If it is said: "To force men to cultivate rocks, and extract an ounce of iron from a hundredweight of ore, is to increase their labour and consequently their wealth," Reply: "To force men to dig wells by prohibiting them from taking water from the brook, is to increase their _useless labour_, but not their wealth." If you are told that the sun gives you his heat and light without remuneration, Reply: "So much the better for me, for it costs me nothing to see clearly." And if you are answered that industry in general loses what would have been paid for artificial light, Rejoin; "No; for having paid nothing to the sun, what he saves me enables me to buy clothes, furniture, and candles." In the same way, if you are told that these rascally English possess capital which is dormant, Reply: "So much the better for us; they will not make us pay interest for it." If it is said: "These perfidious English find coal and iron in the same pit," Reply: "So much the better for us; they will charge us nothing for bringing them together." If you are told that the Swiss have rich pasturages, which cost little: Reply: "The advantage is ours, for they will demand a smaller amount of our labour in return for giving an impetus to our agriculture, and supplying us with provisions." If they tell you that the lands of the Crimea have no value, and pay no taxes, Reply: "The profit is ours, who buy corn free from such charges." If they tell you that the serfs of Poland work without wages, Reply: "The misfortune is theirs and the profit is ours, since their labour does not enter into the price of the corn which their masters sell us." Finally, if they tell you that other nations have many advantages over us, Reply: "By means of exchange, they are forced to allow us to participate in these advantages." If they tell you that under free-trade we are about to be inundated with bread, _bouf à la mode_, coal, and winter clothing, Reply: "In that case we shall be neither hungry nor thirsty." If they ask how we are to pay for these things? Reply: "Don't let that disquiet you. If we are inundated, it is a sign we have the means of paying for the inundation; and if we have not the means of paying, we shall not be inundated." If any one says: I should approve of free-trade, if the foreigner, in sending us his products, would take our products in exchange; but he carries off our money, Reply: "Neither money nor coffee grows in the fields of Beauce, nor are they turned out by the workshops of Elbeuf. So far as we are concerned, to pay the foreigner with money is the same thing as paying him with coffee." If they bid you eat butcher's meat, Reply: "Allow it to be imported." If they say to you, in the words of the _Presse_, "When one has not the means to buy bread, he is forced to buy beef," Reply: "This is advice quite as judicious as that given by M. Vautour to his tenant: