"Consider," said those of Havre, "that it is indispensable to reduce all raw materials one after another to the lowest rate, in order that industry may successively bring into operation the naval forces which will furnish to it its first and indispensable means of labor." The manufacturers could not in exchange of politeness be behind the ship-owners; so the petition from Lyons demanded the free introduction of raw material, "in order to prove," said they, "that the interests of manufacturing towns are not always opposed to those of maritime ones!" True; but it must be said that both interests were, understood as the petitioners understood them, terribly opposed to the interests of the country, of agriculture, and of consumers. See, then, where you would come out! See the end of these subtle economical distinctions! You would legislate against allowing _perfected_ produce to traverse the ocean, in order that the much more expensive transportation of rough materials, dirty, loaded with waste matter, may offer more employment to our merchant service, and put our naval force into wider operation. This is what these petitioners termed _a wise economy_. Why did they not demand that the firs of Russia should be brought to them with their branches, bark, and roots; the gold of California in its mineral state, and the hides from Buenos Ayres still attached to the bones of the tainted skeleton? Industry, the navy, labor, have for their end, the general good, the public good. To create a useless industry, in order to favor superfluous transportation; to feed superfluous labor, not for the good of the public, but for the expense of the public--this is to realize a veritable begging the question. Work, in itself, is not a desirable thing; its result is; all work without result is a loss. To pay sailors for carrying useless waste matter across the sea is like paying them for skipping stones across the surface of the water. So we arrive at this result: that all economical sophisms, despite their infinite variety, have this in common, that they confound the means with the end, and develop one at the expense of the other. CHAPTER XXII. METAPHORS.