Putting English and French on one side, I will try to find out in a general way, if, even though by superiority in one branch of industry, one nation has crushed out similar industrial pursuits in another one, this nation has made a step toward supremacy, and that one toward dependence; in other words, if both do not gain by the operation, and if the conquered do not gain the most by it.
If we see in any product but a cause of labor, it is certain that the alarm of the protectionists is well founded.

If we consider iron, for instance, only in connection with the masters of forges, it might be feared that the competition of a country where iron was a gratuitous gift of nature, would extinguish the furnaces of another country, where ore and fuel were scarce.
But is this a complete view of the subject?
Are there relations only between iron and those who make it?
Has it none with those who use it?
Is its definite and only destination to be produced?
And if it is useful, not on account of the labor which it causes, but on account of the qualities which it possesses, and the numerous services for which its hardness and malleability fit it, does it not follow that foreigners cannot reduce its price, even so far as to prevent its production among us, without doing us more good, under the last statement of the case, than it injures us, under the first?
Please consider well that there are many things which foreigners, owing to the natural advantages which surround them, hinder us from producing directly, and in regard to which we are placed, _in reality_, in the hypothetical position which we examined relative to iron.

We produce at home neither tea, coffee, gold nor silver.

Does it follow that our labor, as a whole, is thereby diminished?
No; only to create the equivalent of these things, to acquire them by way of exchange, we detach from our general labor a _smaller_ portion than we would require to produce them ourselves.

More remains to us to use for other things.
We are so much the richer and stronger.