What Is Free Trade? Part 8

Would not one say, who listened only to this language, that we political economists, in merely claiming for every one _the free disposition of his own property_, had, like the Fourierists, conjured up from our brains a new social order, chimerical and strange; a sort of phalanstery, without precedent in the annals of the human race, instead of merely talking plain _meum_ and _tuum_ It seems to us that if there is in all this anything utopian, anything problematical, it is not free trade, but protection; it is not the right to exchange, but tariff after tariff applied to overturning the natural order of commerce.

But it is not the point to compare and judge of these two systems by the light of reason; the question for the moment is, to know which of the two is founded upon experience.

So, Messrs. Monopolists, you pretend that the facts are on your side; that we have, on our side, theories only.

You even flatter yourselves that this long series of public acts, this old experience of the world, which you invoke, has appeared imposing to us, and that we confess we have not as yet refuted you as fully as we might.

But we do not cede to you the domain of facts, for you have on your side only exceptional and contracted facts, while we have universal ones to oppose to them; the free and voluntary acts of all men.

What do you say, and what say we?

We say:

"It is better to buy from others anything which would cost more to make ourselves."

And on your part you say:

"It is better to make things ourselves, even though it would cost less to purchase them from others."

Now, gentlemen, laying aside theory, demonstration, argument, everything which appears to afflict you with nausea, which of these a.s.sertions has in its favor the sanction of _universal practice_?

Visit the fields, work-rooms, manufactories, shops; look above, beneath, and around you; investigate what is going on in your own establishment; observe your own conduct at all times, and then say which is the principle that directs these labors, these workmen, these inventors, these merchants; say, too, which is your own individual practice.

Does the farmer make his clothes? Does the tailor raise the wheat which he consumes? Does not your housekeeper cease making bread at home so soon as she finds it more economical to buy it from the baker?

Do you give up the pen for the brush in order to avoid paying tribute to the shoe-black? Does not the whole economy of society depend on the separation of occupations, on the division of labor; in one word, on _exchange_? And is exchange anything else than the calculation which leads us to discontinue, as far as we can, direct production, when indirect acquisition spares us time and trouble?

You are not, then, men of _practice_, since you cannot show a single man on the surface of the globe who acts in accordance with your principle.

"But," you will say, "we have never heard our principle made the rule of individual relations. We comprehend perfectly that this would break the social bond, and force men to live, like snails, each one in his own sh.e.l.l. We limit ourselves to a.s.serting that it governs _in fact_ the relations which are established among the agglomerations of the human family."

But still, this a.s.sertion is erroneous. The family, the village, the town, the county, the state, are so many agglomerations, which all, without any exception, _practically_ reject your principle, and have never even thought of it. All of them procure, by means of exchange, that which would cost them more to procure by means of production.

Nations would act in the same natural manner, if you did not prevent it _by force_.

It is _we_, then, who are the men of practice and of experience; for, in order to combat the interdict which you have placed exceptionally on certain international exchanges, we appeal to the practice and experience of all individuals, and all agglomerations of individuals whose acts are voluntary, and consequently may be called on for testimony. But you commence by _constraining_, by _preventing_, and then you avail yourself of acts caused by prohibition to exclaim, "See! practice justifies us!" You oppose our _theory_, indeed all _theory_. But when you put a principle in antagonism with ours, do you, by chance, fancy that you have formed no _theory_? No, no; erase that from your plea. You form a theory as well as ourselves; but between yours and ours there is this difference: our theory consists merely in observing universal facts, universal sentiments, universal calculations and proceedings, and further, in cla.s.sifying them and arranging them, in order to understand them better. It is so little opposed to practice, that it is nothing but _practice explained_. We observe the actions of men moved by the instinct of preservation and of progress; and what they do freely, voluntarily, is precisely what we call _political economy_, or the economy of society. We go on repeating with out cessation: "Every man is _practically_ an excellent economist, producing or exchanging, according as it is most advantageous to him to exchange or to produce. Each one, through experience, is educated to science; or rather, science is only that same experience scrupulously observed and methodically set forth."

As for you, you form a theory, in the unfavorable sense of the word.

You imagine, you invent--proceedings which are not sanctioned by the practice of any living man under the vault of heaven--and then you call to your a.s.sistance constraint and prohibition. You need, indeed, have recourse to _force_, since, in wishing that men should _produce_ that which it would be more advantageous to them to _buy_, you wish them to renounce an _advantage_; you demand that they should act in accordance with a doctrine which implies contradiction even in its terms.

Now, this doctrine, which, you argue, would be absurd in individual relations, we defy you to extend, even in speculation, to transactions between families, towns, counties, states. By your own avowal, it is applicable to international relations only.

And this is why you are obliged to repeat daily: "Principles are not in their nature absolute. That which is _well_ in the individual, the family, the county, the state, is _evil_ in the nation. That which is _good_ in detail--such as, to purchase rather than to produce, when purchase is more advantageous than production--is bad in the ma.s.s. The political economy of individuals is not that of nations," and other rubbish, _ejusdem farinae_. And why all this? Look at it closely. It is in order to prove to us that we, consumers, are your property, that we belong to you body and soul, that you have an exclusive right to our stomachs and limbs, and it is for you to nourish us and clothe us at your own price, however great may be your ignorance, your rapacity, or the inferiority of your position.

