CHAPTER XXI.

RAW MATERIAL.

It is said that the most advantageous commerce consists in the exchange of manufactured goods for raw material, because this raw material is a spur to national labor.

And then the conclusion is drawn, that the best custom-house regulation would be that which should give the utmost possible facility to the entry of raw material, and oppose the greatest obstacles to articles which have received their first manipulation by labor.

No sophism of political economy is more widely spread than the foregoing. It supports not only the protectionists, but, much more, and above all, the pretended liberalists. This is to be regretted; for the worst which can happen to a good cause is not to be severely attacked, but to be badly defended.

Commercial freedom will probably have the fate of all freedom; it will not be introduced into our laws until after it has taken possession of our minds. But if it be true that a reform must be generally understood, in order that it may be solidly established, it follows that nothing can retard it so much as that which misleads public opinion; and what is more likely to mislead it than those writings which seem to favor freedom by upholding the doctrines of monopoly?

Several years ago, three large cities of France—Lyons, Bordeaux, and Havre—were greatly agitated against the restrictive policy. The nation, and indeed all Europe, was moved at seeing a banner raised, which they supposed to be that of free trade. Alas! it was still the banner of monopoly; of a monopoly a little more niggardly, and a great deal more absurd, than that which they appeared to wish to overturn. Owing to the sophism which we are about to unveil, the petitioners merely reproduced the doctrine of protection to national labor, adding to it, however, another folly.

What is, in effect, the prohibitive system? Let us listen to the protectionist: "Labor constitutes the wealth of a people, because it alone creates those material things which our necessities demand, and because general comfort depends upon these."

This is the principle.

"But this abundance must be the product of national labor. Should it be the product of foreign labor, national labor would stop at once."

This is the mistake. (See the close of the last chapter.)

"What shall be done, then, in an agricultural and manufacturing country?"

This is the question.

"Restrict its market to the products of its own soil, and its own industry."

This is the end proposed.

"And for this end, restrain by prohibitive duties the entrance of the products of the industry of other nations."

These are the means.

Let us reconcile with this system that of the petition from Bordeaux.

It divided merchandise into three classes:

"The first includes articles of food, and raw material free from all human labor. A wise economy would require that this class should not be taxed."

Here there is no labor; consequently no protection.

"The second is composed of articles which have undergone some preparation. This preparation warrants us in charging it with some tax."

Here protection commences, because, according to the petitioners, national labor commences.

"The third comprises perfected articles which can in no way serve national labor; we consider these the most taxable."

Here, labor, and with it protection, reach their maximum.

The petitioners assert that foreign labor injures national labor; this is the error of the prohibitive school.

They demanded that the French market should be restricted to French labor; this is the end of the prohibitive system.

They insisted that foreign labor should be subject to restriction and taxation; these are the means of the prohibitive system.

What difference, then, is it possible to discover between the petitioners of Bordeaux and the advocate of American restriction? One alone: the greater or less extent given to the word labor.

The protectionist extends it to everything—so he wishes to protect everything.

"Labor constitutes all the wealth of a people," says he; "to protect national industry, all national industry, manufacturing industry, all manufacturing industry, is the idea which should always be kept before the people." The petitioners saw no labor excepting that of manufacturers; so they would admit that alone to the favors of protection. They said:

"Raw material is devoid of all human labor. For that reason we should not tax it. Fabricated articles can no longer occupy national labor. We consider them the most taxable."

We are not inquiring whether protection to national labor is reasonable. The protectionist and the Bordelais agree upon this point, and we, as has been seen in the preceding chapters, differ from both.

The question is to ascertain which of the two—the protectionists or the raw-materialists of Bordeaux—give its just acceptation to the word "labor."

Now, upon this ground, it must be said, the protectionist is, by all odds, right; for observe the dialogue which might take place between them:

The PROTECTIONIST: "You agree that national labor ought to be protected. You agree that no foreign labor can be introduced into our market without destroying therein an equal amount of our national labor. Yet you assert that there is a host of merchandise possessed of value (since it sells), which is, however, free from human labor. And, among other things, you name wheat, corn, meats, cattle, lard, salt, iron, brass, lead, coal, wool, furs, seeds, etc. If you can prove to me that the value of these things is not due to labor, I will agree that it is useless to protect them. But, again, if I demonstrate to you that there is as much labor in a hundred dollars' worth of wool as in a hundred dollars' worth of cloth, you must acknowledge that protection is as much due to the one as to the other. Now, why is this bag of wool worth a hundred dollars? Is it not because that sum is the price of production? And is the price of production anything but that which it has been necessary to distribute in wages, salaries, manual labor, interest, to all the workmen and capitalists who have concurred in producing the article?"

