your minds, and scruples in your conscience. You say to yourselves
sometimes, "But to assert that capital ought not to produce interest, is
to say that he who has created instruments of labour, or materials, or
provisions of any kind, ought to yield them up without compensation. Is
that just? And then, if it is so, who would lend these instruments,
these materials, these provisions? who would take care of them? who even
would create them? Every one would consume his proportion, and the human
race would never advance a step. Capital would be no longer formed,
since there would be no interest in forming it. It would become
exceedingly scarce. A singular step towards gratuitous loans! A singular
means of improving the condition of borrowers, to make it impossible for
them to borrow at any price! What would become of labour itself? for
there will be no money advanced, and not one single kind of labour can
be mentioned, not even the chase, which can be pursued without money in
hand. And, as for ourselves, what would become of us? What! we are not
to be allowed to borrow, in order to work in the prime of life, nor to
lend, that we may enjoy repose in its decline? The law will rob us of
the prospect of laying by a little property, because it will prevent us
from gaining any advantage from it. It will deprive us of all stimulus
to save at the present time, and of all hope of repose for the future.
It is useless to exhaust ourselves with fatigue: we must abandon the
idea of leaving our sons and daughters a little property, since modern
science renders it useless, for we should become traffickers in men if
we were to lend it on interest. Alas! the world which these persons
would open before us, as an imaginary good, is still more dreary and
desolate than that which they condemn, for hope, at any rate, is not
banished from the latter." Thus, in all respects, and in every point of
view, the question is a serious one. Let us hasten to arrive at a
solution.