Let us, according to our usual practice, take a very simple case by way of illustration. Nature labours, and has done so probably from all eternity, to invest spring water with those qualities which fit it for quenching our thirst, and which qualities, so far as we are concerned, constitute its ‹utility›. It is assuredly not my work, for it has been elaborated without my assistance, and quite unknown to me. In this respect I can truly say that water is to me the gratuitous gift of God. What is my own ‹proper› work is the effort which I have made in going to fetch my supply of water for the day. Of what do I become proprietor by that act? As regards myself, I am proprietor, if I may use the expression, of all the utility with which nature has invested this water. I can turn it to my own use in any way I think proper. It is for that purpose that I have taken the trouble to fetch it. To dispute my right would be to say that, although men cannot live without [p239] drinking, they have no right to drink the water which they have procured by their own exertions. I do not believe that the Communists, although they go very far, will go the length of asserting this, and even under the ‹régime› of Cabet, the lambs of Icaria would be allowed to quench their thirst in the limpid stream. But in relation to other men, who are free to do as I do, I am not, and cannot be, proprietor except of what is called, by metonymy, ‹the value of the water›, that is to say, the value of the ‹service› which I render in procuring it. My right to drink this water being granted, it is impossible to contest my right to give it away. And the right of the other contracting party to go to the spring, as I did, and draw water for himself, being admitted, it is equally impossible to contest his right to accept the water which I have fetched. If the one has a right to give, and the other, in consideration of a payment voluntarily bargained for, to accept, this water, the first is then the ‹proprietor› in relation to the second. It is sad to write upon Political Economy at a time when we cannot advance a step without having recourse to demonstrations so puerile. But on what basis is the arrangement we have supposed come to? It is essential to know this, in order to appreciate the whole social bearing of the word Property,—a word which sounds so ill in the ears of democratic sentimentalism.