Footnotes
A franc is 10d. of our money.
This error will be combated in a pamphlet, entitled "Cursed Money."
Common people.
The Minister of War has lately asserted that every individual transported to Algeria has cost the State 8,000 francs. Now it is certain that these poor creatures could have lived very well in France on a capital of 4,000 francs. I ask, how the French population is relieved, when it is deprived of a man, and of the means of subsistence of two men?
This was written in 1849.
Twenty francs.
General Council of Manufactures, Agriculture, and Commerce, 6th. of May, 1850.
The French word is spoliation.
If protection were only granted in France to a single class, to the engineers, for instance, it would be so absurdly plundering, as to be unable to maintain itself. Thus we see all the protected trades combine, make common cause, and even recruit themselves in such a way as to appear to embrace the mass of the national labour. They feel instinctively that plunder is slurred ever by being generalised.
Political economy precedes politics: the former has to discover whether human interests are harmonious or antagonistic, a fact which must have been decided upon before the latter can determine the prerogatives of Government.