“In the midst of forests and savannas, the savage enjoys four natural rights, [p279] namely, the rights of Hunting, of Fishing, of Gathering the fruits, of Pasturing. Such is the primitive form of property in land. “In all civilized societies, the working-classes, the Prolétaires, who inherit nothing and possess nothing, are simply despoiled of these rights. We cannot say that the primitive Right has changed its form, for it no longer exists. The form and the substance have alike disappeared. “Now in what Form can such Rights be reconciled with the conditions of an industrial Society? The answer is plain: “In the savage state, in order to avail himself of his Right, man is ‹obliged to act›. The ‹labour› of Fishing, of Hunting, of Gathering, of Pasturing are the conditions of the exercise of his Right. The primitive Right, then, is a Right ‹to engage in these employments›. “Very well, let an industrial Society, which has appropriated the land, and taken away from man the power of exercising freely and at will his four natural Rights, let this society cede to the individual, in compensation for those Rights, of which it had despoiled him, the ‹Right to Employment›. On this principle, rightly understood and applied, the individual has no longer any reason to complain. “The condition ‹sine quâ non›, then, of the Legitimacy of Property is, that Society should concede to the Prolétaire—the man who has no property—the ‹Right to Employment›; and, in exchange for a given exertion of activity, ‹assure› him of means of subsistence, at least as adequate as such exercise ‹could› have procured him in the primitive state.” I cannot, without being guilty of tiresome repetition, discuss this question with M. Considérant in all its bearings. If I demonstrate, that what he terms ‹uncreated capital› is no capital at all; that what he terms the ‹additional value› of the soil, is not an additional value, but the ‹total value›; he must acknowledge that his argument has fallen to pieces, and, with it, all his complaints of the way in which mankind have judged it proper to live since the days of Adam. But this controversy would oblige me to repeat all that I have already said upon the essentially and indelibly gratuitous character of natural agents. I shall only remark, that if M. Considérant speaks in behalf of the non-proprietary class, he is so very accommodating that they may think themselves betrayed. What! proprietors have usurped the soil, and all the miracles of vegetation which it displays! they have usurped the sun, the rain, the dew, oxygen, hydrogen, and azote, so far at least as these co-operate in the production of agricultural products—and you ask them to assure to the man who has no property, as a compensation, at least as much of the means of subsistence, in exchange for a given exertion of activity, as that exertion could have procured him in the primitive and savage state!