"' Nothing,' replied the foreigner; and, bursting out a-laugh-ing, he regained his canoe."
"The story would not be amiss, if Robinson were not made to argue so very absurdly."
"He does not argue more absurdly than the committee of the Rue Hauteville."
"Oh! the case is very different. Sometimes you suppose one man, and sometimes (which comes to the same thing) two men working in company. That does not tally with the actual state of things. The division of labour and the intervention of merchants and money change the state of the question very much."
"That may complicate transactions, but does not change their nature."
"What! you want to compare modern commerce with a system of barter."
"Trade is nothing but a multiplicity of barters. Barter is in its own nature identical with commerce, just as labour on a small scale is identical with labour on a great scale, or as the law of gravitation which moves an atom is identical with that same law of gravitation which moves a world."
"So, according to you, these arguments, which are so untenable in the mouth of Robinson, are equally untenable when urged by our protectionists."
"Yes; only the error is better concealed under a complication of circumstances."
"Then, pray, let us have an example taken from the present order of things."
"With pleasure. In France, owing to the exigencies of climate and habits, cloth is a useful thing. Is the essential thing to _make it_, or to _get it?_"
"A very sensible question, truly! In order to have it, you must make it."
"Not necessarily. To have it, some one must make it, that is certain; but it is not at all necessary that the same person or the same country which consumes it should also produce it. You have not made that stuff which clothes you so well. France does not produce the coffee on which our citizens breakfast."
"But I buy my cloth, and France her coffee."
"But neither you nor France produce the material of money."
"With our products, which are sent to Peru."
"It is then, in fact, your labour which you exchange for cloth, and French labour which is exchanged for coffee."
"It is not absolutely necessary, therefore, to manufacture what you consume."
"No; if we manufacture something else which we give in exchange."