"The abundance of raw material," it elsewhere says, "gives an unlimited scope to labor in those countries where it prevails."
"Raw material," says the petition from Havre, "being the element of labor, should be regulated on a different system, and ought to be admitted immediately and at the lowest rate."
The same petition asks, that the protection of manufactured articles should be reduced, not immediately, but at some indeterminate time, not to the lowest rate of entrance, but to twenty per cent.
"Among other articles," says the petition of Lyons, "of which the low price and the abundance are necessary, the manufacturers name all raw material."
All this is based upon error.
All value is, we have seen, the representative of labor. Now it is undoubtedly true that manufacturing labor increases ten-fold, a hundred-fold, the value of raw material, thus dispensing ten, a hundred-fold increased profits throughout the nation; and from this fact is deduced the following argument: The production of a hundred weight of iron, is the gain of only fifteen francs to the various workers therein engaged. This hundred weight of iron, converted into watch-springs, is increased in value by this process, ten thousand francs. Who can pretend that the nation is not more interested in securing the ten thousand francs, than the fifteen francs worth of labor?
In this reasoning it is forgotten, that international exchanges are, no more than individual exchanges, effected through weight and measure. The exchange is not between a hundred weight of unmanufactured iron, and a hundred weight of watch-springs, nor between a pound of wool just shorn, and a pound of wool just manufactured into cashmere, but between a fixed value in one of these articles, and a fixed equal value in another. To exchange equal value with equal value, is to exchange equal labor with equal labor, and it is therefore not true that the nation which sells its hundred francs worth of cloth or of watch-springs, gains more than the one which furnishes its hundred francs worth of wool or of iron.
In a country where no law can be passed, no contribution imposed without the consent of the governed, the public can be robbed, only after it has first been cheated. Our own ignorance is the primary, the raw material of every act of extortion to which we are subjected, and it may safely be predicted of every Sophism, that it is the forerunner of an act of Spoliation. Good Public, whenever therefore you detect a Sophism in a petition, let me advise you, put your hand upon your pocket, for be assured, it is that which is particularly the point of attack.
Let us then examine what is the secret design which the ship-owners of Bordeaux and Havre, and the manufacturers of Lyons, would smuggle in upon us by this distinction between agricultural produce and manufactured produce.
"It is," say the petitioners of Bordeaux, "principally in this first class (that which comprehends raw material, untouched by human labor) that we find the principal encouragement of our merchant vessels.... A wise system of political economy would require that this class should not be taxed.... The second class (articles which have received some preparation) may be considered as taxable. The third (articles which have received from labor all the finish of which they are capable) we regard as most proper for taxation."