"Again, when any article, as coal, iron, cheese, or cloth, comes to us from foreign countries with less labor than if we produced it ourselves, the difference in price is a _gratuitous gift_ conferred upon us; and the gift is more or less considerable, according as the difference is greater or less. It is the quarter, the half, or the three-quarters of the value of the produce, in proportion as the foreign merchant requires the three-quarters, the half, or the quarter of the price. It is as complete as possible when the producer offers, as the sun does with light, the whole in free gift. The question is, and we put it formally, whether you wish for France the benefit of gratuitous consumption, or the supposed advantages of laborious production. Choose, but be consistent. And does it not argue the greatest inconsistency to check as you do the importation of coal, iron, cheese, and goods of foreign manufacture, merely because and even in proportion as their price approaches _zero_, while at the same time you freely admit, and without limitation, the light of the sun, whose price is during the whole day at _zero_?" VIII. DISCRIMINATING DUTIES. A poor laborer of Gironde had raised, with the greatest possible care and attention, a nursery of vines, from which, after much labor, he at last succeeded in producing a pipe of wine, and forgot, in the joy of his success, that each drop of this precious nectar had cost a drop of sweat to his brow. I will sell it, said he to his wife, and with the proceeds I will buy thread, which will serve you to make a _trousseau_ for our daughter. The honest countryman, arriving in the city, there met an Englishman and a Belgian. The Belgian said to him, Give me your wine, and I in exchange, will give you fifteen bundles of thread. The Englishman said, Give it to me, and I will give you twenty bundles, for we English can spin cheaper than the Belgians. But a custom-house officer standing by, said to the laborer, My good fellow, make your exchange, if you choose, with the Belgian, but it is my duty to prevent your doing so with the Englishman. What! exclaimed the countryman, you wish me to take fifteen bundles of Brussels thread, when I can have twenty from Manchester? Certainly; do you not see that France would be a loser, if you were to receive twenty bundles instead of fifteen? I can scarcely understand this, said the laborer. Nor can I explain it, said the custom-house officer, but there is no doubt of the fact; for deputies, ministers, and editors, all agree that a people is impoverished in proportion as it receives a large compensation for any given quantity of its produce. The countryman was obliged to conclude his bargain with the Belgian. His daughter received but three-fourths of her _trousseau_; and these good folks are still puzzling themselves to discover how it can happen that people are ruined by receiving four instead of three; and why they are richer with three dozen towels instead of four.