ses the whole misunderstanding. Robinson lost sight of it, and our
protectionists do not see it, or pretend not to. The stranded plank thus
paralyzed for fifteen days Robinson's labor, so far as it was applied to
the making of a plank, but it did not deprive him of it. Distinguish,
then, between these two kinds of diminution of labor, one resulting in
_privation_, and the other in _comfort_. These two things are very
different, and if you assimilate them, you reason like Robinson. In the
most complicated, as in the most simple instances, the sophism consists
in this: _Judging of the utility of labor by its duration and intensity,
and not by its results_, which leads to this economic policy, _a
reduction of the results of labor, in order to increase its duration and
intensity_.

XV.

THE LITTLE ARSENAL OF THE FREE TRADER.

--If they say to you: There are no absolute principles; prohibition may
be bad, and restriction good--

Reply: Restriction _prohibits_ all that it keeps from coming in.

--If they say to you: Agriculture is the nursing mother of the country--

Reply: That which feeds a country is not exactly agriculture, but
_grain_.

--If they say to you: The basis of the sustenance of the people is
agriculture--

Reply: The basis of the sustenance of the people is _grain_. Thus a law
which causes _two_ bushels of grain to be obtained by agricultural labor
at the expense of four bushels, which the same labor would have
produced but for it, far from being a law of sustenance, is a law of
starvation.

--If they say to you: A restriction on the admission of foreign grain
leads to more cultivation, and, consequently, to a greater home
production--

Reply: It leads to sowing on the rocks of the mountains and the sands of
the sea. To milk and steadily milk, a cow gives more milk; for who can
tell the moment when not a drop more can be obtained? But the drop costs
dear.

--If they say to you: Let bread be dear, and the wealthy farmer will
enrich the artisans--

Reply: Bread is dear when there is little of it, a thing which can make
but poor, or, if you please, rich people who are starving.

--If they insist on it, saying: When food is dear, wages rise--

Reply by showing that in April, 1847, five-sixths of the workingmen were
beggars.

--If they say to you: The profits of the workingmen must rise with the
dearness of food--

Reply: This is equivalent to saying that in an unprovisioned vessel
ev