Once more, when products, such as coal, iron, corn, or textile fabrics, are sent us from abroad, and we can acquire them with less labour than if we made them ourselves, the difference is a free gift conferred upon us. The gift is more or less considerable in proportion as the difference is more or less great. It amounts to a quarter, a half, or three-quarters of the value of the product, when the foreigner only asks us for three-fourths, a half, or a quarter of the price we should otherwise pay. It is as perfect and complete as it can be, when the donor (like the Sun in furnishing us with light) asks us for nothing. The question, and we ask it formally, is this, Do you desire for our country the benefit of gratuitous consumption, or the pretended advantages of onerous production? Make your choice, but be logical; for as long as you exclude as you do, coal, iron, corn, foreign fabrics, ‹in proportion› as their price approximates to ‹zero›, what inconsistency would it be to admit the light of the Sun, the price of which is already at ‹zero› during the entire day! In addition to his other engrossing avocations in Paris, Bastiat, in the end of 1847 and beginning of 1848, delivered a course of lectures to young men on the principles of Political Economy and the Harmony of the Social Laws. He had no opportunity of committing these lectures to writing, as he wished, but we have doubtless the substance of them in his published works, especially in the ‹Harmonies Économiques›. “Something tells me,” he says in one of his letters to M. Coudroy, “that this course addressed to the young, who have logic in their heads, and warmth and fervour in their hearts, will not be useless.” “My auditors,” he says elsewhere, “are not very numerous; but they attend assiduously, and take notes. The seed falls into good ground.”