Here, as elsewhere, we find the theorists who favor protection, taking part with the producer. Let us consider the case of the unfortunate consumer, who seems to have entirely escaped their attention. They compare the field of production to the turf. But on the turf, the race is at once a means and an end. The public has no interest in the struggle, independent of the struggle itself. When your horses are started in the course with the single object of determining which is the best runner, nothing is more natural than that their burdens should be equalized. But if your object were to send an important and critical piece of intelligence, could you without incongruity place obstacles to the speed of that one whose fleetness would secure the best means of attaining your end? And yet this is your course in relation to industry. You forget the end aimed at, which is the well-being of the community.
But we cannot lead our opponents to look at things from our point of view, let us now take theirs; let us examine the question as producers.
I will seek to prove
1. That equalizing the facilities of production is to attack the foundations of all trade.
2. That it is not true that the labor of one country can be crushed by the competition of more favored climates.
3. That, even were this the case, protective duties cannot equalize the facilities of production.
4. That freedom of trade equalizes these conditions as much as possible; and
5. That the countries which are the least favored by nature are those which profit most by freedom of trade.
I. The equalizing of the facilities of production, is not only the shackling of certain articles of commerce, but it is the attacking of the system of mutual exchange in its very foundation principle. For this system is based precisely upon the very diversities, or, if the expression be preferred, upon the inequalities of fertility, climate, temperature, capabilities, which the protectionists seek to render null. If Guyenne sends its wines to Brittany, and Brittany sends corn to Guyenne, it is because these two provinces are, from different circumstances, induced to turn their attention to the production of different articles. Is there any other rule for international exchanges? Again, to bring against such exchanges the very inequalities of condition which excite and explain them, is to attack them in their very cause of being. The protective system, closely followed up, would bring men to live like snails, in a state of complete isolation. In short, there is not one of its Sophisms, which if carried through by vigorous deductions, would not end in destruction and annihilation.
II. It is not true that the unequal facility of production, in two similar branches of industry, should necessarily cause the destruction of the one which is the least fortunate. On the turf, if one horse gains the prize, the other loses it; but when two horses work to produce any useful article, each produces in proportion to his strength; and because the stronger is the more useful, it does not follow that the weaker is good for nothing. Wheat is cultivated in every department of France, although there are great differences in the degree of fertility existing among them. If it happens that there be one which does not cultivate it, it is because, even to itself, such cultivation is not useful. Analogy will show us, that under the influence of an unshackled trade, notwithstanding similar differences, wheat would be produced in every kingdom of Europe; and if any one were induced to abandon entirely the cultivation of it, this would only be, because it would be her interest to employ otherwise her lands, her capital, and her labor. And why does not the fertility of one department paralyze the agriculture of a neighboring and less favored one? Because the phenomena of political economy have a suppleness, an elasticity, and, so to speak, a self-leveling power, which seems to escape the attention of the school of protectionists. They accuse us of being theorists, but it is themselves who are theorists to a supreme degree, if being theoretic consists in building up systems upon the experience of a single fact, instead of profiting by the experience of a series of facts. In the above example, it is the difference in the value of lands, which compensates for the difference in their fertility. Your field produces three times as much as mine. Yes. But it has cost you three times as much, and therefore I can still compete with you: this is the sole mystery. And observe how the advantage on one point leads to disadvantage on the other. Precisely because your soil is more fruitful, it is more dear. It is not accidentally but necessarily that the equilibrium is established, or at least inclines to establish itself; and can it be denied that perfect freedom in exchanges is, of all the systems, the one which favors this tendency?