this end should be attained;
and if foreign salt were to be sold in our market free from duty, the
treasury would not receive its revenue, and would be obliged to seek it
from some thing else. There would be evident inconsistency in creating
an obstacle with a given object, and then avoiding the attainment of
that object. It would have been better at once to seek what was needed
in the other impost without taxing French salt. Such are the
circumstances under which I would allow upon any foreign article a duty,
_not protecting_ but fiscal.

But the supposition that a nation, because it is subjected to heavier
imposts than those of another neighboring nation, should protect itself
by tariffs against the competition of its rival, is a Sophism, which it
is now my purpose to attack.

I have said more than once, that I am opposing only the theory of the
protectionists, with the hope of discovering the source of their errors.
Were I disposed to enter into controversy with them, I would say: Why
direct your tariffs principally against England and Belgium, both
countries more overloaded with taxes than any in the world? Have I not
a right to look upon your argument as a mere pretext? But I am not of
the number of those who believe that prohibitionists are guided by
interest, and not by conviction. The doctrine of Protection is too
popular not to be sincere. If the majority could believe in freedom, we
would be free. Without doubt it is individual interest which weighs us
down with tariffs; but it acts upon conviction.

The State may make either a good or a bad use of taxes; it makes a good
use of them when it renders to the public services equivalent to the
value received from them; it makes a bad use of them when it expends
this value, giving nothing in return.

To say in the first case that they place the country which pays them in
more disadvantageous conditions for production, than the country which
is free from them, is a Sophism. We pay, it is true, twenty millions for
the administration of justice, and the maintenance of the police, but we
have justice and the police; we have the security which they give, the
time which they save for us; and it is most probable that production is
neither more easy nor more active among nations, where (if there be
such) each individual takes the administration of justice into his own
hands. We pay, I grant, many hundred millions for roads, bridges,
ports, railways; but we have these r