The third is incumbent upon the proprietor and constitutes his claim to a share of the funds. “Before you can set up a farm where agriculture may be steadily practised year in and year out what must be done? A block of buildings and a farmhouse must be built, roads made and plantations set, the soil must be prepared, the stones cleared, trees cut down and roots removed; drains must also be cut and shelters prepared. These are the avances foncières, the work that is incumbent upon proprietors, and the true basis of their claim to the privileges of proprietorship.” (Baudeau, Éphémérides, May 1776. A reply to Condillac.)
[51] “Without that sense of security which property gives, the land would still be uncultivated.” (Quesnay, Maximes, iv.) “Everything would be lost if this fount of wealth were not as well assured as the person of the individual.” (Dupont, vol. i. p. 26.)
[52] Mercier de la Rivière, vol. i, p. 242.
[53] Maximes, iv.
[54] Pp. 615, 617.
[55] It is necessary to make a note here of one of the many differences between Turgot and the Physiocrats. Turgot seems much less firmly convinced of the social utility of landed property and of the legitimacy of the right of property. He thinks that its origin is simply due to occupation. This weakens the Physiocratic case very considerably. “The earth is peopled and cultivation extends. The best lands will in time all be occupied. For the last comers there will only be the unfertile lands rejected by the first. In the end every piece of land will have its owner, and those who possess none will have no other resource than to exchange the labour of their arm for the superfluous corn of the proprietor.” (Vol. i, p. 12.) We are here not very far from the Ricardian theory.
[56] Baudeau, p. 378.
[57] “A proprietor who keeps up the avances foncières without fail is performing the noblest service that anyone can perform on this earth.” (Baudeau.)
[58] “The rich have the control of the fund from which the workers are paid, but they are doing a great injustice if they appropriate it.” (Quesnay, vol. i, p. 193.)
[59] Pp. 835, 839. And Mercier de la Rivière writes in terms not less severe; “He is responsible under pain of annihilation for the products of society, and no part of the produce which goes to support the cultivator should wittingly be employed otherwise.” The history of Ireland is an interesting commentary on these words.