If I could be understood by M.Reybaud, I would say to him: Take your stand in favor of competition, you will be wrong; take your stand against competition, still you will be wrong: which signifies that you will always be right.After that, if, convinced that you have not erred either in the first edition of your book or in the fourth, you should succeed in formulating your sentiment in an intelligible manner, I will look upon you as an economist of as great genius as Turgot and A.Smith; but I warn you that then you will resemble the latter, of whom you doubtless know little; you will be a believer in equality.Do you accept the wager?
To better prepare M.Reybaud for this sort of reconciliation with himself, let us show him first that this versatility of judgment, for which anybody else in my place would reproach him with insulting bitterness, is a treason, not on the part of the writer, but on the part of the facts of which he has made himself the interpreter.
In March, 1844, M.Reybaud published on oleaginous seeds -- a subject which interested the city of Marseilles, his birthplace -- an article in which he took vigorous ground in favor of free competition and the oil of sesame.According to the facts gathered by the author, which seem authentic, sesame would yield from forty-five to forty-six per cent of oil, while the poppy and the colza yield only twenty-five to thirty per cent, and the olive simply twenty to twenty-two.Sesame, for this reason, is disliked by the northern manufacturers, who have asked and obtained its prohibition.
Nevertheless the English are on the watch, ready to take possession of this valuable branch of commerce.Let them prohibit the seed, says M.Reybaud, the oil will reach us mixed, in soap, or in some other way: we shall have lost the profit of manufacture.Moreover, the interest of our marine service requires the protection of this trade; it is a matter of no less than forty thousand casks of seed, which implies a maritime outfit of three hundred vessels and three thousand sailors.
These facts are conclusive: forty-five per cent.of oil instead of twenty-
five; in quality superior to all the oils of France; reduction in the price of an article of prime necessity; a saving to consumers; three hundred ships, three thousand sailors, -- such would be the value to us of liberty of commerce.Therefore, long live competition and sesame!
Then, in order to better assure these brilliant results, M.Reybaud, impelled by his patriotism and going straight in pursuit of his idea, observes -- very judiciously in our opinion -- that the government should abstain henceforth from all treaties of reciprocity in the matter of transportation:
he asks that French vessels may carry the imports as well as the exports of French commerce.
"What we call reciprocity," he says, "is a pure fiction, the advantage of which is reaped by whichever of the parties can furnish navigation at the smallest expense.Now, as in France the elements of navigation, such as the purchase of the ships, the wages of the crews, and the costs of outfit, rise to an excessive figure, higher than in any of the other maritime nations, it follows that every reciprocity treaty is equivalent on our part to a treaty of abdication, and that, instead of agreeing to an act of mutual convenience, we resign ourselves, knowingly or involuntarily, to a sacrifice."
And M.Reybaud then points out the disastrous consequences of reciprocity:
France consumes five hundred thousand bales of cotton, and the Americans land them on our wharves; she uses enormous quantities of coal, and the English do the carrying thereof; the Swedes and Norwegians deliver to us themselves their iron and wood; the Dutch, their cheeses; the Russians, their hemp and wheat; the Genoese, their rice; the Spaniards, their oils;
the Sicilians, their sulphur; the Greeks and Armenians, all the commodities of the Mediterranean and Black seas."
Evidently such a state of things is intolerable, for it ends in rendering our merchant marine useless.Let us hasten back, then, into our ship yards, from which the cheapness of foreign navigation tends to exclude us.Let us close our doors to foreign vessels, or at least let us burden them with a heavy tax.Therefore, down with competition and rival marines!
Does M.Reybaud begin to understand that his economico-socialistic oscillations are much more innocent than he would have believed? What gratitude he owes me for having quieted his conscience, which perhaps was becoming alarmed!
The reciprocity of which M.Reybaud so bitterly complains is only a form of commercial liberty.Grant full and entire liberty of trade, and our flag is driven from the surface of the seas, as our oils would be from the continent.Therefore we shall pay dearer for our oil, if we insist on making it ourselves; dearer for our colonial products, if we wish to carry them ourselves.To secure cheapness it would be necessary, after having abandoned our oils, to abandon our marine: as well abandon straightway our cloths, our linens, our calicoes, our iron products, and then, as an isolated industry necessarily costs too much, our wines, our grains, our forage! Whichever course you may choose, privilege or liberty, you arrive at the impossible, at the absurd.
Undoubtedly there exists a principle of reconciliation; but, unless it be utterly despotic, it must be derived from a law superior to liberty itself: now, it is this law which no one has yet defined, and which I ask of the economists, if they really are masters of their science.For I cannot consider him a savant who, with the greatest sincerity and all the wit in the world, preaches by turns, fifteen lines apart, liberty and monopoly.
Is it not immediately and intuitively evident that COMPETITION DESTROYS
