, to displace credit, not to augment it. In one country,
and in a given time, there is only a certain amount of capital
available, and all are employed. In guaranteeing the non-payers, the
State may, indeed, increase the number of borrowers, and thus raise the
rate of interest (always to the prejudice of the tax-payer), but it has
no power to increase the number of lenders, and the importance of the
total of the loans.
There is one conclusion, however, which I would not for the world be
suspected of drawing. I say, that the law ought not to favour,
artificially, the power of borrowing, but I do not say that it ought not
to restrain them artificially. If, in our system of mortgage, or in any
other, there be obstacles to the diffusion of the application of credit,
let them be got rid of; nothing can be better or more just than this.
But this is all which is consistent with liberty, and it is all that any
who are worthy of the name of reformers will ask.
X.--Algeria.
Here are four orators disputing for the platform. First, all the four
speak at once; then they speak one after the other. What have they said?
Some very fine things, certainly, about the power and the grandeur of
France; about the necessity of sowing, if we would reap; about the
brilliant future of our gigantic colony; about the advantage of
diverting to a distance the surplus of our population, &c.
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