Value is determined by a bargain between two contracting parties. In making that bargain, each has his own views. You offer to sell me corn. What matters it to me the time and pains it may have cost you to produce it? What I am concerned about is the time and pains it would have cost me to procure it from another quarter. The knowledge you have of my situation may render you more or less exacting; the knowledge I have of yours may render me more or less anxious to make the purchase. There is no necessary measure, then, of the recompense which you are to derive from your labour. That depends upon the circumstances, and the value which these circumstances confer upon the two services which we are desirous to exchange. By-and-by we shall call attention to an external force called Competition, whose mission is to regulate values, and render them more and more proportional to efforts. Still this proportion is not of the essence of value, seeing that the proportion is established under the pressure of a contingent fact. Keeping this in view, I maintain that the value of land arises, fluctuates, and is determined, like that of gold, iron, water, the [p283] lawyer’s advice, the physician’s consultation, the singer’s or dancer’s performance, the artist’s picture—in short, like all other values; that it is subject to no exceptional laws; that it constitutes a property the same in origin, the same in nature, and as legitimate, as any other property. But it does not at all follow, as you must now see, that, of two exertions of labour applied to the soil, one should not be much better remunerated than the other. Let us revert again to that industry, the most simple of all, and the best fitted to show us the delicate point which separates the onerous labour of man from the gratuitous co-operation of nature. I allude to the humble industry of the water-carrier. A man procures and brings home a barrel of water. Does he become possessed of a value necessarily proportionate to his labour? In that case, the value would be independent of the service the water may render. Nay more, it would be fixed; for the labour, once over, is no longer susceptible of increase or diminution. Well, the day after he procures and brings home this barrel of water, it may lose its value, if, for example, it has rained during the night. In that case every one is provided—the water can render no service, and is no longer wanted. In economic language, it has ceased to be in demand. On the other hand, it may acquire considerable value, if extraordinary wants, unforeseen and pressing, come to manifest themselves.