them by the manufacture of casks. It is fortunate, say our statesmen, that this obstacle exists, since it occupies a portion of the labor of the nation, and enriches a certain number of our citizens. But here is presented to us an ingenious machine, which cuts down the oak, squares it, makes it into staves, and, gathering these together, forms them into casks. The obstacle is thus diminished, and with it the profits of the coopers. We must prevent this. Let us proscribe the machine!

To sift thoroughly this sophism, it is sufficient to remember that human labor is not an end, but a means. It is never without employment. If one obstacle is removed, it seizes another, and mankind is delivered from two obstacles by the same effort which was at first necessary for one. If the labor of coopers becomes useless, it must take another direction. But with what, it may be asked, will they be remunerated? Precisely with what they are at present remunerated. For if a certain quantity of labor becomes free from its original occupation, to be otherwise disposed of, a corresponding quantity of wages must thus also become free. To maintain that human labor can end by wanting employment, it would be necessary to prove that mankind will cease to encounter obstacles. In such a case, labor would be not only impossible, it would be superfluous. We should have nothing to do, because we should be all-powerful, and our fiat alone would satisfy at once our wants and our desires.

III.

EFFORT—RESULT.

We have seen that between our wants and their gratification many obstacles are interposed. We conquer or weaken these by the employment of our faculties. It may be said, in general terms, that industry is an effort followed by a result.

But by what do we measure our well-being? By the result of our effort, or by the effort itself? There exists always a proportion between the effort employed and the result obtained. Does progress consist in the relative increase of the second or of the first term of this proportion?

Both propositions have been sustained, and in political economy opinions are divided between them.

According to the first system, riches are the result of labor. They increase in the same ratio as the result does to the effort. Absolute perfection, of which God is the type, consists in the infinite distance between these two terms in this relation, viz., effort none, result infinite.

The second system maintains that it is the effort itself which forms the measure of, and constitutes, our riches. Progression is the increase of the proportion of the effort to the result. Its ideal extreme may be represented by the eternal and fruitless efforts of Sisyphus.[7]

The first system tends naturally to the encouragement of every thing which diminishes difficulties, and augments production,—as powerful machinery, which adds to the strength of man; the exchange of produce, which allows us to profit by the various natural agents distributed in different degrees over the surface of our globe; the intellect which discovers, experience which proves, and emulation which excites.

The second as logically inclines to every thing which can augment the difficulty and diminish the product; as privileges, monopolies, restrictions, prohibitions, suppression of machinery, sterility, etc.

It is well to remark here that the universal practice of men is always guided by the principle of the first system. Every workman, whether agriculturist, manufacturer, merchant, soldier, writer or philosopher, devotes the strength of his intellect to do better, to do more quickly, more economically,—in a word, to do more with less.

The opposite doctrine is in use with legislators, editors, statesmen, men whose business is to make experiments upon society. And even of these we may observe, that in what personally concerns themselves, they act, like every body else, upon the principle of obtaining from their labor the greatest possible quantity of useful results.

It may be supposed that I exaggerate, and that there are no true Sisyphists.

I grant that in practice the principle is not pushed to its extremest consequences. And this must always be the case when one starts upon a wrong principle, because the absurd and injurious results to which it leads, cannot but check it in its progress. For this reason, practical industry never can admit of Sisyphism. The error is too quickly followed by its punishment to remain concealed. But in the speculative industry of theorists and statesmen, a false principle may be for a long time followed up, before the complication of its consequences, only half understood, can prove its falsity; and even when all is revealed, the opposite principle is acted upon, self is contradicted, and justification sought, in the incomparably absurd modern axiom, that in political economy there is no principle universally true.

Let us see then, if the two opposite principles I have laid down do not predominate, each in its turn;—the one in practical industry, the other in industrial legislation.

I have already quoted some words of Mr. Bugeaud; but we must look on Mr. Bugeaud in two separate characters, the agriculturist and the legislator.

As agriculturist, Mr. Bugeaud makes every effort to attain the double object of sparing labor, and obtaining bread cheap. When he prefers a good plough to a bad one, when he improves the quality of his manures; when, to loosen his soil, he substitutes as much as possible the action of the atmosphere for that of the hoe or the harrow; when he calls to his aid every improvement that science and experience have revealed, he has, and can have, but one object, viz., to diminish the proportion of the effort to the result. We have indeed no other means of judging of the success of an agriculturist, or of the merits of his system, but by observing how far he has succeeded in lessening the one, while he increases the other; and as all the farmers in the world act upon this principle, we may say that all mankind are seeking, no doubt for their own advantage, to obtain at the lowest price, bread, or whatever other article of produce they may need, always diminishing the effort necessary for obtaining any given quantity thereof.

This incontestable tendency of human nature, once proved, would, one might suppose, be sufficient to point out the true principle to the legislator, and to show him how he ought to assist industry (if indeed it is any part of his business to assist it at all), for it would be absurd to say that the laws of men should operate in an inverse ratio from those of Providence.

Yet we have heard Mr. Bugeaud in his character of legislator, exclaim, "I do not understand this theory of cheapness; I would rather see bread dear, and work more abundant." And consequently the deputy from Dordogne votes in favor of legislative measures whose effect is to shackle and impede commerce, precisely because by so doing we are prevented from procuring by exchange, and at low price, what direct production can only furnish more expensively.

Now it is very evident that the system of Mr. Bugeaud the deputy, is directly opposed to that of Mr. Bugeaud the agriculturist. Were he consistent with himself, he would as legislator vote against all restriction; or else as farmer, he would practice in his fields the same principle which he proclaims in the public councils. We should then see him sowing his grain in his most sterile fields, because he would thus succeed in laboring much, to obtain little. We should see him forbidding the use of the plough, because he could, by scratching up the soil with his nails, fully gratify his double wish of "dear bread and