of persons, soon to be a hundred 
 millions. It possesses vast resources still undeveloped. It 
 says to all the world, " Come over and share our pros- 
 perity. All we ask is that you should live like men as we 
 do ; and that, being furnished with work by us, we taking 
 your products and services, you shall in turn consume the 
 products and services of others among us so far as our laws 
 and customs require. We have become convinced that this 
 system promotes the general good, and that under it you will 
 yourselves enjoy a greater abundance than under any other." 
 " But," says A, " this is not what I desire. I would like to 
 have you give me high wages ; but, when I have got them, I 
 have a right to buy of whomsoever I please ; and C, across the 
 Atlantic, being willing to live a great deal cheaper than B, 
 can give me considerably more for my wages than B will." 
 The United States might reply : '' If you have any such right, 
 then one individual can veto the action of fifty millions, mak- 
 ing their interests give way to what he supposes to be his, but 
 which we are satisfied are not his, because if A is to be 
 allowed to act in this way every other citizen must be allowed 
 to do so ; and then, a large proportion of our industries being 
 transferred abroad, high wages will disappear, and with them, 
 the ability to buy the cheap foreign goods." " But this is not
 
 86 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 SO," cries A. " Adam Smith and all the illustrious and learned 
 foreign economists down to M. Bastiat agree that it is best to 
 allow every man to buy where he can buy cheapest. They 
 assure me that they have demonstrated the doctrine, and that 
 none but ignorant people have any doubt upon the subject." 
 The fifty millions might reply : " Protectionist writers have 
 gone over those reasonings and pointed out gross blunders in 
 them ; blunders that would ruin the reputation of any of us 
 ignorant people. Moreover, we see clearly enough that where 
 much is produced there is much to consume. If half of us, 
 ■working in the industries where we have a decided advantage, 
 can produce as much as we all require, and as much as can find 
 a good market abroad, it needs no philosopher to see that the 
 other half of the population had better be employed, even 
 upon less productive fields. This is our theory ; and under 
 it we have always prospered, except during the years 1873- 
 1879, when other sufficient causes produced depression.^ 
 Whenever we have faltered in this policy we have suffered, 
 even during the years following 1849, when Australian 
 and Californian gold favored prosperity everywhere. We 
 believe that both inductive and deductive reasoning war- 
 rant our practice ; and if A does not think so he had better 
 go to England and stay there. To allow him to remain and 
 do as he likes, to the detriment of the community which 
 gives him his opportunity of gaining a living, — this^ in- 
 deed, would be an injustice. His demand is opposed to 
 morality. Every moral teacher from Socrates down would 
 so declare it." 
 
 There is no ground then for M. Bastiat's deduction that 
 according to protectionist reasoning titUlty is incompatible 
 with the internal administration of justice or incompatible 
 ■with the maintenance of external peace. These are M. Bas- 
 tiat's conclusions, indeed, but they cannot be worked out from 
 any sound premises. As to the foreign consumer, we have no 
 charge of his interests. By looking after those of the United 
 States w^e shall do all we have any title to do. By taking 
 good care of our own affairs, we may very likely promote 
 those of the rest of the world as effectually as if we assumed 
 
 1 See note 2, page 79.
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 37 
 
 the rSle of general philantliropist. A multitude of opulent 
 nations woald still have a vast international trade, — probably 
 much larger in actual volume (though less, perliaps, in pro- 
 portion to the total annual products) than can be supported 
 between the same nations impoverished by free trade. 
 
 There is no call, then, for M. Bastiat's rhapsodies and dec- 
 lamations about horrible blasphemy, liberty, utility, justice, 
 peace, and the manifestation of the wisdom of God as shown 
 in the sublime harmony of material creation. The sober and 
 clear-headed American people are not likely to be fooled in 
 this way. 
 
 Chapter XV. is entitled " Reciprocity Again.." 
 This chapter argues that an individual in a nation having 
 no external relations sells his product for mone}', " casts his 
 product into the national circulation," and by means of money 
 withdraws a like value ; that if thereafter the exchanges of 
 the nation be opened — made free — wdth other nations, the 
 individual will in like manner cast his product into the larger 
 market, that of the world. 
 
 But induction from facts and deductive reasoning alike 
 show tliat the individual may find the universal market 
 smaller than the national. The farmer may have an advan- 
 tage not only in growing wheat, cotton, and tobacco, but also 
 in growing green crops and market products not susceptible 
 of distant conveyance. He wishes to exchange these for 
 manufactured goods which can be brought from the ends of 
 the earth. He throws them into the market of the world ; 
 but the world market for tke7n is bounded by a radius of a few 
 tens of miles. He can produce of them (his most profitable 
 crops) only what can be taken by the population occupying 
 the limited area. Put a cotton or woollen mill or any other 
 manufacturing establishment near the farmer and his possible 
 production of salable articles, and consequently his possible 
 consumption is increased greatly. The laissez-faire system 
 produces liere a smaller product for the individual, for his 
 immediate vicinity, for his nation, and for the world. If he 
 buys that which comes from a great distance, he must raise
 
 38 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 that which can be carried to a great distance, — that is, a few 
 articles, for which the distant markets are very limited. 
 
 Bastiat next reasons from individual action to national, 
 forgetting that nations are few and individuals many. A 
 casts his individual product into the national market, and sells 
 it. Innumerable producers compete to supply him with what 
 he needs. Frequent combinations among them to fleece him 
 arebe3'ohdthe range of probability ; iind any occurrence which 
 should stop his supply is scarcely possible. It is not so with 
 nations. They are few, and the possible events which might 
 stop a foreign supply are ver}^ many. 
 
 Finall}', Bastiat says that if the supply and demand from 
 abroad should stop, we should only be forced upon isolation^ 
 to reach which is the ideal of the protective system. 
 
 But it has been already observed that protection does not 
 aim at nor tend to isolation. It aims at and accomplishes a 
 comparative independence as to the great necessaries of life, 
 and brings about a great increase of opulence, from which 
 springs the ability to enjoy a thousand luxuries which can 
 really be got to better advantage elsewhere. The products 
 which the United States throws into the market of the world 
 are thirty times greater (per head) than free-trade India 
 throws ; they are many times greater than those of Portugal, 
 Turkey, Ireland, and nearly equal to those of Great Britain's 
 American colonies, being $16.70 per head to $19.04 per head. 
 This last is a remarkable fact. The United States makes for 
 herself vastly more, per liead, than those colonies consume, 
 and still sells in the market of the world a surplus as great, 
 or nearly as great, as theirs under free trade. 
 
 We say that this is a fact. You cannot deny it. But j'ou 
 deny that the fact has any connection with protection. We 
 reply that by deductive reasoning we show that such a fact 
 ought to occur under protection ; and by observations which 
 you cannot and do not deny, we show that it does occur. 
 You reply that you have shown by deductive reasoning that 
 no such fact could follow such a cause. We answer, in turn, 
 that we have pointed out errors in your deductions, errors 
 which absolutely annihilate them ; while you have not found
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 39 
 
 any errors in our deductions, but answer them only by a 
 repetition of your own (just as if they had never been con- 
 futed), and by a vast amount of declamation and rhetoric. 
 You do not prove the contradictory of our propositions, but 
 only the contradictory of some other propositions, which you 
 put into our mouths, but which we ourselves never dreamed of. 
 
 Chapter XVI., — "Obstructed Rivers pleading for the 
 Prohibitionists." 
 
 This is the case of the Douro, which, according to M. 
 Bastiat, neither Spain nor Portugal was willing to improve, 
 for fear that grain would pass between the two countries. 
 The chapter does not give sufficient facts to enable a protec- 
 tionist to decide whether, under the circumstances, it was or 
 was not desirable to expend money in removing the obstruc- 
 tions. To M. Bastiat the case appeared simple. He was for 
 removing all obstructions to individual action. To protec- 
 tionists, who do not believe that individual action necessarily 
 leads to the best result for a community, the case is not so 
 clear. We believe that Adam Smith was right in advocating 
 the regulation by the society of individual action regarding 
 the currency, and that Mr. John Stuart Mill was right in 
 advocating similar regulations regarding a variety of matters 
 touching the general good. We believe that laissez faire 
 and giving perfect freedom to individual action is not good 
 in theorj^ and has never yet anywhere been adopted in 
 practice. 
 
 Chapter XVII. is entitled " A Negative Railroad." 
 This chapter is a good specimen of M. Bastiat's reasoning. 
 By diligent search or lively invention, he produces an absurd 
 proposal that a railroad should have a break or terminus at 
 Bordeaux, in order that goods and passengers should be thus 
 forced to contribute to the profits of the boatmen, porters, 
 commission-merchants, hotel-keepers, etc. He then argues 
 that IF such profit be conformable to the public interest, there 
 ought to be similar breaks elsewhere, and these too Avould be 
 for the general good, and for the interest of national labor.
 
 40 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 " For it is certain that in proportion to the number of these 
 breaks or termini will be the increase in consignments, com- 
 missions, lading, unlading, etc." A protectionist would say at 
 once that the first break was detrimental, and that many would 
 utterly prevent all consignments, commissions, etc., coming 
 thus to a conclusion the opposite of that which M. Bastiat 
 says is certain, — a conclusion, by the way, which would not 
 be certain, even if the premises were sound. M. Bastiat, 
 however, insists — 
 
 " that the restrictive principle is identical with that which would 
 maintain this system of breaks ; it is the sacrifice of the consumer to 
 the producer, — of the end to the means." 
 
 This shows, out of M. Bastiat's own mouth, that he had no 
 conception of what protection does actually aim at. It aims 
 at the greatest possible consumption, but recognizes (what 
 M. Bastiat apparently did not) that, before an individual or 
 a nation can consume largely, he or it must produce. Pro- 
 tectionists are as anxious as free-traders — more anxious than 
 free-traders — to remove obstacles, to improve machinery, to 
 improve tools, to improve the arrangement and organization 
 of society. It aims at whatever will increase the gross annual 
 product. Evidently M. Bastiat never learned such a doc- 
 trine ; but he might have deduced it by easy economical 
 reasoning from the sound parts of Adam Smith and J.B.Say. 
 The trouble with him was that he gathered iij their errors, 
 and passed by their sound reasoning ; that he took in sober 
 earnest, and as universal generalizations, what tliey threw out 
 as rhetorical flourishes. Tinsel caught his eye quicker than 
 solid gold. So lie swallowed laissez faire^ and thought to 
 build a science upon a proposition drawn from a few and 
 uncertain instances, and forbidden by innumerable negative 
 instances. M. Bastiat certainly profited little from the 
 " Novum Organum," or from Mr. John Stuart Mill's 
 "Logic." 
 
