Suppose that the first shoemaker who established himself in that city had succeeded in ejecting all others; that the first tailor, the first mason, the first printer, the first watchmaker, the first physician, the first baker, had been equally successful. Paris would at this moment have been still a village of 1200 or 1500 inhabitants. It has turned out very differently. The market of Paris has been open to all (excepting those whom you still keep out), and it is this freedom which has enlarged and aggrandized it. The struggles of competition have been bitter and long continued, and this is what has made Paris a city of a million of inhabitants. The general wealth has increased, no doubt; but has the individual wealth of the shoemakers and tailors been diminished? This is the question you have to ask. You may say that according as the number of competitors increased, the price of their products would go on falling. Has it done so? No; for if the supply has been augmented, the demand has been enlarged. The same thing will hold good of your commodity, cloth; let it enter freely. You will have more competitors in the trade, it is true; but you will have more customers, and, above all, richer customers. Is it possible you can never have thought of this, when you see nine-tenths of your fellow-citizens underclothed in winter, for want of the commodity which you manufacture? If you wish to prosper, allow your customers to thrive. This is a lesson which you have* been very long in learning. When it is thoroughly learnt, each man will seek his own interest in the general good; and then jealousies between man and man, town and town, province and province, nation and nation, will no longer trouble the world. VI. TO ARTISANS AND WORKMEN. Many journals have attacked me in your presence and hearing. Perhaps you will not object to read my defence? I am not suspicious. When a man writes or speaks, I take for granted that he believes what he says. And yet, after reading and re-reading the journals to which I now reply, I seem unable to discover any other than melancholy tendencies. Our present business is to inquire which is more favourable to your interests,--liberty or restriction. I believe that it is liberty,--they believe that it is restriction. It is for each party to prove his own thesis. Was it necessary to insinuate that we free-traders are the agents of England, of the south of France, of the government? On this point, you see how easy recrimination would be. We are the agents of England, they say, because some of us employ the words meeting and free-trader! And do they not make use of the words drawback and budget? We, it would seem, imitate Cobden and the English democracy! And do they not parody Lord George Bentinck and the British aristocracy? We borrow from perfidious Albion the doctrine of liberty! And do they not borrow from the same source the quibbles of protection? We follow the lead of Bordeaux and the south!