It would no longer be the same thing if Jonathan and his brethren, availing themselves of their legislative powers, were to proscribe or shackle the liberty of trade,—were they to decree, for example, that not a grain of foreign corn should be allowed to enter the territory of Arkansas. In that case the value of services exchanged between proprietors and non-proprietors would no longer be regulated by justice. The one party could no longer control the [p269] pretensions of the other. Such a legislative measure would be as iniquitous as the one to which we have just alluded. The effect would be quite the same as if Jonathan, having carried to market a sack of corn, which in other circumstances would have sold for fifteen francs, should present a pistol at the purchaser’s head, and say, Give me three francs more, or I will blow out your brains. This (to give the thing its right name) is ‹extortion›. ‹Brutal› or ‹legal›, the character of the transaction is the same. Brutal, as in the case of the pistol, it violates property; legal, as in the case of the prohibition, it still violates property, and repudiates, moreover, the very principle upon which property is founded. The exclusive subject of property, as we have seen, is value, and Value is the appreciation of two services freely and voluntarily exchanged. It is impossible, then, to conceive anything more directly antagonistic to the very principle of property, than that which, in the name of right, destroys the equivalence of services. It may not be out of place to add, that laws of this description are iniquitous and injurious, whatever may be the opinions entertained by those who impose them, or by those who are oppressed by their operation. In certain countries we find the working-classes standing up for these restrictions, because they enrich the proprietors. They do not perceive that it is at their expense, and I know from experience that it is not always safe to tell them so. Strange! that people should listen willingly to sectaries who preach Communism, which is slavery; for when a man is no longer master of his own services, he is a slave;—and that they should look askance at those who are always and everywhere the defenders of Liberty, which is the Community of the gifts of God. We now come to the third hypothesis, which assumes that all the land capable of cultivation throughout the world has passed into the domain of individual appropriation. We have still to do with two classes—those who possess land—and those who do not. Will the first not oppress the second? and will the latter not be always obliged to give more labour in exchange for the same amount of subsistence? I notice this objection merely for argument’s sake, for hundreds of years must elapse before this hypothesis can become a reality. Everything forewarns us, however, that the time must at last come when the exactions of proprietors can no longer be met by the words, There are other lands to clear.