 Chapter XVIII., — " There are no Absolute Principles." 
 M. Bastiat scoffs at the idea that there are in political 
 economy no absolute principles, and reaffirms that the free-
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 41 
 
 dom of exchanges is an absolute principle. He deduces this 
 from the provisioning of a great city. He says : — 
 
 " Contemplating this great city of Paris, I have thought to myself: 
 Here are a million of human beings, who would die in a few days if 
 provisions of every kind did not flow towards this vast metropolis. 
 The imagination is unable to contemplate the multiplicity of objects 
 which to-morrow must enter its gates, to prevent the life of its inhabi- 
 tants terminating in famine, riot, or pillage. And yet, at this moment 
 all are asleep, without feeling one moment's uneasiness from the 
 contemplation of this frightful possibility. On the other side, we 
 see eighty departments who have this day labored, without concert, 
 without mutual understanding, for the victualling of Paris. How can 
 each day bring just what is necessary, nothing less, nothing more, to 
 this gigantic market ? What is the ingenious and secret power which 
 presides over the astonishing regularity of such complicated move- 
 ments, — a regularity in which we all have so implicit, though thought- 
 less, a faith ; on which our comfort, our very existence depends ? This 
 power is an absolute principle, the jirinciple of freedom in exchanges. 
 We have faith in that inner light which Providence has placed in the 
 hearts of all men, confiding to it the preservation and amelioration 
 of our species, — interest, since we must give its name, so vigilant, so 
 active, having so much forecast, when allowed its free action." 
 
 M. Bastiat then declares that no minister, however superior 
 his abilities, could arrange things so well, and that if he 
 should attempt it, the actually existing misery would be 
 infinitely increased, etc., etc. 
 
 This chapter may be good, considered as declamation or 
 rhetoric, but we fear it would hardly stand a test by ]\Ir. 
 Mill's canons of inductive logic. What M. Bastiat under- 
 took to prove was that in political economy it was an absolute 
 (by which he must have meant a universal) proposition that 
 freedom in exchanges is, in every case, promotive of opu- 
 lence ; or that every constraint put upon the freedom of 
 exchanges is unfavorable to progress in opulence. 
 
 His method of proof was to present the case of a great 
 city provisioned regularly without any supervision. He rep- 
 resents that there is never too much, never too little, etc., 
 statements which it would be necessary to verify, and which 
 
 * 6
 
 42 EEVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 
 
 could not be verified. On the contrary, it would be found 
 that at times there are short, and at times excessive, supplies ; 
 that much food perishes unused almost in the sight, nay, 
 quite in the sight, of hungry crowds ; that much clothing 
 wears out on the shop shelves in the sight of shivering myriads. 
 M. Bastiat alleges that matters would be much worse under 
 the management of a single head with suitable assistants, but 
 he does not prove this ; and a general proposition intended to 
 be the basis of an important science should not rest upon 
 opinion. As there is great irregularity of supply, so great 
 that some 90 per cent of the mercantile classes (who under- 
 take the management of such matters) fail and become 
 bankrupts, the results of free competition are evidently far 
 from perfect. Whether they could or could not be better 
 managed by a government bureau is a matter of opinion, not 
 a matter of certaint3\ To establish M. Bastiat's proposition 
 inductively, it is necessary to find not only instances in which 
 opulence attends freedom of exchange, but also to show that 
 poverty never attends it. How then about Ireland, Turkey, 
 Portugal, India ; and, to a minor extent, but still to a very 
 observable extent, all the American colonies of Great Britain ? 
 Freedom of exchange has not prevented millions from starv- 
 ing in Ireland and India in the midst of all the possibilities 
 of plent}'. These are negative instances, any one of which 
 would be sufficient to forbid the proposed generalization. If, 
 then, it is to be proved that freedom of exchange is even one 
 among many causes of opulence, it must be proved deductively. 
 It cannot be proved a posteriori in the face of numerous nega- 
 tive instances. Let us then try the case deductively, and 
 first with regard to an individual. A produces something. 
 Free trade saj^s. Stick to your particular business, and buy 
 with your products, in which you have an advantage, the 
 other things you desire which are produced by persons who 
 have an advantage over you in their production. Yes ; cer- 
 tainly, if A has occupation all the time. But if he has occu- 
 pation for only four days out of six, then most certainly 
 let him do something else during the two unoccupied days, 
 rather than call in a skilled artist to do it for him. He may
 
 REVIEW OP BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 43 
 
 not do it as well or easily at first, but he will do it after a 
 fashion, and better and better every time he tries ; and he 
 will save a portion of his four days' earnings, which would 
 otherwise be paid out for the work he now does for himself. 
 If he be thrifty he will do this of liis own accord ; if he be 
 unthrifty it would be better for him, so far as opulence is con- 
 cerned, if he were constrained to do so. But this is to invade 
 his liberty. True ; and upon other grounds tlian that of 
 procuring abundance, it may be better not to constrain him ; 
 but that is another question. The question we have before 
 us is, " How shall he obtain the greatest abundance ? " There 
 can be no sound reasoning if we fly off iroai the point under 
 discussion. 
 
 Now let us consider a nation, say, the United States. It 
 possesses a decided advantage in growing cotton. Are we to 
 confine ourselves, fifty millions of us, to growing cotton? It 
 is only necessary to ask the question to make the absurdity 
 apparent. We have also an abundance of cheap land, capable 
 of yielding agricultural products for seven hundred millions 
 of people, and at our present rate of increase we shall grow to 
 be a hundred millions in twenty-five years ; and to two hun- 
 dred millions in half a centur}'. Some twenty-five millions of 
 people three thousand miles away are willing to take a few 
 agricultural products of us, and they say they will give us in 
 return manufactured products cheaper than Ve can make 
 them ourselves, while land is open to all at a nominal price. 
 
 Twenty-five millions of people (a minute portion of the 
 human race) propose to do the mechanical and manufacturing 
 work for a thousand millions. But a thousand millions of 
 people can raise raw agricultural products for three thousand 
 millions ; where are the other two thousand millions ? Or, to 
 put it in another shape, three hundred and fifty millions can 
 raise raw agricultural products for the world ; what are the 
 other six hundred and fifty millions to do while the English 
 Islands do all the mechanical and manufacturing labors ? 
 England teaches free-trade doctrines, and these promise a 
 greater abundance than is practicable witli protection. We 
 have a right, then, to assume that she promises the world at
 
 44 REVIEW OP bastiat's sophisms op protection. 
 
 least as great an abundance of mechanical and manufactured 
 products as are enjoyed by the people of the United States 
 who are so silly and unscientific as to help themselves. They 
 consume per head a value of $100 in such products. A hun- 
 dred dollars each for one thousand millions of people is one 
 hundred thousand millions. The remuneration of capital 
 and labor for converting the raw material, even at a low 
 rate, would be thirty thousand millions of dollars, or about 
 six times the total annual production and consumption of the 
 whole British Islands! Here we come to an absurdit}'. The 
 dream of being the workshop to the world enjoying abun- 
 dance is seen to be only a dream. If those Islands were 
 called upon to supply the United States alone, profits and 
 wages would speedily be doubled or trebled there, and the 
 cheapness which exists during lack of demand would vanish. 
 But what she could give us of finished products would be 
 limited b}^ the amount she could consume of our raw prod- 
 ucts ; and a very short calculation will show that the quantity 
 would be only a small fraction of what we get by helping 
 ourselves even now, and twice as inadequate twenty-five 
 years hence. 
 
 Any one who has been taught simple arithmetic can see 
 that Great Britain cannot give us abundance at any price. 
 She can give us cheapness and scarcity if we will first allow 
 her to destroy our own industries and drive an undue 
 proportion of us on to farms ; but we can have an abundance 
 of finished products only by manufacturing ourselves. In 
 this way we can have all we need witliout paying more in 
 labor and abstinence than we pay for raw products. 
 
 • 
 
 Chapter XIX., — "National Independence," 
 
 A chapter so full of inveracity, audacious misrepresentation, 
 
 and declamation as to be positively wonderful. It says in 
 
 substance that : — 
 
 "With free trade and mutual independence would come eternal 
 peace! 'Interest' — that is, the immediate selfish interest of the 
 unhridled individual — is the necessary, eternal, and indestructible 
 mover to the guidance of which Providence has confided human per- 
 fectibility. The 'spoliators' declaim against the beautiful harmony
 
 REVIEW OP BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 45 
 
 which God has been pleased to establish in the moral world," etc., 
 usque ad nauseam. 
 
 The fact is that the most wicked wars of modern times have 
 been waged to promote free trade, and more would be waged 
 were it not that the great protectionist powers are too strong 
 to be attacked. 
 
 Chapter XX., — " Human Labor — National Labor." 
 
 M. Bastiat maintains that the destruction of machinery and 
 the prohibition of foreign goods are two acts proceeding from 
 the same doctrine. 
 
 This only proves that M. Bastiat was entirely ignorant of 
 political economy. He takes the case of machinery and shows 
 easily enough that its introduction is advantageous. The 
 gross annual product is not diminished, the immediate loss 
 which falls upon the displaced laborers is made good to labor 
 in general by the expenditure of the sum saved. Thus far, 
 all right ; but his next step is a blunder. 
 
 Ten millions of hats produced in France at fifteen francs 
 makes one hundred and fifty millions of francs. Import from 
 abroad at ten francs, and they will cost one hundred millions ; 
 and the fifty millions saved being spent for other articles or 
 services, M. Bastiat imagines that all will be serene the same 
 as in the case of machineiy. But he overlooks the fact that 
 the one hundred and fifty millions' value of hats provoked 
 and remunerated other French labor, producing values of one 
 hundred and fifty millions ; the sum of products, then (the 
 whole price of which was net individual income to French- 
 men ; see J. B. Say), was three hundred millions. Bring 
 in the English hats, and the French products to pay for the 
 hats (supposing complete reciprocity) will be one hundred 
 millions. If the fifty millions saved on the hats be spent for 
 other products, or say for more hats, then the gross French 
 product will be one hundred and fifty millions. France 
 altogether will have lost one hundred and fifty millions. The 
 case is totally unlike that of machinery. If M. Bastiat had 
 been competent to instruct the American people, he would 
 not have made such a blunder.
 
 46 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION, 
 
 Chapter XXI. is entitled " Raw Material." 
 Here the blunder just noticed comes on the stage again. 
 M. Bastiat quotes M. de St. Cricq as saying : — 
 
 " * Labor constitutes the riches of a nation, because it creates supplies 
 for the gratification of our necessities ; and universal comfort consists 
 in the abundance of those supplies.' « 
 
 " Here," sr ys M. Bastiat, " we have the principle. 
 
 " ' But this abundance ought to be the result of national labor. If 
 it were the result of foreign labor, national labor must receive an 
 inevitable check.' 
 
 " Here," says M. Bastiat, " lies the error. (See the preceding 
 fallacy.)" 
 
