st
as public prosperity increases. "Incomes" (I like to quote you, sir,
because it is impossible to give too good an authority for these
elementary principles of economy, and because I cannot express them
better myself), "incomes," you have said, "tend to disappear as capital
increases. He who possesses to-day an income of twenty thousand pounds
is not nearly as rich as he who possessed the same amount fifty years
ago. The time is coming when all property will be a burden to the idle,
and will necessarily pass into the hands of the able and industrious.
[44]..."

In order to live as a proprietor, or to consume without producing, it is
necessary, then, to live upon the labor of another; in other words,
it is necessary to kill the laborer. It is upon this principle that
proprietors of those varieties of capital which are of primary necessity
increase their farm-rents as fast as industry develops, much more
careful of their privileges in that respect, than those economists who,
in order to strengthen property, advocate a reduction of interest.
But the crime is unavailing: labor and production increase; soon the
proprietor will be forced to labor, and then property is lost.

The proprietor is a man who, having absolute control of an instrument
of production, claims the right to enjoy the product of the instrument
without using it himself. To this end he lends it; and we have just
seen that from this loan the laborer derives a power of exchange, which
sooner or later will destroy the right of increase. In the first place,
the proprietor is obliged to allow the laborer a portion of the product,
for without it the laborer could not live. Soon the latter, through
the development of his industry, finds a means of regaining the greater
portion of that which he gives to the proprietor; so that at last, the
objects of enjoyment increasing continually, while the income of the
idler remains the same, the proprietor, having exhausted his resources,
begins to think of going to work himself. Then the victory of the
producer is certain. Labor commences to tip the balance towards its own
side, and commerce leads to equilibrium.

Man's instinct cannot err; as, in liberty, exchange of functions leads
inevitably to equality among men, so commerce--or exchange of products,
which is identical with exchange of functions--is a new cause of
equality. As long as the proprietor does not labor, however small his
income, he enjoys a privilege; t