Visit our fields, workshops, forges, stores; look above, below, and around you; examine what is passing in your own household; observe your own actions at every moment, and say which principle it is, that directs these laborers, workmen, contractors, and merchants; say what is your own personal practice.
Does the agriculturist make his own clothes? Does the tailor produce the grain which he consumes? Does not your housekeeper cease to make her bread at home, as soon as she finds it more economical to buy it from the baker? Do you lay down your pen to take up the blacking-brush in order to avoid paying tribute to the shoe-black? Does not the whole economy of society depend upon a separation of occupations, a division of labor, in a word, upon mutual exchange of production, by which we, one and all, make a calculation which causes us to discontinue direct production, when indirect acquisition offers us a saving of time and labor.
You are not then sustained by practice, since it would be impossible, were you to search the world, to show us a single man who acts according to your principle.
You may answer that you never intended to make your principle the rule of individual relations. You confess that it would thus destroy all social ties, and force men to the isolated life of snails. You only contend that it governs in fact, the relations which are established between the agglomerations of the human family.
We say that this assertion too is erroneous. A family, a town, county, department, province, all are so many agglomerations, which, without any exception, all practically reject your principle; never, indeed, even think of it. Each of these procures by barter, what would be more expensively procured by production. Nations would do the same, did you not by force prevent them.
We, then, are the men who are guided by practice and experience. For to combat the interdict which you have specially put upon some international exchanges, we bring forward the practice and experience of all individuals, and of all agglomerations of individuals, whose acts being voluntary, render them proper to be given as proof in the question. But you, on your part, begin by forcing, by hindering, and then, adducing forced or forbidden acts, you exclaim: "Look; we can prove ourselves justified by example!"
You exclaim against our theory, and even against all theory. But are you certain, in laying down your principles, so antagonistic to ours, that you too are not building up theories? Truly, you too have your theory; but between yours and ours there is this difference:
Our theory is formed upon the observation of universal facts, universal sentiments, universal calculations and acts. We do nothing more than classify and arrange these, in order to better understand them. It is so little opposed to practice, that it is in fact only practice explained. We look upon the actions of men as prompted by the instinct of self-preservation and of progress. What they do freely, willingly,—this is what we call Political Economy, or economy of society. We must repeat constantly that each man is practically an excellent political economist, producing or exchanging, as his advantage dictates. Each by experience raises himself to the science; or rather the science is nothing more than experience, scrupulously observed and methodically expounded.
But your theory is theory in the worst sense of the word. You imagine procedures which are sanctioned by the experience of no living man, and then call to your aid constraint and prohibition. You cannot avoid having recourse to force; because, wishing to make men produce what they can more advantageously buy, you require them to give up an advantage, and to be led by a doctrine which implies contradiction even in its terms.
I defy you too, to take this doctrine, which by your own avowal would be absurd in individual relations, and apply it, even in speculation, to transactions between families, towns, departments, or provinces. You yourselves confess that it is only applicable to internal relations.