a profound impression. Yes, certainly, and this impression remains, for M. Say has argued more in its favor than destroyed it.
Let us listen to M. de Saint-Chamans:3
It was scarcely before the middle of the last century, the eighteenth century in which all subjects and every principle without exception were subject to discussion by writers, that these suppliers of speculative ideas, applied to everything without being applicable to anything, began to write on the subject of political economy. Before that, there was an unwritten system of political economy that was practiced by governments. Colbert, it was said, was its inventor, and it was the rule for all the states in Europe. The strangest thing about it is that it is still so, in spite of anathema and scorn and in spite of the discoveries of the modern school. This system, which our writers called the mercantile system, consisted in … obstructing, through prohibition or import duties, foreign products that might have ruined our factories by competing with them.… This system was declared by economist writers of all schools4 to be inept, absurd, and likely to impoverish any country; it has been banished from all books, reduced to taking refuge in the practice of all peoples, and we cannot conceive that, with regard to the wealth of nations, governments have not drawn their counsel from scholars
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rather than from the long-standing experience of a system, etc.… Above all we cannot conceive that the French government … is determined to resist the progress of enlightenment with regard to political economy and to retain the practice of old errors that all of our economist writers have pointed out.… But this is dwelling too much on this mercantile system which has only facts in its favor and which is supported by no writer!5
Hearing this, will some people not say that when economists call for each person to have the free disposal of his property, they have given birth, like the followers of Fourier, to a new social order, fanciful, strange, a sort of phalanstery that is unprecedented in the annals of the human race? It seems to me that if there is anything in all this that has been invented, contingent, it is not freedom, but protection; it is not the ability to trade but indeed the customs service, which is applied to upsetting artificially the natural order of income.
But it is not a question of comparing or judging the two systems. The question for the moment is to know which of the two is based on experience.
Thus, you monopolists claim that facts are on your side and that we have only theories to support us.
You even flatter yourselves that this long series of public acts, this old experience of Europe’s that you invoke, appeared imposing to M. Say, and I agree that he has not refuted you with his customary sagacity. For my part, I do not yield the domain of fact to you, for you have in your support only exceptional and restrained facts, while we have in opposition the universal facts, the free and voluntary acts of all men.
What are we saying and what do you say?
We say:
“It is better to purchase from others what it would cost more to produce ourselves.”
You, on the other hand, say:
“It is better to make things ourselves even though it costs less to purchase them from others.”
Well, sirs, leaving theory, demonstration, and reasoning, all things that appear to nauseate you, to one side, which of these two statements has the approval of universal practice on its side?
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Just pay a visit to fields, workshops, factories, and stores, look upward, downward, and around you, scrutinize what is being done in your own households, observe your own everyday acts, and tell us what principle is governing all these laborers, workers, entrepreneurs, and merchants. Tell us what your personal practice is.
Do farmers make their own clothes? Do tailors produce the grain they consume? Does your housekeeper not stop making bread at home as soon as she finds it cheaper to purchase it from the baker? Do you mend your own boots instead of writing, in order not to pay tribute to the cobbler? Does the entire economy of society not rest on the separation of occupations, the division of labor, in a word, on exchange? And is trade anything other than this calculation that makes us all, whatever we are, cease direct production when indirect acquisition saves us both time and trouble?
You are thus not men of practice, since you cannot show us a single man anywhere in the world who acts in accordance with your principle.
But, you will say, we have never heard of our principle being used as a rule for individual relations. We fully understand that this would disrupt social links and force men to live like snails, each in his shell. We limit ourselves to claiming that it dominates de facto the relations established between groups in the human family.
As it happens, this assertion is also false. Families, communes, cantons, départements, and provinces are so many groups which all, without exception, reject in practice your principle and have never even given it a thought. All of these obtain by means of exchange what would cost them more to obtain by production. Every nation would do likewise if you did not prevent it by force.
It is therefore we who are the men of practice and experience, for in order to combat the prohibition that you have specially placed on some international trade, we base ourselves on the practice and experience of every individual and every group of individuals whose acts are voluntary and thus can be quoted as evidence. You, however, begin by coercing and preventing and then you seize upon acts that are forced or prohibited to claim: “You see, practice justifies us!”
You rise up against our theory and even against theory in general. But when you posit a principle that is antagonistic to ours, did you ever by chance imagine that you were not indulging in theory? No, no, cross that out of your papers. You are indulging in theory, just like us, but between yours and ours there is this difference:
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Our theory consists only in observing universal facts, universal sentiments, universal calculations and procedures, and at the very most classifying them and coordinating them in order to understand them better.
It is so little opposed to practice that it is nothing other than practice explained. We watch the actions of men driven by the instinct of self-preservation and progress and what they do freely and voluntarily; it is exactly this that we call political economy or the economics of society. We constantly repeat that each man is in practice an excellent economist, producing or trading depending on whether there is more to gain from trading or producing. Each one through experience teaches himself this science, or rather, science is merely this same experience scrupulously observed and methodically set out.
You, however, make theory in the disparaging meaning of the word. You imagine and invent procedures that are not sanctioned by the practice of any living man under the heavens and then you call coercion and prohibition to your assistance. You have indeed to resort to force since, as you want men to produce what it is more advantageous to purchase, you want them to abandon an advantage and you require them to act in accordance with a doctrine that implies a contradiction even on its own terms.
Thus, I challenge you to extend, even in theory, this doctrine that you admit would be absurd in individual relationships, to transactions between families, communes, départements, or provinces. On your own admission, it is applicable only to international relations.
And this is why you
