5. Countries least favored by nature (countries not yet cleared of forests, for example) are those which profit most by mutual exchange. The protectionists may suppose me in a paradoxical humor, for I go further still.  I say, and I sincerely believe, that if any two countries are placed in unequal circumstances as to advantages of production, the one of the two which is the less favored by nature, will gain more by freedom of commerce.  To prove this, I will be obliged to turn somewhat aside from the form of reasoning which belongs to this work.  I will do so, however; first, because the question in discussion turns upon this point; and again, because it will give me the opportunity of exhibiting a law of political economy of the highest importance, and which, well understood, seems to me to be destined to lead back to this science all those sects which, in our days, are seeking in the land of chimeras that social harmony which they have been unable to discover in nature.  I speak of the law of consumption, which the majority of political economists may well be reproached with having too much neglected.

Consumption is the end, the final cause of all the phenomena of political economy, and, consequently, in it is found their final solution.

No effect, whether favorable or unfavorable, can be vested permanently in the producer.  His advantages and disadvantages, derived from his relations to nature and to society, both pass gradually from him; and by an almost insensible tendency are absorbed and fused into the community at large—­the community considered as consumers.  This is an admirable law, alike in its cause and its effects; and he who shall succeed in making it well understood, will have a right to say, “I have not, in my passage through the world, forgotten to pay my tribute to society.”

Every circumstance which favors the work of production is of course hailed with joy by the producer, for its immediate effect is to enable him to render greater services to the community, and to exact from it a greater remuneration.  Every circumstance which injures production, must equally be the source of uneasiness to him; for its immediate effect is to diminish his services, and consequently his remuneration.  This is a fortunate and necessary law of nature.  The immediate good or evil of favorable or unfavorable circumstances must fall upon the producer, in order to influence him invisibly to seek the one and to avoid the other.

Again:  when an inventor succeeds in his labor-saving machine, the immediate benefit of this success is received by him.  This again is necessary, to determine him to devote his attention to it.  It is also just; because it is just that an effort crowned with success should bring its own reward.

But these effects, good and bad, although permanent in themselves, are not so as regards the producer.  If they had been so, a principle of progressive and consequently infinite inequality would have been introduced among men.  This good, and this evil, both therefore pass on, to become absorbed in the general destinies of humanity.