e 'Harmonies economiques'
and 'Sophismes economiques' have been translated and published
in English.

PETITION

OF THE MANUFACTURERS OF CANDLES, WAX-LIGHTS, LAMPS, CANDLE-STICKS,
STREET LAMPS, SNUFFERS, EXTINGUISHERS, AND OF THE PRODUCERS OF OIL,
TALLOW, ROSIN, ALCOHOL, AND GENERALLY OF EVERYTHING CONNECTED
WITH LIGHTING.

_To Messieurs the Members of the Chamber of Deputies:

Gentlemen_:--You are on the right road. You reject abstract theories,
and have little consideration for cheapness and plenty. Your chief care
is the interest of the producer. You desire to emancipate him from
external competition, and reserve the _national market_ for _national
industry_.

We are about to offer you an admirable opportunity of applying
your--what shall we call it? your theory? no: nothing is more deceptive
than theory. Your doctrine? your system? your principle? but you dislike
doctrines, you abhor systems, and as for principles, you deny that there
are any in social economy. We shall say, then, your practice, your
practice without theory and without principle.

We are suffering from the intolerable competition of a foreign rival,
placed, it would seem, in a condition so far superior to ours for the
production of light, that he absolutely _inundates_ our _national
market_ with it at a price fabulously reduced. The moment he shows
himself, our trade leaves us--all consumers apply to him; and a branch
of native industry, having countless ramifications, is all at once
rendered completely stagnant. This rival, who is no other than the Sun,
wages war to the knife against us, and we suspect that he has been
raised up by _perfidious Albion_ (good policy as times go); inasmuch as
he displays towards that haughty island a circumspection with which he
dispenses in our case.

What we pray for is, that it may please you to pass a law ordering the
shutting up of all windows, skylights, dormer windows, outside and
inside shutters, curtains, blinds, bull's-eyes; in a word, of all
openings, holes, chinks, clefts, and fissures, by or through which the
light of the sun has been in use to enter houses, to the prejudice of
the meritorious manufactures with which we flatter ourselves we have
accommodated our country,--a country which, in gratitude, ought not to
abandon us now to a strife so unequal.

We trust, gentlemen, that you will not regard this our request as a
satire, or refuse it without at least previously hearing the reasons
whi