The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Arthur Goddard, Preface to the English-language Edition
• Henry Hazlitt, Introduction
• First Series, Chapter 1: Abundance and Scarcity
• First Series, Chapter 2: Obstacle and Cause
• First Series, Chapter 3: Effort and Result
• First Series, Chapter 4: Equalizing the Conditions of Production
• First Series, Chapter 5: Our Products Are Burdened With Taxes
• First Series, Chapter 6: The Balance of Trade
• First Series, Chapter 7: A Petition
• First Series, Chapter 8: Differential Tariffs
• First Series, Chapter 9: An Immense Discovery!
• First Series, Chapter 10: Reciprocity
• First Series, Chapter 11: Money Prices
• First Series, Chapter 12: Does Protectionism Raise Wage Rates?
• First Series, Chapter 13: Theory and Practice
• First Series, Chapter 14: Conflict of Principles
• First Series, Chapter 15: Reciprocity Again
• First Series, Chapter 16: Obstructed Rivers As Advocates For the Protectionists
• First Series, Chapter 17: A Negative Railroad
• First Series, Chapter 18: There Are No Absolute Principles
• First Series, Chapter 19: National Independence
• First Series, Chapter 20: Human Vs. Mechanical Labor and Domestic Vs. Foreign Labor
• First Series, Chapter 21: Raw Materials
• First Series, Chapter 22: Metaphors
• First Series, Chapter 23: Conclusion
• Second Series, Chapter 1: The Physiology of Plunder 1*
• Second Series, Chapter 2: Two Systems of Ethics
• Second Series, Chapter 3: The Two Hatchets
• Second Series, Chapter 4: Subordinate Labor Council
• Second Series, Chapter 5: High Prices and Low Prices 17*
• Second Series, Chapter 6: To Artisans and Laborers 23*
• Second Series, Chapter 7: A Chinese Tale
• Second Series, Chapter 8: Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc 33* 34*
• Second Series, Chapter 9: Robbery By Subsidy 36*
• Second Series, Chapter 10: The Tax Collector
• Second Series, Chapter 11: The Utopian 53*
• Second Series, Chapter 12: Salt, the Postal Service, and the Tariff 65*
• Second Series, Chapter 13: Protectionism, Or the Three Aldermen a Demonstration In Four Scenes Scene 1.
• Second Series, Chapter 14: Something Else 91*
• Second Series, Chapter 15: The Little Arsenal of the Freetrader 96*
• Second Series, Chapter 16: The Right Hand and the Left 101* (a Report to the King)
• Second Series, Chapter 17: Domination Through Industrial Superiority 108*

First Series, Chapter 16

Obstructed Rivers as
Advocates for the Protectionists

Some years ago I was in Madrid, where I attended a session of the Cortes.69* The subject under discussion was a treaty with Portugal for improving navigation on the Douro.70* One of the deputies rose and said: "If the Douro is canalized, shipping rates for cargoes traveling on it will be reduced. Portuguese grain will consequently sell at a lower price in the markets of Castile and will provide formidable competition for our domestic industry. I oppose the project, unless our cabinet ministers agree to raise the customs duty so as to redress the balance." The assembly found this argument unanswerable.

Three months later I was in Lisbon. The same question was up for discussion in the Senate. A great hidalgo71* said: "Mr. President, the project is absurd. At great cost you have set guards along the banks of the Douro to prevent an invasion of Portugal by Castilian grain, and at the same time you propose, again at great cost, to facilitate that invasion. It is an inconsistency to which I cannot assent. Let us leave the Douro to our children in just the same condition as our forefathers left it to us."

Later, when the question of improving the Garonne was being discussed, I remembered the arguments of these Iberian orators, and I said to myself: If the deputies from Toulouse were as good economists as those from Palencia, and the representatives from Bordeaux as skillful logicians as those from Oporto,72* certainly they would leave the Garonne

To drowse in the soothing murmur of its overflowing wave.73*

For the canalization of the Garonne would favor, to the injury of Bordeaux, its invasion by products from Toulouse, and, to the detriment of Toulouse, its inundation by products from Bordeaux.

[69.][The Spanish legislature.—TRANSLATOR.]

[70.][A river rising in Spain and flowing through Portugal into the Atlantic.—TRANSLATOR.]

[71.][A member of the inferior nobility.—TRANSLATOR.]

[72.][Toulouse is a French city on the Garonne well upstream from Bordeaux. Palencia is a Spanish city on a tributary of the Douro; and Oporto, a Portuguese city at the mouth of the Douro.—TRANSLATOR.]

[73.][A modified version of the personification of the Rhine in the Fourth Epistle of the French poet Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636-1711).—TRANSLATOR.]