d if socialism
proposed to _punish_ the present owners; but the question presents
itself in a different form. Society places the expropriation of the
owners of land on the ground of "public utility," and the individual
right must give way before the rights of society. Just as it does at
present, leaving out of consideration for the moment the question of
indemnity. To reply to the second argument, in the first place, it must
not be forgotten that the improvements are not exclusively the work of
the personal exertions of the owners. They represent, at first, an
enormous accumulation of fatigue and blood that many generations of
laborers have left upon the soil, in order to bring it to its present
state of cultivation ... and all of this for the profit of others; there
is also this fact to be remembered that society itself, the social life,
has been a great factor in producing these improvements (or increased
values), since public roads, railways, the use of machinery in
agriculture, etc., have been the means of bestowing freely upon the
landowners large unearned increments that have greatly swollen the
prices of their lands.

Why, finally, if we are to consider the amount and the character of this
indemnity, should this indemnity be _total_ and _absolute_? Why, even
under present conditions, if a landowner, for various reasons, such as
cherished memories connected with the land, values it at a sentimental
price, he would be forced under the right of eminent domain to accept
the market value, without any extra payment for his affection or
sentiment. It would be just the same in the case of the collective
appropriation which would, moreover, be facilitated by the progressive
concentration of the land in the hands of a few great landed
proprietors. If we were to assure these proprietors, _for the term of
the natural lives_, a comfortable and tranquil life, it would suffice to
make the indemnity meet all the requirements of the most rigorous
equity.

[54] LORIA, _La Teoria economica della constituzione politica_, Turin,
1886. p. 141. The second edition of this work has appeared in French,
considerably enlarged: _Les bases economiques de la constitution
sociale_, Paris, 1893. (This has also been translated into
English.--Tr.)

This law of apparent retrogression alone overthrows the greater part of
the far too superficial criticisms that Guyot makes upon socialism in
_La Tyrannie socialiste_, Paris, 1893 (published in Engl