“Ah, bah!” exclaimed Pierre; “you disconcert me with your suppositions. What do you want? I firmly believe that in my colony, as everywhere, there will be good and bad luck, but while the chances are equal for all, and there is no place for wrong-doing or trickery, I console myself. At least you will admit that my principle, _A chacun le produit de son travail_, will have this good result, that it will render impossible the existence of rich idle people who pass their life in doing nothing.” “Are you quite sure of that, Pierre? If any one after working ten or twenty years has produced enough property to suffice for his wants during the remainder of his days, do you pretend to hinder him from spending in his own way, in idleness if he pleases, what he had amassed by his labors?” “Certainly not, because such a one would be living on the product of his own toil. Let a man rest in the evening after having worked hard in the morning, and let him live in ease in his old age after having produced enough by the toil of his youth; I see no harm in that. I have no wish to condemn the members of my colony to forced labor in perpetuity. The only idlers that I wish to exclude are those who live without ever having worked at all or produced anything—the _rentiers_, as they call them, or idle people, who live on their income, or the interest of their money.” “Stop now, Pierre; do you admit that a man who has obtained anything by his labor has the right to do what he pleases with it?” “Assuredly.” “Here is a man who has made a loaf of bread. You admit his right to eat it all if he is hungry, or to set part of it aside if he has not appetite at the time for all of it, or even to throw some of it away, as he pleases.” “Yes, it is a consequence of my principle, _A chacun le produit de son travail_. He who creates wealth has the right to dispose of it as he pleases. But what has that to do with your argument?” “Just this. If he who produces a thing can do what he pleases with it, he can surely give it where he pleases. If, then, it suits me to make every day a loaf for you, and to give it to you; still more, if it pleases me to give to you out of my property or to bequeath to you after my death enough bread, or, what comes to the same thing, enough money to support you during your life, you will have acquired the means of walking about with your hands in your pockets like an idle gentleman. You will, in fact, have become a _rentier_.” Never,” said Pierre, “never. If I allowed such parasites to exist in my new society it would be no better than the old.”