ABSTRACT
If a customs code is considered as a whole, it is almost always found that the prohibitions given successively to various levels of industry are in direct contradiction with each other. But if every new processor concludes that all operations preceding his have only supplied him with raw material, and if he obtains new export prohibitions, it becomes difficult to foresee where the repercussions will stop that he thus brings to production. Import prohibitions are as imprudent and ruinous as export prohibitions; they have been invented to give to a nation an industry it did not yet have, and it cannot be denied that they constitute, for a beginning industry, the strongest source of encouragement. Besides, the authors must also take into account the weighty inconveniences of establishing the vexatious system of duties, of covering the frontiers with an army of custom-house officers, and with another not less dangerous army of smugglers, and thus of training the subjects to disobedience.