 There are inaccuracies of expression in what is represented 
 to have been said by M. de St. Cricq, but it is plain enough 
 what he means, if one wishes to understand. Labor does 
 not constitute the riches of a nation ; but labor produces or 
 causes the riches of a nation, because it creates supplies for the 
 gratification of our necessities, and universal comfort consists 
 in the abundance of those supplies ; and the labor must be 
 national labor. It cannot by any possibility be foreign labor, 
 for that will not give an atom of its products except in ex- 
 change for an atom of ours, or for bonds which are mortgages, 
 or for treasure. If nation A produces articles with less labor 
 than nation B, and nation B produces other articles Avith less 
 labor than nation A, it will be well for them to exchange, pro- 
 vided the gross annual product of each nation remains undimin- 
 ished. If it be diminished in either nation, then clearly that 
 nation is the loser. How can this be when both are getting 
 things cheaper ? Because the articles and services in demand 
 in each country are not infinite in number, but limited ; nor 
 are they in infinite demand as to quantity, but also in limited 
 demand. Nation A produced both articles, x and y, enough 
 for its demand at the cost price. Nation B also produced 
 both articles, x and ^, enough for its demand at the cost price. 
 Nation A now transfers to nation B the industry producing x, 
 and nation B transfers to nation A the industry producing y. 
 The aggregate demand for products and services in general is 
 diminished in one or the other nation unless x and y balance.
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 47 
 
 If the demand in nation A for B's cheaper product 3/ be 1 
 and the demand in nation B for A's cheaper product x be 5, 
 the extra 4 can only be had by nation B so long as its treas- 
 ure and securities hold out.^ Thereafter it must be content 
 with one fifth of the article x that it had before, and this 
 deplorable result will be arrived at by an appreciation of the 
 value of gold, making all debts, public and private, more 
 onerous, and reducing the exchangeable value of its whole 
 accumulated capital in the market of the world. The ac- 
 cepted theory of international exchange leaves out of sight 
 three not altogether insignificant facts, — the first, the fact that 
 there is such a thing as money in the world ; the second, that 
 nations can and do run in debt to other nations ; the third, 
 that the debtor nation must sell its products for what the 
 creditors are willing to give. Bastiat assumes falsely that, if 
 France gives up making hats and takes them from England, 
 then England will increase its consumption of French articles 
 to the same extent. The increase in the English field of 
 employment consequent upon the new demand for hats will 
 give England a greater power of consumption ; but this 
 power will be exerted in buying more of everything (com- 
 modities and services) which England habituall}' desires and 
 buj's. Only a small portion of the increased consumption will 
 fall upon French products ; the balance must be paid in 
 treasure. If this be recovered from other nations it v/ill only 
 be by offering them French products cheaper than before. 
 
 Abundance then cannot be the result of foreign labor ; the 
 foreign products can only be obtained in exchange for national 
 products, or for money or for bonds, that is, by running in 
 debt ; and the introduction of the foreign product, even at a 
 two-thirds price, may lead to a marked impoverishment of one 
 or the other of the exchanging nations. One or the other may 
 have a greater power of purchase at the high price, than it 
 has at the lower price. 
 
 The rest of the chapter is a conversation between manufac- 
 turers who wish to have materials introduced duty free, and 
 M. de St. Cricq. 
 
 Manufacturers often wish their own individual interests, or 
 supposed interests, to be made the concern of the State ; but 
 
 1 See note 3, page 79.
 
 48 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 no protectionist, properl}'' so called, considers any but the 
 problem of how the nation may become wealthier, wiser, 
 and better. It is unnecessary to examine what M. Bastiat 
 puts into the mouths of the manufacturers any more than his 
 declamations about spoliation. These last are the arts of the 
 sophist, essentially dishonest and disreputable, and discredit- 
 able alike to the author and to those who have made them- 
 selves his sponsors to the American public. Nobody supposes 
 or affirms that labor itself, aside from its products, is the 
 deeirable object, so far as direct effects upon opulence are 
 concerned ; and in combating such a proposition, M. Bastiat 
 simply makes a false issue. 
 
 Chapter XXII. is entitled " Metaphors." 
 
 In this chapter, M. Bastiat inveighs against the use of the 
 expressions : invasion of foreign products ; an inundation 
 of foreign goods ; paying tribute to a foreign nation. He is 
 quite right to inveigh against their use as arguments. They 
 are not arguments. Neither is the denunciation of their use 
 an argument. If the free-trade doctrine be right, they are 
 improperly used, not being descriptive of facts ; if the protec- 
 tionist doctrine be right, they are oftentimes very descriptive 
 of most calamitous facts. Which is right and which is wrong 
 can never be ascertained by declamation and much calling of 
 names. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 M. Bastiat sa3'S of his book : — 
 
 " Among the sophisms which it has discussed, each has undoubtedly 
 its own formula and tendency, but all have a common root ; and this 
 is the for get fulness of the interests of men, considered as consumers." 
 
 M. Bastiat imagines that the interest of the consumer is 
 promoted by offering him commodities at a low price, regard- 
 less of whether he has or has not anything to buy with. 
 The protectionist maintains that the interest of the consumer 
 is best promoted by not only offering him commodities, but 
 seeing to it that he has the means of purchasing. If he can- 
 not buy, it is mere trifling to offer him an article for little
 
 REVIEW OP BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 49 
 
 money. Give him the means of purchase, and the price is 
 comparatively unimportant. Scarcity to the consumer is often 
 accompanied by lowness of price ; while abundance goes 
 often hand in hand with a high price. M. Bastiat concludes 
 that he will be satisfied if he has brought the reader to 
 doubt — 
 
 " 1. The blessings of scarcity. 
 
 " 2. The beneficial effects of obstacles. 
 
 " 3. The desirableness of effort without result. 
 
 "4. The inequality of two equal values when one comes from the 
 plough and the other from the workshop. 
 
 " 5. The incompatibility of prosperity with justice, and of peace with 
 liberty, and of the extension of labor with the advance of intelligence ! " 
 
 The protectionist believes that in the existing state of the 
 world abundance cannot flow from free trade ; that to acquire 
 abundance a nation must erect an obstacle to the maliciously 
 destructive competition of a community, which, having re- 
 duced its own labor to misery, can and will, if permitted, 
 bring others down to its level. Protection does not maintain 
 that effort without result is desirable, but only that it is 
 desirable to enlarge the field in which effort is possible, so far 
 at least as to obtain the greatest possible gross annual product 
 for the nation. Protection has nothing to do with the prop- 
 osition tlmt any two equal values are unequal, nor with any 
 other absurdity ; and, finally, protection maintains that under 
 its system, and only under its system, will prosperity and 
 justice, peace and libert}^ labor and intelligence, be found in 
 accord. 
 
 To be sure, there is a difference in the meaning assigned to 
 justice and liberty by M. Bastiat and by the protectionist. 
 The latter considers it just that the individual, who prospers 
 with and through the prosperity of the society, should be 
 allowed to follow that private selfishness, which, if followed 
 by all, would destroy the prosperity of all, and which would 
 cease to be advantageous to the individual himself the moment 
 others followed his example ; but the protectionist under- 
 stands by liberty, the liberty of the whole community to 
 
 7
 
 50 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 pursue the course most advantageous to the whole community, 
 the individual included ; it does not understand by liberty 
 the right of one man to veto and prevent the efforts of the 
 whole for the good of the whole, the individual himself in- 
 cluded. We have conquered state rights when construed to 
 include nullification ; we are not likely then to allow individ- 
 ual rights to be pressed to the same extreme. 
 
 M. Bastiat concludes by charging upon protectionists spolia- 
 tion and robbery, which is rather cool in face of the facts. 
 Great Britain, at the instance of her manufacturing classes, 
 has found them markets by force wherever she could, — not- 
 ably, in China, India, Japan, and Ireland. She now is attempt- 
 ing the same thing by sophism in France, the United States, 
 and her colonies. She cannot use force in the latter cases ; 
 but she can scatter the specious fallacies of such writers as 
 Bastiat, and this she is doing with a free hand. 
 
 Part II. Chapter I. is entitled " Natural History of 
 Spoliation," 
 
 In this chapter the evils of war, robbery, slavery, and mo- 
 nopoly are enlarged upon, and the protectionist policy is then 
 quietly classed with the rest as being monopoly. This, too, 
 addressed to thirty millions of Frenchmen ; and, now, ad- 
 dressed to fifty millions of Americans, every one of whom is 
 free to go into any of the trades or manufactures enjoying 
 the monopoly. Good rhetoric, only untruthful and deceitful. 
 
 Chapter II., — " Two Systems of Morals." 
 
 This chapter explains that economical morality (that is, 
 free trade) does not exclude religious morality, which may 
 still find something to do in the world ! This is fortunate 
 for religious morality ! 
 
 Chapter III., — " The Two Hat'chets." 
 
 This is the same wearisome untruth once more : a car- 
 penter is represented as holding forth that by means of the 
 protective laws he is robbed of half his earnings, and so he 
 asks for a law that only dull hatchets be used so that the
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 51 
 
 amount of carpenters' work should be doubled. In such 
 mixed fabrics of exaggeration and absurdity, M. Bastiat stands 
 easily first. Nobody proposes any sort of protection which 
 will diminish the efficiency of labor, or which will other than 
 augment the national gross annual product. Nobody believes 
 that half of a French carpenter's wages are taken away by 
 protection ; although it is very possible and probable that 
 free trade w^ould diminish them one half. 
 
 Chapter IV., — " Inferior Council of Labor." 
 
 Here laborers, blacksmiths, and carpenters are represented 
 as declaring that they pay more for bread, meat, sugar, thread, 
 etc., on account of the tariff. 
 
 They would like to get their bread and meat, their sugar 
 and thread, everything they eat, drink, clothe, or warm them- 
 selves with, from foreign countries ; and suppose that, under 
 such circumstances, there would be abundant French cus- 
 tomers for tailors and blacksmiths. 
 
 The unmeasured and incredible audacity of M. Bastiat 
 makes any sober answer difficult. 
 
