"Strange! since the consumers are so much more considerable a body than any class of the protected."
"Nothing is strange when there is a want of money. Does not a minor make over his property to sharpers for his debts before he has enjoyed it? Do not the besieged in a city revel in food and wine while starvation impends? If so, why should not a government, involved in ruinous wars and other extravagance, stake the commerce of the country for an immediate supply of money? When new taxes must be imposed, submission has been bought by new protections. The example once set, other restrictions have followed, till those who possess nothing but the fruits of their own labour bear the whole burden. They pay to the landlords, that bread may be dear; they pay to the India House, that tea may be rendered a blameable luxury to them, and that what is woven in eastern looms may be out of their reach; they paid for the wars which occasioned the restraints which they now pay to keep up."
"But why do they thus pay? And is not all this a reason why they should welcome you, instead of desiring a continuance of their bondage?"
"Slaves often hug their chains as ornaments, and the ignorant mistake custom for right. My enemies are not aware how they have suffered from the long custom of restriction; and it was my folly to expect a welcome from the poor, who have ever been taught, that what a foreigner gains an Englishman must lose; or from masters who have been cradled in fear, not by the generous nurse,--competition, but by the jealous demon,--monopoly."
"Truly," exclaimed Mademoiselle, "the lark is likely to be hooted and clawed if she ventures among the owls. You are right, brother; there is nothing for it but fleeing away."
"These owls being even now transforming into day-birds, and the lark having once been an owl herself, both should have patience with each other," replied her brother, laughing. "But though the hooting may be borne for awhile, the tearing to pieces is hardly to be awaited in patience. I have been growing more unpopular every day, my dear; I see it in many faces, whenever I look beyond my own people. They like me, I believe; but they will soon be threatened out of working for me. They will also seize on this imputation, that I make use of them as a screen for practices which take work out of the hands of their brethren. After they have learned--only through my zeal overcoming their reluctance--to rival us in the niceties of our art, they will drive us away as if we had done them an injury."
"And yet you will not let me reproach them."
"If you must blame, blame the selfish monarchs, the temporising ministers, the barbarous aristocracies, the vain-glorious generations of the people that have passed away,--rather than the descendants on whom they have entailed the consequences of their mutual follies. The spirit of barbarism lingers about its mortal remains. Barbaric wars are hushed, the dead having buried their dead;--Barbaric shows are fading in splendour, and are as much mocked at as admired;--Barbaric usurpations are being resisted and supplanted day by day; but the infatuation which upheld them so long is not altogether dispelled; and if we rashly suppose that it is, we deserve to suffer for coming within its reach. I was wrong to settle among a people who invited us to a contraband trade, were driven by their own vicissitudes to offer us, with much reluctance, a lawful one; and now, through the hardness of their own terms, suspect us wrongfully, and make a great crime of that which they themselves have taught us."
"They seem to forget that we are on equal terms of obligation; that we French take as much of the produce of their industry as they take of ours."
"I shall urge this on our jealous neighbours, and will go as an equal to a brother manufacturer for counsel," observed M. Gaubion. "Culver knows little of me, but he holds many of my principles, and to him will I now go. If he thinks this charge of importance, I will deal with it as he advises; if not, I will strive to think so too."