Reply: On this principle, when workingmen come to make the law, do not blame them if they fix a high rate of wages without troubling themselves to protect grain, for they know that if wages are raised, articles of food will _naturally_ rise in price. --If they say to you: What, then, is to be done? Reply: Be just to everybody. --If they say to you: It is essential that a great country should manufacture iron-- Reply: The most essential thing is that this great country _should have iron_. --If they say to you: It is necessary that a great country should manufacture cloth. Reply: It is more necessary that the citizens of this great country _should have cloth_. --If they say to you: Labor is wealth-- Reply: It is false. And, by way of developing this, add: A bleeding is not health, and the proof of it is, that it is done to restore health. --If they say to you: To compel men to work over rocks and get an ounce of iron from a ton of ore, is to increase their labor, and, consequently, their wealth-- Reply: To compel men to dig wells, by denying them the use of river water, is to add to their _useless_ labor, but not their wealth. --If they say to you: The sun gives his heat and light without requiring remuneration-- Reply: So much the better for me, since it costs me nothing to see distinctly. --And if they reply to you: Industry in general loses what you would have paid for lights-- Retort: No, for having paid nothing to the sun, I use that which it saves me in paying for clothes, furniture and candles. --So, if they say to you: These English rascals have capital which pays them nothing-- Reply: So much the better for us; they will not make us pay interest. --If they say to you: These perfidious Englishmen find iron and coal at the same spot-- Reply: So much the better for us; they will not make us pay anything for bringing them together. --If they say to you: The Swiss have rich pastures which cost little-- Reply: The advantage is on our side, for they will ask for a lesser quantity of our labor to furnish our farmers oxen and our stomachs food. --If they say to you: The lands in the Crimea are worth nothing, and pay no taxes-- Reply: The gain is on our side, since we buy grain free from those charges. --If they say to you: The serfs of Poland work without wages-- Reply: The loss is theirs and the gain is ours, since their labor is deducted from the price of the grain which their masters sell us. --Then, if they say to you: Other nations have many advantages over us-- Reply: By exchange, they are forced to let us share in them. --If they say to you: With liberty we shall be swamped with bread, beef _a la mode_, coal, and coats-- Reply: We shall be neither cold nor hungry. --If they say to you: With what shall we pay? Reply: Do not be troubled about that. If we are to be inundated, it will be because we are able to pay. If we cannot pay we will not be inundated.