We confess this argument should make a profound impression, and ought to throw doubt on the most incontestable points, if we had not seen, one after another, opinions the most false, now generally acknowledged to be such, received and professed by all the world during a long succession of centuries. It is not very long since all nations, from the most rude to the most enlightened, and all men, from the street-porter to the most learned philosopher, believed in the four elements. Nobody had thought of contesting this doctrine, which is, however, false; so much so, that at this day any mere naturalist's assistant, who should consider earth, water, and fire, elements, would disgrace himself.
On which our opponents make this observation: "If you suppose you have thus answered the very forcible objection you have proposed to yourselves, you deceive yourselves strangely. Suppose that men, otherwise intelligent, should be mistaken on any point whatever of natural history for many centuries, that would signify or prove nothing. Would water, air, earth, fire, be less useful to man whether they were or were not elements? Such errors are of no consequence; they lead to no revolutions, do not unsettle the mind; above all, they injure no interests, so they might, without inconvenience, endure for millions of years. The physical world would progress just as if they did not exist. Would it be thus with errors which attack the moral world? Can we conceive that a system of government, absolutely false, consequently injurious, could be carried out through many centuries, among many nations, with the general consent of educated men? Can we explain how such a system could be reconciled with the ever-increasing prosperity of nations? You acknowledge that the argument you combat ought to make a profound impression. Yes, truly, and this impression remains, for you have rather strengthened than destroyed it."
Or again, they say: "It was only in the middle of the last century, the eighteenth century, in which all subjects, all principles, without exception, were delivered up to public discussion, that these furnishers of speculative ideas which are applied to everything without being applicable to anything—commenced writing on political economy. There existed, however, a system of political economy, not written, but practised by governments. It is said that Colbert was its inventor, and it was the rule of all the States of Europe. What is more singular, it has remained so till lately, despite anathemas and contempt, and despite the discoveries of the modern school. This system, which our writers have called the mercantile system, consists in opposing, by prohibitions and duties, such foreign productions as might ruin our manufacturers by their competition. This system has been pronounced futile, absurd, capable of ruining any country, by economical writers of all schools. It has been banished from all books, reduced to take refuge in the practice of every people; and we do not understand why, in regard to the wealth of nations, governments should not have yielded themselves to wise authors rather than to the old experience of a system. Above all, we cannot conceive why, in political economy, the American government should persist in resisting the progress of light, and in preserving, in its practice, those old errors which all our economists of the pen have designated. But we have said too much about this mercantile system, which has in its favor facts alone, though sustained by scarcely a single writer of the day."
Would not one say, who listened only to this language, that we political economists, in merely claiming for every one the free disposition of his own property, had, like the Fourierists, conjured up from our brains a new social order, chimerical and strange; a sort of phalanstery, without precedent in the annals of the human race, instead of merely talking plain meum and tuum It seems to us that if there is in all this anything utopian, anything problematical, it is not free trade, but protection; it is not the right to exchange, but tariff after tariff applied to overturning the natural order of commerce.
But it is not the point to compare and judge of these two systems by the light of reason; the question for the moment is, to know which of the two is founded upon experience.
So, Messrs. Monopolists, you pretend that the facts are on your side; that we have, on our side, theories only.
You even flatter yourselves that this long series of public acts, this old experience of the world, which you invoke, has appeared imposing to us, and that we confess we have not as yet refuted you as fully as we might.
But we do not cede to you the domain of facts, for you have on your side only exceptional and contracted facts, while we have universal ones to oppose to them; the free and voluntary acts of all men.
What do you say, and what say we?
We say: