'Your Free-trade is a beautiful theory. It is founded on right and justice; it realizes liberty; it consecrates property; it would be followed by the union of nations--the reign of peace and of good-will amongst men. You have reason and principle on your side; but we will resist you to the utmost, and with all our strength, because foreign competition would be fatal to our national industry.' I take the liberty of addressing this reply to them:-- 'I deny that foreign competition would be fatal to national industry. If it was so, you would be placed in every instance between your interest--which, according to you, is on the side of the restriction--and justice, which, by your confession, is on the side of freedom of intercourse! Now when I, the worshipper of the golden calf, warn you that the time has arrived to make your own choice, whence comes it that you, the men of self-denial, cling to self-interest, and trample principle under foot? Do not, then, inveigh so much against a motive, which governs you as it governs other men? Such is the experience which warns me that it is incumbent on us, in the first place, to solve this alarming problem: Is there harmony or antagonism between justice and utility? and, in consequence, to investigate the economical side of the protective system; for since they whose watchword is Fraternity, themselves yield before an apprehended adversity, it is clear that this proceeds from no doubt in the truth of the cause of universal justice, but that it is an acknowledgment of the existence and of the necessity of self-interest, as an all-powerful spring of action, however unworthy, abject, contemptible, and despised it may be deemed. It is this which has given rise to a work, in two small volumes, which I take the liberty of sending you with the present one, well convinced, Sir, that if, like other political economists, you judge severely of the system of Protection on the ground of morality, and if we only differ as far as concerns its utility, you will not refuse to inquire, with some care, if these two great elements of substantial progress agree or disagree. This harmony exists--or, at least, it is as clear to me as the light of the sun that it does. May it reveal itself to you! It is, then, by applying your talents, which have so remarkable an influence on others, to counteract Communism in its most dangerous shape, that you will give it a mortal blow.