the mass of society. You thus only create interminable complications.
If you can prove that the increase of price resulting from protection,
falls upon the foreign producer, I grant something specious in your
argument. But if it be true that the American people paid the tax
before the passing of the protective duty, and afterwards that it has
paid not only the tax but the protective duty also, truly I do not
perceive wherein it has profited.

But I go much further, and maintain that the more oppressive our taxes
are, the more anxiously ought we to open our ports and frontiers to
foreign nations, less burdened than ourselves. And why? _In order that
we may_ SHARE WITH THEM, _as much as possible, the burden
which we bear._ Is it not an incontestable maxim in political economy,
that taxes must, in the end, fall upon the consumer? _The greater then
our commerce, the greater the portion which will be reimbursed to us,
of taxes incorporated in the produce which we will have sold to
foreign consumers; whilst we on our part will have made to them only a
lesser reimbursement, because (according to our hypothesis) their
produce is less taxed than ours._




CHAPTER VI.

BALANCE OF TRADE.


Our adversaries have adopted a system of tactics, which
embarrasses us not a little. Do we prove our doctrine? They admit the