What disorder, what confusion in facts; but what can you expect when there is such disorder and confusion in ideas? You may have resisted Communism vigorously in the abstract; but while at the same time you humour, and support, and foster it in that part of our legislation which it has tainted, your labours will be in vain. It is a poison, which, with your consent and approbation, has glided into all our laws and into our morals, and now you are indignant that it is followed by its natural consequences.
Possibly, Sir, you will make me one concession; you will say to me, perhaps, the system of Protection rests on the principle of Communism. It is contrary to right, to property, to liberty; it throws the government out of its proper road, and invests it with arbitrary powers, which have no rational origin. All this is but too true; but the system of Protection is useful; without it the country, yielding to foreign competition, would be ruined.
This would lead us to the examination of Protection in the economical point of view. Putting aside all consideration of justice, of right, of equity, of property, of liberty, we should have to resolve the question into one of pure utility, the money question, so to speak; but this, you will admit, does not properly fall within my subject. Take care that, availing yourself of expediency in order to justify your contempt of the principle of right is as if you said, 'Communism or spoliation, condemned by justice, can, nevertheless, be admitted as an expedient,' and you must admit that such an avowal is replete with danger.
Without seeking to solve in this place the economical problem, allow me to make one assertion. I affirm that I have submitted to arithmetical calculation the advantages and the inconveniences of Protection, from the point of view of mere wealth, and putting aside all higher considerations. I affirm, moreover, that I have arrived at this result: that all restrictive measures produce one advantage and two inconveniences, or, if you will, one profit and two losses, each of these losses equal to the profit, from which results one pure distinct loss, which circumstance brings with it the encouraging conviction, that in this, as in many other things, and I dare say in all, expediency and justice agree.