 He pretends to believe that all laborers having carefully 
 considered their position might rationally come to the con- 
 clusion that they found relevancy in the proposition that 
 " It is better to support one's self, surrounded by well-to-do 
 neighbors, than to be protected in the midst of poverty." 
 He feigns to believe that well-to-do neighbors will be gen- 
 erated by a system which proposes to an idle population to 
 buy everything where it is cheapest. Buy ! What is a man 
 to buy with who has nothing to do ? He fancied that the 
 amount of labor employed depended upon capital. He did 
 not know that quite another cause mastered or limited first 
 the accumulation of capital and then the employment of 
 laborers. What other cause? The extent of the field of 
 mutually satisfying desires. The community as a whole offers 
 to the community as a whole — wheat. There are individ- 
 uals who desire more wheat than they use ; but they have not 
 the means of buying it. Why? Because they produce noth- 
 ing the community desires in exchange for wheat. Let these
 
 52 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 
 
 wishers for wheat discover a new convenience, or a new ser- 
 vice for which others have a desire, and the satisfaction of the 
 new desire will give wheat to those who before were sighing 
 in vain for it. More still ; the sale of an additional quantity 
 of wheat will enable the grower of wheat to satisfy perhaps 
 some before unsatisfied desire. The newly discovered or 
 invented want is seized upon by labor and by capital (both of 
 which are normally in excess in a community where diver- 
 sified employments exist), and the field of employment is 
 permanently enlarged. The community as a whole produces 
 more than before, and so there is more to divide. Wages, 
 profits, rents, all rise together. Not so when the people, seduced 
 by witless manipulators of words, adopt the free-trade pana- 
 cea. " Let us buy in the cheapest market," say they. " Let 
 us get our cotton and metal fabrics from England, our woollen 
 goods from Germany, our coal from Nova Scotia, our sugar 
 from the West Indies, our hemp and tallow from Russia, our 
 lumber from Canada, our wool from Australia." Here are 
 industries which respond to what now (1881) amount to, say, 
 over twelve hundred millions of dollars of annual wants in 
 the United States, the satisfaction of which supports a pop- 
 ulation whose demand for the productions of other industries 
 creates a market to an equal amount. 
 
 Transferring these industries to foreign nations would re- 
 duce the purchasing power of the United States by twelve 
 hundred millions of dollars, would diminish the gross annual 
 product, the fund out of which all wages, all profits, all rents 
 are paid by that amount, which means by one sixth part. 
 But this is not the worst. The foreign markets, oppressed with 
 an additional twelve hundred millions of our products, would 
 refuse them, except at a greatly reduced price, and we should 
 find that many of the remaining unscalped industries would 
 graduall}^ die out for want of a market. The over-anxious 
 manufacturer, clutching after a foreign market, would find 
 himself bereft of a market ten times greater at home ; the 
 clergyman, lawyer, physician, who coveted cheap clothes with 
 ample incomes, would find the people too poor to pay the ample 
 incomes. The carpenter, blacksmith, mason, painter, paperer,
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 53 
 
 etc., who had been told that " houses were never imported," 
 would find out, to their cost, that houses were built in propor- 
 tion to the means of the community. The owner of railroad 
 stock, bank stock, manufacturing stock, of houses, of stores, 
 of forges, of farms, would find out at last that they were in 
 the same boat as the day laborer, and that they could not 
 thrive while he starved. 
 
 Chapter V., — " Dearness — Cheapness." 
 
 Here is only a repetition of the old fallacy which teaches 
 an individual who has worlv for only four days out of six, 
 that he will become rich faster by spending a portion of his 
 four days' earnings to buy than he will by keeping all his 
 earnings and doing for himself during the unemployed two 
 days that which he requires to have done ; and which teaches 
 a nation that it will become rich by buying at a cheap price 
 what its unemploj'ed labor and capital can make for nothing. 
 Here also is a repetition of inveracious assumption, as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 " Therefore the question, the eternal question, is not whether protec- 
 tion favors this or that special branch of industry, but whether, all things 
 considered, restriction is, in its nature, more profitable than freedom. 
 
 '■'■Now no person can maintain that proposition. And just this 
 explains the admission which our opponents continually make to us : 
 ' You are riglit^ on principle.^ " 
 
 As before observed, some protectionists, feeling themselves 
 unable to unravel all the innumerable Protean, " Achilles and 
 Tortoise " puzzles which men like Bastiat propound, may have 
 found refuge in the absurdity of saying, " So and so may 
 be good in theory, but is not good in practice ; " but it is not 
 the refuge of any protectionist who has the time and patience 
 to follow up and refute a hundred times over the parroted 
 fallacies of free trade. 
 
 There is nothing new in Chapter V. It is only a repetition 
 of positions and assumptions already over and over again 
 refuted. 
 
 Chapter VI., — " To Artisans and Laborers." 
 
 Here is more repetition. Tariff duties are a tax, therefore
 
 54 REVIEW OP bastiat's sophisms op protection. 
 
 they are of the same nature as all other taxes. This is like 
 the syllogism with four terms which runs thus : — 
 
 Files are instruments made of steel. 
 
 A regiment marching in regular order is composed of files. 
 Therefore a regiment marching in regular order is com- 
 posed of instruments made of steel. 
 
 Some taxes take money from the people and give nothing 
 in return. 
 
 Tariff duties are taxes. 
 
 Therefore tariff duties take money from the people and 
 give nothing in return. 
 
 Such is free-trade logic! Professors who write books upon 
 political economy would do well to have their manuscripts 
 examined by their fellow-professors who teach the science of 
 logic, before they stereotype their productions. 
 
 Again M. Bastiat says : — 
 
 " I believe that we can call that the natural rate of wages which 
 would establish itself naturally, if there were fi-eedom of trade. Then, 
 when they tell you that restriction is for your benefit, it is as if they 
 told you that it added a surplus to your natural wages. Now, an 
 extra natural surplus of wages must be taken from somewhere : it does 
 not fall from the moon ; it must be taken from those who pay it. 
 
 " You are then brought to this conclusion, that, according to your 
 preteuded friends, the protective system has been created and brought 
 into the world in order that capitalists might be sacrificed to laborers. 
 
 " Tell me, is that probable ? " 
 
 That is to say, M. Bastiat, whose work has been translated 
 from the French by the Free Trade League in order " to 
 educate public opinion ; to convince the people of the United 
 States of the folly and wrongfulness of the protective system," 
 — this M. Bastiat did not know that a fully occupied people 
 and capital would produce a greater mass of commodities 
 than they would produce if a third or a half of them were 
 unemplo3^ed. He did not know that a large annual product 
 gave much to be divided between wages, profits, and rent ; 
 and he did not know that the portions falling to profits and
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 55 
 
 rent were nearly all distributed again to labor. He did not 
 know that not only the recipients of profits and rent, but 
 still more the recipients of wages, were supremely interested 
 that the gross annual product should be the greatest possible, 
 and that this desirable result was not to be obtained by sitting 
 idle and buying cheap goods of other nations. 
 
 But in spite of this ignorance, M. Bastiat was selected as 
 the best teacher of political economy which the League 
 could find for the people of the United States. 
 
 One can imagine the grim humor with which the clear- 
 headed workmen of the United States no doubt contemplate 
 the condescension of the League. 
 
 Chapter VII., — " A Chinese Story." 
 
 This is the obstacle fallacy over again. 
 
 The free-traders discovered that obstacles, many of them, 
 were the cause of expense, or that their existence increased 
 the cost of commodities, without in any way increasing the 
 gross product, or means of payment. They then discovered 
 that a duty upon imported articles increased —sometimes — 
 the price of similar articles produced in the country. We say 
 sometimes, for Bastiat himself admits that they do not always 
 do so ; and the fact is notorious that they do not do so for any 
 considerable length of time, to nearly the amount of the duty, 
 and that they often, by stimulating home skill and competi- 
 tion, cause a lower price than existed before. Never mind ! 
 they are an obstacle to importation, so they are obstacles ; and 
 by simply calling them obstacles, pure and simple, it is made 
 to appear that they are not only obstacles to importation, but 
 also obstacles to opulence. They are obstacles ; so also are fens, 
 mountains, stormy seas, distance, obstructed canals, bad tools, 
 etc., etc. The last.being seen to be really obstacles to opulence, 
 the free-traders jump you to the conclusion that everything 
 called an obstacle is an obstacle to opulence. Several phe- 
 nomena called obstacles being seen to be really obstacles to 
 opulence, inasmuch as they raise the price without augment- 
 ing the national product, everything called by the same name 
 is inferred to be of the same effect. Those obstacles increase
 
 66 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 » 
 
 the cost in labor, say, 25 per cent ; this obstacle — the duty — 
 also (we will suppose for the sake of argument), raises the 
 cost in labor 25 per cent. They are, then, exactly alike ! 
 and so they are, thus far, or rather in these particulars ; but 
 in the important particular they are exactly opposite. Those 
 obstacles increase the cost in labor of everything, — of that 
 which it is desirable to import as well as of that which it is 
 not desirable to import. This obstacle does not lay a finger 
 upon the importation of tropical products which our climate 
 cannot produce, does not prevent or render more difficult 
 immigration, travel, the personal inspection of foreign arts 
 and sciences and social organization ; but it does prevent that 
 industrial competition which makes it impossible for us to 
 acquire such arts as we are perfectly able to acquire, and 
 which both during the process of acquisition and thenceforth, 
 forever, will add to the gross annual product of the nation, 
 which is the same thing precisely as the aggregate net indi- 
 vidual income. 
 
 This obstacle also discriminates and shuts out those prod- 
 ucts in which foreign nations excel only by reason of the 
 lower rate of wages and by the introduction of which our 
 owft existing system of civilization (based as it is, npon a 
 high scale of remuneration to labor of every sorf) would be im- 
 paired if not entirely overthrown. The duty is a discriminating 
 obstacle in which all that is good in the natural obstacles 
 is retained, and all that is bad is discarded ; this opposes 
 baneful intercourse ; those oppose alike every kind of inter- 
 course, the benignant as well and as much as the baneful; this 
 is an obstacle reared by human intelligence for a definite 
 purpose ; those are obstacles arising out of the constitution 
 of the world. A mind may be presumed to have been 
 given to man to enable him to discriminate between dif- 
 ferent things, even when called by the same name. Even 
 a free-trader can perceive that there is a difference between 
 a file of soldiers and a file of a carpenter ; by and by perhaps 
 they may develop sufficiently to see that there is a difference 
 between a tax which simply takes a dollar, and a tax which, 
 where it takes a dollar, gives five ; and they may grow to
 
 REVIEW OP BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 57 
 
 see that there is a difference between an obstacle which 
 simply obstructs and an obstacle which overcomes and annihi- 
 lates a far greater obstruction. 
 
 Chapter VIII., — '•'•Post hoc^ ergo propter hocr 
 
 The free-traders say, " See how prosperous England has 
 been since she adopted free trade ! " They exaggerate every 
 picture of her wealth, wink out of sight the panics of 1866 
 and 1873, with their attendant horrors, point to the indus- 
 trial troubles in the United States in 1873-1879, but say 
 nothing about the sufScient cause of a contraction in the 
 currency, the like of which worked far greater mischief in 
 1819 in England ; say nothing, either, of the wonderful re- 
 covery of the United States under a higher tariff in 1879-80; 
 say nothing about the prosperity of France since 1815, — far 
 more astonishing than that of England. They say nothing 
 about the advantages that England has derived from invest- 
 ments in protectionist countries. No ! 
 
 England adopted free trade. 
 
 Post hoc, England showed some very decided evidences of 
 prosperity. Ergo, the prosperity, such as it was, came from 
 free trade. 
 
 Chapter IX.,— " Robbery by Bounties." 
 
