There is no question here as to the propriety of protecting national labor. Mr. de Saint Cricq and the Bordalese agree entirely upon this point. We have, in our preceding chapters, already shown how entirely we differ from both of them. The question to be determined, is, whether it is Mr. de Saint Cricq, or the Bordalese, who give to the word _labor_ its proper acceptation. And we must confess that Mr. de Saint Cricq is here decidedly in the right. The following dialogue might be supposed between them: _Mr. de Saint Cricq._--You agree that national labor ought to be protected. You agree that no foreign labor can be introduced into our market, without destroying an equal quantity of our national labor. But you contend that there are numerous articles of merchandise possessing _value_, for they are sold, and which are nevertheless _untouched by human labor_. Among these you name corn, flour, meat, cattle, bacon, salt, iron, copper, lead, coal, wool, skins, seeds, etc. If you can prove to me, that the _value_ of these things is not dependent upon labor, I will agree that it is useless to protect them. But if I can prove to you that there is as much labor put upon a hundred francs worth of wool, as upon a hundred francs worth of cloth, you ought to acknowledge that protection is the right as much of the one, as of the other. I ask you then why this bag of wool is worth a hundred francs? Is it not because this is its price of production? And what is the price of production, but the sum which has been distributed in wages for labor, payment of skill, and interest on money, among the various laborers and capitalists, who have assisted in the production of the article? _The Petitioners._--It is true that with regard to wool you may be right; but a bag of corn, a bar of iron, a hundred weight of coal, are these the produce of labor? Is it not nature which _creates_ them? _Mr. de St. Cricq._--Without doubt, nature _creates_ these substances, but it is labor which gives them their _value_. I have myself, in saying that labor _creates_ material objects, used a false expression, which has led me into many farther errors. No man can _create_. No man can bring any thing from nothing; and if _production_ is used as a synonym for _creation_, then indeed our labor must all be useless. The agriculturist does not pretend that he has _created_ the corn; but he has given it its _value_. He has by his own labor, and by that of his servants, his laborers, and his reapers, transformed into corn substances which were entirely dissimilar from it. What more is effected by the miller who converts it into flour, or by the baker who makes it into bread?