"
Would not one say, who listened only to this language, that we
political economists, in merely claiming for every one _the free
disposition of his own property_, had, like the Fourierists, conjured
up from our brains a new social order, chimerical and strange; a sort
of phalanstery, without precedent in the annals of the human race,
instead of merely talking plain _meum_ and _tuum_ It seems to us that
if there is in all this anything utopian, anything problematical, it
is not free trade, but protection; it is not the right to exchange,
but tariff after tariff applied to overturning the natural order of
commerce.
But it is not the point to compare and judge of these two systems by
the light of reason; the question for the moment is, to know which of
the two is founded upon experience.
So, Messrs. Monopolists, you pretend that the facts are on your side;
that we have, on our side, theories only.
You even flatter yourselves that this long series of public acts, this
old experience of the world, which you invoke, has appeared imposing
to us, and that we confess we have not as yet refuted you as fully as
we might.
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