competitor and becomes a monopolist. Suppress the protection which
represents the difference of price according to each, and foreign
produce must immediately inundate and obtain the monopoly of our
market. Every one ought to wish, for his own sake and for that of the
community, that the productions of the country should be protected
against foreign competition, _whenever the latter may be able to
undersell the former_."

This argument is constantly recurring in all writings of the
protectionist school. It is my intention to make a careful
investigation of its merits, and I must begin by soliciting the
attention and the patience of the reader. I will first examine into
the inequalities which depend upon natural causes, and afterwards into
those which are caused by diversity of taxes.

Here, as elsewhere, we find the theorists who favor protection taking
part with the producer. Let us consider the case of the unfortunate
consumer, who seems to have entirely escaped their attention. They
compare the field of protection to the _turf_. But on the turf, the
race is at once a _means and an end_. The public has no interest in
the struggle, independent of the struggle itself. When your horses are
started in the course with the single object of determining which is
the best runner, nothing is more natural than that their burdens
should be equalized. But if your object were to send an important and
critical piece of intelligence, could you without incongruity place
obstacles to the speed of that one whose fleetness would secure you
the best means of attaining your end? And yet this is your course in
relation to industry. You forget the end aimed at, which is the
_well-being_ of the community; you set it aside; more, you sacrifice
it by a perfect _petitio principii_.