"Sire, your object is, by increased facility of transit, to reduce the price of articles of consumption, and bring them within reach of the people; and to effect that, you begin by taking away from them all the employment to which the destruction of the canal had given rise. Sire, in political economy, nominal cheapness-" _The Emperor_: "I believe you are repeating by rote." _Kouang_: "True, Sire; and it will be better to read what I have to say." So, producing the _Esprit Public_, he read as follows: "In political economy, the nominal cheapness of articles of consumption is only a secondary question. The problem is to establish an equilibrium between the price of labour and that of the means of subsistence. The abundance of labour constitutes the wealth of nations; and the best economic system is that which supplies the people with the greatest amount of employment. The question is not whether it is better to pay four or eight cash for a cup of tea, or five or ten tales for a shirt. These are puerilities unworthy of a thinking mind. Nobody disputes your proposition. The question is whether it is better to pay dearer for a commodity you want to buy, and have, through the abundance of employment and the higher price of labour, the means of acquiring it; or whether, it is better to limit the sources of employment, and with them the mass of the national production--to transport, by improved means of transit, the objects of consumption, cheaper, it is true, but taking away at the same time from classes of our population the means of purchasing these objects even at their reduced price." Seeing the Emperor still unconvinced, Kouang added, "Sire, deign to give me your attention. I have still another quotation from the _Moniteur Industriel_ to bring under your notice." But the Emperor said: "I don't require your Chinese journals to enable me to find out that to create _obstacles_ is to divert and misapply labour. But that is not my mission. Go and clear out the canal; and we shall reform the Customhouse afterwards." And Kouang went away tearing his beard, and appealing to his God, "O Fo! take pity on thy people; for we have now got an Emperor of the English school, and I see clearly that in a short time we shall be in want of everything, for we shall no longer require to do anything." VIII. POST HOC, ERGO PROPTER HOC. This is the greatest and most common fallacy in reasoning. Real sufferings, for example, have manifested themselves in England.* * This was written in January 1848.--Translator. These sufferings come in the train of two other phenomena: 1st, The reformed tariff; 2d, Two bad harvests in succession. To which of these two last circumstances are we to attribute the first? The protectionists exclaim: It is this accursed free-trade which does all the harm. It promised us wonderful things; we accepted it; and here are our manufactures at a standstill, and the people suffering: _Cum hoc, ergo propter hoc_.