says Say; "but the land also is an implement whose
service must be paid for, then...."

I admit that the land is an implement; but who made it? Did the
proprietor? Did he--by the efficacious virtue of the right of property,
by this MORAL QUALITY infused into the soil--endow it with vigor and
fertility? Exactly there lies the monopoly of the proprietor; in the
fact that, though he did not make the implement, he asks pay for its
use. When the Creator shall present himself and claim farm-rent, we will
consider the matter with him; or even when the proprietor--his pretended
representative--shall exhibit his power-of-attorney.

"The proprietor's service," adds Say, "is easy, I admit."

It is a frank confession.

"But we cannot disregard it. Without property, one farmer would contend
with another for the possession of a field without a proprietor, and the
field would remain uncultivated...."

Then the proprietor's business is to reconcile farmers by robbing
them. O logic! O justice! O the marvellous wisdom of economists! The
proprietor, if they are right, is like Perrin-Dandin who, when summoned
by two travellers to settle a dispute about an oyster, opened it,
gobbled it, and said to them:--

"The Court awards you each a shell."

Could any thing worse be said of property?

Will Say tell us why the same farmers, who, if there were no
proprietors, would contend with each other for possession of the
soil, do not contend to-day with the proprietors for this possession?
Obviously, because they think them legitimate possessors, and because
their respect for even an imaginary right exceeds their avarice. I
proved, in Chapter II., that possession is sufficient, without property,
to maintain social order. Would it be more difficult, then, to reconcile
possessors without masters than tenants controlled by proprietors? Would
laboring men, who respect--much to their own detriment--the pretended
rights of the idler, violate the natural rights of the producer and the
manufacturer? What! if the husbandman forfeited his right to the land as
soon as he ceased to occupy it, would he become more covetous? And would
the impossibility of demanding increase, of taxing another's labor, be a
source of quarrels and law-suits? The economists use singular logic.
But we are not yet through. Admit that the proprietor is the legitimate
master of the land.

"The land is an instrument of production," they say. That is true. But
whe