e whole amount of service must be
balanced by the value of the product. If this condition is not
complied with, the exchange is unequal; the producer gives more than he
receives."

Now, value being necessarily based upon utility, it follows that every
useless product is necessarily valueless,--that it cannot be exchanged;
and, consequently, that it cannot be given in payment for productive
services.

Then, though production may equal consumption, it never can exceed it;
for there is no real production save where there is a production of
utility, and there is no utility save where there is a possibility of
consumption. Thus, so much of every product as is rendered by
excessive abundance inconsumable, becomes useless, valueless,
unexchangeable,--consequently, unfit to be given in payment for any
thing whatever, and is no longer a product.

Consumption, on the other hand, to be legitimate,--to be true
consumption,--must be reproductive of utility; for, if it is
unproductive, the products which it destroys are cancelled
values--things produced at a pure loss; a state of things which causes
products to depreciate in value. Man has the power to destroy, but he
consumes only that which he reproduces. Under a right system of economy,
there is then an equation between production and consumption.

These points established, let us suppose a community of one thousand
families, enclosed in a territory of a given circumference, and deprived
of foreign intercourse. Let this community represent the human race,
which, scattered over the face of the earth, is really isolated. In
fact, the difference between a community and the human race being only
a numerical one, the economical results will be absolutely the same in
each case.

Suppose, then, that these thousand families, devoting themselves
exclusively to wheat-culture, are obliged to pay to one hundred
individuals, chosen from the mass, an annual revenue of ten per cent. on
their product. It is clear that, in such a case, the right of increase
is equivalent to a tax levied in advance upon social production. Of what
use is this tax?

It cannot be levied to supply the community with provisions, for between
that and farm-rent there is nothing in common; nor to pay for services
and products,--for the proprietors, laboring like the others, have
labored only for themselves. Finally, this tax is of no use to its
recipients who, having harvested wheat enough for their own consumpti