consideration of a fair indemnity payable in advance.

This principle is eminently an economic one; for, on the one
hand, it assumes the right of eminent domain of the citizen
expropriated, whose consent, according to the democratic spirit
of the social compact, is necessarily presupposed. On the other
hand, the indemnity, or the price of the article taken, is
fixed, not by the intrinsic value of the article, but by the
general law of commerce,--supply and demand; in a word, by
opinion. Expropriation in the name of society may be likened to
a contract of convenience, agreed to by each with all; not only
then must the price be paid, but the convenience also must be
paid for: and it is thus, in reality, that the indemnity is
estimated. If the Roman legists had seen this analogy, they
undoubtedly would have hesitated less over the question of
expropriation for the sake of public utility.

Such, then, is the sanction of the social right of expropriation:
indemnity.

Now, practically, not only is the principle of indemnity not
applied in all cases where it ought to be, but it is impossible
that it should be so applied. Thus, the law which established
railways provided indemnity for the lands to be occupied by the
rails; it did nothing for the multitude of industries dependent
upon the previous method of conveyance, whose losses far exceeded
the value of the lands whose owners received compensation.
Similarly, when the question of indemnifying the manufacturers of
beet-root sugar was under consideration, it occurred to no one
that the State ought to indemnify also the large number of