This principle is capital, false
property, interest, and usury, which by the old _regime_, is made to
weigh upon labour.
"Ever since the aristocrats invented the incredible fiction, _that
capital possesses the power of reproducing itself_, the workers have
been at the mercy of the idle.
"At the end of a year, will you find an additional crown in a bag of one
hundred shillings? At the end of fourteen years, will your shillings
have doubled in your bag?
"Will a work of industry or of skill produce another, at the end of
fourteen years?
"Let us begin, then, by demolishing this fatal fiction."
I have quoted the above, merely for the sake of establishing the fact,
that many persons consider the productiveness of capital a false, a
fatal, and an iniquitous principle. But quotations are superfluous; it
is well known that the people attribute their sufferings to what they
call _the trafficking in man by man_. In fact, the phrase, _tyranny of
capital_, has become proverbial.
I believe there is not a man in the world, who is aware of the whole
importance of this question:--
"Is the interest of capital natural, just, and lawful, and as useful to
the payer as to the receiver?"
You answer, No; I answer, Yes. Then we differ entirely; but it is of the
utmost importance to discover which of us is in the right, otherwise we
shall incur the danger of making a false solution of the question, a
matter of opinion.
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