_The People._ Down with RESTRICTION! _Pierre._ I declare to you that if the poor dealers in cattle and hogs are deprived of their livelihood, if they are sacrificed to theories, I will not be answerable for public order. Workmen, distrust this man. He is an agent of perfidious Normandy; he is under the pay of foreigners. He is a traitor, and must be hanged. [The people keep silent.] _Jacques._ Parisians, all that I say now, I said to you twenty years ago, when it occurred to Pierre to use the _octroi_ for his gain and your loss. I am not an agent of Normandy. Hang me if you will, but this will not prevent oppression from being oppression. Friends, you must kill neither Jacques nor Pierre, but liberty if it frightens you, or restriction if it hurts you. _The People._ Let us hang nobody, but let us emancipate everybody. XIV. SOMETHING ELSE. --What is restriction? --A partial prohibition. --What is prohibition? --An absolute restriction. --So that what is said of one is true of the other? --Yes, comparatively. They bear the same relation to each other that the arc of the circle does to the circle. --Then if prohibition is bad, restriction cannot be good. --No more than the arc can be straight if the circle is curved. --What is the common name for restriction and prohibition? --Protection. --What is the definite effect of protection? --To require from men _harder labor for the same result_. --Why are men so attached to the protective system? --Because, since liberty would accomplish the same result _with less labor_, this apparent diminution of labor frightens them. --Why do you say _apparent_? --Because all labor economized can be devoted to _something else_. --What? --That cannot and need not be determined. --Why? --Because, if the total of the comforts of France could be gained with a diminution of one-tenth on the total of its labor, no one could determine what comforts it would procure with the labor remaining at its disposal. One person would prefer to be better clothed, another better fed, another better taught, and another more amused. --Explain the workings and effect of protection. --It is not an easy matter. Before taking hold of a complicated instance, it must be studied in the simplest one. --Take the simplest you choose. --Do you recollect how Robinson Crusoe, having no saw, set to work to make a plank? --Yes. He cut down a tree, and then with his ax hewed the trunk on both sides until he got it down to the thickness of a board. --And that gave him an abundance of work? --Fifteen full days. --What did he live on during this time? --His provisions. --What happened to the ax? --It was all blunted. --Very good; but there is one thing which, perhaps, you do not know. At the moment that Robinson gave the first blow with his ax, he saw a plank which the waves had cast up on the shore. --Oh, the lucky accident! He ran to pick it up?