Peter: Parisians, don't allow yourselves to be seduced by that word, liberty. What good can result from liberty to purchase if you want the means--in other words, if you are out of employment? Can Paris produce firewood as cheaply as the Forest of Bondy? meat as cheaply as Poitou? butter as cheaply as Normandy? If you open your gates freely to these rival products, what will become of the cowfeeders, woodcutters, and pork-butchers? They cannot dispense with protection. The People: Vive, vive la Protection! Jacques Bonhomme: Protection! but who protects you workmen? Do you not compete with one another? Let the wood-merchants, then, be subject to competition in their turn. They ought not to have right by law to raise the price of firewood, unless the rate of wages is also raised by law. Are you no longer in love with equality? The People: Vive, vive l'Egalité! Peter: Don't listen to these agitators. We have, it is true, raised the price of firewood, butchers' meat, and butter; but we have done so for the express purpose of being enabled to give good wages to the workmen. We are actuated by motives of charity. The People: Vive, vive la Charité! Jacques Bonhomme. Cause the rate of wages to be raised by the octroi, if you can, or cease by the same means to raise the prices of commodities. We Parisians ask for no charity--we demand justice. The People: Vive, vive la Justice! Peter: It is precisely the high price of commodities which will lead, _par ricochet_, to a rise of wages. The People: Vive, vive la Cherté! Jacques Bonhomme: If butter is dear, it is not because you pay high wages to the workmen, it is not even because you make exorbitant profits; it is solely because Paris is ill-adapted for that branch of industry; it is because you wish to make in the town what should be made in the country, and in the country what should be made in the town. The people have not more employment--only they have employment of a different kind. They have no higher wages; while they can no longer buy commodities as cheaply as formerly. The People: Vive, vive le Bon Marché! Peter: This man seduces you with fine words. Let us place the question before you in all its simplicity. Is it, or is it not, true, that if we admit firewood, meat, and butter freely or at a lower duty, our markets will be inundated? Believe me there is no other means of preserving ourselves from this new species of invasion but to keep the door shut, and so maintain the prices of commodities by rendering them artificially rare. Some Voices in the Crowd: Vive, vive la Rareté! Jacques Bonhomme: Let us bring the question to the simple test of truth. You cannot divide among the people of Paris commodities which are not in Paris. If there be less meat, less firewood, less butter, the share falling to each will be smaller. Now there must be less if we prohibit what should be allowed to enter the city. Parisians, abundance for each of you can be secured only by general abundance.