If, then, the scarcity of wheat has a tendency to increase the price by reason of the diminution of the supply, the scarcity of all other products for which wheat is exchanged has likewise a tendency to depreciate the value of wheat on account of a falling off of the demand; so that it is by no means certain that wheat will be a mill dearer under a protective tariff than under a system of free trade. This alone is certain, that inasmuch as there is a smaller amount of everything in the country, each individual will be more poorly provided with everything.
The farmer would do well to consider whether it would not be more desirable for him to allow the importation of wheat and beef, and, as a consequence, to be surrounded by a well-to-do community, able to consume and to pay for every agricultural product.
There is a certain province where the men are covered with rags, dwell in hovels, and subsist on chestnuts. How can agriculture flourish there? What can they make the earth produce, with the expectation of profit? Meat? They eat none. Milk? They drink only the water of springs. Butter? It is an article of luxury far beyond them. Wool? They get along without it as much as possible. Can any one imagine that all these objects of consumption can be thus left untouched by the masses, without lowering prices?
That which we say of a farmer, we can say of a manufacturer. Cloth-makers assert that foreign competition will lower prices owing to the increased quantity offered. Very well, but are not these prices raised by the increase of the demand? Is the consumption of cloth a fixed and invariable quantity? Is each one as well provided with it as he might and should be? And if the general wealth were developed by the abolition of all these taxes and hindrances, would not the first use made of it by the population be to clothe themselves better?
Therefore the question, the eternal question, is not whether protection favors this or that special branch of industry, but whether, all things considered, restriction is, in its nature, more profitable than freedom?
Now, no person can maintain that proposition. And just this explains the admission which our opponents continually make to us: "You are right on principle."
If that is true, if restriction aids each special industry only through a greater injury to the general prosperity, let us understand, then, that the price itself, considering that alone, expresses a relation between each special industry and the general industry, between the supply and the demand, and that, reasoning from these premises, this remunerative price (the object of protection) is more hindered than favored by it.
APPENDIX.
We published an article entitled Dearness-Cheapness, which gained for us the two following letters. We publish them, with the answers:
"Dear Mr. Editor:—You upset all my ideas. I preached in favor of free trade, and found it very convenient to put prominently forward the idea of cheapness. I went everywhere, saying, "With free trade, bread, meat, woolens, linen, iron and coal will fall in price." This displeased those who sold, but delighted those who bought. Now, you raise a doubt as to whether cheapness is the result of free trade. But if not, of what use is it? What will the people gain, if foreign competition, which may interfere with them in their sales, does not favor them in their purchases?"