Some sincere publicists, studying social economy from the point of view of producers only, have arrived at this double formula:
"Governments ought to dispose of the consumers subject to the influence of their laws, in favor of national labor."
"They should render distant consumers subject to their laws, in order to dispose of them in favor of national labor."
The first of these formulas is termed protection; the latter, expediency.
Both rest on the principle called Balance of Trade; the formula of which is:
"A people impoverishes itself when it imports, and enriches itself when it exports."
Of course, if every foreign purchase is a tribute paid, a loss, it is perfectly evident we must restrain, even prohibit, importations.
And if all foreign sales are tribute received, profit, it is quite natural to create channels of outlet, even by force.
Protective System—Colonial System: two aspects of the same theory. To hinder our fellow-citizens purchasing of foreigners, to force foreigners to purchase [111] from our fellow-citizens, are merely two consequences of one identical principle. Now, it is impossible not to recognize that according to this doctrine, general utility rests on monopoly, or interior spoliation, and on conquest, or exterior spoliation.
Let us enter one of the cabins among the Adirondacks. The father of the family has received for his work only a slender salary. The icy northern blast makes his half naked children shiver, the fire is extinguished, and the table bare. There are wool, and wood, and coal, just over the St. Lawrence; but these commodities are forbidden to the family of the poor day-laborer, for the other side of the river is no longer the United States. The foreign pine-logs may not gladden the hearth of his cabin; his children may not know the taste of Canadian bread, the wool of Upper Canada will not bring back warmth to their benumbed limbs. General utility wills it so. All very well! but acknowledge that here it contradicts justice. To dispose by legislation of consumers, to limit them to the products of national labor, is to encroach upon their liberty, to forbid them a resource (exchange) in which there is nothing contrary to morality; in one word, it is to do them injustice.
"Yet this is necessary," it is said, "under the penalty of seeing national labor stopped, under the penalty of striking a fatal blow at public prosperity."
The writers of the protectionist school arrive then at this sad conclusion; that there is a radical incompatibility between justice and utility.
On the other side, if nations are interested in selling, and not in buying, violent action and reaction are the [112] natural condition of their relations, for each will seek to impose its products on all, and all will do their utmost endeavor to reject the products of each.
As a sale, in effect, implies a purchase, and since, according to this doctrine, to sell is to benefit, as to buy is to injure, every international transaction implies the amelioration of one people, and the deterioration of another.
But, on one side, men are fatally impelled towards that which profits them: on the contrary, they resist instinctively whatever injures them; whence we must conclude that every people bears within itself a natural force of expansion, and a not less natural power of resistance, which are equally prejudicial to all the others; or, in other terms, that antagonism and war are the natural constitution of human society!
So that the theory which we are discussing may be summed up in these two axioms:
"Utility is incompatible with justice at home,"
"Utility is incompatible with peace abroad."
Now that which astonishes us, which confounds us, is, that a publicist, a statesman, who has sincerely adhered to an economic doctrine whose principle clashes so violently with other incontestable principles, could enjoy one moment's calm and repose of mind. As for us, it seems to us, that if we had penetrated into science by this entrance, if we did not clearly perceive that liberty, utility, justice, peace, are things not only compatible, but closely allied together, so to say, identical with each other, we would try to forget all we had learned; we would say to ourselves:
"How could God will that men shall attain prosperity [113] only through injustice and war? How could He will that they may remove war and injustice only by renouncing their own well-being?"
Does not the science which has conducted us to the horrible blasphemy which this alternative implies deceive us by false lights; and shall we dare take on ourselves to make it the basis of legislation for a great people? And when a long succession of illustrious philosophers have brought together more comforting results from this same science, to which they have consecrated their whole lives; when they affirm that Liberty and Utility are reconciled with Justice and Peace, that all these grand principles follow infinite parallels, without clashing, throughout all eternity; have they not in their favor the presumption which results from all we know of the goodness and the wisdom of God, manifested in the sublime harmony of the material creation? Ought we lightly to believe, against such a presumption, and in face of so many imposing authorities, that it has pleased this same God to introduce antagonism and a discord into the laws of the moral world?
No, no; before taking it for granted that all social principles clash, shock, and neutralize each other, and are in anarchical, eternal, irremediable, conflict together; before imposing on our fellow citizens the impious system to which such reasoning conducts us, we had better go over the whole chain, and assure ourselves that there is no point on the way where we may have gone astray.
And if, after a faithful examination, twenty times recommenced, we should always return to this frightful conclusion, that we must choose between the advantages [114] and the good—we should thrust science away, disheartened; we should shut ourselves up in voluntary ignorance; above all, we should decline all participation in the affairs of our country, leaving to the men of another time the burden and the responsibility of a choice so difficult.