And all this, in spite of the fact that the Free Traders not only freely admit, as we have said, that the trade between nations depends on precisely the same laws and principles as the trade between individuals in the same nation, but also see that for success, the trade between individuals requires an eternal vigilance as to detail,-, and that wealth is not a commodity like water or air which will equally wash in and out, flooding the coffers of all alike who freely bargain in it wherever it finds an opening, and rising to the same level in all; but on the contrary has the trick of becoming a private property, a sacred possession, which individuals will clutch to their bosoms, and hold and guard as tenaciously as their own bodily persons; and further that men will use it as much to draw wealth away from others by trade competition, as to make fair and equal complementary exchanges with them: - at any rate until the millennium comes and the unification of all nations as but families of one nation, sharing each with each and with all, is no longer a dream.

If, therefore, we bear in mind that each nation is an independent political unit desirous at all hazards of maintaining its own dignity, independence, and self-respect, and that it can only do this by means of its own wealth and not that of another; and further, that the total wealth-producing power of a nation consists only of its own instruments of production or fixed capital, and that it can draw on the wealth of the world (in its imports) only to the value of the yield of these instruments of production (plus the yield of their invested savings), and not, as the Free Traders imagine, by a blank cheque to an unlimited amount, as Bastiat's grotesque illustration of the gratuitous bounty of the sun, which has been finally selected by them as at once the most complete, picturesque, and compendious expression of their doctrine, involves; - if we consider all this, and reflect further that when the instruments of production of one nation engage in trade with the instruments of production of another, - or, what is the same thing, the products of the one with the products of the other, - it is only the complementary products of each that rise to the same level, as it were, on both sides of the exchange fence, inasmuch as an equal value of wealth has been given and received on both sides; whereas the competitive products of each, - i.e., those in the same line of goods and made by the same kind of instruments, - must fight until the one extinguishes, the other by underselling it, and by the same act not only closes down the machinery engaged, but causes the loss for all time of those powers of Nature which fed these machines and made each of them do gratuitously the work of hundreds or thousands of men; - if we consider all this, I say, and reflect that the transfer of these great instruments of production to conquering rivals is precisely the same as a transfer of rich and fertile provinces and territories to foreign nations in war, whereby the conquered nation can never again 'commandeer' the world to send it imports to the value of the wealth asset it has lost, we see how absurd it is to imagine that there is a common reservoir of wealth in the world, which if nations will only keep their sluices open and their pipes unobstructed by tariffs, will not only flush and fertilize all these nations alike, but the exports and imports of each nation as well; and how true it is, on the contrary, that each nation has its own separate reservoir, as represented by its own natural resources and instruments of production, and that these, which take shape in its foreign trade as its exports, can only command the wealth of the world in imports to an amount equal to these exports, - and to no more.

So that if you took two nations in trade relations with each other, it is evident that the wealth from each of their separate reservoirs would rise only to the same height in each in those complementary products which yield a mutual advantage in exchange, but that the competitive products of each (when sufficient time was given them to test their relative strengths) would go over to one or the other side as the case might be, and would raise the height of wealth in the one column to a corresponding extent over the height of wealth in the other. And with result what? That the one which had now captured the instruments of production of the other and added them to its own, would immediately use its greater power over the other to squeeze it, precisely as we the great Trusts established in the States of the American Union doing to-day, viz., by forcing their goods, in which they now have a monopoly, on the defeated States at prices which would be monopoly prices were it not for the fear of driving the public to the use of cheaper substitutes, - and which are actually monopoly prices in the case, say, of the Meat Trust, where substitutes are not easily found; and which, in any case, are always fixed at that point above the former competitive price level which will give the largest possible profit on the whole amount of capital engaged; following in this the practice of boys at school, where the big boys and bullies will always force an exchange more to their own advantage on the smaller boys, than they can get out of boys of their own age and strength.