Two products, A and B, have an original value in France, which I may denominate 50 and 40 respectively. Let us admit that A is not worth more than 40 in Belgium. This being supposed, if France is subjected to the protective system, she will have the enjoyment of A and B in the whole as the result of her efforts, a quantity equal to 90, for she will, on the above supposition, be compelled to produce A directly. If she is free, the result of her efforts, equal to 90, will be equal: 1st, to the production of B, which she will take to Belgium, in order to obtain A; 2ndly, to the production of another B for herself; 3rdly, to the production of C. It is that portion of disposable labour applied to the production of C in the second case, that is to say, creating new wealth equal to 10, without France being deprived either of A or of B, which makes all the difficulty. In the place of A put iron; in the place of B, wine, silk, and Parisian articles; in the place of C put some new product not now existing. You will always find that restriction is injurious to national prosperity. Do you wish to leave this dull algebra? So do I. To speak of facts, therefore, you will not deny that if the prohibitory system has contrived to do some good to the coal trade, it is only in raising the price of the coal. You will not, moreover, deny that this excess of price from 1822 to the present time has only occasioned a greater expense to all those who use this fuel--in other words, that it represents a loss. Can it be said that the producers of coal have received, besides the interest of their capital and the ordinary profits of trade, in consequence of the protection afforded them, an extra gain equivalent to that loss? It would be necessary that Protection, without losing those unjust and Communistic qualities which characterize it, should at least be _neuter_ in the purely economic point of view. It would be necessary that it should at least have the merit of resembling simple robbery, which displaces wealth without destroying it. But you yourself affirm, at page 236, 'that the mines of Aveyron, Alais, Saint-Etienne, Creuzot, Anzin, the most celebrated of all, have not produced a revenue of four per cent, on the capital embarked in them.' It does not require Protection that capital in France should yield four per cent. Where, then, in this instance, is the profit to counterbalance the above-mentioned loss? This is not all. There is another national loss. Since by the relative rising of the price of fuel, all the consumers of coal have lost, they have been obliged to limit their expenses in proportion, and the whole of national labour has been necessarily discouraged to this extent. It is this loss which they never take into their calculation, because it does not strike their senses.