[713] J. B. Say had already employed the term “service” without giving it any normative significance, simply using it to distinguish between wealth which consists of acts and wealth which consists of material products.
[714] Social Possibilities of Economic Chivalry, in Economic Journal, March 1907.
[715] “And I also declare that you have not intercepted any of the gifts of God. It is true that you received them free out of nature’s hand. But it is equally true that you have handed them on freely, reserving nothing for yourself. Fear not, but live in peace and freedom from every qualm.” (Harmonies, chap. 8, p. 257.)
“Coal is free for everyone. There is neither paradox nor exaggeration in that. It is as free as the water of the brook, if we only take the trouble to get it, or pay others for getting it for us.” (Ibid., chap. 10.) Bastiat would not regard the shareholders’ dividends as payments for the trouble which the shareholders have taken in getting the coal. The dividends simply pay for the trouble taken to save the money which made the exploitation possible.
Say spoke of free natural agents. What he meant to refer to was such natural commodities as air and water, which are at the disposal of everyone.
[716] Harmonies, chap. 8, p. 256.
[717] Ibid., chap. 5, p. 142.
[718] Bastiat does not seem to have studied rent. The chapter of the Harmonies on this subject was never completed. Fontenay, one of his disciples, wrote a brilliant book called Du Revenu foncier (1854), which is almost forgotten to-day. He attempted to show:
(1) That Ricardian or differential rent would not exist were all the land equally fertile and suitably cultivated.
(2) That it is incorrect to speak of the rent of natural fertility, as Adam Smith and the Physiocrats did, if all utility (and not merely value) is the product of human labour. A fish, a grape, a grain of wheat, a fat ox, all of them have been created by human industry. Nature is for ever incapable of doing this. This is quite true if we say nature alone, but it is equally true of labour taken by itself.