The RAW-MATERIALIST: "It is true, that in regard to wool, you may be right. But a bag of wheat, an ingot of iron, a quintal of coal—are they the produce of labor? Did not Nature create them?"

The PROTECTIONIST: "Without doubt Nature creates the elements of all things; but it is labor which produces their value. I was wrong myself in saying that labor creates material objects, and this faulty phrase has led the way to many other errors. It does not belong to man, either manufacturer or cultivator, to create, to make something out of nothing; if, by production, we understand creation, all our labors will be unproductive; that of merchants more so than any other, except, perhaps, that of law-makers. The farmer has no claim to have created wheat, but he may claim to have created its value: he has transformed into wheat substances which in no wise resembled it, by his own labor with that of his ploughmen and reapers. What more does the miller effect who converts it into flour, the baker who turns it into bread? Because man must clothe himself in cloth, a host of operations is necessary. Before the intervention of any human labor, the true raw materials of this product (cloth) are air, water, gas, light, the chemical substances which must enter into its composition. These are truly the raw materials which are untouched by human labor; therefore, they are of no value, and I do not think of protecting them. But a first labor converts these substances into hay, straw, etc., a second into wool, a third into thread, a fourth into cloth, a fifth into clothing—who will dare to say that every step in this work is not labor, from the first stroke of the plough, which begins, to the last stroke of the needle, which terminates it? And because, in order to secure more celerity and perfection in the accomplishment of a definite work, such as a garment, the labors are divided among several classes of industry, you wish, by an arbitrary distinction, that the order of succession of these labors should be the only reason for their importance; so much so that the first shall not deserve even the name of labor, and that the last work pre-eminently, shall alone be worthy of the favors of protection!"

The RAW-MATERIALIST: "Yes, we begin to see that wheat no more than wool is entirely devoid of human labor; but, at least, the agriculturist has not, like the manufacturer, done all by himself and his workmen; Nature aids him, and if there is labor, it is not all labor in the wheat."

The PROTECTIONIST: "But all its value is in the labor it has cost. I admit that Nature has assisted in the material formation of wheat. I admit even that it may be exclusively her work; but confess that I have controlled it by my labor; and when I sell you some wheat, observe this well: that it is not the work of Nature for which I make you pay, but my own; and, on your supposition, manufactured articles would be no more the product of labor than agricultural ones. Does not the manufacturer, too, rely upon Nature to second him? Does he not avail himself of the weight of the atmosphere in aid of the steam-engine, as I avail myself of its humidity in aid of the plough? Did he create the laws of gravitation, of correlation of forces, of affinities?"

The RAW-MATERIALIST: "Come, let the wool go too. But coal is assuredly the work, and the exclusive work, of Nature, unaided by any human labor."

The PROTECTIONIST: "Yes, Nature made coal, but labor makes its value. Coal had no value during the thousands of years during which it was hidden, unknown, a hundred feet below the soil. It was necessary to look for it there—that is a labor: it was necessary to transport it to market; that is another labor: and once more, the price which you pay for it in the market is nothing else than the remuneration for these labors of digging and transportation."

We see that thus far the protectionist has all the advantage on his side; that the value of raw material, as well as that of manufactured material, represents the expense of production, that is to say, of labor; that it is impossible to conceive of a material possessed of value while totally unindebted to human labor; that the distinction which the raw-materialists make is wholly futile, in theory; that, as a basis for an unequal division of favors, it would be iniquitous in practice; because the result would be that one-third of the people, engaged in manufactures, would obtain the sweets of monopoly, for the reason that they produced by labor, while the other two-thirds, that is to say the agriculturists, would be abandoned to competition, under pretext that they produced without labor.

It will be urged that it is of more advantage to a nation to import the materials called raw, whether they are or are not the product of labor, and to export manufactured articles.

This is a strongly accredited opinion.

"The more abundant raw materials are," said the petition from Bordeaux, "the more manufactories are multiplied and extended." It said again, that "raw material opens an unlimited field of labor to the inhabitants of the country from which it is imported."

