The commerce of Marseilles is pointed out to me; but if
this is to be brought about by means of taxation, I shall always show
that an equal commerce is destroyed thereby in other parts of the
country. It is said, "There is an emigrant transported into Barbary;
this is a relief to the population which remains in the country," I
answer, "How can that be, if, in transporting this emigrant to Algiers,
you also transport two or three times the capital which would have
served to maintain him in France?"[4]
The only object I have in view is to make it evident to the reader, that
in every public expense, behind the apparent benefit, there is an evil
which it is not so easy to discern. As far as in me lies, I would make
him form a habit of seeing both, and taking account of both.
When a public expense is proposed, it ought to be examined in itself,
separately from the pretended encouragement of labour which results from
it, for tins encouragement is a delusion. Whatever is done in this way
at the public expense, private expense would have done all the same;
therefore, the interest of labour is always out of the question.
It is not the object of this treatise to criticise the intrinsic merit
of the public expenditure as applied to Algeria, but I cannot withhold a
general observation. It is, that the presumption is always unfavourable
to collective expenses by way of tax.
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