and a no less natural impulsion to resistance, both of which are equally harmful to everybody else, or in other words, antagonism and war are the natural condition of the human race.
Thus, the theory I am discussing can be summarized by these two axioms:
Public Interest is incompatible with Justice within the country.
Public Interest is incompatible with Peace abroad.
Well then! What astonishes and disconcerts me is that a political writer or a statesman, who has sincerely adopted an economic doctrine whose basic ideas are so violently contrary to other incontrovertible principles, can have even one instant of calm and peace of mind.
For my part, I think that, if I had gone into science through this particular door, if I had not clearly perceived that Freedom, Public Interest, Justice, and Peace are things that are not only compatible but closely linked with each other and, so to say, identical, I would endeavor to forget everything I had learnt and tell myself:
“How could God have wished men to achieve prosperity only through injustice and war? How could He have decreed that they should renounce war and injustice only by renouncing their well-being?
“Is the science that has led me to the horrible blasphemy implied by this alternative not misleading me with false flashes of insight, and do I dare to take it on myself to make it the basis for the legislation of a great nation? And when a long line of illustrious scholars has gathered more reassuring results from this same science, to which they have devoted their entire life, when they state that freedom and public interest can be reconciled with justice and peace; that all these great principles follow infinite parallel paths without conflicting with each other for all eternity; do they not have on their side the presumption that results from everything we know of the goodness and wisdom of God as shown in the sublime harmony of physical creation? Am I casually to believe, faced with such beliefs and on the part of so many imposing authorities, that this same God took pleasure in instilling antagonism and discord in the laws governing the moral world? No, no, before holding as certain that all social principles conflict with each other, crash into and neutralize each other, and are locked in an anarchical, eternal, and irremediable struggle; before imposing on my fellow citizens the impious system to which my reasoning has led me, I wish to review the entire chain and reassure myself that there is no point on the route at which I have gone astray.”
If, after a sincere examination, redone twenty times, I continued to reach this frightful conclusion, that we have to choose between the Right and the
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Good,2 I would reject science in my discouragement, I would sink into willful ignorance, and above all I would decline any participation in the affairs of my country, leaving men of another stamp the burden and responsibility of such a painful choice.
PUBLISHING HISTORY:
Original title: “Encore la réciprocité.”
Place and date of first publication: No date given. First published in book form.
First French edition as book or pamphlet: Economic Sophisms (First Series) (1846).
Location in Paillottet’s edition of OC: Vol. 4. Sophismes économiques. Petits pamphlets I, pp. 90–92.
Previous translations: 1st English ed., 1846; 1st American ed., 1848; FEE ed., 1964.
As M. de Saint-Cricq said: “Are we sure that foreigners will purchase as much from us as they sell to us?”
M. de Dombasle says: “What reason have we to believe that English producers will come to us rather than any other nation in the world in search of the products they may need and products whose value is equivalent to their exports to France?”
I am amazed that men who above all call themselves practical reason in a way divorced from all practicality!
In practice, is there one trading operation in a hundred, a thousand, or perhaps even ten thousand that is a direct exchange of one product for another? Since money first came into the world, has any farmer ever said to himself: “I want to buy shoes, hats, advice, and lessons only from a shoemaker, milliner, lawyer, or teacher who will buy wheat from me for exactly the equivalent value”? And why would nations impose this obstacle on themselves?
How are things really done?
Let us imagine a nation that has no foreign trade. One man has produced
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wheat. He sells it in the national market at the highest price he can obtain and receives in exchange … what? Écus,1 that is to say, money orders, goods which can be split up indefinitely, which will permit him to take from the national market the goods which he needs or wants at a time he judges suitable and up to the amount he has at hand.2 All said and done, at the end of the operation he will have withdrawn from the total the exact equivalent of what he has put into it and in value, his consumption will be exactly the same as his production.
If this nation’s external trade is free it is no longer in the national flow of goods but in the general flow of goods that each person places his products, and it is from that flow that he withdraws his consumption. He does not have to worry whether what he puts into this general circulation is bought by a fellow citizen or a foreigner, whether the money orders he receives come from a Frenchman or an Englishman, whether the objects for which he later trades these money payments, according to his needs, have been made on this or that side of the Rhine or the Pyrénées. What remains true is that there is for each individual an exact balance between what he puts in and what he takes out of the great common reservoir, and if this is true for each individual, it is also true for the nation as a whole.
The only difference between the two cases is that, in the second, each is facing a market that is wider for his sales and purchases and has consequently more opportunity to do well on both fronts.
The following objection is made: If everyone joins forces in order not to withdraw from the circulation the products of a given individual, he will not be able to withdraw anything in turn from the overall flow. This is the same for a nation.
Reply: If this nation cannot withdraw anything from the general circulation, it will not put anything into it either; it will work for its own account. It will be forced to submit to what you wish to impose on it at the outset, that is to say, isolation.
And that will be the ideal of the prohibitionist regime.
Is it not ludicrous that you are already inflicting this regime on the nation for fear that it will run the risk of reaching it one day without you?
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16. Blocked Rivers Pleading in Favor of the Prohibitionists
PUBLISHING HISTORY:
Original title: “Les fleuves obstrués plaidant pour les prohibitionists.”
Place and date of first publication: No date given. First published in book form.
First French edition as book or pamphlet: Economic Sophisms (First Series) (1846).
Location in Paillottet’s edition of OC: Vol. 4. Sophismes économiques. Petits pamphlets I, pp. 92–93.
Previous translations: 1st English ed., 1846; 1st American ed., 1848; FEE ed., 1964.
A few years ago I was in Madrid.1 I went to the cortès.2 They were discussing a treaty with Portugal on improving the bed of the Douro.3 A deputy stood up and said: “If the Douro is channeled, transport will cost less. Portuguese grain will be sold cheaper in Castile and will provide formidable competition for our national production. I reject the project unless the ministers undertake to raise customs duties so as to reestablish the balance.” The assembly had