"DEAR MR. EDITOR:--You upset all my ideas. I preached in favor of free trade, and found it very convenient to put prominently forward the idea of _cheapness_. I went everywhere, saying, "With free trade, bread, meat, woolens, linen, iron and coal will fall in price." This displeased those who sold, but delighted those who bought. Now, you raise a doubt as to whether _cheapness_ is the result of free trade. But if not, of what use is it? What will the people gain, if foreign competition, which may interfere with them in their sales, does not favor them in their purchases?" MY DEAR FREE TRADER:--Allow us to say that you have but half read the article which provoked your letter. We said that free trade acted precisely like roads, canals and railways, like everything which facilitates communications, and like everything which destroys obstacles. Its first tendency is to increase the quantity of the article which is relieved from duties, and consequently to lower its price. But by increasing, at the same time, the quantity of all the things for which this article is exchanged, it increases the _demand_, and consequently the price rises. You ask us what the people will gain. Suppose they have a balance with certain scales, in each one of which they have for their use a certain quantity of the articles which you have enumerated. If a little grain is put in one scale it will gradually sink, but if an equal quantity of cloth, iron and coal is added in the others, the equilibrium will be maintained. Looking at the beam above, there will be no change. Looking at the people, we shall see them better fed, clothed and warmed. "DEAR MR. EDITOR:--I am a cloth manufacturer, and a protectionist. I confess that your article on _dearness_ and _cheapness_ has led me to reflect. It has something specious about it, and if well proven, would work my conversion." MY DEAR PROTECTIONIST:--We say that the end and aim of your restrictive measures is a wrongful one--_artificial dearness_. But we do not say that they always realize the hopes of those who initiate them. It is certain that they inflict on the consumer all the evils of dearness. It is not certain that the producer gets the profit. Why? Because if they diminish the supply they also diminish the _demand_. This proves that in the economical arrangement of this world there is a moral force, a _vis medicatrix_, which in the long run causes inordinate ambition to become the prey of a delusion.