Observe, besides, that if, as I believe I have shown, James, far from
doing any harm to William, has done him a _service_ in lending him his
plane for a year; for the same reason, he will do no harm to a second, a
third, a fourth borrower, in the subsequent periods. Hence you may
understand that the interest of a capital is as natural, as lawful, as
useful, in the thousandth year, as in the first. We may go still
further. It may happen that James lends more than a single plane. It is
possible, that by means of working, of saving, of privations, of order,
of activity, he may come to lend a multitude of planes and saws; that is
to say, to do a multitude of services. I insist upon this point,--that
if the first loan has been a social good, it will be the same with all
the others; for they are all similar, and based upon the same
principle. It may happen, then, that the amount of all the remunerations
received by our honest operative, in exchange for services rendered by
him, may suffice to maintain him. In this case, there will be a man in
the world who has a right to live without working. I do not say that he
would be doing right to give himself up to idleness--but I say, that he
has a right to do so; and if he does so, it will be at nobody's expense,
but quite the contrary. If society at all understands the nature of
things, it will acknowledge that this man subsists on services which he
receives certainly (as we all do), but which he lawfully receives in
exchange for other services, which he himself has rendered, that he
continues to render, and which are quite real, inasmuch as they are
freely and voluntarily accepted.
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