Later, when it was a question of improving the Garonne,5 I remembered
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the arguments of the Iberian speakers and said to myself: “If the deputies in Toulouse were as good economists as those from Palencia and the representatives of Bordeaux were as skilled logicians as those of Oporto,6 the Garonne would surely be left ‘to sleep to the pleasing sound of its tilting urn,’7 for the channeling of the Garonne would encourage the invasion of products from Toulouse to the detriment of Bordeaux and the flooding of products from Bordeaux to the detriment of Toulouse.”
PUBLISHING HISTORY:
Original title: “Un chemin de fer negative.”
Place and date of first publication: No date given. First published in book form.
First French edition as book or pamphlet: Economic Sophisms (First Series) (1846).
Location in Paillottet’s edition of OC: Vol. 4. Sophismes économiques. Petits pamphlets I, pp. 93–94.
Previous translations: 1st English ed., 1846; 1st American ed., 1848; FEE ed., 1964.
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I have said that when, unfortunately, we took the point of view of the producers’ interest, we could not fail to clash with the general interest,1 since producers, as such, demand only effort, needs, and obstacles.
I have found a remarkable example of this in a Bordeaux journal.
M. Simiot2 asks himself this question:
Should the Paris-to-Spain railway be offered to Bordeaux with a complete fracture in the line?3
He answered it in the positive with a host of reasons that it is not my place to examine but which include the following:
The railway between Paris and Bayonne should be completely broken in two4 at Bordeaux so that goods and passengers forced to stop in the town would contribute revenue to boatmen, packmen, commission agents, shippers, hoteliers, etc.
It is clear that this is once again a case of the interest of producers being put ahead of the interest of consumers.
But if Bordeaux can be allowed to profit from this break in the line, and if this is in keeping with the public interest, Angoulême, Poitiers, Tours, Orleans, and more, all intermediary points, Ruffec, Châtellerault, etc., etc., must also demand breaks in the line in the general interest, that is of course in the
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interest of national production, since the more breaks there are, the more consignments, commissions, and transshipping there will be all along the line. With this system, we will have created a railway made up of consecutive segments, a negative railway.
Whether the protectionists want this or not, it is no less certain that the principle of trade restriction is the same as the principle of breaks in the line: the sacrifice of the consumer to the producer and of the end to the means.
18. There Are No Absolute Principles
PUBLISHING HISTORY:
Original title: “Il n’y a pas de principes absolus.”
Place and date of first publication: No date given. First published in book form.
First French edition as book or pamphlet: Economic Sophisms (First Series) (1846).
Location in Paillottet’s edition of OC: Vol. 4. Sophismes économiques. Petits pamphlets I, pp. 94–97.
Previous translations: 1st English ed., 1846; 1st American ed., 1848; FEE ed., 1964.
You cannot be too surprised at the ease with which men resign themselves to ignoring what they need most to know, and you can be sure that they are determined to fall asleep in their ignorance once they have come to the point of proclaiming this axiom: There are no absolute principles.
You enter the legislative chamber. The question before the house is to ascertain whether the law will forbid or free up international trade.
A deputy stands up and says:
“If you allow this trade, foreigners will flood you with their products, the English with cloth, the Belgians with coal, the Spanish with wool, the Italians with silk, the Swiss with cattle, the Swedish with iron, and the Prussians with wheat, so that no industry will be possible in this country.”
Another replies:
“If you forbid this trade, the various benefits that nature has showered on each geographical region will be nonexistent for you. You will not share in the mechanical skills of the English, the richness of the Belgian mines, the fertility of Polish soil, the fruitfulness of Swiss pastures, the cheapness
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of Spanish labor, or the heat of the Italian climate, and you will have to satisfy your demand with goods produced under awkward and difficult conditions instead of with goods obtained by trading with those who can produce things more easily.”
It is certain that one of these deputies is wrong. But which one? It is nevertheless worthwhile taking the trouble to find out, as it is not just a matter of opinion. You are faced with two paths and you have to choose; and one inevitably leads to poverty.
To escape from this quandary, people say: There are no absolute principles.
This axiom, so fashionable today, in addition to nodding to laziness, is also suited to ambition.
If the theory of prohibition won, or else if the doctrine of freedom triumphed, a very small law would encompass our entire economic code. In the first case, it would say: All foreign trade is forbidden and in the second: All foreign trade is free, and many leading figures would lose their importance.
But if trade does not have its own proper nature, if it is not governed by any natural law, if it is capriciously useful or disastrous, if it does not find its stimulus in the good it does and its limit in the good it ceases to do, and if its effects cannot be appreciated by those who carry it out; in a word, if there are no absolute principles, oh! It would then be necessary to weigh, balance, and regulate transactions, to equalize the conditions of labor, and to set the level of profits; a colossal task, but one well suited to be given to those who enjoy high remuneration and wide influence.
On entering Paris, which I had come to visit, I said to myself: Here there are a million human beings who would all die in a few days if supplies of all sorts did not flood into this huge metropolis. The mind boggles when it tries to assess the huge variety of objects that have to enter through its gates tomorrow if the lives of its inhabitants are not to be snuffed out in convulsions of famine, uprisings, and pillage. And in the meantime everyone is asleep, without their peaceful slumber being troubled for an instant by the thought of such a frightful prospect. On the other hand, eighty departéments1 have worked today without being in concert and without agreement to supply Paris. How does it happen that every day what is needed and no more or less is brought to this gigantic market? What is thus the ingenious and secret power that presides over the astonishing regularity of such complicated movements, a regularity in which everyone has such blind faith, although well-being and life depend on it? This power is an absolute principle, the principle
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of