 Here we have the public duped ; the public robbed, — 
 robbed by' tariff, robbed by bounties, robbed by fraud, robbed 
 by force, etc. In fact, the chapter may be called a war-dance to 
 the tunes of robbing, cheating, pillaging, stealing, swindling, 
 monopoly, etc. Those who mistake abuse for syllogism can 
 read it, no doubt, with amusement. There are, moreover, two 
 really funny things in it. One where M. Bastiat says: "They 
 find my little book of Sophisms too theoretical, scientific, 
 and metaphysical ! " The other is where he says : " More 
 than sixty years ago Adam Smith said, ' When manufac- 
 turers meet it may be expected that a conspiracy will be 
 planned against the pockets of the public' " 
 
 Did M. Bastiat suppose the world was ignorant of the fact 
 that the free-trade measures adopted in Great Britain were 
 
 8v
 
 68 REVIEW OP bastiat's sophisms op protection. 
 
 adopted at the suggestion of a cabal of manufacturers ; that 
 they were designed to forward the interests of that class at 
 the expense of the landed aristocracy and the people alike, 
 and that they were forced through by the most lavish use 
 of money to promote publications, meetings, addresses, dis- 
 tribution of pamphlets, etc., etc., and that they prolonged the 
 sacrifice of India, Ireland, and, for a time, the colonies, to 
 Manchester ? 
 
 The same system is now being applied to the United States. 
 Pamphlets and books are being distributed by the m^aiad, 
 and these wily manufacturers of Manchester, etc., would per- 
 suade us that they are taking all this trouble and going to 
 all this expense to free us from American monopolists ! If 
 there be an irrepressible contest between American monopo- 
 lists and English monopolists, and if (as Adam Smith and 
 Bastiat would have us believe) they are all rascals, then the 
 American people are very likely to rally to the support of 
 their own rascals. These at least can be reached by the law 
 and by competition ; and whatever they do make must at all 
 events be either spent or invested in the United States, 
 and, in either case, gets at last into the hands of those who 
 work. 
 
 Chapter X.,— " The Tax Collector." 
 
 The tax collector takes six out of twenty hogsheads of 
 wine, which Jacques Bonhomme, wine grower, has produced 
 with much care and sweat. 
 
 The first goes to the creditors of the state, the second goes 
 to the civil service, two go to the army and navy, the fifth 
 goes to Algeria, the sixth goes in bounty to encourage man- 
 ufactures. There are fourteen hogsheads left, and Jacques 
 Bonhomme is assured that these will buy only half as much 
 as they would if he, good man, could be allowed to buy 
 everything from the foreigner. There is the same confusion 
 about taxes which do, and those which do not, lead to an 
 increase of the nation's annual product, which we have before 
 noticed, and the same exaggeration which runs through the 
 whole book. English iron is cheap when it is not in demand.
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 59 
 
 M. Bastiat assumes that it will be just as cheap when France 
 and the United States and all the rest of the world are 
 clamoring for it. The wine grower is advised to buy every- 
 thing abroad which can be made cheaper there, but he is not 
 told that there would soon under such a regiwe be few able 
 to buy his wine. 
 
 Chapter XL, — " Utopian Ideas." 
 
 This chapter is based upon the assumption that the just and 
 the useful must agree. Very likely they must ; but never- 
 theless it may be that the author has a mistaken idea of 
 what is just and an equally mistaken idea of what is useful. 
 He assumes that an individual has an undoubted right to do 
 whatever he pleases with that which he acquires in the com- 
 munity. It is just, according to M. Bastiat, for him to benefit 
 by the advantages growing out of the association, but at the 
 same time to refuse to act in that manner which the association 
 finds to be essential to the interests of all, himself included. 
 It is just not only because a man has a right to do Avhat he 
 pleases with his own, but also because by the providence of 
 God this world has been so arranged that the blind instincts 
 of every uninstructed individual, seeking only his own advan- 
 tage, necessarily lead him to the very acts which best pro- 
 mote the interests of the whole community. The individual 
 instinct of every man, however ignorant, selfish, and gross, is 
 surer than the judgment and reason of all men, including all 
 statesmen and philosophers. 
 
 This is an extraordinary proposition indeed. It is not self- 
 evident. It must then have been arrived at by induction, or 
 deduction, or both ; and in point of fact we find that it was 
 first put forth by Adam Smith in the second chapter of the 
 fourth book of the " Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of 
 the Wealth of Nations." He thought that men, in some cases, 
 when pursuing their own interests, did at the same time pro- 
 mote the interest of the nation. The cases he adduced were 
 very uncertain, it being by no means sure that men would act 
 as he imagined ; by no means certain that among the manifold 
 motives of man, Adam Smith did really select those which
 
 60 REVIEW OP BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 would prevail in the eases imagined. But never mind ; they 
 suited his purpose, and he jumped his readers to the con- 
 clusion that in "these as in many cases the individuals were 
 led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part 
 of their intention." It will be observed that with Adam Smith 
 this was little more than a pretty piece of rhetoric ; and in 
 other parts of his work he affirms most vehemently that the 
 private interests of large classes are adverse to the interests 
 of the community as a whole ; but a pretty piece of rhetoric 
 is as good as the strongest syllogism to the man who was not 
 born with the ability to reason, and has never acquired the 
 ability through education. Everybody who knows the can- 
 ons of inductive logic is aware that a single negative instance 
 absolutely forbids the forming of such a " general proposition ; " 
 and everybody who has read enough of political economy to 
 warrant writing upon the subject, knows that the negative 
 instances with respect to this proposition are innumerable. 
 The proposition belongs to the domain of noodledom, — 
 
 " A limbo large and broad, since called 
 The Paradise of Fools." Millon. 
 
 And yet such is the looseness with which political economy 
 is treated that writers of some authority refer to it as if it 
 actually carried weight into the discussions upon free trade 
 and protection. If, then, M. Bastiat is in error as to what is 
 ■useful, he may be equally in error as to what is just ; and it 
 may turn out that justice and utility do agree and go hand 
 in hand ; only they are not what he calls justice and utility, 
 but something very different. 
 
 Chapter XIII., — "The Three Aldermen." 
 
 This is a delightful piece of persiflage. The introduction 
 into Paris of three industries totally unsuited to the place is 
 described, and to this absurd imagining are applied the argu- 
 ments which are justly and properly used in favor of the 
 introduction into a nation of industries for which it has 
 every natural advantage, and in favor of maintaining them so 
 long as their products will in the end cost less (in labor and 
 abt>tinence) than similar products brought from abroad. This
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 61 
 
 is the case of the United States v. Great Britain, and it is as 
 an argument applicable to this case that the " Sophisms " of 
 Bastiat are presented to the people of the United States. 
 
 An individual becomes wealthy by acquiring from others 
 a portion of the already existing instruments of production. 
 He may acquire enough to support him a thousand years. A 
 nation can do nothing of the kind. It becomes wealthy in 
 proportion to the increase of its annual product of commod- 
 ities. But its annual product must be annually consumed, 
 even that portion of it which is saved ; that is to say, the 
 portion which is converted by labor into instruments to facil- 
 itate and enlarge future production and comfort. It must be 
 consumed, or else it lies in immoderate stocks, paralyzing 
 industry. Taking the average of years, it is consumed. The 
 richest nation then is the one whicli first produces and then 
 consumes the largest annual product of commodities; and 
 here we stumble headlong upon a most vital proposition, 
 which is, that the richest nation is that in which the great 
 bulk of the people, the workers with hands and the workers 
 with brains, enjoy the highest real wages. ^ 
 
 What, then, can come of the plans which are built upon 
 a reduction of the real wages of a people ? Inevitable 
 national impoverishment. The gross annual product pays 
 all wages, all profits, all rents. Increase it, — they all in- 
 crease. Diminish it, and they all dwindle away together. 
 
 Chapter XIV., — " Something Else." 
 
 Here are twelve pages of puerilities which are, nevertheless, 
 specious, and must be dealt with, even at the risk of weary- 
 ing the reader. 
 
 " Restriction and prohibition," says M. Bastiat, " bear the same 
 relation to one another that an arc bears to a circle. One cannot be 
 bad and the other good, any more than an arc can be straight if the 
 circle be curved." 
 
 Straight and curved, mathematical terms signifying the 
 same tbings under all possible circumstances, cannot, accord- 
 ing to M. Bastiat, be predicated with any more certainty of 
 a line, than the words good and bad can be predicated of 
 restriction and prohibition in political economy. 
 
 1 See note 4, page 79.
 
 62 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 
 
 It is only necessary to show a single class of cases in 
 which prohibition would be bad and restriction good, and 
 the thinness of M. Bastiat's supposed logic will be apparent ; 
 and it is not necessary that the case adduced should abso- 
 lutely exist. It is sufficient that it might exist. 
 
 Well, then, there might be two countiies which produced 
 silk piece goods. Call the countries A and B. In A the 
 rate of wages is only one half what it is in B, but for reasons 
 which seem satisfactory to the people generally it is con- 
 sidered to be both desirable to maintain the rate of wages in 
 B and also to maintain the manufacture of silk goods. Evi- 
 dently the manufacturers must be protected sufficiently to 
 offset the difference of wages. This is one case ; and, to 
 prevent the free-trader from making a specious although 
 unsound cavil, let us look at another possible case. Nation 
 B, by reason of improvements in the application of its labor 
 and the efficiency of it, can weave silk even a little cheaper 
 than nation A ; but the manufacturers in nation A, being 
 vastly richer than those in nation B, can (and do, whenever 
 they have a chance) sell at a loss, in order to destroy the 
 manufacturers in nation B, and thereafter be free to charge 
 their own prices. In this case, also, it would be necessary 
 to give such protection as would overcome the existing obsta- 
 cle to the maintenance of the silk industry in nation A. 
 Here, then, restriction would be good, Avhile prohibition might 
 be good, bad, or indifferent, according to circumstances. IF 
 (as alleged by free-traders to be sometimes the case) the silk 
 manufacturers in nation B were lazy and unenterprising, 
 using inferior machinery, and consequently turning out silk 
 piece goods at an unnecessarily high price, — if, we say, this 
 were the case, then prohibition would be bad, and too high 
 a duty would be bad ; while some duty would be good, as 
 preventing the demolition by foreigners of an industry de- 
 sired by the people. 
 
 Let, now, the Free Trade League show a case wdiere an 
 arc of a circle is a straight line, or else confess that M. 
 Bastiat's reasoning is flippant and unworthy to be offered to 
 the American people.
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 63 
 
 Again, ]\I. Bastiat declares that the definite effect of pro- 
 tection is to require from men harder labor for the same result. 
 Let us see how this is made out, in respect to the United 
 States, for the education (!) of whose people this and other 
 books of a similar character are distributed. Mr. Mongredien, 
 writino; for the Cobden Club, shows us the method. The 
 cost of American manufactured products, he says, is 40 
 per cent above the cost at which similar products can be 
 imported. Why? Because the duty is 40 per cent and 
 over, and in spite of the duty some goods are imported. 
 That is, if some kinds of goods can be imported in spite of 
 a duty of 40 per cent, then the native goods (if there be any 
 of the same kind) must cost 40 per cent more than they 
 could be imported for. Then some goods (those of which 
 the like are imported) cost 40 per cent more by reason of the 
 duty. Therefore all goods on which there is a duty 
 (those kinds which are not imported as well as those which 
 are) must cost 40 per cent more than they could be imported 
 for! 
 
