This reasoning is not strictly logical. Water, air, and light are COMMON things, not because they are INEXHAUSTIBLE, but because they are INDISPENSABLE; and so indispensable that for that very reason Nature has created them in quantities almost infinite, in order that their plentifulness might prevent their appropriation. Likewise the land is indispensable to our existence,--consequently a common thing, consequently insusceptible of appropriation; but land is much scarcer than the other elements, therefore its use must be regulated, not for the profit of a few, but in the interest and for the security of all. In a word, equality of rights is proved by equality of needs. Now, equality of rights, in the case of a commodity which is limited in amount, can be realized only by equality of possession. An agrarian law underlies M. Ch. Comte's arguments. From whatever point we view this question of property--provided we go to the bottom of it--we reach equality. I will not insist farther on the distinction between things which can, and things which cannot, be appropriated. On this point, economists and legists talk worse than nonsense. The Civil Code, after having defined property, says nothing about susceptibility of appropriation; and if it speaks of things which are in THE MARKET, it always does so without enumerating or describing them. However, light is not wanting. There are some few maxims such as these: _Ad reges potestas omnium pertinet, ad singulos proprietas; Omnia rex imperio possidet, singula dominio_. Social sovereignty opposed to private property!--might not that be called a prophecy of equality, a republican oracle? Examples crowd upon us: once the possessions of the church, the estates of the crown, the fiefs of the nobility were inalienable and imprescriptible. If, instead of abolishing this privilege, the Constituent had extended it to every individual; if it had declared that the right of labor, like liberty, can never be forfeited,--at that moment the revolution would have been consummated, and we could now devote ourselves to improvement in other directions. % 2.--Universal Consent no Justification of Property. In the extract from Say, quoted above, it is not clear whether the author means to base the right of property on the stationary character of the soil, or on the consent which he thinks all men have granted to this appropriation. His language is such that it may mean either of these things, or both at once; which entitles us to assume that the author intended to say, "The right of property resulting originally from the exercise of the will, the stability of the soil permitted it to be applied to the land, and universal consent has since sanctioned this application."