or
books. Your trouble will be as fruitless as was the immense labor of the
army of Xerxes; who, as Herodotus says, with his three million soldiers,
scourged the Hellespont for twenty-four hours, as a punishment for
having broken and scattered the pontoon bridge which the great king had
thrown across it.

Tools and capital, land and labor, considered individually and
abstractly, are not, literally speaking, productive. The proprietor who
asks to be rewarded for the use of a tool, or the productive power
of his land, takes for granted, then, that which is radically false;
namely, that capital produces by its own effort,--and, in taking pay for
this imaginary product, he literally receives something for nothing.

OBJECTION.--But if the blacksmith, the wheelwright, all manufacturers in
short, have a right to the products in return for the implements which
they furnish; and if land is an implement of production,--why does not
this implement entitle its proprietor, be his claim real or imaginary,
to a portion of the products; as in the case of the manufacturers of
ploughs and wagons?

REPLY.--Here we touch the heart of the question, the mystery of
property; which we must clear up, if we would understand any thing of
the strange effects of the right of increase.

He who manufactures or repairs the farmer's tools receives the price
ONCE, either at the time of delivery, or in several payments; and when
this price is once paid to the manufacturer, the tools which he has
delivered belong to him no more. Never does he claim double payment for
the same tool, or the same job of repairs. If he annually shares in the
products of the farmer, it is owing to the fact that he annually makes
something for the farmer.

The proprietor, on the contrary, does not yield his implement; eternally
he is paid for it, eternally he keeps it.

In fact, the rent received by the proprietor is not intended to defray
the expense of maintaining and repairing the implement; this expense is
charged to the borrower, and does not concern the proprietor except as
he is interested in the preservation of the article. If he takes it upon
himself to attend to the repairs, he takes care that the money which he
expends for this purpose is repaid.

This rent does not represent the product of the implement, since of
itself the implement produces nothing; we have just proved this, and we
shall prove it more clearly still by its consequences.

Finally, this ren