Tyranny

Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George, a themed collection of excerpts from the writings of Henry George (with links to sources)

WE should keep our own market for our own producers, seems by many to be regarded as the same kind of a proposition as, We should keep our own pasture for our own cows; whereas, in truth, it is such a proposition as, We should keep our own appetites for our own cookery, or, We should keep our own transportation for our own legs. — Protection or Free Trade, Chapter 11: The Home Market and Home Trade - econlib

THE protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny — the plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. The slave owners justified slavery as protecting the slaves. British misrule in Ireland is upheld on the ground that it is for the protection of the Irish. But, whether under a monarchy or under a republic, is there an instance in the history of the world in which the "protection" of the laboring masses has not meant their oppression? The protection that those who have got the law-making power into their hands have given labor, has at best always been the protection that man gives to cattle — he protects them that he may use and eat them. — Protection or Free Trade — Chapter 2, Clearing Ground   econlib

IT is never intimated that the land-owner or the capitalist needs protection. They, it is always assumed, can take care of themselves. It is only the poor workingman who must be protected. What is labor that it should so need protection? Is not labor the creator of capital, the producer of all wealth? Is it not the men who labor that feed and clothe all others? Is it not true, as has been said, that the three great orders of society are "workingmen, beggarmen, and thieves?" How, then, does it come that workingmen alone need protection? — Protection or Free Trade — Chapter 2, Clearing Ground   econlib -|- abridged

WHAT should we think of human laws framed for the government of a country which should compel each family to keep constantly on their guard against every other family, to expend a large part of their time and labor in preventing exchanges with their neighbors, and to seek their own prosperity by opposing the natural efforts of other families to become prosperous? Yet the protective theory implies that laws such as these have been imposed by the Creator upon the families of men who tenant this earth. It implies that by virtue of social laws, as immutable as the physical laws, each nation must stand jealously on guard against every other nation and erect artificial obstacles to national intercourse.— Protection or Free Trade, Chapter 4: Protection as a Universal Need  econlib

TO attempt to make a nation prosperous by preventing it from buying from other nations is as absurd as it would be to attempt to make a man prosperous by preventing him from buying from other men. How this operates in the case of the individual we can see from that practice which, since its application in the Irish land agitation, has come to be called "boycotting." Captain Boycott, upon whom has been thrust the unenviable fame of having his name turned into a verb, was in fact "protected." He had a protective tariff of the most efficient kind built around him by a neighborhood decree more effective than act of Parliament. No one would sell him labor, no one would sell him milk or bread or meat or any service or commodity whatever. But instead of growing prosperous, this much-protected man had to fly from a place where his own market was thus reserved for his own productions. What protectionists ask us to do to ourselves in reserving our home market for home producers, is in kind what the Land Leaguers did to Captain Boycott. They ask us to boycott ourselves. — Protection or Free Trade, Chapter 11: The Home Market and Home Trade - econlib

WHEN not caused by artificial obstacles, any tendency in trade to take a certain course is proof that it ought to take that course, and restrictions are harmful because they restrict, and in proportion as they restrict. To assert that the way for men to become healthy and strong is for them to force into their stomachs what nature tries to reject, to regulate the play of their lungs by bandages, or to control the circulation of their blood by ligatures, would be not a whit more absurd than to assert that the way for nations to become rich is for them to restrict the natural tendency to trade. — Protection or Free Trade, Chapter 6: Trade - econlib

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