idered as
consumers. This is an admirable law, alike in its cause and its effects,
and he who shall succeed in making it well understood, will have a right
to say, "I have not, in my passage through the world, forgotten to pay
my tribute to society."

Every circumstance which favors the work of production is of course
hailed with joy by the producer, for its _immediate effect_ is to enable
him to render greater services to the community, and to exact from it a
greater remuneration. Every circumstance which injures production, must
equally be the source of uneasiness to him; for its _immediate effect_
is to diminish his services, and consequently his remuneration. This is
a fortunate and necessary law of nature. The immediate good or evil of
favorable or unfavorable circumstances must fall upon the producer, in
order to influence him invincibly to seek the one and to avoid the
other.

Again, when a workman succeeds in his labor, the _immediate_ benefit of
this success is received by him. This again is necessary, to determine
him to devote his attention to it. It is also just; because it is just
that an effort crowned with success should bring its own reward.

But these effects, good and bad, although permanent in themselves, are
not so as regards the producer. If they had been so, a principle of
progressive and consequently infinite _inequality_ would have been
introduced among men. This good, and this evil, both therefore pass on,
to become absorbed in the general destinies of humanity.

How does this come about? I will try to make it understood by some
examples.

Let us go back to the thirteenth century. Men who gave themselves up to
the business of copying, received for this service _a remuneration
regulated by the general rate of profits_. Among them is found one, who
seeks and finds the means of multiplying rapidly copies of the same
work. He invents printing. The first effect of this is, that the
individual is enriched, while many more are impoverished. At the first
view, wonderful as the discovery is, one hesitates in deciding whether
it is not more injurious than useful. It seems to have introduced into
the world, as I said above, an element of infinite inequality.
Guttenberg makes large profits by this invention, and perfects the
invention by the profits, until all other copyists are ruined. As for
the public,--the consumer,--it gains but little, for Guttenberg takes
care to lower the price of books only j