as though
we should say: "We will have nothing of that which Nature gives you.
You ask of us an effort equal to two, in order to furnish ourselves
with produce only attainable at home by an effort equal to four. You
can do it because with you Nature does half the work. But we will have
nothing to do with it; we will wait till your climate, becoming more
inclement, forces you to ask of us a labor equal to four, and then we
can treat with you _upon an equal footing_!"

A is a favored country; B is maltreated by Nature. Mutual traffic then
is advantageous to both, but principally to B, because the exchange is
not between _utility_ and _utility_, but between _value_ and _value_.
Now A furnishes a greater _utility in a similar value_, because the
utility of any article includes at once what Nature and what labor
have done; whereas the value of it only corresponds to the portion
accomplished by labor. B then makes an entirely advantageous bargain;
for by simply paying the producer from A for his labor, it receives in
return not only the results of that labor, but in addition there is
thrown in whatever may have accrued from the superior bounty of
Nature.

We will lay down the general rule.

Traffic is an exchange of _values_; and as value is reduced by
competition to the simple representation of labor, traffic is the
exchange of equal labors. Whatever Nature has done towards the
production of the articles exchanged, is given on both sides
_gratuitously_; from whence it necessarily follows, that the most
advantageous commerce is transacted with those countries which are
the least favored by Nature.

The theory of which I have attempted in this chapter to trace the
outlines, deserves a much greater elaboration. But perhaps the
attentive reader will have perceived in it the fruitful seed which is
destined in its future growth to smother Protectionism, at once with
the various other isms whose object is to exclude the law of
COMPETITION from the government of the world. Competition, no
doubt, considering man as producer, must often interfere with his
individual and _immediate_ interests. But if we consider the great
object of all labor, the universal good, in a word, Consumption, we
cannot fail to find that Competition is to the moral world what the
law of equilibrium is to the material one. It is the foundation of
true gratification, of true Liberty and Equality, of the equality of
comforts and condition, so much sought af