Either man could make it, just as either man could use it.

Why, then, should A pay a tribute to B for the use of something which, to-morrow, if not to-day, he could make for himself without paying anything to anybody?
Now, if Bastiat's plane is to be taken as signifying a plane only, the criticism of George is just.

But what George forgets is that, if the plane means a plane only--an implement which any man could make just as well as the lender--interest on planes, besides being morally indefensible, would as a matter of fact never be paid at all.

Bastiat's plane, however, stands for a kind of capital, the borrowing of which and the paying of interest on which, form one of the most constant features of the modern industrial world; and he evidently assumes, even if he does not say so, that for all this borrowing and paying there is some constant and sufficient reason.

Now, the only reason can be--and George's own criticism implies this--that in order to produce the machine-capital borrowed certain faculties are needed which are not possessed by the borrowers; and though this may not be true of a simple hand-plane itself, it is emphatically true of the elaborate modern machinery of which Bastiat merely uses his hand-plane as a symbol.