What Is Free Trade?

s often use the f

ere there is an equality in the facilities of production. In a horse-race the load which each horse carries is weighed and all advantages equalized; otherwise there could be no competition. In commerce, if one producer can undersell all others, he ceases to be a competitor and becomes a monopolist. Suppress the protection which represents t

vestigation of its merits, and I must begin by soliciting the attention and the patience of the reader. I will first exami

terest in the struggle, independent of the struggle itself. When your horses are started in the course with the single object of determining which is the best runner, nothing is more natural than that their burdens should be equalized. But if your object were to send an important and critical piece of intelligence, could you

ings from our point of view; let us now take t

seek to

s of production is to attack the

of one country can be crushed by the

, protective duties cannot equal

equalizes these condition

least favored by nature are those

very foundation principle. For this system is based precisely upon the very diversities, or, if the expression be preferred, upon the inequalities of fertility, climate, temperature, capabilities, which the protectionists seek to render null. If New England sends

cause of being. The protective system, closely followed up, would bring men to live like snails, in a state of complete isolation. In s

itself, such cultivation is not useful. Analogy will show us, that under the influences of an unshackled trade, notwithstanding similar differences, wheat would be produced in every portion of the world; and if any nation were induced to entirely abandon the cultivation of it, this would only be because it would be her interest to otherwise employ her lands, her capital, and her labor. And why does not the fertility of one department paralyze the agriculture of a neighboring and less favored one? Because the phenomena of political economy have a suppleness, an elasticity, and, so to speak, a self-levelling power, which seems to escape the attention of the school of protectionists. They accuse us of being theoretic, but it is themselves who are so to a supreme degree, if the being

revent tailors from being in New York also, although the latter have to pay a much higher rent, as well as higher price for furniture, wo

dvantages of labor, it would be well to consider whethe

lculated to cause us to admire the providential wisdom which presides over the equalizing governmen

er us, in being able to procure cheaply, coal, iron, machi

when an advantage and a disadvantage are placed in juxtaposition, they do not bear in themselves, the

r will be concentrated upon A, while B must be abandoned. A, you say, sells much more than it buy

rises in value; while labor, iron, coal, lands, food, capi

ways buying, cash passes from B to A.

of it will be needed. Then in A, real dearness, which proceeds from a very active demand

essary for each purchase. Then in B, a nomin

l have the strongest possible motives f

ture being opposed to sudden transits, let us suppose that, without waiting the extreme point, it will have gradually divided its

stry should concentrate itself upon a single point, there must, from its nature,

Chamber of Commerce at Manchester (the figures

nd talent, which are the source of capital. All these elements of labor have, one after the other, transferred themselves to other points, where their profits were increased, and where the means of subsistence being less difficult to obtain, life

able fact. It has, by means as simple as they are infallible, provided for dispersion, diffusion, mutual dependence, and simultaneous progress; all of which, your restrictive laws paralyze as much as is in their power, by their tendency towards the isolation of nations. By this

se an error under false terms. It is not true that an import duty equalizes the conditions of production. These remain after the imposition of the duty just as they were before. The most that law can do is to equalize the conditions of sale. If it should be sai

mitted to exe

f the boxes, hot-houses, &c., which are necessary to ward against the severity of our climate, it is impossible to raise them at less than a dollar apiece. They accordingly demand a duty of ninety-nine cents up

r. The law can only equalize the conditions of sale. It is evident that while the Portuguese sell their oranges here at a dollar apiece, the ninety-nine cents which go to pay the tax are taken from the American consumer. Now look at the whimsicality of the result. Upon each Portuguese orange, the country loses nothing; for the ninety-nine cents which the consumer pays to satisfy the impost tax,

nditions of production and those of sale, which perhaps the prohibitionists may consider as paradoxical, because it leads me on to what

listen, if it be only through curiosity, to the end of my argumen

edth of this day's labor is required; which means simply this, that the sun does at Lisbon what labor does at New York. Now is it not evident, that if I can produce an orange, or, what is the same thing, the means of buying it, with one-hundredth of a day's labor, I am placed exactly in the same conditi

all-important; since, in fine, consumption is the main object of all our industrial efforts. Thanks to freedom of trade, we would enjoy here the results of the Portuguese sun, as well as Portugal itself;

