That, on the one hand, the true meaning of the word ‹value› is what I have already demonstrated it to be (Chapter V.); and that, on the other, men are never, and never can be, as regards each other, proprietors of anything but ‹value›, is evident as well from reasoning as from experience. From reasoning—for why should I go to purchase from a man, by means of an effort, what, without any effort, I can obtain from nature? From universal experience, which is too weighty to be despised in this question,—nothing being more fitted to give us confidence in a theory than the rational and practical acquiescence of men of all ages and all countries. Now I say that universal consent ratifies the sense which I give here to the word Property. When a public officer makes an inventory after a death, or by authority of justice, of when a merchant, manufacturer, or farmer does the same thing for his own satisfaction, or when it is done by officials under a bankruptcy—what do they inscribe on the stamped rolls as each object presents itself? Is it its ‹utility›, its intrinsic merit? No, it is its ‹value›, that is to say, the equivalent of the trouble which, any purchaser taken at random would have in procuring himself a similar commodity. Does a jury named by a judge to report upon a work or a commodity inquire whether it be more useful than another work or commodity? Do they take into consideration the enjoyments which may be thereby procured? Do they esteem a hammer more than a china jar, because the hammer is admirably adapted to make the law of gravitation available to its possessor? or a glass of water more than a diamond, because the former is capable of rendering more substantial service? or the work of Say more than the work of Fourier, because from the former we can draw more rational enjoyment and more solid instruction? No, they ‹value›, they set down the ‹value›, in rigorous conformity, observe, with my definition, or, to say better, it is my definition which is in conformity with their practice. They take into account, not the natural advantages, or the gratuitous utility, attached to each commodity, but the exertion which each acquirer should have to make for himself, or to require another to make for him, in order to procure it. They never think of the exertion which nature has made, if I may hazard the expression, but upon the exertion which the purchaser would have had to make. And when the operation is terminated, when the public is told the sum total of Value which is carried to the balance-sheet, they exclaim with one voice, Here is the wealth which is available to the «Proprietor». As property includes nothing but value, and as value expresses only a relation, it follows that property itself is only a relation. [p228]