You will not deny that at the present day in France it is more difficult to manufacture cloth than to cultivate the vine—the former is the dull hatchet, the latter the sharp one—on the contrary, you make this greater difficulty the very reason why you recommend to us the worst of the two hatchets.
Now, then, be consistent, if you will not be just, and treat the poor carpenters as well as you treat yourself. Make a law which shall read: "It is forbidden to use beams or shingles which have not been fashioned by dull hatchets."
And you will immediately perceive the result.
Where we now strike an hundred blows with the ax, we shall be obliged to give three hundred. What a powerful encouragement to industry! Apprentices, journeymen and masters, we should suffer no more. We should be greatly sought after, and go away well paid. Whoever wishes to enjoy a roof must leave us to make his tariff, just as buyers of cloth are now obliged to submit to you.
As for those free trade theorists, should they ever venture to call the utility of this system in question we should know where to go for an unanswerable argument. Your investigation of 1834 is at our service. We should fight them with that, for there you have admirably pleaded the cause of prohibition, and of dull hatchets, which are both the same.
IV.
INFERIOR COUNCIL OF LABOR.
"What! You have the assurance to demand for every citizen the right to buy, sell, trade, exchange, and to render service for service according to his own discretion, on the sole condition that he will conduct himself honestly, and not defraud the revenue? Would you rob the workingman of his labor, his wages and his bread?"
This is what is said to us. I know what the general opinion is; but I have desired to know what the laborers themselves think. I have had an excellent opportunity of finding out.