The facility with which men resign themselves to ignorance in cases where knowledge is all-important to them, is often astonishing; and we may be sure that a man has determined to rest in his ignorance, when he once brings himself to proclaim as a maxim that there are no absolute principles. We enter into the legislative halls, and find that the question is, to determine whether the law will or will not allow of international exchanges. A deputy rises and says, If we tolerate these exchanges, foreign nations will overwhelm us with their produce. We will have cotton goods from England, coal from Belgium, woolens from Spain, silks from Italy, cattle from Switzerland, iron from Sweden, corn from Prussia, so that no industrial pursuit will any longer be possible to us. Another answers: Prohibit these exchanges, and the divers advantages with which nature has endowed these different countries, will be for us as though they did not exist. We will have no share in the benefits resulting from English skill, or Belgian mines, from the fertility of the Polish soil, or the Swiss pastures; neither will we profit by the cheapness of Spanish labor, or the heat of the Italian climate. We will be obliged to seek by a forced and laborious production, what, by means of exchanges, would be much more easily obtained. Assuredly one or other of these deputies is mistaken. But which? It is worth the trouble of examining. There lie before us two roads, one of which leads inevitably to _wretchedness_. We must choose. To throw off the feeling of responsibility, the answer is easy: There are no absolute principles. This maxim, at present so fashionable, not only pleases idleness, but also suits ambition. If either the theory of prohibition, or that of free trade, should finally triumph, one little law would form our whole economical code. In the first case this would be: _foreign trade is forbidden_; in the second: _foreign trade is free_; and thus, many great personages would lose their importance. But if trade has no distinctive character, if it is capriciously useful or injurious, and is governed by no natural law, if it finds no spur in its usefulness, no check in its inutility, if its effects cannot be appreciated by those who exercise it; in a word, if it has no absolute principles,--oh! then it is necessary to deliberate, weigh, and regulate transactions, the conditions of labor must be equalized, the level of profits sought. This is an important charge, well calculated to give to those who execute it, large salaries, and extensive influence.