augment trade and production, and so are plainly beneficial, except
where by mistake the wrong things are produced, or where also by
mistake misplaced credit is given, and a man who cannot produce
anything which is wanted gets the produce of other people's labour
upon a false idea that he will produce it. But there is another
variable cause which produces far more of apparent than of real
prosperity and of which the effect is in actual life mostly confused
with those of the others.

In our common speculations we do not enough remember that interest
on money is a refined idea, and not a universal one. So far indeed
is it from being universal, that the majority of saving persons in
most countries would reject it. Most savings in most countries are
held in hoarded specie. In Asia, in Africa, in South America,
largely even in Europe, they are thus held, and it would frighten
most of the owners to let them out of their keeping. An Englishman a
modern Englishman at leastassumes as a first principle that he ought
to be able to 'put his money into something safe that will yield 5
per cent;' but most saving persons in most countries are afraid to
'put their money' into anything. Nothing is safe to their minds;
indeed, in most countries, owing to a bad Government and a backward
industry, no investment, or hardly any, really is safe. In most
countries most men are content to forego interest; but in more
advanced countries, at some times there are more savings seeking
investment than there are known investments for; at other times
there is no such superabundance. Lord Macaulay has graphically
described one of the periods of excess. He says'During the interval
between the Restoration and the Revolution the riches of the nation
had been rapidly increasing. Thousands of busy men found every
Christmas that, after the expenses of the year's housekeeping had