 From deductive reasoning one would have supposed that 
 the internal competition of fifty millions of people might, 
 perhaps, reduce prices considerably below the maximum 
 possible price ; and a little inquiry as to facts would have 
 shown that a large part of American products are actually 
 as cheap, or very nearly as cheap as they could be imported 
 for, even if there were no duty. 
 
 But Mr. Mongredien preferred to ascertain the cost by 
 logic ; and he told the American farmers they could have for 
 one thousand millions of dollars from England what they 
 paid fourteen hundred millions for to the native me- 
 chanics and manufacturers. The farmers being about half 
 the population, the whole country would save eight hundred 
 millions, getting from England for two thousand millions 
 what they now pay twenty-eight hundred millions for ; 
 and all this built upon a syllogism in which a distributed 
 conclusion is drawn from undistributed premises. Would 
 it not be well for the Cobden Club to send Mr. Mongredien 
 to school for a year or two before allowing him to write
 
 64 REVIEW OP bastiat's sophisms of protection. 
 
 another book for the instruction of the American people? 
 But to return to M. Btxstiat. The Free Trade League, 
 through him, tell the American people that the definite 
 result of protection is to require from men harder labor for 
 the same result. This inference is founded upon the well- 
 known " Fallacy of Division," of which Archbishop Whately 
 observes : — 
 
 " This is a fallacy with which men are extremely apt to deceive 
 themselves ; for, when a multitude of particulars are presented to the 
 mind, many are too weak, or too indolent, to take a comprehensive 
 view of them ; but confine their attention to a single point in turn, 
 and then decide, infer, and act, accordingly ; e. g. the imprudent 
 spendthrift, finding that he is able to afford this, or that, or the other 
 expense, forgets that all of them together will ruin him." 
 
 M. Bastiat, referring to France, maintains that iron, being 
 produced in England for less labor and 'abstinence than in 
 France, had better be bought by France by means of some 
 product in which she has an advantage ; then clothing had 
 better be bought in a similar way of Belgium ; tlien food of 
 Hungary or the United States; and so on, forgetting that 
 all the needs of France together which could be supplied 
 more cheaply from abroad would come to many times more 
 than would the aggregate requirements of foreign nations 
 for the products of the remaining industries in which France 
 has a decided advantage. 
 
 With regard to the United States, the chapter has no rele- 
 vancy ; for almost everything we produce is produced with 
 as little labor and abstinence as anywhere in the world. Many 
 things can be brought here and sold for less money; but 
 this is because our wages are high, and our labor altogether 
 so much more productive that gold and silver are cheap with 
 us. Were we to open our ports and give up to the foreigner 
 a large portion of our " field of employment," — wages and 
 money-prices would doubtless decline; but nothing would 
 be produced with less labor and abstinence than it is now. 
 Our foreign market might be increased a little ; but our home 
 market would be reduced many times as much ; and profits,
 
 REVIEW OP BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 65 
 
 rents, fees, salaries, and incomes of every description would 
 be diminished in proportion. Why so? Because the gross 
 annual product would be diminished enormously, and it is 
 this which pays all wages, profits, and rents. But wliy 
 would our gross annual product be diminished enormously? 
 Because nowhere in this planet could be found markets for 
 four thousand — soon to be ten thousand — millions of the 
 products in which we have an advantage, in addition to what 
 ■we now export, nor could markets be found for even a third 
 part of those vast amounts. We should not only rob our- 
 selves of a large part of what we now get from the mechani- 
 cal and manufacturing arts, but we should transfer to the 
 foreigner all the advantages we -now derive from agriculture. 
 The chapter consists chiefly of a conversation between 
 Robinson Crusoe and Friday, whose situation was not at all 
 analogous to that of an industrial community; and afterwards 
 of the doctrine that, when one of the industries of a society 
 is given over to a foreign country the displaced labor will 
 occupy itself about 
 
 SOMETHING ELSE. 
 
 This conclusion is drawn from Adam Smith's doctrine " that 
 each industry is prevented from increasing by the want of 
 capital ; " it has no place in a world w'here each industry has 
 unemployed capital, and is prevented from increasing for 
 want of a " field of employment." In such a world the 
 displaced labor and capital can only — in the words of Mr. 
 J. S. Mill — squeeze out a living by competition with other 
 labor and capital. Both the wages and profits appertaining 
 to the remaining industries must be diminished whenever 
 one is given up to the foreigner, for the reason that the ex- 
 truded industry furnished a market to nearly its full value 
 for other products, while the substituted foreign industry 
 increases the foreign demand by only a small percentage of 
 its amount. 
 
 Let us represent the various industries (both productive 
 and unproductive) by the letters of the alphabet. A, B, C, etc. 
 Then V A + V B 4- V C, etc., may represent the annual 
 
 9
 
 66 EEVIETv' OF BASTIAt's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 exchangeable value contributed by each description of in- 
 dustry and each description of service to the gross annual 
 exchangeable value, and VA-f-VB + VC, etc. = T A P ; or, 
 the total annual product. A purchases of B, C, etc., portions 
 of their annual products equalling in the aggregate VA, 
 and so do B, C, and each of the others. Now transfer 
 industry A to another nation, and immediately TAP be- 
 comes TAP — V A ; that is, the capital and labor before 
 employed by industry A are in excess, and cannot find em- 
 ployment by spreading themselves through the other indus- 
 tries or classes of service already fully supplied. A portion 
 of the products of B, C, D, etc., must go abroad to pay for 
 the foreign products which have displaced industry A. If 
 these cost 25 per cent less than the native, then a value equal 
 to I V A will go abroad, and a value equal to ^^ V A will 
 remain distributed among B, C, D, etc., as stock in addition 
 to their previously existing surplus stocks. There will be a 
 greater or less glut of commodities and services throughout 
 the society ; and the exchangeable value of B, of C, of D, 
 etc., etc., will each be found to be diminished, probably to a 
 greater amount, perhaps to a much greater amount, in the 
 aggregate, than the i V A expected to be saved by importing 
 from abroad. The effective demand, then, of the whole com- 
 munity, less industry A, for the imported article at, say, three 
 dollars, will be less than was the effective demand of the same 
 persons for the native article at four dollars, and there will be 
 also a necessity for supporting the labor of industry A in idle- 
 ness. This labor cannot do "something else," for everything 
 else desired by the community was done before to the full 
 extent of the then effective demand which is now diminished ; 
 and not only this, but production must be also lessened in each 
 of the remaining industries. So far from industry B having 
 more to spend for the products of C, D, E, etc., industry B 
 will find its own annual products selling for less money than 
 they did when A got four dollars for what the foreigner now 
 brings for three dollars. 
 
 France " has the advantage " of other nations in the pro- 
 duction of many articles of taste, and also in some kinds of
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 67 
 
 wine. She exports these to the extent of about six hundred 
 millions of dollars. It is highly improbable that the opening 
 of her ports to other nations could cause any great increase 
 of consumption of her products upon their part ; while the 
 products which she produces for herself at no advantage or 
 at a disadvantage come probably to three thousand millions. 
 Evidently she could not obtain any considerable increase of 
 the articles she produces at a disadvantage, except by paying 
 out of her accumulations of treasure. M. Bastiat thought 
 she would get the needed treasure from Peru ; but this only 
 shows that his education had been neglected in the branch of 
 arithmetic. The whole of the annual production of precious 
 metals added to the whole of the large amount accumulated 
 by France during the whole period of her existence would not 
 suffice to purchase abroad for a single year the commodities 
 which France makes for herself at more or less disadvantage, 
 compared with this, that, or the other foreign country. As 
 he suggests, she might import treasure from Peru, and this 
 would suffice to buy this article, or it would suffice to buy 
 that article, or it would suffice to buy the other article ; but 
 when it comes to adding all the articles together, the insuf- 
 ficiency of the proposed resource becomes so manifest as to be 
 ridiculous. It is the fallacy of division fooling with the lives 
 and fortunes of thirty-four millions of people. 
 
 Chapter XV. is the " Little Arsenal of the Free-Trader." 
 These are short sentences embodying the fallacies already 
 sufficiently answered. 
 
 Chapter XVI. proposes a number of funny absurdities, 
 which M. Bastiat imagines to be of the same nature as pro- 
 tectionist arguments ; but which only show that he either 
 did not understand or did not choose to understand the pro- 
 tectionist arguments. 
 
 To work with the left hand rather than the right, to pre- 
 vent the use of machinery, to dull the axes, to fill up canals, 
 ,etc., etc., would not increase the gross annual product. To 
 employ a portion of the population upon industries in which
 
 68 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 the nation stands at no advantage, or even at disadvantage, 
 when the whole population cannot be employed upon the 
 industries in which it has an advantage, or cannot be so em- 
 ployed without throwing away the natural advantage, would 
 increase the gross annual product. That is just what M. Bas- 
 tiat did iiot know ; and that is why his teachings should not 
 have been offered to the American people. 
 
 Chapter XVII., — " Supremacy by Labor." 
 It is impossible to do justice to the sophistry of this chapter 
 without quoting. It says : — 
 
 " As, in time of war, supremacy is obtained by superiority in arms, 
 can, in time of peace, supremacy be secured by superiority in labor ? 
 
 " This question is of the greatest interest, at a time when no one 
 seems to doubt that, in the field of industry, as on that of battle, the 
 stronger crushes the weaker. 
 
 *' This must result from the discovery of some sad and discouraging 
 analogy between labor, which exercises itself on things, and violence, 
 which exercises itself on men ; for how could two things be identical 
 in their effects, if they were opposed in their nature ? 
 
 " And if it be true that, in manufacturing, as in war, supremacy is 
 the necessary result of superiority, why need we occupy ourselves 
 with progress, or social economy, since we are in a world where all 
 has been so arranged by Providence that one and the same result, 
 oppression, necessarily flows from the most antagonistic principles ? 
 
 " Referring to the new policy towards which commercial freedom 
 is drawing in England, many persons make this objection, which I 
 admit occupies the sincerest minds : 'Is England doing anything more 
 than pursuing the same end by different means? Does she not con- 
 stantly aspire to universal supremacy ? Sure of the superiority of 
 her capital and labor, does she not call in free competition to stifle 
 the industry of the Continent, reign as sovereign, and conquer the 
 privilege of feeding and clothing the ruined peoples?' 
 