"Raw material," said the other petition, that from Havre, "being the aliment of labor, must be submitted to a different system, and admitted at once at the lowest duty." The same petition would have the protection on manufactured articles reduced, not one after another, but at an undetermined time; not to the lowest duty, but to twenty per cent.

"Among other articles which necessity requires to be abundant and cheap," said the third petition, that from Lyons, "the manufacturers name all raw material."

This all rests on an illusion. We have seen that all value represents labor. Now, it is true that labor increases ten-fold, sometimes a hundred-fold, the value of a rough product, that is to say, expands ten-fold, a hundred-fold, the products of a nation. Thence it is reasoned, "The production of a bale of cotton causes workmen of all classes to earn one hundred dollars only. The conversion of this bale into lace collars raises their profits to ten thousand dollars; and will you dare to say that the nation is not more interested in encouraging labor worth ten thousand than that worth one hundred dollars?"

We forget that international exchanges, no more than individual exchanges, work by weight or measure. We do not exchange a bale of cotton for a bale of lace collars, nor a pound of wool in the grease for a pound of wool in cashmere; but a certain value of one of these things for an equal value of the other. Now to barter equal value against equal value is to barter equal work against equal work. It is not true, then, that the nation which gives for a hundred dollars cashmere or collars, gains more than the nation which delivers for a hundred dollars wool or cotton.

In a country where no law can be adopted, no impost established, without the consent of those whom this law is to govern, the public cannot be robbed without being first deceived. Our ignorance is the "raw material" of all extortion which is practised upon us, and we may be sure in advance that every sophism is the forerunner of a spoliation. Good public, when you see a sophism, clap your hand on your pocket; for that is certainly the point at which it aims. What was the secret thought which the shipowners of Bordeaux and of Havre, and the manufacturers of Lyons, conceived in this distinction between agricultural products and manufactured articles?

"It is principally in this first class (that which comprehends raw material unmodified by human labor)," said the Raw-Materialists of Bordeaux, "that the chief aliment of our merchant marine is found. At the outset, a wise economy would require that this class should not be taxed. The second (articles which have received some preparation) may be charged; the third (articles on which no more work has to be done) we consider the most taxable."

"Consider," said those of Havre, "that it is indispensable to reduce all raw materials one after another to the lowest rate, in order that industry may successively bring into operation the naval forces which will furnish to it its first and indispensable means of labor." The manufacturers could not in exchange of politeness be behind the ship-owners; so the petition from Lyons demanded the free introduction of raw material, "in order to prove," said they, "that the interests of manufacturing towns are not always opposed to those of maritime ones!"

True; but it must be said that both interests were, understood as the petitioners understood them, terribly opposed to the interests of the country, of agriculture, and of consumers.

See, then, where you would come out! See the end of these subtle economical distinctions! You would legislate against allowing perfected produce to traverse the ocean, in order that the much more expensive transportation of rough materials, dirty, loaded with waste matter, may offer more employment to our merchant service, and put our naval force into wider operation. This is what these petitioners termed a wise economy. Why did they not demand that the firs of Russia should be brought to them with their branches, bark, and roots; the gold of California in its mineral state, and the hides from Buenos Ayres still attached to the bones of the tainted skeleton?

Industry, the navy, labor, have for their end, the general good, the public good. To create a useless industry, in order to favor superfluous transportation; to feed superfluous labor, not for the good of the public, but for the expense of the public—this is to realize a veritable begging the question. Work, in itself, is not a desirable thing; its result is; all work without result is a loss. To pay sailors for carrying useless waste matter across the sea is like paying them for skipping stones across the surface of the water. So we arrive at this result: that all economical sophisms, despite their infinite variety, have this in common, that they confound the means with the end, and develop one at the expense of the other.



CHAPTER XXII.

METAPHORS.

Sometimes a sophism dilates itself, and penetrates through the whole extent of a long and heavy theory. More frequently it is compressed, contracted, becomes a principle, and is completely covered by a word. A good man once said: "God protect us from the devil and from metaphors!" In truth, it would be difficult to say which of the two creates the more evil upon our planet. It is the demon, say you; he alone, so long as we live, puts the spirit of spoliation in our hearts. Yes; but he does not prevent the repression of abuses by the resistance of those who suffer from them. Sophistry paralyzes this resistance. The sword which malice puts in the assailant's hand would be powerless, if sophistry did not break the shield upon the arm of the assailed; and it is with good reason that Malebranche has inscribed at the opening of his book, "Error is the cause of human misery."

