Page:Tales in Political Economy by Millicent Garrett Fawcett.djvu/22

 ble with their capital and labour if they had cultivated the spices, for which their land was particularly well suited. They threw away the advantages which nature had freely bestowed upon them, and by one of the most extraordinary cases of protection in the world imprisoned their capital and labour in an industry where it was absolutely unproductive of wealth to themselves or anyone else. And this in a modified degree is what happens in every case where a native industry is protected against foreign competition. Home-grown beet-root sugar, in France, is protected against the competition of West Indian cane sugar by a heavy import duty. If the duty were removed, West Indian sugar would undersell the French sugar. The effect of the duty is that all people who live in France pay more dearly for their sugar than they otherwise would; and that a certain amount of French capital and labour is driven into an industry in which it can only be made profitable by taxing those who consume the commodity produced by it. Nature gives more help to the production of sugar in the West