If property is incompatible with the right of labour, and if the right of labour is founded upon the same principle as Protection, what conclusion can we draw, but that Protection is itself incompatible with property? In geometry, we regard as an incontestable truth, that two things equal to a third are equal to each other.
Now it happens that an eminent orator, M. Billault, has thought it right to support at the tribune the right of labour. This was not easy, in the face of the declaration which escaped from M. Proudhon. M. Billault understood very well, that to make the state interfere to weigh in the balance the fortunes, and equalize the conditions, of men, tends towards Communism; and what did he say to induce the National Assembly to violate property and the principles thereof? He told you with all simplicity that he asked you to do what, in effect, you already do by your tariff. His aim does not go beyond a somewhat more extended application of the doctrines now admitted by you, and applied in practice. Here are his words:--
'Look at our custom-house tariff? By their prohibitions, their differential taxes, their premiums, their combinations of all kinds, it is society which aids, which supports, which retards or advances all the combinations of national labour; it not only holds the balance between French labour, which it protects, and foreign labour, but on the soil of France itself it is perpetually interfering between the different interests of the country. Listen to the perpetual complaints made by one class against another: see, for example, those who employ iron in their processes, complaining of the protection given to French iron over foreign iron; those who employ flax or cotton thread, protesting against the protection granted to French thread, in opposition to the introduction of foreign thread; and it is thus with all the others. Society (it ought to be said, the government) finds itself then forcibly mixed up with all these struggles, with all the perplexities connected with the regulation of labour; it is always actively interfering between them, directly and indirectly, and from the moment that the question of custom duties is broached, you will see that you will be, in spite of yourselves, forced to acknowledge the fact and its cause, and to take on yourself the protection of every interest.