"And which is best for a nation, to have the choice between these two means, or that the law should prohibit one of them, on the chance of stumbling on the better of the two?" "It appears to me that it is better for the nation to have the choice, inasmuch as in such matters it invariably chooses right." "The law, which prohibits the importation of foreign cloth, decides, then, that if France wishes to have cloth, she must make it in kind, and that she is prohibited from making the something else with which she could purchase foreign cloth." "True." "And as the law obliges us to make the cloth, and forbids our making the something else, precisely because that something else would exact less labour (but for which reason the law would not interfere with it) the law virtually decrees that for a determinate amount of labour, France shall only have one yard of cloth, when for the same amount of labour she might have two yards, by applying that labour to something else!" "But the question recurs, 'What else?" "And my question recurs, 'What does it signify?' Having the choice, she will only make the something else to such an extent as there may be a demand for it." "That is possible; but I cannot divest myself of the idea that the foreigner will send us his cloth, and not take from us the something else, in which case we would be entrapped. At all events, this is the objection even from your own point of view. You allow that France could make this something else to exchange for cloth, with a less expenditure of labour than if she had made the cloth itself?" "Undoubtedly." "There would, then, be a certain amount of her labour rendered inert?" "Yes; but without her being less well provided with clothes, a little circumstance which makes all the difference. Robinson lost sight of this, and our protectionists either do not see it, or pretend not to see it. The shipwrecked plank rendered fifteen days of Robinson's labour inert, in as far as that labour was applied to making a plank, but it did not deprive him of it. Discriminate, then, between these two kinds of diminished labour--the diminution which has for effect privation, and that which has for its cause satisfaction. These two things are very different, and if you mix them up, you reason as Robinson did. In the most complicated, as in the most simple cases, the sophism consists in this: _Judging of the utility of labour by its duration and intensity, and not by its results_; which gives rise to this economic policy: _To reduce the results of labour for the purpose of augmenting its duration and intensity_." * * See ch. ii. and iii. of _Sophimes_, first series; and _Harmonies Économiques_, ch. vi. XV. THE LITTLE ARSENAL OF THE FREE-TRADER. If any one tells you that there are no absolute principles, no inflexible rules; that prohibition may be bad and yet that restriction may be good, Reply: "Restriction prohibits all that it hinders from being imported.":