potent to
protect certain classes of society, such as artizans, merchants,
literary men, lawyers, soldiers, etc., etc.

It is true that _bounty robbery_ allows of infinite subdivisions, and in
this respect does not yield in perfection to _highway robbery_, but on
the other hand it often leads to results which are so odd and foolish,
that the natives of the Kingdom of A---- may laugh at it with great
reason.

That which the plundered party loses in highway robbery is gained by the
robber. The article stolen remains, at least, in the country. But under
the dominion of _bounty robbery_, that which the duty takes from the
French is often given to the Chinese, the Hottentots, Caffirs, and
Algonquins, as follows:

A piece of cloth is worth a _hundred francs_ at Bordeaux. It is
impossible to sell it below that without loss. It is impossible to sell
it for more than that, for the _competition_ between merchants forbids.
Under these circumstances, if a Frenchman desires to buy the cloth, he
must pay a _hundred francs_, or do without it. But if an Englishman
comes, the government interferes, and says to the merchant: "Sell your
cloth, and I will make the tax-payers give you _twenty francs_ (through
the operation of the _drawback_)." The merchant, who wants, and can get,
but one hundred francs for his cloth, delivers it to the Englishman for
eighty francs. This sum added to the twenty francs, the product of the
_bounty robbery_, makes up his price. It is then precisely as if the
tax-payers had given twenty francs to the Englishman, on condition that
he would buy French cloth at twenty francs below the cost of
manufacture,--at twenty francs below what it costs us. Then bounty
robbery has this peculiarity, that the _robbed_ are inhabitants of the
country which allows it, and the _robbers_ are spread over the face of
the globe.

It is truly wonderful that they should persist in holding this
proposition to have been demonstrated: _All that the individual robs
from the mass is a general gain._ Perpetual motion, the philosopher's
stone, and the squaring of the circle, are sunk in oblivion; but the
theory of _progress by robbery_ is still held in honor. _A priori_,
however, one might have supposed that it would be the shortest lived of
all these follies.

Some say to us: You are, then, partisans of the _let alone_ policy?
economists of the superannuated school of the Smiths and the Says? You
do not desire the _organization of labo