There, the first blacksmith, nail-smith,
farrier, machinist, or locksmith, who presents himself to do his own
business and not mine, I will kill, to teach him how to live." At the
moment of starting, M. Prohibant made a few reflections which calmed
down his warlike ardour a little. He said to himself, "In the first
place, it is not absolutely impossible that the purchasers of iron, my
countrymen and enemies, should take the thing ill, and, instead of
letting me kill them, should kill me instead; and then, even were I to
call out all my servants, we should not be able to defend the passages.
In short, this proceeding would cost me very dear, much more so than the
result would be worth."
M. Prohibant was on the point of resigning himself to his sad fate, that
of being only as free as the rest of the world, when a ray of light
darted across his brain. He recollected that at Paris there is a great
manufactory of laws. "What is a law?" said he to himself. "It is a
measure to which, when once it is decreed, be it good or bad, everybody
is bound to conform. For the execution of the same a public force is
organised, and to constitute the said public force, men and money are
drawn from the whole nation. If, then, I could only get the great
Parisian manufactory to pass a little law, 'Belgian iron is
prohibited,' I should obtain the following results:--The Government
would replace the few valets that I was going to send to the frontier by
20,000 of the sons of those refractory blacksmiths, farriers, artizans,
machinists, locksmiths, nail-smiths, and labourers.
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