 " It would be easy for me to demonstrate that these alarms are 
 chimerical ; that our pretended inferiority is greatly exaggerated ; 
 that all our great branches of industry not only resist foreign competi- 
 tion, but develop themselves under its influence ; and that its infallible 
 effect is to bring about an increase in general consumption, capable of 
 absorbing both foreign and domestic products."
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 69 
 
 This is the language of the Anti- Corn-Law League, of the 
 Cobclen Club, of the Manchester manufacturers, — of the 
 spider to the fly. 
 
 Labor in its nature is opposed to war. Labor produces; 
 war destroj's. Labor employs itself on things ; war employs 
 itself upon persons. Opposite causes cannot produce identi- 
 cal effects. Does this, O reader, persuade you that there is 
 no valid analogy between the struggles of oj^posing armies 
 for the possession of a province, and the struggles of compet- 
 ing industries for the possession of a market ? To seriously 
 ask the question would be to insult you ; and yet the trash 
 is persuasive to the hasty reader. When he pauses for a 
 moment and reads again he sees that he is trifled with. 
 
 That which moves to war is the desire to overcome an 
 opponent. That which moves to industrial competition is the 
 desire to overcome an opponent, — to overcome one who pre- 
 vents your selling as much or as dearly as you would. The 
 causes are similar. It is only the methods of procedure which 
 differ. The paragraph about manufacturing, supremacy, Pro- 
 vidence, oppression, and antagonistic principles is a similar 
 logical puzzle, which an}'- intelligent reader can solve for him- 
 self. It assumes that there are antagonistic principles wher- 
 ever the methods of procedure, the instruments used to obtain 
 the end, are dissimilar. The paragraph commencing, " It 
 would be easy for me to demonstrate,"' is a bundle of asser- 
 tions, pure and simple. There is not a particle of argument 
 in it. The " proof" comes afterwards and consists in this : — 
 
 " If we see in any product but a cause of labor, it is certain that 
 the alarm of the protectionists is well founded. If we consider iron, 
 for instance, only in connection with the masters of forges, it might be 
 feared that the competition of a country wliere iron was a gratuitous 
 gift of nature would extinguish the furnaces of another country, 
 where ore and fuel were scarce. 
 
 " But is this a complete view of the subject ? Are these relations 
 only between iron and those who make it ? Has it none with those 
 who use it ? Is its definite and only destination to be produced ? And 
 if it is useful, not only on account of the labor which it causes, but on 
 account of the qualities which it possesses, and the numerous services
 
 70 REVIEW OP BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 for which its hardness and malleability fit it, does it not follow that 
 foreigners cannot reduce its price, even so far as to prevent its produc- 
 tion among us, without doing us more good, under the last statement 
 of the case, than it injures us under the first? 
 
 " Foreign superiority prevents national labor only under some cer- 
 tain form, and makes it superfluous luider this form, but by putting 
 at our disposal the very result of the labor thus annihilated." 
 
 This is wonderful ! What earthly relevancy has the second 
 paragraph? Is not French iron hard and malleable? The 
 French have iron in either case. The only question is whether 
 they shall have it at one price made at home or at another price 
 made abroad ; and in a former chapter M. Bastiat put the 
 price at twelve francs for French and eight francs for English 
 iron. But he argues that to procure the English iron," France 
 will have only to " detach " from her general labor a smaller 
 portion than she would require to produce it herself. France 
 would save one third of the labor before used in making iron. 
 The careful reader will see that he assumes that the whole 
 labor power of the country is employed in either case ; while 
 the fact is, and must be, that the whole is not employed in 
 either case. Even when France makes her own iron, every 
 industry within her borders is limited by the limits of the 
 field of employment. There are so many desires known to 
 her people which they have found out means of gratifying 
 ■with such expenditure of effort as they are willing to pay, — 
 so many and no more. Their desires even are not infinite ; but 
 even if they were, the desires they know how to gratify with- 
 out more exertion than they are willing to make, are very far 
 from infinite ; they are quite limited. Their aggregate of 
 these constitutes the field of employment, outside of which 
 there are always (except during peiiods of abnormal excite- 
 ment and perhaps even then) many unemployed persons, 
 many half employed persons, many persons helping others to 
 do what they can well enough do alone. This unemployed 
 labor is constantly striving to find something to do, and the 
 unemployed capital of the country is constantly striving to 
 find something to do, — some means of gratifying a desire at 
 such price as the community will be willing and able to pay.
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 71 
 
 The community, then, does not " detach " a portion of its 
 previously employed labor to make iron, but a portion and 
 only a portion of its previously it/icmployed or half employed 
 labor, and the then more fully employed labor has the means 
 of buying from all the other industries ; their field of employ- 
 ment is increased. According to M. Bastiat's philosoph}^ if 
 iron and its products should suddenly be rained down out of 
 the sky already shaped for use, the United States would 
 immediately have set free an amount of labor that would pro- 
 duce "something else " to the value of, say, three hundred 
 millions of dollars. But " everything else " for which the 
 people have a desire is already produced to a somewhat greater 
 extent than can be sold, as is evidenced by the existing sur- 
 plus stocks of commodities. The total industry of the com- 
 munity is kept up by motives, and one of these motives is the 
 desire for iron. The immediate effect, then, of iron dropping 
 down ready fashioned from the skies would be to diminish 
 the field of employment to the extent of, say, three hundred 
 millions ; but as iron is only a means towards procuring other 
 things, notably, food, clothing, shelter, and transportation, 
 the getting iron for nothing might make it possible to procure 
 a greater supply of food, clothing, shelter, and transportation, 
 with the same effort, and the ultimate result might be that 
 as great or even a greater field of employment would be found 
 in producing a greater supply. But meanwhile, during the 
 growth of a larger demand for food, clothing, shelter, and 
 transportation, between two and three millions of people 
 would have to go without food, clothing, shelter, and trans- 
 portation, or squeeze them by competition out of the balance 
 of the community. The immediate effect would certainly be 
 a great diminution of the effective demand of the community 
 for food, clothing, shelter, and transportation, — a glut. 
 There would be much more of all these than the community 
 as a whole had means of buying. There would be a period 
 of distress and depression, and political economy does not 
 perhaps, at present, possess the means of saying how long 
 such depression would continue, nor even of saying decis- 
 ively that it would not end in a permanent deterioration of
 
 72 REVIEW OP bastiat's sophisms of protection. 
 
 the condition of the community ; in which case the seem- 
 ing gift would prove to be a gigantic evil, somewhat analo- 
 gous to the fortune with which a fond father paralyzes the 
 powers and prevents the development of his children. It is 
 to be hoped that political economy will not always be incom- 
 petent to solve such problems ; but it certainly will be as long 
 as it remains innocent of all knowledge of their existence ; 
 so long as, with M. Bastiat and Mr. J. S. Mill, it supposes that 
 displaced labor and capital always find "something else " to do. 
 The writer feels guilty for having mentioned so upright 
 and serious a writer as Mr. J. S. Mill in the same sentence as 
 M. Bastiat ; but they agreed in supporting the same doctrine 
 as to capital and its effects upon industry, and in the deduc- 
 tions from that doctrine ; in all else they are very wide apart. 
 In reviewing Mr. Mill, one would be spared the disagreeable 
 task of combating the arts of the rhetorical sophist, the 
 appeals to prejudice, to anger, to pit}', to greed, to supersti- 
 tion, to misguided or affected philanthropy. He would meet 
 with some very important errors in reasoning, strange as this 
 is in an unquestionably pre-eminent logician ; but everything 
 is honest, straightforward, and such as the spirit of tlie great 
 reasoner, looking back upon life, need not blush to have 
 written. M. Bastiat closes his " Sophisms of Protection " as 
 follows : — 
 
 " Let us decide that supremacy by labor is impossible and contra- 
 dictory, since all superiority which manifests itself among a people is 
 converted into cheapness, and results only in giving force to all others. 
 Let us, then, banish from political economy all those expressions bor- 
 rowed from the vocabulary of battles : to struggle with equal arms, to 
 conquer, to crush out, to stijie, to be beaten, invasion, tribute. What do 
 these words mean ? Squeeze them, and nothing comes out of them. 
 "VYe are mistaken ; there come from them absurd errors and fatal 
 prejudices. These are the words which stop the blending of peoples, 
 their peaceful, universal, indissoluble alliance, and the progress of 
 humanity." 
 
 So writes ]\I. Bastiat. Now compare with his words those 
 of Horace Greeley. Speaking of some strictures upon the 
 effects of reckless competition, hs says : —
 
 REVIEW OP BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 73 
 
 " The justice of these strictures I have at least twice seen realized 
 on a gigantic scale, in the general prostration of the manufacturing 
 industry of my countrymen under the pressure of European, mainly 
 of English, competition. That industry was thus crushed out after the 
 peace of 1815, when the eminent Henry Brougham (afterwards Lord 
 Brougham) remarked (when Great Britain was pouring out the goods 
 that crushed our then infant manufactures) that ' England can afford 
 to incur some loss ybr the purpose of destroying foreign manufactures in 
 their cradle ; ' and the noted economist and free-trader, Joseph Hume, 
 made a similar remark in 1828. Our tariff enacted in that year 
 rendered all efforts to cripple and prostrate our manufacturing industry 
 temporarily fruitless ; but it was otherwise after the compromise 
 tariff" of 1833 began to take full effect, in the reduction of the duties 
 to a (presumptively) revenue standard which culminated in the collapse 
 alike of industry and revenue in 1840-42. 
 
 " A report on strikes made to the British Parliament in 1854 sig- 
 nificantly said : — 
 
 " 'Authentic instances are well known of (British) employers having 
 in such times (of depressed prices), carried on their works at a loss 
 amounting to three or four hundred thousand pounds in the course of 
 three or four years. If the efforts of those who encourage the com- 
 bination to restrict the amount of labor, and to produce strikes, were 
 to be successful for any length of time, the great accumulations of 
 capital could no longer be made which enable a few of the most 
 wealthy capitalists to overwhelm all foreign competition in times of 
 great depression, and thus to clear the way for the whole trade to step 
 in when prices revive, and to carry on a great business before foreign 
 capital can again accumulate to establish a competition in prices, with 
 any chance of success. The great capitals of this country are the 
 great instruments of warfare against the competing capitals of other 
 countries, and are the most essential instruments now remaining, by 
 which our manufacturing supremacy can be maintained ; the other 
 elements, cheap labor, abundance of raw materials, means of communi- 
 cation, and skilled labor being rapidly in progress of being equalized.' " 
 
 It will be seen that Mr. Greeley bears witness to our indus- 
 tries having been twice prostrated by their English competi- 
 tors in his time, and it is matter of general knowledge also 
 that the same thing happened to the Portuguese industries 
 after the treaty of Methuen, and to the Irish industries after 
 the union, and so with Turkey and India. 
 
