protection, for seclusion. We don't want anything Eng

lish."

In these or similar words a fallacy is expressed which is frequently made use of, however irrational it may be.

The difficulty in acting upon this principle seems to lie in the fact that we must begin with abolishing the English language, the Christian religion, and the practice of wearing the nose in the middle of the face; for we have all these in common with the English.

Even if the adherents of this doctrine think they do right in substituting "Hate thy neighbor as much as thou canst," for the command "Love thy neighbor as thyself," and for the first principle of the Christian law of nations “Peace and good-will toward man," even in that case they ought not to lay down the maxim, Hate thyself as much as thy neighbor; and it does show disregard of self when the advantage which necessarily results from simple exchange is wilfully interrupted. But what can we say, when a leading protectionist actually stated, not in passionate speech, but in the considerateness of printed words, that a ten years' war with England would do us great good! These men know better than the Creator, who made all things, beings, and climes, for Inter-Dependence and Inter-Beneficence.

Ashamed as a writer may feel in putting down the truth, it is a fact that this argument has been urged, and continues to be urged, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and by people who profess a cosmopolitan religion of good-will and peace.

FALLACY ELEVENTH.-The Balance of Trade.

At length we arrive at what may be called a somewhat respectable fallacy after the four or five preceding ones.

By balance of trade is generally understood the balance between exports and imports; and the protectionists say, If more is imported than exported, it is clear that the balance must have been made up by money, so that the country has lost so much as the exported money amounts to.

Mr. Levi Woodbury, secretary of the treasury to General Jackson and President Van Buren, went so far as to show in a report, published with one of the President's annual messages, that ever since the establishment of this government the United States have imported more than they exported, and that thus they have been carrying on a losing business ever since. How the country managed to flourish and how national wealth increased, or why people continued to trade for nearly a century, while it was all the time a losing business, cannot be seen. This statement of Mr. Woodbury was made up from the books of our custom-houses. Now, if we carry on a prosperous trade, the books ought to show importation. greater than exportation. If a thousand bales of cotton, valued at fifty dollars each in the port of Charleston, do not realize in Liverpool more than fifty thousand dollars and the freight, they had much better not be exported; but if they sold in Europe for sixty-five thousand dollars, and merchandise to the amount of this sum was imported, so that apparently fifteen thousand dollars' worth more was imported than exported, then it was most likely a profitable business. Yet the balance-of-trade protectionists would wish us to believe that in this case fifteen thousand dollars in coin went out of the country, and that, therefore, the country was by so much impoverished, Money, however, does not grow in the fields; at least, specie does not. In order to be able to purchase commodities in Europe we must first produce something to offer in exchange for it. (See Webster's words in Fallacy 4.) The figurative question much in vogue at one time, "How can a man expect not to get poorer from day to day, if he takes daily more money out of his breeches' pockets than he put in ?" is utterly futile. There is no such thing as "the people's pocket." A pocket does not produce, except in the fairy-tale, and men must produce values to be able to exchange them for other commodities which they desire. An every-day process sufficiently illustrates this. A farmer carries corn and poultry to the market of the nearest town, sells them, and buys forthwith, for the money thus obtained, cloth

and flannel-for winter may be approaching—also a book and some pairs of shoes for his boys, or a fine time-saving machine for his wife. These commodities consume all he obtained for his product. The question now is, Has he, or his house or family, village or county, become so much the poorer? He produced for this very purpose, and he brought home the equivalent. To the farmer it is worth more, else he would not have exchanged his values for what he purchased. Here, as elsewhere, we meet with the two truths which it were well for us had they never been forgotten.

He who interferes with exchange, natural and necessary, interferes with the essential welfare of mankind; and wealth cannot be increased but by production. It is the only way. Wealth can never be legislated into existence. Laws have indeed been passed, in the course of history, calling a halfdollar a dollar, but no law has ever been able to make two thousand dollars out of one thousand dollars.

