and
desiring, among other things, to purchase cloth. There are two means of
doing this. The first is to card the wool and weave the cloth himself;
the second is to manufacture clocks, or wines, or wall-paper, or
something of the sort, and exchange them in Belgium for cloth.

The process which gives the larger result may be represented by the
sharp hatchet; the other process by the dull one.

You will not deny that at the present day in France it is more difficult
to manufacture cloth than to cultivate the vine--the former is the dull
hatchet, the latter the sharp one--on the contrary, you make this
greater difficulty the very reason why you recommend to us the worst of
the two hatchets.

Now, then, be consistent, if you will not be just, and treat the poor
carpenters as well as you treat yourself. Make a law which shall read:
"It is forbidden to use beams or shingles which have not been fashioned
by dull hatchets."

And you will immediately perceive the result.

Where we now strike an hundred blows with the ax, we shall be obliged to
give three hundred. What a powerful encouragement to industry!
Apprentices, journeymen and masters, we should suffer no more. We should
be greatly sought after, and go away well paid. Whoever wishes to enjoy
a roof must leave us to make his tariff, just as buyers of cloth are now
obliged to submit to you.

As for those free trade theorists, should they ever venture to call the
utility of this system in question we should know where to go for an
unanswerable argument. Your investigation of 1834 is at our service. We
should fight them with that, for there you have admirably pleaded the
cause of prohibition, and of dull hatchets, which are both the same.

IV.

INFERIOR COUNCIL OF LABOR.

"What! You have the assurance to demand for every citizen the right to
buy, sell, trade, exchange, and to render service for service according
to his own discretion, on the sole condition that he will conduct
himself honestly, and not defraud the revenue? Would you rob the
workingman of his labor, his wages and his bread?"

This is what is said to us. I know what the general opinion is; but I
have desired to know what the laborers themselves think. I have had an
excellent opportunity of finding out.

It was not one of those _Superior Councils of Industry_ (Committee on
the Revision of the Tariff), where large manufacturers, who style
themselves laborers, influential ship-builders who ima