It is impossible for the reader not to perceive that these authors lead us to a negation of Property, and lead us to it very logically, in setting out with the proposition that the proprietor is paid for the gifts of God. Here we have rent held up as an injustice established by Law under the pressure of necessity, and which laws may modify or destroy under the pressure of another necessity. The Communists have never gone farther than this. «Senior.»—“The instruments of production are labour and natural agents. Natural agents having been appropriated, proprietors ‹charge for their use› under the form of Rent, which is the recompense of no sacrifice whatever, and is received by those who have neither laboured nor put by, but who merely hold out their hands to accept the offerings of the rest of the community.” After giving this heavy blow to property, Mr Senior explains that one portion of Rent resolves itself into the Interest of Capital, and then adds: “The surplus is taken by ‹the proprietor of the natural agent›, and is his reward, ‹not for having laboured or abstained›, but simply for not having withheld what he was able to withhold; for having permitted the gifts of nature to be accepted.” You will observe that this is still the same theory. The proprietor is supposed to interpose himself between the hungry mouth and the food which God has vouchsafed under the condition of [p254] labour. The proprietor who has co-operated in the work of production, charges first of all for his co-operation, which is just, and then he makes a second charge for the work of nature, for the use of natural agents, for the indestructible powers of the soil, which is iniquitous. This theory of the English Economists, which has been farther developed by Mill, Malthus, and others, we are sorry to find making its way also on the Continent. “When a franc’s worth of seed,” says «Scialoja», “produces a hundred francs’ worth of corn, this augmentation of ‹value› is mainly due to the soil.” This is to confound Utility with value; He might just as well have said, when water which costs only one sou at ten yards’ distance from the spring, costs ten sous at 100 yards, this augmentation of value is due in part to the intervention of nature. «Florez Estrada.»—“Rent is that portion of the agricultural product which remains ‹after all the costs of production have been defrayed›.” Then the proprietor receives something for nothing. The English Economists all set out by announcing the principle that ‹value comes from labour›, and they are guilty of inconsistency when they afterwards attribute value to the inherent ‹powers of the soil›. The French Economists in general make value to consist in utility; but, confounding gratuitous with onerous utility, they have not the less assisted in shaking the foundation of Property.