avenues to intelligence; it ennobles, it raises the morals; it
spiritualizes the soul of humanity, not only without laying any weight
on those of our brethren whose lot in life devotes them to severe
labour, but relieving them gradually from the heaviest and most
repugnant part of this labour. It is enough that capitals should be
formed, accumulated, multiplied; should be lent on conditions less and
less burdensome; that they should descend, penetrate into every social
circle, and that by an admirable progression, after having liberated the
lenders, they should hasten the liberation of the borrowers themselves.
For that end, the laws and customs ought all to be favourable to
economy, the source of capital. It is enough to say, that the first of
all these conditions is, not to alarm, to attack, to deny that which is
the stimulus of saving and the reason of its existence--interest.

As long as we see nothing passing from hand to hand, in the character of
loan, but _provisions_, _materials_, _instruments_, things indispensable
to the productiveness of labour itself, the ideas thus far exhibited
will not find many opponents. Who knows, even, that I may not be
reproached for having made a great effort to burst what may be said to
be an open door. But as soon as _cash_ makes its appearance as the
subject of the transaction (and it is this which appears almost always),
immediately a crowd of objections are raised. Money, it will be said,
will not reproduce it self, like your _sack of corn_; it does not assist
labour, like your _plane_; it does not afford an immediate satisfaction,
like your _house_. It is incapable, by its nature, of producing
interest, of multiplying itself, and the remuneration it demands is a
positive extortion.

Who cannot see the sophistry of this? Who does not see that cash is only
a transient form, which men give at the time to other _values_, to real