Nor is this all. The capital which has been advanced, and the interest of which is spread over the crop of successive years, is so far from increasing the price of the produce, and forming a burden on the consumers, that the latter acquire agricultural products cheaper in proportion as this capital is augmented, that is to say, in proportion as the value of the soil is increased. I have no doubt that this assertion will be thought paradoxical and tainted with exaggerated optimism, so much have people been accustomed to regard the value of land as a calamity, if not a piece of injustice. For my own part, I affirm, that it is not enough to say that the value of the soil has been created at no one’s expense; it is not enough to say that it injures no one; we should rather say that it benefits everybody. It is not only legitimate, but advantageous, even to those who possess no property. We have here, in fact, the phenomenon of our previous illustration reproduced. We remarked that from the moment the water-carrier invented the barrow and the wheel, the purchaser of the water had to pay for two kinds of labour: 1st, The labour employed in making the barrow and the wheel, or rather the interest of the capital, and an annual contribution to a sinking fund to replace that capital when worn out; 2d, The direct labour which the water-carrier must still perform. But it is equally true that these two kinds of labour united do not equal in amount the labour which had to be undergone before the invention. Why? because a portion of the work has now been handed over to the gratuitous forces of nature. It is, indeed, in consequence of this diminution of human labour that the invention has been called forth and adopted. All this takes place in exactly the same way in the case of land and the production of corn. As often as an agriculturist expends capital in permanent ameliorations, it is certain that the successive crops are burdened with the interest of that capital. But it is [p277] equally certain that the other species of labour—rude, unskilled, present, direct labour—is rendered unnecessary in a still greater proportion; so that each crop is obtained by the proprietor, and consequently by the consumer, on easier terms, on less onerous conditions—the proper action of capital consisting precisely in substituting natural and gratuitous co-operation for human labour which must be paid for.