The government may make either a good or a bad use of taxes; it makes a good use of them when it renders to the public services equivalent to the value received from them; it makes a bad use of them when it expends this value, giving nothing in return. To say in the first case that they place the country which pays them in more disadvantageous conditions for production, than the country which is free from them, is a Sophism. We pay, it is true, so many millions for the administration of justice, and the maintenance of order, but we have justice and order; we have the security which they give, the time which they save for us; and it is most probable that production is neither more easy nor more active among nations, where (if there be such) each individual takes the administration of justice into his own hands. We pay, I grant, many millions for roads, bridges, ports, steamships; but we have these steamships, these ports, bridges, and roads; and unless we maintain that it is a losing business to establish them, we cannot say that they place us in a position inferior to that of nations who have, it is true, no budget of public works, but who likewise have no public works. And here we see why (even while we accuse taxes of being a cause of industrial inferiority) we direct our tariffs precisely against those nations which are the most taxed. It is because these taxes, well used, far from injuring, have ameliorated the _conditions of production_ to these nations. Thus we again arrive at the conclusion that the protectionist Sophisms not only wander from, but are the contrary--the very antithesis--of truth. As to unproductive taxes, suppress them if you can; but surely it is a most singular idea to suppose, that their evil effect is to be neutralized by the addition of individual taxes to public taxes. Many thanks for the compensation! The State, you say, has taxed us too much; surely this is no reason that we should tax each other! A protective duty is a tax directed against foreign produce, but which returns, let us keep in mind, upon the national consumer. Is it not then a singular argument to say to him, "Because the taxes are heavy, we will raise prices higher for you; and because the State takes a part of your revenue, we will give another portion of it to benefit a monopoly?" But let us examine more closely this Sophism so accredited among our legislators; although, strange to say, it is precisely those who keep up the unproductive taxes (according to our present hypothesis) who attribute to them afterwards our supposed inferiority, and seek to re-establish the equilibrium by further taxes and new clogs. It appears to me to be evident that protection, without any change in its nature and effects, might have taken the form of a direct tax, raised by the State, and distributed as a premium to privileged industry. Let us admit that foreign iron could be sold in our market at $16, but not lower; and American iron at not lower than $24.