 10
 
 74 REVIEW OP bastiat's sophisms op protection. 
 
 The reader can then form his own opinion about the hardi- 
 hood of M. Bastiat when he attempted to prove that such 
 things cannot happen, by a process of false logic which has 
 been the somewhat disagreeable task of the writer to expose. 
 The rest of his book is made up chiefly of rhetorical sophisms, 
 in which taxes and obstacles which do increase the productive 
 power of the community are classed with the taxes and 
 obstacles which do not increase it ; of appeals to our pity that 
 the ^^poor workman" after getting his wages from his fellow- 
 citizens, should not be allowed to spend them among foreign- 
 ers, and in appeals to class prejudices by abuse of every descrip- 
 tion poured out upon everybody who is protected from the 
 English manufacturer. They are cheats, swindlers, robbers, 
 monopolists, oppressors, thieves ! 
 
 Now it has been held by every respectable economist, from 
 Adam Smith down, that it is impossible for any industry to 
 long obtain a profit above that usual in the community ; and 
 it would seem, therefore, that all this abuse is as unjust as 
 it is unseemly ; but if there be in any case reason to fear that 
 manufacturers may combine to exact a higher profit, our own 
 are within reach of control. Let the fact be proved, and 
 nothing is easier than to bring them to reason, by simply 
 reducing the duty to what will give them an adequate and 
 not an excessive protection. "We should have no such power 
 over the foreigners. When they have once ruined our own 
 industries they can, if they combine, charge us whatever 
 they please. 
 
 If, then, there be any foundation for the cry of monopoly, 
 the possibility of such a combination is the best of all reasons 
 for standing by our own and not the alien manufacturers. 
 These can be ruled. The others cannot. 
 
 Part III., — " Spoliation and Law." 
 
 This supremely sophistical chapter endeavors to connect, in 
 the mind of the reader, the totally different matters of pro- 
 tection and communism. At the time it was written, society 
 in France was alarmed at the pretensions of communism, and 
 the endeavor to make out some similarity between it and
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 75 
 
 protection was as shrewd as anything can be which is abso- 
 lutely dishonest. The same attempt has been made by the 
 unscrupulous upon this side of the Atlantic. 
 
 Civilized men everywhere recognize, either consciously or 
 unconsciously, the fact that, without the aid of tools, machines, 
 improved farms, mills, forges, railroads, stores of food, mate- 
 rials, and shelter, etc., — without, in short, the aid of instru- 
 ments of production, the gross annual product of labor 
 would be incomparably less than it is ; they recognize, also, 
 that these instruments of production cannot come into exist- 
 ence nor be kept in repair, except through abstinence, which 
 is, therefore, entitled to such portion of the increased product 
 as demand and supply determine to be the just value of 
 their use ; they recognize, also, that to allow individuals to 
 possess these instruments and enjoy said portion of their 
 fruits is the most economical and efficient method for bring- 
 ing them into existence and keeping them in repair, utility 
 being here completely at one with justice ; they recognize 
 even that those proprietors who do nothing except to live 
 within their income do, nevertheless, thereby render a most 
 essential service to society, for living within their income is 
 nothing less than keeping in repair the " instruments " which 
 furnish them with incomes ; and in recognizing, consciously 
 or unconsciously, these facts, all men of common sense per- 
 ceive the rights of property to be based upon the all-sufficient 
 foundation of the greatest good to the whole society, — not 
 the greatest good only for to-day, or this year, but for all 
 time. But the common sense of mankind also recognizes 
 that, while the greatest good of the whole is tlie foundation 
 of the rights of property, it also puts limits to those rights. 
 As they are founded and justified by the good of tlie whole, 
 they must logically be restricted to that which in the long 
 run is beneficial to all. No man is allowed to use his prop- 
 erty to found a college for teaching what the community 
 generally accounts to be vice, nor to run gambling-houses or 
 lotteries, nor to erect unsafe houses, nor to sail ships which 
 have become unseaworthy, nor to establish anything which is 
 a nuisance or a source of disease, nor to run a bank except
 
 76 revif:w of bastiat's sophisms of protection 
 
 under conditions protecting public interests, etc., ad infinitum. 
 Property is not weakened by these necessary and proper re- 
 straints, but only prevented from weakening its own just and 
 legitimate claims, and becoming in some respects a nuisance, 
 instead of a great blessing to the community. Indeed, he is 
 no friend of property, but its dangerous enemy, who maintains 
 that each single possessor has the indefeasible right to veto the 
 decisions of the whole society, and that, too, in the cause of a 
 pseudo-theory composed of a vast mass of bad logic and of 
 totally irrelevant rhetoric. The argimient that " the highest 
 right of property is the right to exchange it for other property ; " 
 that, therefore, any restraint or regulation of this right, — in 
 short, the forbidding of any exchange, however detrimental, 
 — is an unwarrantable invasion of the rights of property, and 
 therefore akin to communism, — this argument can only be 
 used by one who has the incredible folly to suppose that the 
 American people are a nation of unmitigated noodles. 
 
 In the first place, the right to exchange it is not the highest 
 right of property. A higher right still is the right to an 
 unmolested enjoyment either of the property itself or of the 
 income thereof. Second, another higher right is the right to 
 protection against foreign attacks, whether civil or military. 
 Third, if even it were the highest right, this, like every other 
 right of property, must give way before the vastly higher 
 and more important rights of the whole community. Com- 
 pensation is given where the case requires it ; compensation 
 is not given where the interference produces no damage, but 
 a great benefit, as when protective laws are passed. 
 
 " But," exclaim the free-traders, " protective laws are not 
 a benefit, but an injury." 
 
 Ah, gentlemen, you undertook to bolster the doctrine of free 
 trade by an argument from the rights of property ; but we 
 now find that the argument about the rights of property breaks 
 down unless we first assume the free-trade doctrine to be cor- 
 rect. You are attempting to make two doctrines hold each 
 other up, when neither the one nor the other can stand alone. 
 
 If the free-trade doctrine were sound, the interference with 
 foreign exchanges would be unwise, but by no means beyond
 
 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 77 
 
 the restrictive rights of the whole people ; if the protection- 
 ist doctrine be sound, the interference is eminently beneficial ; 
 but, in either case, there is nothing resembling the proposed 
 communistic abolition of property' which would be ruinous 
 alike to individual owners and to the public. 
 
 The attempt, then, to smooch protection by coupling it 
 wdth communism is simply a dishonest rhetorical artifice, dis- 
 graceful to tlie author and insulting to the readers whom he 
 addresses. It is precisely equivalent to calling them fools. 
 
 And here we come to the end of a book which shows 
 much wit, vivacity, ingenuity, and audacity, but which 
 stands almost alone among transatlantic productions for the 
 entire absence of that serious, earnest desire for truth which 
 political economists usually display. Others may involve 
 themselves in logical puzzles ; but they appear to do so unin- 
 tentionally. Possibly this may have also been the case with 
 M. Bastiat, and the semblance of flippancy and insincerity 
 may be rather apparent than real ; but, at all events, one 
 cannot rise from a diligent study of him without a profound 
 conviction that no member of the Free Trade League can 
 have carefully perused the book which they translated and 
 printed in order " to educate public opinion in the United 
 States, and convince the people of the folly and wrongfulness 
 of the protective system." 
 
 Any other conviction would involve the gross insult of 
 supposing them to be either exceedingly flat or exceedingly 
 dishonest, or both. 
 
 Bastiat's sophistries are based chiefly upon the following 
 erroneous propositions : — 
 
 " 1. That industry is limited by capital, whereas both are limited by 
 the field of employment. 
 
 " 2. That human labor is never without employment. 
 
 " 3. That the wages fund is a fixed amount, equal to the existing cap- 
 ital, and the whole of it always employed. 
 
 " 4. That protective laws, which cause more people to be employed 
 with increased production, are the same in effect as dull axes, ob- 
 structed canals, working with the left hand, amputating one hand, 
 etc., which would cause more people to be employed without 
 increased production.
 
 78 REVIEW OF BASTIAT'S SOPHISMS OF PROTECTION. 
 
 " 5. 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 clever enough to see that it proves nothing, 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."
 
 EEVIEW OF BASTIAT's SOPHISMS OP PROTECTION. 79 
 
 1 My friend, Mr. David H. Mason, observes here : " That, in point of fact, 
 individuals do not possess the claimed riglit, and have least of it where civili- 
 zation is greatest. The disposition of one's own property is not a natural right, 
 but a conventional right, — a right limited by law or by custom, based on the 
 views taken of tiie individual's obligations to the society of which he is a unit. 
 Whatever may be said theoretically about the right of each individual to the 
 free disposition of his own property, he does not in any civilized community 
 possess such claimed right. Restraint, in a multitude of forms, confronts every 
 member of the community in the disposition of his property. No person can 
 legally dispose of his property in such a way as to interfere with the rights of his 
 fellow-citizens. He cannot use his capital to erect a frame-building witiiin the 
 limits of a municipal fire-district. He cannot spend his money so as to commit 
 a public nuisance; as, for example, by locating a bone or soap factory, with its 
 noisome stench, amid the residence quarter of a town. He cannot, without 
 incurring heavy penalties, invest his means in publishing clearly immoral news- 
 papers or books, which operate to debauch public sentiment. If he is an apothe- 
 cary, he cannot sell poisons indiscriminately, but is therein subjected to various 
 restrictions. If he is a manufacturer, he cannot purchase for use in his business 
 any machinery which infringes a patent, without making himself liable for 
 exemplary damages. If he is a publisher, he cannot, without violating the law 
 and incurring its punishment, print a book for sale which has been copyrighted 
 in his country, and for which printing he does not possess the imprimatur of the 
 author or the permission of the owner. If he is a shipmaster, he cannot sail 
 his vessel into the harbor of destination according to his own separate will, but 
 according to the will of the health-officer of the port, who may force him into 
 detention at quarantine quarters. Formerly in the Southern States it was legal 
 to dispose of negroes as property. That was then a conventional right; now it 
 is a conventional wrong. A protective tariff rests upon the same general prin- 
 ciple, that society is injured by permitting to individuals the free disposition of 
 their property in purchase of or exchange for imported property." 
 
 2 Much protection was taken from pig-iron, the base of our iron and steel 
 industries in 1870, and there was a heavy reduction of duties on a wide range 
 of manufactures in 1872. But for these changes the country might perhaps 
 have escaped the panic of 1873 in spite of the contraction of the currency, &c. 
 
 3 After all the treasure it can possibly spare is gone, government bonds, rail 
 road bonds and stock, mortgages, &c., will go, and during all this process B will 
 be unable to compete with A by manufacturing for herself. The industries in 
 which she is inferior will be destroyed, and she will be kept continually in the 
 condition of treasure-famine. She will never have enough of the precious 
 metals to suffice as a basis for a safe and stable currency. 
 
 * There is an exception -when the individuals of a community invest largely 
 in other lands ; but this kind of wealth, as Adam Smith has observed, is of a 
 very unstable and fugitive character.
 
 
 MAY 1 1 1978 
 
 
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