It is well known that here there are several lawyers, officials, 
doctors, rentiers, merchants, etc., who, under pretence of an 
Association pour le libre échange (a l’instar de Paris),? give one 
another instruction in the elements of political economy. For the last 
three days of the past week these gentlemen were swimming in bliss. 
They held their great congress of the greatest economists of all 
countries, they enjoyed the ineffable delights of hearing the truths of 
economics expounded, no longer from the mouths of a M[onsieur} 
Jules Bartels, a Le Hardy de Beaulieu, a Faider or Fader? or other 
unknown celebrities, no, but from the mouths of the leading masters 
of the science. They were enraptured, enchanted, divinely happy, 
transported to the seventh heaven. 

Less enraptured, however, were the masters of the science 
themselves. They had come prepared for an easy battle, and the 
battle was very hard for them; they believed that they had only to 
come, see and conquer, and they conquered only in the voting, 
whereas they were decisively defeated in the discussion on the 
second day, and only by means of intrigues did they avoid a new and 
still more decisive defeat on the third day. Even if their divinelv 
happy public noticed nothing of all this, they themselves could not 
but feel it painfully. 

We attended the congress. From the very beginning we had no 
particular respect for these masters of science, whose principal 

learning consists in continually contradicting one another and 
themselves with the greatest equanimity. But we confess that this 
congress robbed us of the last tiny vestige of respect we might have 
had for those with whose writings and speeches we were less well 
acquainted. We confess that we were astounded to have to hear such 
platitudes and insipidities, such universally familiar trivialities. We 
confess that we had not expected these men of science to be 
incapable of telling us anything more valuable than the first ele- 
ments of economics, which might well be new for children of seven 
or eight, but which must be presumed to be common knowl- 
edge for adults, and in particular for members of Associations pour 
le libre échange. However, the gentlemen knew their public better 
than we. 

The Englishmen comported themselves best at the congress. They 
had the greatest interest in the matter; they have the opening up of 
the continental markets at heart; for them the question of free trade 
is a matter of life and death. They showed this clearly enough, too; 
they, who nowhere speak anything but their English, condescended, 
in the interest of their beloved free trade,* to speak French. One 
could clearly see how powerfully the matter affected their purses. 
The Frenchmen performed in the manner of pure ideologists and 
scientific dreamers. They did not even distinguish themselves by any 
French esprit or originality of conception. But at least they spoke 
good French, and that is something one seldom hears in Brus- 
sels—The Dutchmen were tedious and professorial. The Dane, 
Herr David, was quite incomprehensible. The Belgians for the most 
part played the role of passive listeners, or at any rate never 
transcended the limits of their national industry—contrefagon.» And 
finally the Germans, with the exception of Weerth, who, however, 
spoke more as an Englishman than a German, formed the partie 
honteuse of the whole congress. The palm would have fittingly 
been theirs, if a Belgian had not after all conquered it for his 
nation. 

First day. General discussion. Belgium opened it with M. Faider, 
who, in his entire behaviour, in his deportment and language, 
brought before us the whole of that strutting foppishness which gives 
itself such repulsive airs in the streets and promenades of Brussels. 
M. Faider peddled nothing but empty phrases, and hardly raised 
himself to the most elementary economic truths. Let us not detain 

ourselves with him for as long as he detained us with his outpourings 
of dishwater soup. 

M. Wolowski, Professor etc. in Paris, mounted the rostrum. A 
smug, rhetorical, superficial, Frenchified Polish Jew, who has 
managed to combine in himself the bad qualities of all three nations 
with none of the good. M. Wolowski whipped up huge enthusiasm by 
means of a previously arranged, sophistically surprising speech. 
Unfortunately, however, this speech was not M. Wolowski’s proper- 
ty, it was patched together from the Sophismes économiques of M. 
Frédéric Bastiat. This was naturally something the Brussels claqueurs 
could not know.—M. Wolowski regretted that a German protectionist 
would be opposing him and that the French protectionists had 
allowed the initiative to be taken from them in this way. For this he 
was punished. When concluding his speech M. Wolowski became 
comical in the highest degree. He came to speak of the working 
classes, to whom he promised golden mountains from free trade, 
and in whose name he made a hypocritically furious attack on the 
protectionists. Yes! He exclaimed, working himself up into a 
rhetorical falsetto, yes, these protectionists, “ces gens qui n’ont rien la 
qui batie pour les classes laborieuses’*—here he pounded himself on his 
round little belly—these protectionists are the people who prevent us 
from fulfilling our most heartfelt wishes and help the workers out of 
their poverty! Unfortunately, his whole fury was too artificial to 
make any impression on the few workers who were present in the 
gallery. 

