The People: Vive, vive l'Abondance! Peter: It is in vain that this man tries to persuade you that it is your interest to be subjected to unbridled competition. The People: A bas, à bas la Concurrence! Jacques Bonhomme: It is in vain that this man tries to make you fall in love with restriction. The People: A bas, à bas la Restriction! Peter: I declare, for my own part, if you deprive the poor cowfeeders and pig-drivers of their daily bread, I can no longer be answerable for public order. Workmen, distrust that man. He is the agent of perfidious Normandy, and derives his inspiration from the provinces. He is a traitor; down with him! (The people preserve silence.) Jacques Bonhomme: Parisians, what I have told you to-day, I told you twenty years ago, when Peter set himself to work the octroi for his own profit and to your detriment. I am not, then, the agent of Normandy. Hang me up, if you will, but that will not make oppression anything else than oppression. Friends, it is not Jacques or Peter that you must put an end to, but liberty if you fear it, or restriction if it does you harm. The People: Hang nobody, and set everybody free. XIV. SOMETHING ELSE. "What is restriction?" "It is partial prohibition." "What is prohibition?" "Absolute restriction." "So that what holds true of the one, holds true of the other?" "Yes; the difference is only one of degree. There is between them the same relation as there is between a circle and the arc of a circle." "Then, if prohibition is bad, restriction cannot be good?" "No more than the arc can be correct if the circle is irregular." "What is the name which is common to restriction and prohibition?" "Protection." "What is the definitive effect of protection?" "To exact from men _a greater amount of labour for the same result_." "Why are men attached to the system of protection?" "Because as liberty enables us to obtain the same result with less labour, this apparent diminution of employment frightens them." "Why do you say apparent?" "Because _all labour saved can be applied to something else_." "To what?" "That I cannot specify, nor is there any need to specify it." "Why?" "Because if the sum of satisfactions which the country at present enjoys could be obtained with one-tenth less labour, no one can enumerate the new enjoyments which men would desire to obtain from the labour left disposable. One man would desire to be better clothed, another better fed, another better educated, another better amused." "Explain to me the mechanism and the effects of protection." "That is not an easy matter. Before entering on consideration of the more complicated cases, we must study it in a very simple one." "Take as simple a case as you choose." "You remember how Robinson Crusoe managed to make a plank when he had no saw." "Yes; he felled a tree, and then, cutting the trunk right and left with his hatchet, he reduced it to the thickness of a board." "And that cost him much labour?"