the less favored by nature, will gain more by freedom of commerce. To prove this, I will be obliged to turn somewhat aside from the form of reasoning which belongs to this work. I will do so, however; first, because the question in discussion turns upon this point; and again, because it will give me the opportunity of exhibiting a law of political economy of the highes

the phenomena of political economy, and, cons

adually from him; and by an almost insensible tendency are absorbed and fused into the community at large-the community considered as consumers. This is an admirable law, alike in its cau

reater remuneration. Every circumstance which injures production, must equally be the source of uneasiness to him; for its immediate effect is to diminish his services, and consequently his remuneration. This is

ss is received by him. This again is necessary, to determine him to devote his attention to it. I

had been so, a principle of progressive and consequently infinite inequality would have been introduced among

I will try to make it un

g. The first effect of this is, that the individual is enriched, while many more are impoverished. At the first view, wonderful as the discovery is, one hesitates in deciding whether it is not more injurious than useful. It seems to have introduced into the world, as I said above, an element of infinite

o give it to the internal mechanism of society. We will see the advantages of this inv

ortion as the invention becomes older; and in the same proportion imitation becomes less meritorious. Soon the new object of industry attains its normal condition; in other words, the remuneration of printers is no longer an exception to the general rules of remuneration, and, like that of copyists formerly, it is only regulated by the general rate of profits. Here then the producer, as such, holds only the old position. The discovery, however, has been made; the saving of time, labor, effort, for a fixed result, for a certain number of volumes, is realized. But in what is

these laws strike me with

aid for; and the remainder, which is the result of the invention, is subtracted; at least after the invention has run through the cycle which I have just described as its destined course. I send for a workman; he brings a saw with him; I pay him two dollars for his day's labor, and he saws me twenty-five boards. If the saw had not been invented, he would perhaps not have been able to make one board, and I would none the less have paid him for his day's labor. The usefulness, then, of th

im only to remember the conclusion at which I have arrived: Remuneration is not proportioned to the usefulness of

more or less intense, dangerous, skilful, &c., [and time more or less valuable.] Competition

m human inventions, but will now go

xchange, and consequently of remuneration. The remuneration varies much, no doubt, in proportion to the intensity of the labor, of the skill, which it requires, of its being à-propos to the demand of the day, of the

er takes it for us, we must give him an equivalent in something which will have cost us the trouble of production. From which we see that the exchange is between efforts, [time and] labor. It is certainly not for hydrogen gas that I pay, for this is everywhere at my disposal, but for the work that it has been necessary to accomplish in order

nd remark, that it is so entirely [time and] labor and not utility to which remuneration is proportioned, that it may well happen that one of these means of lighting, whi

re is required, I can get another boat to furnish it, or finally go and get it myself. The water itself is not the subject of the bargain, but the labor required to obtain the water. This point of

ause, to produce it, Nature requires more labor from man. It is evident that if Nature did for the latter what she does for the former, their prices would tend

uld be abundance and cheapness. There would be less labor incorporated into an acre of grain, and the agriculturist would be therefore obliged to exchange it for less labor incorporated into some ot

point, and look only at immediate effects, which act but upon individual men or classes of men as producers, we know nothing more of political economy than the quack does of me

for labor to accomplish. But who reaps the advantage of this liberality of Nature? Not these regions, for they are forced by competition to receive re

grant, the immediate inhabitants profit by this fortunate circumstance. But soon comes competition, and the price of coal and iron

gain by commerce with those which do; because the exchanges of commerce are between labor and labor, subtraction being made of all the natural advantages which are combined with these labors; and it is evidently the most favored countries which can incorporate into a given labor the lar

s you. You ask of us an effort equal to two, in order to furnish ourselves with produce only attainable at home by an effort equal to four. You can do it because with you Nature does half the work.

r utility in a similar value, because the utility of any article includes at once what Nature and what labor have done; whereas the value of it only corresponds to the portion accomplished by labor. B then makes an entirely adva

down the g

of equal labors. Whatever Nature has done towards the production of the articles exchanged, is given on both sides gratuitously; from wh

he government of the world. Competition, no doubt, considering man as producer, must often interfere with his individual and immediate interests. But if we consider the great object of all labor, the universal good, in a word, Consumption, we cannot fail to find that Competition is to the moral world what the law of equilibrium is to the materia