"With our products, which are sent to Peru."
"It is then, in fact, your labour which you exchange for cloth, and French labour which is exchanged for coffee."
"Undoubtedly."
"It is not absolutely necessary, therefore, to manufacture what you consume."
"No; if we manufacture something else which we give in exchange."
"In other words, France has two means of procuring a given quantity of cloth. The first is to make it; the second is to make something else, and to exchange this something else with the foreigner for cloth. Of these two means, which is the best?"
"I don't very well know."
"Is it not that which, for a determinate amount of labour, obtains the greater quantity of cloth?"
"It seems so."
"And which is best for a nation, to have the choice between these two means, or that the law should prohibit one of them, on the chance of stumbling on the better of the two?"