"It should subject to its laws foreign consumers, in order to dispose of them in favor of home industry."
The first of the formulas is that of Protection; the second that of Outlets.
Both rest upon this proposition, called the Balance of Trade, that
"A people is impoverished by importations and enriched by exportations."
For if every foreign purchase is a tribute paid, a loss, nothing can be more natural than to restrain, even to prohibit importations.
And if every foreign sale is a tribute received, a gain, nothing more natural than to create outlets, even by force.
Protective System; Colonial System.—These are only two aspects of the same theory. To prevent our citizens from buying from foreigners, and to force foreigners to buy from our citizens. Two consequences of one identical principle.
It is impossible not to perceive that according to this doctrine, if it be true, the welfare of a country depends upon monopoly or domestic spoliation, and upon conquest or foreign spoliation.
Let us take a glance into one of these huts, perched upon the side of our Pyrenean range.
The father of a family has received the little wages of his labor; but his half-naked children are shivering before a biting northern blast, beside a fireless hearth, and an empty table. There is wool, and wood, and corn, on the other side of the mountain, but these are forbidden to them; for the other side of the mountain is not France. Foreign wood must not warm the hearth of the poor shepherd; his children must not taste the bread of Biscay, nor cover their numbed limbs with the wool of Navarre. It is thus that the general good requires!