It is true that, among the elementary parts of the value of the loaf, our book-keeper will find one which he will have difficulty in connecting with a ‹service›, at least a service implying effort. He will find of the fourpence, of which the price is made up, a part goes to the proprietor of the soil, to the man who has the keeping of the laboratory. That small portion of the value of the loaf constitutes what is called the ‹rent of land›; and, misled by the form of expression, by the metonymy which again makes its appearance here, our calculator may be tempted to think that this portion is allotted to natural agents—to the soil itself. I maintain that, if he exercises sufficient skill, he will find that this is still the price of real ‹services›—services of the same kind as all the others. This will be demonstrated with the clearest evidence when we come to treat of ‹landed property›. At present, I shall only remark, that I am not concerned here with property, but with ‹value›. I don’t inquire whether all services are real and legitimate, or whether men do not sometimes succeed in getting paid for services which they do not render. The world, alas! is full of such injustices, but ‹rent› must not be included among them. All that I have to demonstrate here is, that the pretended value of ‹commodities› is only the value of ‹services›, real or imaginary, received and rendered in connexion with them—that value does not reside in the commodities themselves, and is no more to be found in the loaf than in the diamond, the water, or the air—that no part of the remuneration goes to nature—that it proceeds from the final consumer of the article, and is distributed exclusively among men,—and that it would not be accorded to them by him for any other reason than that they have rendered him services, unless, indeed, in the case of violence or fraud. Two men agree that ice is a good thing in summer, and coal a [p144] still better thing in winter. They supply two of our wants—the one cools, the other warms us. We do not fail to remark that the Utility of these commodities consists in certain ‹material› properties suitably adapted to our ‹material› organs. We remark, moreover, that among those properties, which physics and chemistry might enumerate, we do not find ‹value›, or anything like it. How, then, have we come to regard value as inherent in matter and material?