"Property, the daughter of labor, can be enjoyed at present and in the future only under the protection of the laws.

It has its origin in natural law; it derives its power from civil law; and from the union of these two ideas, LABOR and PROTECTION, positive legislation results."...
Ah! THE PROBLEM IS SOLVED! PROPERTY IS THE DAUGHTER OF LABOR! What, then, is the right of accession, and the right of succession, and the right of donation, &c., if not the right to become a proprietor by simple occupancy?
What are your laws concerning the age of majority, emancipation, guardianship, and interdiction, if not the various conditions by which he who is already a laborer gains or loses the right of occupancy; that is, property?
Being unable, at this time, to enter upon a detailed discussion of the Code, I shall content myself with examining the three arguments oftenest resorted to in support of property.1.APPROPRIATION, or the formation of property by possession; 2.

THE CONSENT OF MANKIND; 3.PRESCRIPTION.

I shall then inquire into the effects of labor upon the relative condition of the laborers and upon property.
% 1 .-- The Land cannot be Appropriated.
"It would seem that lands capable of cultivation ought to be regarded as natural wealth, since they are not of human creation, but Nature's gratuitous gift to man; but inasmuch as this wealth is not fugitive, like the air and water,--inasmuch as a field is a fixed and limited space which certain men have been able to appropriate, to the exclusion of all others who in their turn have consented to this appropriation,--the land, which was a natural and gratuitous gift, has become social wealth, for the use of which we ought to pay."-- SAY: POLITICAL ECONOMY.
Was I wrong in saying, at the beginning of this chapter, that the economists are the very worst authorities in matters of legislation and philosophy?
It is the FATHER of this class of men who clearly states the question, How can the supplies of Nature, the wealth created by Providence, become private property?
and who replies by so gross an equivocation that we scarcely know which the author lacks, sense or honesty.

What, I ask, has the fixed and solid nature of the earth to do with the right of appropriation?
I can understand that a thing LIMITED and STATIONARY, like the land, offers greater chances for appropriation than the water or the sunshine; that it is easier to exercise the right of domain over the soil than over the atmosphere: but we are not dealing with the difficulty of the thing, and Say confounds the right with the possibility.