It would be a waste of time to seek any satisfactory explanation from the writings of economists.  They have not thrown much light upon the reasons of the existence of interest.  For this they are not to be blamed; for at the time they wrote, its lawfulness was not called in question.  Now, however, times are altered; the case is different.  Men, who consider themselves to be in advance of their age, have organised an active crusade against capital and interest; it is the productiveness of capital which they are attacking; not certain abuses in the administration of it, but the principle itself.

A journal has been established to serve as a vehicle for this crusade.  It is conducted by M. Proudhon, and has, it is said, an immense circulation.  The first number of this periodical contains the electoral manifesto of the people.  Here we read, “The productiveness of capital, which is condemned by Christianity under the name of usury, is the true cause of misery, the true principle of destitution, the eternal obstacle to the establishment of the Republic.”

Another journal, La Ruche Populaire, after having said some excellent things on labour, adds, “But, above all, labour ought to be free; that is, it ought to be organised in such a manner, that money-lenders and patrons, or masters, should not be paid for this liberty of labour, this right of labour, which is raised to so high a price by the traffickers of men.”  The only thought that I notice here, is that expressed by the words in italics, which imply a denial of the right to interest.  The remainder of the article explains it.

It is thus that the democratic Socialist, Thore expresses himself:—­

“The revolution will always have to be recommenced, so long as we occupy ourselves with consequences only, without having the logic or the courage to attack the principle itself.  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:—­