“Things which are accessible to all,” says M. Say, “and which everyone may enjoy at pleasure, without being forced to acquire them, and without the fear of exhausting them, such as air, water, the light of the sun, etc., are the gratuitous gifts of nature, and may be denominated ‹Natural Wealth›. As these can be neither produced nor distributed, nor consumed by us, ‹they come not within the domain of Political Economy›. “The things which this science has to do with are things which we possess, and which have a recognised value. These we denominate ‹Social Wealth›, because they exist only among men united in society.” “It is the ‹Wealth of Value›,” says M. de Saint-Chamans, “‹which forms the special subject of Political Economy›, and whenever in this work I mention Wealth without being more specific, I mean that description of it.” Nearly all Economists have taken the same view. [p191] “The most striking distinction,” says Storch, “which presents itself in the outset, is, that there are certain kinds of value which are capable of appropriation, and other kinds which are not so.[49] ‹The first alone are the subject of Political Economy›, for the analysis of the others would furnish no result worthy of the attention of the statesman.” For my own part, I think that that portion of utility which, in the progress of society, ceases to be onerous and to possess value, but which does not on that account cease to be utility, and is about to fall into the domain of the ‹common› and ‹gratuitous›, is precisely that which should constantly attract the attention of the statesman and of the Economist. If it do not, in place of penetrating and comprehending the great results which affect and elevate the human race, the science will be left to deal with what is quite contingent and flexible—with what has a tendency to diminish, if not to disappear—with a relation merely; in a word, with Value. Without being aware of it, Economists are thus led to consider only labour, obstacles, and the interest of the producer; and, what is worse, they are led to confound the interest of the producer with the interest of the public,—that is to say, to mistake evil for good, and, under the guidance of the Sismondis and Saint-Chamans, to land at length in the Utopia of the socialists, or the ‹Système des Contradictions› of Proudhon.