In a battle, he who is killed is thoroughly killed, and the army is weakened just that much. In manufactures, one manufactory succumbs only so far as the total of national labor replaces what it produced, _with an excess_. Imagine a state of affairs where for one man, stretched on the plain, two spring up full of force and vigor. If there is a planet where such things happen, it must be admitted that war is carried on there under conditions so different from those which obtain here below, that it does not even deserve that name. Now, this is the distinguishing character of what they have so inappropriately called an _industrial war_. Let the Belgians and English reduce the price of their iron, if they can, and keep on reducing it, until they bring it down to nothing. They may thereby put out one of our furnaces--kill one of our soldiers; but I defy them to hinder a thousand other industries, more profitable than the disabled one, immediately, and, as a necessary consequence of this very cheapness, resuscitating and developing themselves. Let us decide that supremacy by labor is impossible and contradictory, since all superiority which manifests itself among a people is converted into cheapness, and results only in giving force to all others. Let us, then, banish from political economy all these expressions borrowed from the vocabulary of battles: _to struggle with equal arms, to conquer, to crush out, to stifle, to be beaten, invasion, tribute_. What do these words mean? Squeeze them, and nothing comes out of them. We are mistaken; there come from them absurd errors and fatal prejudices. These are the words which stop the blending of peoples, their peaceful, universal, indissoluble alliance, and the progress of humanity. PART III. SPOLIATION AND LAW.[16] [Footnote 16: On the 27th of April, 1850, after a very curious discussion, which was reproduced in the _Moniteur_, the General Council of Agriculture, Manufactures and Commerce issued the following order: "Political economy shall be taught by the government professors, not merely from the theoretical point of view of free trade, but also with special regard to the facts and legislation which control French industry." It was in reply to this decree that Bastiat wrote the pamphlet _Spoliation and Law_, which first appeared in the _Journal des Economistes_, May 15, 1850.] _To the Protectionists of the General Council of Manufactures:_ GENTLEMEN--Let us for a few moments interchange moderate and friendly opinions. You are not willing that political economy should believe and teach free trade. This is as though you were to say, "We are not willing that political economy should occupy itself with society, exchange, value, law, justice, property. We recognize only two principles--oppression and spoliation."