If we had here to do with utility as connected with human ‹services›, I should not contest this principle. At most I could only observe that it is superfluous, as being self-evident. It is very clear, as matter of fact, that no one consents to remunerate a ‹service›, unless right or wrong, he judges it to be useful. The word service includes the idea of ‹utility›—so much so that it is nothing else than a literal reproduction of the Latin word ‹uti›; in French, ‹servir›. But, unfortunately, it is not in this sense that Say understands it. He discovers the principle of value not only in human services, rendered by means of material things, but in the ‹useful› qualities put by nature into the things themselves. In this way he places himself once more under the yoke of materiality, and is very far, we are obliged to confess, from clearing away the mist in which the English Economists had enveloped the question of Property. Before discussing Say’s principle on its own merits, I must explain its logical bearing, in order to avoid the reproach of landing myself and the reader in an idle discussion. We cannot doubt that the Utility of which Say speaks is that which resides in material objects. If corn, timber, coal, broad cloth, have value, it is because these products possess qualities which render them proper for our use, fit to satisfy the want we experience of food, fuel, and clothing. Hence, as nature has created Utility, it is inferred that she has created also Value—a fatal confusion of ideas, out of which the enemies of property have forged a terrible weapon. Take a commodity, corn for example. I purchase it at the ‹Halle au Blé› for sixteen francs. A great portion of these sixteen francs is distributed—in infinite ramifications, and an inextricable complication of advances and reimbursements—among all the men, [p162] here or abroad, who have co-operated in furnishing this corn. Part goes to the labourer, the sower, the reaper, the thrasher, the carter,—part to the blacksmith and plough-wright, who have prepared the agricultural implements. Thus far all are agreed, whether Economists or Communists. But I perceive that four out of the sixteen francs go to the proprietor of the soil, and I have a good right to ask if that man, like the others, has rendered me a Service to entitle him incontestably, like them, to remuneration.