The nineteenth century was one long contest between two opposing forces.
The increase in the population, together with the power to make wealth,
were together enormously effective in decreasing the burden. Against
them was the ultimate tendency to lower prices, and the former of these
two forces slowly won the day.

I hesitate to say that we can expect anything at all comparable with the
wonderful leap forward in productive power during the early Victorian
era. I hope that in this I may prove to be wrong. Anyway I do not think
that in our lifetime we can expect these islands to double their
population.


THE CAPITAL LEVY

If we cannot look forward to any great measure of relief through these
channels, to what then must we look? By far the most important
alternative remedy which has been put to us is that of a Capital Levy;
it has the enormous virtue that it would repay on one level of prices
the debts incurred at that level; in short, it would give back one pair
of boots at once for every pair it has borrowed, instead of waiting and
stretching out over future generations the burden of two pairs. It is so
attractive that one cannot wonder there is a tendency to slur over its
less obvious difficulties.

Advocates of this scheme fall into two camps, whom I would distinguish
broadly as the economist group and the Labour Party, and if you will
examine their advocacy carefully, you will see that they support it by
two different sets of contentions, which are not easily reconciled. The
economists lay stress upon the fact that you not only pay off at a less