FELONIOUS one; he cannot cease to waste
and destroy without ceasing to be a proprietor.

But this is only the least of the evils which property engenders.

Society has to maintain some idle people, whether or no. It will always
have the blind, the maimed, the insane, and the idiotic. It can easily
support a few sluggards. At this point, the impossibilities thicken and
become complicated.

THIRD PROPOSITION.

Property is impossible, because, with a given capital, Production is
proportional to labor, not to property.

To pay a farm-rent of one hundred at the rate of ten per cent. of the
product, the product must be one thousand; that the product may be one
thousand, a force of one thousand laborers is needed. It follows,
that in granting a furlough, as we have just done, to our one hundred
laborer-proprietors, all of whom had an equal right to lead the life
of men of income,--we have placed ourselves in a position where we are
unable to pay their revenues. In fact, the productive power, which at
first was one thousand, being now but nine hundred, the production is
also reduced to nine hundred, one-tenth of which is ninety. Either,
then, ten proprietors out of the one hundred cannot be paid,--provided
the remaining ninety are to get the whole amount of their farm-rent,--or
else all must consent to a decrease of ten per cent. For it is not for
the laborer, who has been wanting in no particular, who has produced as
in the past, to suffer by the withdrawal of the proprietor. The
latter must take the consequences of his own idleness. But, then, the
proprietor becomes poorer for the very reason that he wishes to enjoy;
by exercising his right, he loses it; so that property seems to decrease
and vanish in proportion as we try to lay hold of it,--the more we
pursue it, the more it eludes our grasp. What sort of a right is that
which is governed by numerical relations, and which an arithmetical
calculation can destroy?

The laborer-proprietor received, first, as laborer, 0.9 in wages;
second, as proprietor, 1 in farm-rent. He said to himself, "My farm-rent
is sufficient; I have enough and to spare without my labor." And thus
it is that the income upon which he calculated gets diminished by
one-tenth,--he at the same time not even suspecting the cause of this
diminution. By taking part in the production, he was himself the creator
of this tenth which has vanished; and while he thought to labor only for
himself, he unwi