I pray the reader not to forget that this question is of grave importance at the present moment. Hitherto it has been neglected or glossed over by Economists, as a question of mere curiosity. The legitimacy of individual appropriation was not formerly contested, but this is no longer the case. Theories which have obtained but too much success have created doubts in the minds of our best thinkers on the institution of property. And upon what do the authors of these theories found their complaints? Why, exactly upon the assertion contained in the objection which I have just explained—upon the fact, unfortunately admitted by all schools, that the soil, by reason of its fertility, possesses an inherent value communicated to it by nature and not by human means. Now value is not transferred gratuitously. The very word excludes the idea of gratuitousness. We say to the proprietor, then—you demand from me a value which is the fruit of my labour, and you offer me in exchange a value which is not the fruit of your labour, or of any labour, but of the liberality of nature. Be assured that this would be a fearful complaint were it well founded. It did not originate with Messieurs Considérant and Proudhon. We find it in the works of Smith, of Ricardo, of Senior, of all the Economists without exception, not as a theory [p282] merely, but as a subject of complaint. These authors have not only attributed to the soil an extra-human value, they have boldly deduced the consequence, and branded landed property as a privilege, a monopoly, a usurpation. No doubt, after thus branding it, they have defended it on the plea of ‹necessity›. But what does such a defence amount to, but an error of reasoning which the Communist logicians have lost no time in rectifying? It is not, then, to indulge an unhappy love for subtilties that I enter on this delicate subject. I should have wished to save both the reader and myself the ennui which even now I feel hovering over the conclusion of this chapter. The answer to the objection now under consideration is to be found in the theory of Value, explained in the ‹fifth› chapter of this work. I there said that value does not essentially imply labour; still less is it necessarily proportionate to labour. I have shown that the foundation of value is not so much the ‹pains taken› by the person who transfers it as the ‹pains saved› to the person who receives it; and it is for that reason that I have made it to reside in something which embraces these two elements—in ‹service›. I have said that a person may render a great service with very little effort, or that with a great effort one may render a very trifling service. The sole result is, that labour does not obtain necessarily a remuneration which is always in proportion to its intensity, in the case either of man in an isolated condition, or of man in the social state.