7

8

POST HOC, ERGO PROPTER HOC

This is the greatest and most common fallacy in reasoning.

Real sufferings, for example have manifested themselves in England.1

These sufferings come in the train of two other phenomena:

First, The reformed tariff;

Second, Two bad harvests in succession.

To which of these two last circumstances are we to attribute the first?

The protectionists exclaim:

9

THE PREMIUM THEFT—ROBBERY BY SUBSIDY

This little book of FALLACIES is found to be too theoretical, scientific, and metaphysical. Be it so. Let us try the effect of a more trivial and hackneyed, and, if necessary, a ruder style. Convinced that the public is duped in this matter of protection, I have endeavored to prove it. But if outcry is preferred to argument, let us vociferate,

“King Midas has a snout, and asses’ ears.”1

10

THE TAX GATHERER

JACQUES BONHOMME, a Vintner.

Mr. LASOUCHE, Tax gatherer.

L.: You have secured twenty tuns of wine?

J.: Yes, by dint of my own skill and labor.

L.: Have the goodness to deliver up to me six of the best.

J.: Six tuns out of twenty! Good Heaven! you are going to ruin me. And please, Sir, for what purpose do you intend them?

L.: The first will be handed over to the creditors of the State. When people have debts, the least thing they can do is to pay interest upon them.

11

PROTECTION; OR, THE THREE CITY ALDERMEN

DEMONSTRATION IN FOUR TABLEAUX

SCENE I—House of Master Peter

Window looking out on a fine park.—Three gentlemen seated near a good fire.

PETER: Bravo! Nothing like a good fire after a good dinner. It does feel so comfortable. But alas! how many honest folks, like the Rio d’Yvetot,

Soufflent, faute de bois
Dans leurs doigts.

12

SOMETHING ELSE

“What is restriction?”

“It is partial prohibition.” “What is prohibition?” “Absolute restriction.”

“So that what holds true of the one, holds true of the other?”

“Yes; the difference is only one of degree. There is between them the same relation as there is between a circle and the arc of a circle.”

“Then, if prohibition is bad, restriction cannot be good?”

“No more than the arc can be correct if the circle is irregular.”

“What is the name which is common to restriction and prohibition?”

13

THE LITTLE ARSENAL OF THE FREE-TRADER

If anyone tells you that there are no absolute principles, no inflexible rules; that prohibition may be bad and yet that restriction may be good,

Reply: “Restriction prohibits all that it hinders from being imported.”

If anyone says that agriculture is the mother’s milk of the country,

Reply: “What nourishes the country is not exactly agriculture, but wheat.”

If anyone tells you that the basis of the food of the people is agriculture,

14

THE RIGHT HAND AND THE LEFT

REPORT ADDRESSED TO THE KING1

SIRE—When we observe these free trade advocates boldly disseminating their doctrines, and maintaining that the right of buying and selling is implied in the right of property (as has been urged by Mr. Billauit in the true style of a special pleader), we may be permitted to feel serious alarm as to the fate of our national labor; for what would Frenchmen make of their heads and their hands were they free?

15

DOMINATION BY LABOR

“In the same way that in time of war we attain the mastery by superiority in arms, can we not, in time of peace, arrive at domination by superiority in Labor?”

This is a question of the highest interest at a time when no doubt seems to be entertained that in the field of industry, as on the field of battle, the stronger crushes the weaker.

VIII.

HARMONIES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

BOOK ONE