THE RIGHT AND THE LEFT HAND.
[Report to the King.]
Sire—When we see these men of the Libre Echange audaciously disseminating their doctrines, and maintaining that the right of buying and selling is implied by that of ownership (a piece of insolence that M. Billault has criticised like a true lawyer), we may be allowed to entertain serious fears as to the destiny of national labor; for what will Frenchmen do with their arms and intelligences when they are free?
The Ministry which you have honored with your confidence has naturally paid great attention to so serious a subject, and has sought in its wisdom for a protection which might be substituted for that which appears compromised. It proposes to you to forbid your faithful subjects the use of the right hand.
Sire, do not wrong us so far as to think that we lightly adopted a measure which, at the first glance, may appear odd. Deep study of the protective system has revealed to us this syllogism, on which it entirely rests:
The more one labors, the richer one is.
The more difficulties one has to conquer, the more one labors.
Ergo, the more difficulties one has to conquer, the richer one is.
What is protection, really, but an ingenious application of this formal reasoning, which is so compact that it would resist the subtlety of M. Billault himself?
Let us personify the country. Let us look on it as a collective being, with thirty million mouths, and, consequently, sixty million arms. This being makes a clock, which he proposes to exchange in Belgium for ten quintals of iron. "But," we say to him, "make the iron yourself." "I cannot," says he; "it would take me too much time, and I could not make five quintals while I can make one clock." "Utopist!" we reply; "for this very reason we forbid your making the clock, and order you to make the iron. Do not you see that we create you labor?"