XV. THE LITTLE ARSENAL OF THE FREE-TRADER.
If any one tells you that there are no absolute principles, no inflexible rules; that prohibition may be bad and yet that restriction may be good,
Reply: "Restriction prohibits all that it hinders from being imported.":
If any one says that agriculture is the nursing-mother of the country,
Reply: "What nourishes the country is not exactly agriculture, but corn."
If any one tells you that the basis of the food of the people is agriculture,
Reply: "The basis of the people's food is corn. This is the reason why a law which gives us, by agricultural labour, two quarters of corn, when we could have obtained four quarters without such labour, and by means of labour applied to manufactures, is a law not for feeding, but for starving the people." If any one remarks that restriction upon the importation of foreign corn gives rise to a more extensive culture, and consequently to increased home production,
Reply: "It induces men to sow grain on comparatively barren and ungrateful soils. To milk a cow and go on milking her, puts a little more into the pail, for it is difficult to say when you will come to the last drop. But that drop costs dear."