Herr Rittinghausen from Cologne, the representative of the 
German fatherland, read out an infinitely tedious essay in defence of 
the protective system. He spoke as a true German. With the most 
pitiful grimaces in the world he lamented Germany's sorry condition 
and its industrial impotence, and he downright beseeched the 
Englishmen that they might, after all, allow Germany to protect itself 
against their superior competition. Why, he said, gentlemen, you 
wish to give us freedom of trade, you wish us to compete freely with 
all nations, when we still have guilds almost everywhere, when we 
may not even compete freely among ourselves? 

M. Blanqui, Professor, Deputy, and Progressive Conservative from 
Paris, author of a wretched economic history> and other inferior 
books, principal pillar of the so-called Ecole frangaise of economics, 
answered Herr Rittinghausen. A well-fed, stand-offish man with a 
face in which hypocritical severity, unctuousness and philanthropy 

are repulsively blended. Knight of the Legion of Honour, cela va sans 
dire.* M. Blanqui spoke with the greatest possible volubility and the 
least possible wit, and this, naturally, was just the thing to impress the 
Brussels Free Traders. What he said is moreover ten times less 
significant than what he has previously written. Let us not detain 
ourselves with these empty phrases. 

Then came Dr. Bowring, radical Member of Parliament and heir 
to the wisdom of Bentham, whose skeleton he owns.'"* He is himself 
a kind of Bentham skeleton. It was noticeable that the elections were 
over; Mr. Bowring no longer found it necessary to make concessions 
to the people, but spoke instead in the manner of a genuine 
bourgeois. He spoke fluent and correct French, with a strong English 
accent, and emphasised the effect of his words with the most 
vehement and droll gesticulations that we recall ever having seen. 
Mr. Bowring, the representative of the highly interested English 
bourgeoisie, declared that at last the time had come for all egoism to 
be cast aside and for each to establish his own prosperity on that of 
the others. Naturally the old economic “truth” cropped up that one 
can do more business with a millionaire and therefore make more 
out of him than out of the possessor of a mere thousand 
talers.—Finally, there was yet another inspired hymn to cet envoyé du 
ciel,» the smuggler. 

After him spoke M. Duchateau, President of the Valenciennes 
Association pour la protection du travail national,‘ defending, as a 
result of M. Wolowski’s provocation, the French protective system. 
He repeated, with great calm and lucidity, the well-known principles 
of the protectionists, in the quite correct opinion that these were 
sufficient to make the whole congress bitter for the free-trade 
gentlemen. He was undoubtedly the best speaker of the day. 

Mr. Ewart, Member of Parliament, answered him, in almost 
incomprehensible French, with the stalest and most platitudinous 
shibboleths of the Anti-Corn-Law League, long since known by heart 
to almost every street urchin in England. 

We mention M. Campan, a delegate from the Free Trade Society 
of Bordeaux, merely for the sake of the record. What he said was so 
insignificant that we can no longer recall a single word of it. 

Colonel Thompson, Member of Parliament, reduces the question 
to a simple story—in a certain town there exist cab-drivers who make 
a journey for 1'/, francs. Now an omnibus is introduced, which 

makes the same trip for 1 franc. Thus the cab-driver would say that 
'/, franc per trip is withdrawn from trade. But is that true? Where 
does the !/, franc go to? Aha! the passenger will buy something else 
for it, perhaps pies, cakes or the like. Thus the half franc enters trade 
after all, and the consumer gets more satisfaction from it. Here we 
have the case of the protectionists, who defend the cab-driver, and 
that of the Free Traders, who wish to introduce the omnibus. The 
only thing that the good Colonel Thompson forgets is that 
competition soon eliminates this advantage of the consumer, and 
takes from him for one thing exactly what he gains on another. 

The final speaker was-M. Dunoyer, a Counsellor of State in Paris, 
author of several books, among others De la liberté du travail, in which 
he accuses the workers of producing far too many children. He 
spoke with the vehemence proper to a Counsellor of State, and 
moreover very insignificantly. M. Dunoyer is a well-nourished ventrwv 
with a bald skull and the red, forward-thrusting face of a dog, he is 
evidently accustomed to brook no contradictions, but is by no means as 
terrifying as he would like to be. M. Blanqui said of his cheap invective 
against the proletariat: “M. Dunoyer dit aux peuples les mémes vérités au- 
stéres qu’au dernier siécle les Voltaire et Rousseau disaient aux princes.”” 

With this the general discussion was closed. We shall report on the 
discussion of the individual questions on the second and third days in 
the next issue.