Now this appears to me quite evident. Labourers (other than owners of land) who wished to procure supplies of grain, being perfectly free to apply either to Jonathan or to his neighbours, or to the proprietors of adjoining states, being in circumstances even to proceed to clear lands beyond the territory of Arkansas, it would be absolutely impossible for Jonathan to impose an unjust law upon them. The very fact that lands which have no value exist elsewhere would oppose to monopoly an invincible obstacle, and we should be landed again in the preceding hypothesis. Agricultural services are subject to the law of Universal Competition, [p268] and it is quite impossible to make them pass for more than they ‹are worth›. I add, that they are worth no more (‹cæteris paribus›) than services of any other description. As the manufacturer, after charging for his time, his anxiety, his trouble, his risk, his advances, his skill (all which things constitute human service, and are represented by value), can demand no recompense for the law of gravitation, the expansibility of steam, the assistance of which he has availed himself of,—so in the same way, Jonathan can include in the value of his grain only the sum total of the personal services, anterior or recent, and not the assistance he has derived from the laws of vegetable physiology. The equilibrium of services is not impaired so long as they are freely exchanged, the one for the other, at an agreed price; and the gifts of God, of which these services are the vehicle, given on both sides into the bargain, remain in the domain of community. It may be said, no doubt, that in point of fact the value of the soil is constantly increasing; and this is true. In proportion as population becomes more dense and the people more wealthy, and the means of communication more easy, the landed proprietor derives more advantage from his services. Is this law peculiar to him? Does the same thing not hold of all other producers? With equal labour, does not a physician, a lawyer, a singer, a painter, a day labourer, procure a greater amount of enjoyments in the nineteenth than he could in the fourth century? in Paris than in Brittany? in France than in Morocco? But is this increased enjoyment obtained at the expense of any other body? That is the point. For the rest, we shall investigate still farther this law of value (using the word metonymically) of the soil, in a subsequent part of the work, when we come to consider the theory of Ricardo. At present it is sufficient to show that Jonathan, in the case we have put, can exercise no oppression over the industrial classes, provided the exchange of services is free, and that labour can, without any legal impediment, be distributed, either in Arkansas or elsewhere, among different kinds of production. This liberty renders it impossible for the proprietors to intercept, for their own profit, the gratuitous benefits of nature.