See how it comes to pass. Ambitious hypocrites will have some sinister purpose; for example, sowing national hatred in the public mind. This fatal germ may develop, lead to general conflagration, arrest civilization, pour out torrents of blood, draw upon the land the most terrible of scourges—invasion. In every case of indulgence in such sentiments of hatred they lower us in the opinion of nations, and compel those Americans, who have retained some love of justice, to blush for their country. Certainly these are great evils; and in order that the public should protect itself from the guidance of those who would lead it into such risks, it is only necessary to give it a clear view of them. How do they succeed in veiling it from them? It is by metaphor. They alter, they force, they deprave the meaning of three or four words, and all is done.

Such a word is invasion itself. An owner of an American furnace says, "Preserve us from the invasion of English iron." An English landlord exclaims, "Let us repel the invasion of American wheat!" And so they propose to erect barriers between the two nations. Barriers constitute isolation, isolation leads to hatred, hatred to war, and war to invasion. "Suppose it does," say the two sophists; "is it not better to expose ourselves to the chance of an eventual invasion, than to accept a certain one?" And the people still believe, and the barriers still remain.

Yet what analogy is there between an exchange and an invasion? What resemblance can possibly be established between a vessel of war, which comes to pour fire, shot, and devastation into our cities, and a merchant ship, which comes to offer to barter with us freely, voluntarily, commodity for commodity?

As much may be said of the word inundation. This word is generally taken in bad part, because inundations often ravage fields and crops. If, however, they deposit upon the soil a greater value than that which they take from it; as is the case in the inundations of the Nile, we might bless and deify them as the Egyptians do. Well! before declaiming against the inundation of foreign produces, before opposing to them restraining and costly obstacles, let us inquire if they are the inundations which ravage or those which fertilize? What should we think of Mehemet Ali, if, instead of building, at great expense, dams across the Nile for the purpose of extending its field of inundation, he should expend his money in digging for it a deeper bed, so that Egypt should not be defiled by this foreign slime, brought down from the Mountains of the Moon? We exhibit precisely the same amount of reason, when we wish, by the expenditure of millions, to preserve our country—From what? The advantages with which Nature has endowed other climates.

Among the metaphors which conceal an injurious theory, none is more common than that embodied in the words tribute, tributary.

These words are so much used that they have become synonymous with the words purchase, purchaser, and one is used indifferently for the other.

Yet a tribute or tax differs as much from purchase as a theft from an exchange, and we should like quite as well to hear it said, "Dick Turpin has broken open my safe, and has purchased out of it a thousand dollars," as we do to have it remarked by our sage representatives, "We have paid to England the tribute for a thousand gross of knives which she has sold to us."

For the reason why Turpin's act is not a purchase is, that he has not paid into my safe, with my consent, value equivalent to what he has taken from it, and the reason why the payment of five hundred thousand dollars, which we have made to England, is not a tribute, is simply because she has not received them gratuitously, but in exchange for the delivery to us of a thousand gross of knives, which we ourselves have judged worth five hundred thousand dollars.

But is it necessary to take up seriously such abuses of language? Why not, when they are seriously paraded in newspapers and in books?

Do not imagine that they escape from writers who are ignorant of their language; for one who abstains from them, we could point you to ten who employ them, and they persons of consideration—that is to say, men whose words are laws, and whose most shocking sophisms serve as the basis of administration for the country.

A celebrated modern philosopher has added to the categories of Aristotle, the sophism which consists in including in one word the begging of the question. He cites several examples. He should have added the word tributary to his vocabulary. In effect the question is, are purchases made abroad useful or injurious? "They are injurious," you say. And why? "Because they make us tributary to the foreigner." Here is certainly a word which presents as a fact that which is a question.

How is this abusive trope introduced into the rhetoric of monopolists?

Some specie goes out of a country to satisfy the rapacity of a victorious enemy—other specie, also, goes out of a country to settle an account for merchandise. The analogy between the two cases is established, by taking account of the one point in which they resemble one another, and leaving out of view that in which they differ.

