our hands? It is, as it were, the witness and proof that you
have, at some time or other, performed some labour, which, instead of
profiting by it, you have bestowed upon society in the person of your
client. This crown testifies that you have performed a _service_ for
society, and, moreover, it shows the value of it. It bears witness,
besides, that you have not yet obtained from society a _real_ equivalent
service, to which you have a right. To place you in a condition to
exercise this right, at the time and in the manner you please, society,
by means of your client, has given you an acknowledgment, a title, a
privilege from the republic, a counter, a crown in fact, which only
differs from executive titles by bearing its value in itself; and if you
are able to read with your mind's eye the inscriptions stamped upon it
you will distinctly decipher these words:--"_Pay the bearer a service
equivalent to what he has rendered to society, the value received being
shown, proved, and measured by that which is represented by me._" Now,
you give up your crown to me. Either my title to it is gratuitous, or it
is a claim. If you give it me as payment for a service, the following is
the result:--your account with society for real satisfactions is
regulated, balanced, and closed. You had rendered it a service for a
crown, you now restore the crown for a service; as far as you are
concerned, you are clear. As for me, I am just in the position in which
you were just now. It is I who am now in advance to society for the
service which I have just rendered it in your person. I am become its
creditor for the value of the labour which I have performed for you, and
which I might devote to myself. It is into my hands, then, that the
title of this credit--the proof of this social debt--ought to pass. You
cannot say that I am any richer; if I am entitled to receive, it is
because I have given. Still less can you say that society is a crown
richer, because one of its members has a crown more, and another has one
less. For if you let me have this crown gratis, it is certain that I
shall be so much the richer, but you will be so much the poorer for it;
and the social fortune, taken in a mass, will have undergone no change,
because as I have already said, this fortune consists in real services,
in effective satisfactions, in useful things. You were a creditor to
society, you made me a substitute to your rights, and it signifies
little to society, wh