This is a pleasant view of the matter! If a nation produces in one year, from its agriculture and commerce, a value of fifty millions, it has only to sell a quarter of it to the foreigner to be a quarter richer! Then if it sells the half, it will be one-half richer! And if it should sell the whole, to its last tuft of wool and its last grain of wheat, it would bring up its revenue to 100 millions. Singular way of getting rich, by producing infinite dearness by absolute scarcity! Again, would you judge of the two doctrines? Submit them to the test of exaggeration. According to the doctrine of M. de Saint-Chamans, the French would be quite as rich--that is to say, quite as well supplied with all things--had they only a thousandth part of their annual products, because they would be worth a thousand times more. According to our doctrine, the French would be infinitely rich if their annual products were infinitely abundant, and, consequently, without any value at all.* * See _post_, ch. v. of second series of _Sophismes_; and ch. vi. of _Harmonies Economiques_. XII. DOES PROTECTION RAISE THE RATE OF WAGES? An atheist, declaiming one day against religion and priestcraft, became so outrageous in his abuse, that one of his audience, who was not himself very orthodox, exclaimed, "If you go on much longer in this strain, you will make me a convert." In the same way, when we see our beardless scribblers, our novel-writers, reformers, fops, amateur contributors to newspapers, redolent of musk, and saturated with champagne, stuffing their portfolios with radical prints, or issuing under gilded covers their own tirades against the egotism and individualism of the age--when we hear such people declaim against the rigour of our institutions, groan over the proletariat and the wages system, raise their eyes to Heaven, and weep over the poverty of the working classes (poverty which they never see but when they are paid to paint it),--we are likewise tempted to exclaim, "If you go on longer in this strain, we shall lose all interest in the working classes." Affectation is the besetting sin of our times. When a serious writer, in a spirit of philanthropy, refers to the sufferings of the working classes, his words are caught up by these sentimentalists, twisted, distorted, and exaggerated, _usque ad 'nauseam_. The grand, the only remedy, it would seem, lies in the high-sounding phrases, association and organization. The working classes are flattered--fulsomely, servilely flattered; they are represented as in the condition of slaves, and men of common sense will soon be ashamed publicly to espouse their cause, for how can common sense make itself heard in the midst of all this insipid and empty declamation? Far from us be this cowardly indifference, which would not be justified even by the sentimental affectation which prompts it.