This circumstance, however,—that is to say, non-reimbursement in the one case, and reimbursement freely agreed upon in the other—establishes such a difference between them, that it is not possible to class them under the same title. To deliver a hundred dollars by compulsion to him who says "Stand and deliver," or voluntarily to pay the same sum to him who sells you the object of your wishes—truly, these are things which cannot be made to assimilate. As well might you say, it is a matter of indifference whether you throw bread into the river or eat it, because in either case it is bread destroyed. The fault of this reasoning, as in that which the word tribute is made to imply, consists in founding an exact similitude between two cases on their points of resemblance, and omitting those of difference.



CHAPTER XXIII.

CONCLUSION.

All the sophisms we have hitherto combated are connected with one single question: the restrictive system; and, out of pity for the reader, we pass by acquired rights, untimeliness, misuse of the currency, etc., etc.

But social economy is not confined to this narrow circle. Fourierism, Saint-Simonism, communism, mysticism, sentimentalism, false philanthropy, affected aspirations to equality and chimerical fraternity, questions relative to luxury, to salaries, to machines, to the pretended tyranny of capital, to distant territorial acquisitions, to outlets, to conquests, to population, to association, to emigration, to imposts, to loans, have encumbered the field of science with a host of parasitical sophisms, which demand the hoe and the sickle of the diligent economist. It is not because we do not recognize the fault of this plan, or rather of this absence of plan. To attack, one by one, so many incoherent sophisms which sometimes clash, although more frequently one runs into the other, is to condemn one's self to a disorderly, capricious struggle, and to expose one's self to perpetual repetitions.

How much we should prefer to say simply how things are, without occupying ourselves with the thousand aspects in which the ignorant see them! To explain the laws under which societies prosper or decay, is virtually to destroy all sophistry at once. When La Place had described all that can, as yet, be known of the movements of the heavenly bodies, he had dispersed, without even naming them, all the astrological dreams of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Hindoos, much more surely than he could have done by directly refuting them through innumerable volumes. Truth is one; the book which exposes it is an imposing and durable monument:

Il brave les tyrans avides, Plus hardi que les Pyramides Et plus durable que l'airain.

Error is manifold, and of ephemeral duration; the work which combats it does not carry within itself a principle of greatness or of endurance.

But if the power, and perhaps the opportunity, have failed us for proceeding in the manner of La Place and of Say, we cannot refuse to believe that the form which we have adopted has, also, its modest utility. It appears to us especially well suited to the wants of the age, to the hurried moments which it can consecrate to study.

A treatise has, doubtless, an incontestable superiority; but upon condition that it be read, meditated upon, searched into. It addresses itself to a select public only. Its mission is, at first, to fix, and afterwards to enlarge, the circle of acquired knowledge.

The refutation of vulgar prejudices could not carry with it this high bearing. It aspires only to disencumber the route before the march of truth, to prepare the mind, to reform public opinion, to blunt dangerous tools in improper hands. It is in social economy above all, that these hand-to-hand struggles, these constantly recurring combats with popular errors, have a true practical utility.

We might arrange the sciences under two classes. The one, strictly, can be known to philosophers only. They are those whose application demands a special occupation. The public profit by their labor, despite their ignorance of them. They do not enjoy the use of a watch the less, because they do not understand mechanics and astronomy. They are not the less carried along by the locomotive and the steamboat through their faith in the engineer and the pilot. We walk according to the laws of equilibrium without being acquainted with them.

But there are sciences which exercise upon the public an influence proportionate with the light of the public itself, not from knowledge accumulated in a few exceptional heads, but from that which is diffused through the general understanding. Such are morals, hygiene, social economy, and in countries which men belong to themselves, politics. It is of these sciences, above all, that Bentham might have said: "That which spreads them is worth more than that which advances them." Of what consequence is it that a great man, a God even, should have promulgated moral laws, so long as men, imbued with false notions, take virtues for vices, and vices for virtues? Of what value is it that Smith, Say, and, according to Chamans, economists of all schools, have proclaimed the superiority of liberty to restraint in commercial transactions, if those who make the laws and those for whom the laws are made, are convinced to the contrary.

These sciences, which are well named social, have this peculiarity: that for the very reason that they are of a general application, no one confesses himself ignorant of them. Do we wish to decide a question in chemistry or geometry? No one pretends to have the knowledge instinctively; we are not ashamed to consult Draper; we make no difficulty about referring to Euclid.