No, you are not men of practice; you are men of abstraction--and of extraction!

CHAPTER XIV.

CONFLICT OF PRINCIPLES.

There is one thing which confounds us, and it is this:

Some sincere publicists, studying social economy from the point of view of producers only, have arrived at this double formula:

"Governments ought to dispose of the consumers subject to the influence of their laws, in favor of national labor."

"They should render distant consumers subject to their laws, in order to dispose of them in favor of national labor."

The first of these formulas is termed _protection_; the latter, _expediency_.

Both rest on the principle called Balance of Trade; the formula of which is:

"A people impoverishes itself when it imports, and enriches itself when it exports."

Of course, if every foreign purchase is a tribute paid, a loss, it is perfectly evident we must restrain, even prohibit, importations.

And if all foreign sales are tribute received, profit, it is quite natural to create channels of outlet, even by force.

Protective System--Colonial System: two aspects of the same theory. To _hinder_ our fellow-citizens purchasing of foreigners, _to force_ foreigners to purchase from our fellow-citizens, are merely two consequences of one identical principle. Now, it is impossible not to recognize that according to this doctrine, general utility rests on _monopoly_, or interior spoliation, and on _conquest_, or exterior spoliation.

Let us enter one of the cabins among the Adirondacks. The father of the family has received for his work only a slender salary. The icy northern blast makes his half naked children shiver, the fire is extinguished, and the table bare. There are wool, and wood, and coal, just over the St. Lawrence; but these commodities are forbidden to the family of the poor day-laborer, for the other side of the river is no longer the United States. The foreign pine-logs may not gladden the hearth of his cabin; his children may not know the taste of Canadian bread, the wool of Upper Canada will not bring back warmth to their benumbed limbs. General utility wills it so. All very well! but acknowledge that here it contradicts justice. To dispose by legislation of consumers, to limit them to the products of national labor, is to encroach upon their liberty, to forbid them a resource (exchange) in which there is nothing contrary to morality; in one word, it is to do them injustice.

"Yet this is necessary," it is said, "under the penalty of seeing national labor stopped, under the penalty of striking a fatal blow at public prosperity."

The writers of the protectionist school arrive then at this sad conclusion; that there is a radical incompatibility between justice and utility.

On the other side, if nations are interested in selling, and not in buying, violent action and reaction are the natural condition of their relations, for each will seek to impose its products on all, and all will do their utmost endeavor to reject the products of each.

As a sale, in effect, implies a purchase, and since, according to this doctrine, to sell is to benefit, as to buy is to injure, every international transaction implies the amelioration of one people, and the deterioration of another.

But, on one side, men are fatally impelled towards that which profits them: on the contrary, they resist instinctively whatever injures them; whence we must conclude that every people bears within itself a natural force of expansion, and a not less natural power of resistance, which are equally prejudicial to all the others; or, in other terms, that antagonism and war are the natural const.i.tution of human society!

So that the theory which we are discussing may be summed up in these two axioms:

"Utility is incompatible with justice at home,"

"Utility is incompatible with peace abroad."

Now that which astonishes us, which confounds us, is, that a publicist, a statesman, who has sincerely adhered to an economic doctrine whose principle clashes so violently with other incontestable principles, could enjoy one moment's calm and repose of mind. As for us, it seems to us, that if we had penetrated into science by this entrance, if we did not clearly perceive that liberty, utility, justice, peace, are things not only compatible, but closely allied together, so to say, identical with each other, we would try to forget all we had learned; we would say to ourselves:

"How could G.o.d will that men shall attain prosperity only through injustice and war? How could He will that they may remove war and injustice only by renouncing their own well-being?"

Does not the science which has conducted us to the horrible blasphemy which this alternative implies deceive us by false lights; and shall we dare take on ourselves to make it the basis of legislation for a great people? And when a long succession of ill.u.s.trious philosophers have brought together more comforting results from this same science, to which they have consecrated their whole lives; when they affirm that Liberty and Utility are reconciled with Justice and Peace, that all these grand principles follow infinite parallels, without clashing, throughout all eternity; have they not in their favor the presumption which results from all we know of the goodness and the wisdom of G.o.d, manifested in the sublime harmony of the material creation? Ought we lightly to believe, against such a presumption, and in face of so many imposing authorities, that it has pleased this same G.o.d to introduce antagonism and a discord into the laws of the moral world?

No, no; before taking it for granted that all social principles clash, shock, and neutralize each other, and are in anarchical, eternal, irremediable, conflict together; before imposing on our fellow citizens the impious system to which such reasoning conducts us, we had better go over the whole chain, and a.s.sure ourselves that there is no point on the way where we may have gone astray.

And if, after a faithful examination, twenty times recommenced, we should always return to this frightful conclusion, that we must choose between the advantages and the good--we should thrust science away, disheartened; we should shut ourselves up in voluntary ignorance; above all, we should decline all partic.i.p.ation in the affairs of our country, leaving to the men of another time the burden and the responsibility of a choice so difficult.