If the people who carry on that peculiar and important branch of productive industry called commerce, and those people who furnish them with the commodities which by commerce are exchanged, are not to be trusted with their own interests, and if governments must regulate their exchange, and indirectly their production, and if disastrous years, like 1837 and 1858, are held up as terrible examples of unrestrained importation, we ask, Who are the government which is to play a sort of sub-providence over us? Are they not men like ourselves? Have governments never gone mad with ruinous speculations? What is asked of government on this point is directly hostile to the principles of self-government, which we cherish so highly. Why are all these government regulations insisted upon merely for foreign trade and foreign importation, and not also for New York trade with New Orleans or Oregon? May the people of San Francisco not overstock the market with Massachusetts goods, if left to themselves? Are these markets unimportant? Now, let a protectionist dare to propose government control in this case, and see how Boston and San Francisco would blaze up in a

fire of indignation. Yet why? If the government is expected to regulate for us what we shall import and export, then we must go farther, and let government (whatever that be) regulate, “organize" everything; in short, adopt communism at once. Millions upon millions daily eat too much and injure their health. Shall government regulate our meals on that account, or shall we, like the Spartans, have regulation dinners? Protective tariffs are partial and slightly-veiled communism. The wider trade extends the steadier prices are, on the same principle that averages, for instance of crime, become steady in the same degree as the area of observation is extended. Perfect free trade in grain would impart an almost unchangeable price to the cereals.

This idea of considering wealth to consist in the keeping of money within our country, and which has led to the strangest legislation in various countries, actually induced Mr. McDuffie, senator of the United States from South Carolina, who had been a fierce nullifier, and was a loudly-professed free-trader, to declare in the senate of the United States that he must own there was no harm in war, economically speaking, if all the articles required for war can be obtained within the country of the belligerent, and the money can thus be retained within the country. It is the exact argument of Louis XIV., that the many millions squandered by his mania for building remained in the country, and that no harm was done. On the contrary, he called the building of Versailles the method of distributing charity appropriate for kings, and I must add that I have heard educated persons in France say that Louis XIV., who nevertheless regretted on his death-bed his mania for wars and building, was perfectly right, and that had not the monarch put the many millions into these spacious fabrics, which continue to stand, they would be lost and gone by this time!

Spain, importing precious metals from her colonies for centuries, and having a law prohibiting all exportation of precious metals, in order to "keep Spain rich," sank deeper and deeper into poverty with every decennium, because it would not

produce. So much for keeping "money" in a country. We know exactly how many millions England has paid to Prussia as subsidy in the Seven Years' War. So many millions of specie flowed into Germany, while the war carried off thousands of people, so that this money was distributed among fewer persons; but was Germany richer after the peace of St. Hubert? She was lamentably poorer, and the Germans and their governments knew it. The Roman conquerors sent immense amounts of values to Italy in the shape of gold and shares. Did Italy become richer? Poverty utterly ruined the country, and in the same degree in which some senators amassed immense fortunes the country and the people at large sank deeper into pauperism.

"Money going out of the country" used to be considered, and is still believed by many, to be simple loss of wealth. So long as the money being in a country was taken to constitute its wealth this was consistent. Montesquieu, again, says in his immortal work that the amount of money existing at a

Long after the Fallacy on the Balance of Trade was written down, after my delivery in a lecture, I became acquainted with the speech which Daniel Webster made in the senate, April, 1824, on the Balance of Trade. The Canon Law allows an appeal a papa male informato ad papam melius informandum. In our case we must appeal a Webster male informato ad Webster quandum melius informatum. Mr. Webster said:

"Let us inquire, then, sir, what is meant by an unfavorable balance of trade, and what the argument is, drawn from that source. By an unfavorable balance of trade, I understand, is meant that state of things in which importation exceeds exportation. To apply it to our own case: if the value of goods imported exceed the value of those exported, then the balance of trade is said to be against us, inasmuch as we have run in debt to the amount of this difference. Therefore it is said, that if a nation continue long in a commerce like this, it must be rendered absolutely bankrupt. It is in the condition of a man that buys more than he sells; and how can such a traffic be maintained without ruin? Now, sir, the whole fallacy of this argument consists in supposing that, whenever the value of imports exceeds that of exports, a debt is necessarily created to the extent of the difference; whereas, ordinarily, the import is no more than the result of the export, augmented in value by the labor of transportation. The excess of imports over exports, in truth, usually shows the gains, not the losses, of trade; or, in a country that not only buys and sells goods, but employs ships in carrying goods also, it shows the profits of commerce and the earnings of navigation."