ron, cloth, fuel,
tools, etc.--in short, a scarcity of everything.

If, then, the scarcity of wheat has a tendency to increase the price by
reason of the diminution of the supply, the scarcity of all other
products for which wheat is exchanged has likewise a tendency to
depreciate the value of wheat on account of a falling off of the demand;
so that it is by no means certain that wheat will be a mill dearer under
a protective tariff than under a system of free trade. This alone is
certain, that inasmuch as there is a smaller amount of everything in the
country, each individual will be more poorly provided with everything.

The farmer would do well to consider whether it would not be more
desirable for him to allow the importation of wheat and beef, and, as a
consequence, to be surrounded by a well-to-do community, able to consume
and to pay for every agricultural product.

There is a certain province where the men are covered with rags, dwell
in hovels, and subsist on chestnuts. How can agriculture flourish there?
What can they make the earth produce, with the expectation of profit?
Meat? They eat none. Milk? They drink only the water of springs. Butter?
It is an article of luxury far beyond them. Wool? They get along without
it as much as possible. Can any one imagine that all these objects of
consumption can be thus left untouched by the masses, without lowering
prices?

That which we say of a farmer, we can say of a manufacturer.
Cloth-makers assert that foreign competition will lower prices owing to
the increased quantity offered. Very well, but are not these prices
raised by the increase of the demand? Is the consumption of cloth a
fixed and invariable quantity? Is each one as well provided with it as
he might and should be? And if the general wealth were developed by the
abolition of all these taxes and hindrances, would not the first use
made of it by the population be to clothe themselves better?

Therefore the question, the eternal question, is not whether protection
favors this or that special branch of industry, but whether, all things
considered, restriction is, in its nature, more profitable than freedom?

Now, no person can maintain that proposition. And just this explains the
admission which our opponents continually make to us: "You are right on
principle."

If that is true, if restriction aids each special industry only through
a greater injury to the general prosperity, let us understand, then,