nd, since their rights balance each
other, the difference between them is zero.

_Scholium_.--If farm-rent is only a fraction of the supposed product of
the proprietor, whatever the amount and value of the property, the same
is true in the case of a large number of small and distinct proprietors.
For, although one man may use the property of each separately, he cannot
use the property of all at the same time.

To sum up. The right of increase, which can exist only within very
narrow limits, defined by the laws of production, is annihilated by
the right of occupancy. Now, without the right of increase, there is no
property. Then property is impossible.

FOURTH PROPOSITION.

Property is impossible, because it is Homicide.

If the right of increase could be subjected to the laws of reason and
justice, it would be reduced to an indemnity or reward whose MAXIMUM
never could exceed, for a single laborer, a certain fraction of that
which he is capable of producing. This we have just shown. But why
should the right of increase--let us not fear to call it by its right
name, the right of robbery--be governed by reason, with which it has
nothing in common? The proprietor is not content with the increase
allotted him by good sense and the nature of things: he demands ten
times, a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times as much. By
his own labor, his property would yield him a product equal only to
one; and he demands of society, no longer a right proportional to his
productive capacity, but a per capita tax. He taxes his fellows in
proportion to their strength, their number, and their industry. A son
is born to a farmer. "Good!" says the proprietor; "one more chance
for increase!" By what process has farm-rent been thus changed into
a poll-tax? Why have our jurists and our theologians failed, with all
their shrewdness, to check the extension of the right of increase?

The proprietor, having estimated from his own productive capacity the
number of laborers which his property will accommodate, divides it
into as many portions, and says: "Each one shall yield me revenue."
To increase his income, he has only to divide his property. Instead
of reckoning the interest due him on his labor, he reckons it on his
capital; and, by this substitution, the same property, which in the
hands of its owner is capable of yielding only one, is worth to him
ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million. Consequently, he has only to hold
h