vni NATURAL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS 



two which varies. 1 A man who hurls a stone 

 loads it with a dose of labour which evaporates 

 when the missile strikes its object, and the stone 

 returns to its previous condition of a mere offering 

 of Nature. A man who slices the same stone and 

 cuts a cameo out of the slice, permanently incor- 

 porates an enormous amount of labour with it. 



In the one case, the " gratuitous offering " is at a 

 maximum, in the other at a minimum ; but the 

 foundation in each case is a gift of Nature. 



"' Progress and Poverty " sets before us the case of 

 a steel pen with much elaboration (p. 236). But 

 the author fails to notice the patent fact that the 

 iron ore, the existence of which is the conditio sine 

 qud non of that of the pen, is a gratuitous offering 

 of Nature. The well-known case of the chro- 

 nometer balance-wheel spring would have still 

 better exemplified the maximum incorporation of 

 labour with the minimum of " the gratuitous 

 offering." 



Now is there any real difference between land 

 and other things in this respect? In Upper 

 Egypt, I have stood with one foot on soil bearing 

 a rich green crop, and the other on the stony 

 desert, as barren as a brick floor, which extended 

 for hundreds of miles to the westward without 

 supporting so much as a blade of grass. The 

 green crop, in fact, reached exactly as far as the 



1 I have long since argued all this out in my Introductory 

 Primer of Science. 



