lated to make a profound impression. Most certainly it is; and
this impression remains; for Mr. Say has rather increased than
diminished it."

Let us hear Mr. de Saint Chamans.

"It has been only towards the middle of the last, the eighteenth
century, when every subject and every principle have without exception
been given up to the discussion of book-makers, that these furnishers of
_speculative_ ideas, applied to every thing and applicable to nothing,
have begun to write upon the subject of political economy. There existed
previously a system of political economy, not written, but _practiced_
by governments. Colbert was, it is said, the inventor of it; and Colbert
gave the law to every state of Europe. Strange to say, he does so still,
in spite of contempt and anathemas, in spite too of the discoveries of
the modern school. This system, which has been called by our writers the
_mercantile system_, consisted in ... checking by prohibition or import
duties such foreign productions as were calculated to ruin our
manufactures by competition.... This system has been declared, by all
writers on political economy, of every school,[12] to be weak, absurd,
and calculated to impoverish the countries where it prevails. Banished
from books, it has taken refuge in _the practice_ of all nations,
greatly to the surprise of those who cannot conceive that in what
concerns the wealth of nations, governments should, rather than be
guided by the wisdom of authors, prefer the _long experience_ of a
system, etc.... It is above all inconceivable to them that the French
government ... should obstinately resist the new lights of political
economy, and maintain in its _practice_ the old errors, pointed out by
all our writers.... But I am devoting too much time to this mercantile
system, which, unsustained by writers, _has only facts_ in its favor!"

[Footnote 12: Might we not say: It is a powerful argument against
Messrs. Ferrier and de Saint Chamans, that all writers on political
economy, of _every school_, that is to say, all men who have studied the
question, come to this conclusion: After all, freedom is better than
restriction, and the laws of God wiser than those of Mr. Colbert.]

Would it not be supposed from this language that political economists,
in claiming for each individual the _free disposition of his own
property_, have, like the Fourierists, stumbled upon some new, strange,
and chimerical system of social government, some w