… is from page 761 of John Stuart Mill’s 1841 “Petition for Free Trade,” as this petition is reprinted in Essays on Economics and Society, 1850-1879, which is volume 5 of The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006):
That protecting duties, or, in other words, duties imposed on foreign commodities, not to raise a revenue, but to keep up the price of similar articles produced at home, are a tax on the whole community for the pecuniary profit of some class or classes, and are therefore an abuse of the power of legislation.
That the argument frequently urged in defence of such duties, namely, that they encourage production and favour the national industry, is, in the opinion of your petitioners, not only unfounded, but the very reverse of the truth, inasmuch as employments which would not be carried on without an artificial high price, are by this very circumstance proved to be employments yielding of themselves a less return than that which the same amount of labour and capital would realise if left to take its natural course. A smaller production is by this means obtained through the sacrifice of a greater, and thus, in addition to what these restrictions take from one portion of the community to bestow upon another, they cause a further and commonly a still greater loss of national wealth, without benefit to any one.
