But they do not destroy the reasons
which have led to the adoption of these monopolies, and which are
generally deduced from the need of security, authenticity, and
regularity in business, as well as from the interests of commerce
and the public health. The object, you say, is not attained. My
God! I know it: leave the butcher's trade to competition, and you
will eat carrion; establish a monopoly in the butcher's trade,
and you will eat carrion. That is the only fruit you can hope
for from your monopoly and patent legislation.
Abuses! cry the protective economists. Establish over commerce a
supervisory police, make trade-marks obligatory, punish the
adulteration of products, etc.
In the path upon which civilization has entered, whichever way we
turn, we always end, then, either in the despotism of monopoly,
and consequently the oppression of consumers, or else in the
annihilation of privilege by the action of the police, which is
to go backwards in economy and dissolve society by destroying
liberty. Marvellous thing! in this system of free industry,
abuses, like lice, being generated by their own remedies, if the
legislator should try to suppress all offences, be on the watch
against all frauds, and secure persons, property, and the public
welfare against any attack, going from reform to reform, he would
finally so multiply the non-productive functions that the entire
nation would be engaged in them, and that at last there would be
nobody left to produce.
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