But in social science authority is but little recognized. As such a one has to do daily with morals, good or bad, with hygiene, with economy, with politics reasonable or absurd, each one considers himself skilled to comment, discuss, decide, and dogmatize in these matters.

Are you ill? There is no good nurse who does not tell you, at the first moment, the cause and cure of your malady.

"They are humors," affirms she; "you must be purged."

But what are humors? and are these humors?

She does not trouble herself about that. I involuntarily think of this good nurse when I hear all social evils explained by these common phrases: "It is the superabundance of products, the tyranny of capital, industrial plethora," and other idle stories of which we cannot even say: verba et voces praetereaque nihil: for they are also fatal mistakes.

From what precedes, two things result—

1st. That the social sciences must abound in sophistry much more than the other sciences, because in them each one consults his own judgment or instinct alone.

2d. That in these sciences sophistry is especially injurious, because it misleads public opinion where opinion is a power—that is, law.

Two sorts of books, then, are required by these sciences; those which expound them, and those which propagate them; those which show the truth, and those which combat error.

It appears to us that the inherent defect in the form of this little Essay—repetition—is that which constitutes its principal value.

In the question we have treated, each sophism has, doubtless, its own set form, and its own range, but all have one common root, which is, "forgetfulness of the interests of man, insomuch as they forget the interests of consumers." To show that the thousand roads of error conduct to this generating sophism, is to teach the public to recognize it, to appreciate it—to distrust it under all circumstances.

After all, we do not aspire to arouse convictions, but doubts.

We have no expectation that in laying down the book, the reader shall exclaim: "I know." Please Heaven he may be induced to say, "I am ignorant."

"I am ignorant, for I begin to believe there is something delusive in the sweets of Scarcity."

"I am no longer so much edified by the charms of Obstruction."

"Effort without Result no longer seems to me so desirable as Result without Effort."

"It may probably be true that the secret of commerce does not consist, as that of arms does, in giving and not receiving, according to the definition which the duellist in the play gives of it."

"I consider an article is increased in value by passing through several processes of manufacture; but, in exchange, do two equal values cease to be equal because the one comes from the plough and the other from the power-loom?"

"I confess that I begin to think it singular that humanity should be ameliorated by shackles, or enriched by taxes: and, frankly, I should be relieved of a heavy weight, I should experience a pure joy, if I could see demonstrated, which the author assures us of, that there is no incompatibility between comfort and justice, between peace and liberty, between the extension of labor and the progress of intelligence."

"So, without feeling satisfied by his arguments, to which I do not know whether to give the name of reasoning or of objections, I will interrogate the masters of the science."

Let us terminate by a last and important observation this monograph of sophisms. The world does not know, as it ought, the influence which sophistry exerts upon it. If we must say what we think, when the Right of the Strongest was dethroned, sophistry placed the empire in the Right of the Most Cunning; and it would be difficult to say which of these two tyrants has been the more fatal to humanity.

Men have an immoderate love for pleasure, influence, position, power—in one word, for wealth.

And at the same time men are impelled by a powerful impulse to procure these things at the expense of another. But this other, which is the public, has an inclination not less strong to keep what it has acquired, provided it can and knows how. Spoliation, which plays so large a part in the affairs of the world, has, then, two agents only: Strength and Cunning; and two limits: Courage and Right.

Power applied to spoliation forms the groundwork of human savagism. To retrace its history would be to reproduce almost entire the history of all nations—Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Franks, Huns, Turks, Arabs, Moguls, Tartars—without counting that of the Spaniards in America, the English in India, the French in Africa, the Russians in Asia, etc., etc.

But, at least, among civilized nations, the men who produce wealth have become sufficiently numerous and sufficiently strong to defend it.

Is that to say that they are no longer despoiled? By no means; they are robbed as much as ever, and, what is more, they despoil one another. The agent alone is changed; it is no longer by violence, but by stratagem, that the public wealth is seized upon.

In order to rob the public, it must be deceived. To deceive it, is to persuade it that it is robbed for its own advantage; it is to make it accept fictitious services, and often worse, in exchange for its property. Hence sophistry, economical sophistry, political sophistry, and financial sophistry—and, since force is held in check, sophistry is not only an evil, it is the parent of other evils. So it becomes necessary to hold it in check, in its turn, and for this purpose to render the public more acute than the cunning; just as it has become more peaceful than the strong.

THE END