Suppose there are used annually in this country ten millions of hats at 15 shillings; this makes the sum which goes to the support of this branch of industry £7,500,000 sterling. A machine is invented which allows these hats to be manufactured and sold at 10 shillings. The sum now wanted for the support of this industry is reduced to £5,000,000, provided the demand is not augmented by the change. But the remaining sum of £2,500,000 is not by this change withdrawn from the support of _human labour_. That sum, economized by the purchasers of hats, will enable them to satisfy other wants, and, consequently, to that extent will go to remunerate the aggregate industry of the country. With the five shillings saved, John will purchase a pair of shoes, James a book, Jerome a piece of furniture, etc. Human labour, taken in the aggregate, will continue, then, to be supported and encouraged to the extent of £7,500,000; but this sum will yield the same number of hats, plus all the satisfactions and enjoyments corresponding to £2,500,000 that the employment of the machine has enabled the consumers of hats to save. These additional enjoyments constitute the clear profit which the country will have derived from the invention. This is a free gift, a tribute which human genius will have derived from nature. We do not at all dispute, that in the course of the transformation a certain amount of labour will have been _displaced_; but we cannot allow that it has been destroyed or diminished. The same thing holds of the importation of foreign commodities. Let us revert to our former hypothesis. The country manufactures ten millions of hats, of which the cost price was 15 shillings. The foreigner sends similar hats to our market, and furnishes them at 10 shillings each. I maintain that the _national labour_ will not be thereby diminished. For it must produce to the extent of £5,000,000, to enable it to pay for 10 millions of hats at 10 shillings. And then there remains to each purchaser five shillings saved on each hat, or in all, £2,500,000, which will be spent on other enjoyments--that is to say, which will go to support labour in other departments of industry. Then the aggregate labour of the country will remain what it was, and the additional enjoyments represented by £2,500,000 saved upon hats, will form the clear profit accruing from imports under the system of free trade. It is of no use to try to frighten us by a picture of the sufferings which, on this hypothesis, the displacement of labour will entail. For, if the prohibition had never been imposed, the labour would have found its natural place under the ordinary law of exchange, and no displacement would have taken place. If, on the other hand, prohibition has led to an artificial and unproductive employment of labour, it is prohibition, and not liberty, which is to blame for a displacement which is inevitable in the transition from what is detrimental to what is beneficial.