"We certainly ask our readers' pardon for it," answers M.Fix; "but here again we are obliged to call for the intervention of capital.These surfaces, certain communal lands excepted, are fallow, because, if cultivated, they would yield no net product, and very likely not even the costs of cultivation.These lands are possessed by proprietors who either have or have not the capital necessary to cultivate them.In the former case, the proprietor would very probably content himself, if he cultivated these lands, with a very small profit, and perhaps would forego what is called the rent of the land: but he has found that, in undertaking such cultivation, he would lose his original capital, and his other calculations have shown him that the sale of the products would not cover the costs of cultivation....
All things considered, therefore, this land will remain fallow, because capital that should be put into it would yield no profit and would be lost.
If it were otherwise, all these lands would be immediately put in cultivation;
the savings now disposed of in another direction would necessarily gravitate in a certain proportion to the cultivation of land; for capital has no affections: it has interests, and always seeks that employment which is surest and most lucrative."
This argument, very well reasoned, amounts to saying that the time to cultivate its waste lands has not arrived for France, just as the time for railroads has not arrived for the Kaffres and the Hottentots.For, as has been said in the second chapter, society begins by working those sources which yield most easily and surely the most necessary and least expensive products: it is only gradually that it arrives at the utilization of things relatively less productive.Since the human race has been tossing about on the face of its globe, it has struggled with no other task; for it the same care is ever recurrent, -- that of assuring its subsistence while going forward in the path of discovery.In order that such clearing of land may not become a ruinous speculation, a cause of misery, in other words, in order that it may be possible, it is necessary, therefore, to multiply still further our capital and machinery, discover new processes, and more thoroughly divide labor.Now, to solicit the government to take such an initiative is to imitate the peasants who, on seeing the approach of a storm, begin to pray to God and to invoke their saint.Governments -- today it cannot be too often repeated -- are the representatives of Divinity, -- I had almost said executors of celestial vengeance: they can do nothing for us.Does the English government, for instance, know any way of giving labor to the unfortunates who take refuge in its workhouses?
And if it knew, would it dare? Aid yourself, and Heaven will aid you! This note of popular distrust of Divinity tells us also what we must expect of power, -- nothing.
Arrived at the second station of our Calvary, instead of abandoning ourselves to sterile contemplations, let us be more and more attentive to the teachings of destiny.The guarantee of our liberty lies in the progress of our torture.
NOTES:
1.In spite of the most approved authorities, I cannot accept the idea that serf, in Latin servus, was so called from servare, to keep, because the slave was a prisoner of war who was kept for labor.Servitude, or at least domesticity, is certainly prior to war, although war may have noticeably strengthened it.Why, moreover, if such was the origin of the idea as well as of the thing, should they not have said, instead of serv-us, serv-atus, in conformity with grammatical deduction? To me the real etymology is revealed in the opposition of serv-are and serv-ire, the primitive theme of which is ser-o in-stro, to join, to press, whence ser-ies, joint, continuity, Ser- a, lock, sertir, insert, etc.All these words imply the idea of a principal thing, to which is joined an accessory, as an object of special usefulness.Thence serv-ire, to be an object of usefulness, a thing secondary to another; serv-are, as we say to press, to put aside, to assign a thing its utility; serv-us, a man at hand, a utility, a chattel, in short, a man of service.The opposite of servus is dem-inus (dom-us, dom-anium, and domare); that is, the head of the household, the master of the house, he who utilizes men, servat, animals, domat, and things, possidet.That consequently prisoners of war should have been reserved for slavery, servati ad servitium, or rather serti ad glebam, is perfectly conceivable; their destiny being known, they have simply taken their name from it.
