certain professions, or certain manufactures, they have no other mode of accomplishing their object than by setting up Obstacles, in order to give to particular branches of industry additional development, in order to enlarge artificially the circle of services to which the community is forced to have recourse,—and thus to increase Value, falsely assumed as synonymous with Wealth. And, in fact, it is quite true that such legislation is useful to the classes which are favoured by it—they exult in it—congratulate each other upon it,—and what is the consequence? Why this, that the same favours are successively accorded to all other classes. What more natural than to confound Utility with Value, and Value with Riches! The science has never encountered a snare which she has less suspected. For what has happened? At every step of progress the reasoning has been this: “The obstacle is diminished, then effort is lessened, then value is lessened, then utility is lessened, then wealth is lessened,—then we are the most unfortunate people in the world to have taken it into our heads to invent and exchange, to have five fingers in place of three, and two hands in place of one; and then it is necessary to engage government, which is in possession of force, to take order with this abuse.” This Political Economy ‹à rebours›—this Political Economy read backwards—is the staple of many of our journals, and the life of legislative assemblies. It has misled the candid and philanthropic Sismondi, and we find it very logically set forth in the work of M. de Saint-Chamans. “There are two kinds of national wealth,” he tells us. “If we have regard only to ‹useful› products with reference to their quantity, their abundance, we have to do with a species of wealth which procures enjoyments to society, and which I shall denominate ‹the Wealth of enjoyment›. “If we regard products with reference to their exchangeable Value, or simply with reference to their value, we have to do with [p185] a species of Wealth which procures values to society, and which I call ‹the Wealth of value›. “‹It is this last species of Wealth which forms the special subject of Political Economy, and it is with it, above all, that governments have to do.›” This being so, how are Economists and Statesmen to proceed? The first are to point out the means of increasing this species of riches, this ‹wealth of value›; the second to set about adopting these means. But this kind of wealth bears proportion to efforts, and efforts bear proportion to obstacles. Political Economy, then, is to teach, and Government to contrive, how to multiply obstacles. M. de Saint-Chamans does not flinch in the least from this consequence. Does exchange facilitate our acquiring more of the ‹wealth of enjoyment› with less of the ‹wealth of value›? We must, then, counteract this tendency of exchange.[39]