me result, oppression,
necessarily flows from the most antagonistic principles?

Referring to the new policy toward which commercial freedom is drawing
England, many persons make this objection, which, I admit, occupies the
sincerest minds. "Is England doing anything more than pursuing the same
end by different means? Does she not constantly aspire to universal
supremacy? Sure of the superiority of her capital and labor, does she
not call in free competition to stifle the industry of the continent,
reign as a sovereign, and conquer the privilege of feeding and clothing
the ruined peoples?"

It would be easy for me to demonstrate that these alarms are chimerical;
that our pretended inferiority is greatly exaggerated; that all our
great branches of industry not only resist foreign competition, but
develop themselves under its influence, and that its infallible effect
is to bring about an increase in general consumption capable of
absorbing both foreign and domestic products.

To-day I desire to attack this objection directly, leaving it all its
power and the advantage of the ground it has chosen. Putting English and
French on one side, I will try to find out in a general way, if, even
though by superiority in one branch of industry, one nation has crushed
out similar industrial pursuits in another one, this nation has made a
step toward supremacy, and that one toward dependence; in other words,
if both do not gain by the operation, and if the conquered do not gain
the most by it.

If we see in any product but a cause of labor, it is certain that the
alarm of the protectionists is well founded. If we consider iron, for
instance, only in connection with the masters of forges, it might be
feared that the competition of a country where iron was a gratuitous
gift of nature, would extinguish the furnaces of another country, where
ore and fuel were scarce.

But is this a complete view of the subject? Are there relations only
between iron and those who make it? Has it none with those who use it?
Is its definite and only destination to be produced? And if it is
useful, not on account of the labor which it causes, but on account of
the qualities which it possesses, and the numerous services for which
its hardness and malleability fit it, does it not follow that
foreigners cannot reduce its price, even so far as to prevent its
production among us, without doing us more good, under the last
statement of the case, than it injure