—That is true.
—And as it is obliged to make cloth, and forbidden to make something else, just because the other thing would require less labor (without which France would have no occasion to do anything with it), the law virtually decrees, that for a certain amount of labor, France shall have but one yard of cloth, making it itself, when, for the same amount of labor, it could have had two yards, by making something else.
—But what other thing?
—No matter what. Being free to choose, it will make something else only so long as there is something else to make.
—That is possible; but I cannot rid myself of the idea that the foreigners may send us cloth and not take something else, in which case we shall be prettily caught. Under all circumstances, this is the objection, even from your own point of view. You admit that France will make this something else, which is to be exchanged for cloth, with less labor than if it had made the cloth itself?
—Doubtless.
—Then a certain quantity of its labor will become inert?
—Yes; but people will be no worse clothed—a little circumstance which causes the whole misunderstanding. Robinson lost sight of it, and our protectionists do not see it, or pretend not to. The stranded plank thus paralyzed for fifteen days Robinson's labor, so far as it was applied to the making of a plank, but it did not deprive him of it. Distinguish, then, between these two kinds of diminution of labor, one resulting in privation, and the other in comfort. These two things are very different, and if you assimilate them, you reason like Robinson. In the most complicated, as in the most simple instances, the sophism consists in this: Judging of the utility of labor by its duration and intensity, and not by its results, which leads to this economic policy, a reduction of the results of labor, in order to increase its duration and intensity.