"' The second is, that you will lose by the bargain. For, as in every exchange there is necessarily a gaining and a losing party, we should be dupes, if you were not the loser. What have you got to say?'
"' Nothing,' replied the foreigner; and, bursting out a-laugh-ing, he regained his canoe."
"The story would not be amiss, if Robinson were not made to argue so very absurdly."
"He does not argue more absurdly than the committee of the Rue Hauteville."
"Oh! the case is very different. Sometimes you suppose one man, and sometimes (which comes to the same thing) two men working in company. That does not tally with the actual state of things. The division of labour and the intervention of merchants and money change the state of the question very much."
"That may complicate transactions, but does not change their nature."
"What! you want to compare modern commerce with a system of barter."
"Trade is nothing but a multiplicity of barters. Barter is in its own nature identical with commerce, just as labour on a small scale is identical with labour on a great scale, or as the law of gravitation which moves an atom is identical with that same law of gravitation which moves a world."
"So, according to you, these arguments, which are so untenable in the mouth of Robinson, are equally untenable when urged by our protectionists."
"Yes; only the error is better concealed under a complication of circumstances."