That, consequently, what was considered an increase of loan, is nothing but a displacement of loan.  Besides, it is not seen that this displacement implies two acts of deep injustice.

It is an injustice to John, who, after having deserved and obtained credit by his honesty and activity, sees himself robbed of it.

It is an injustice to the tax-payers, who are made to pay a debt which is no concern of theirs.

Will any one say, that Government offers the same facilities to John as it does to James?  But as there is only one plough to be had, two cannot be lent.  The argument always maintains that, thanks to the intervention of the State, more will be borrowed than there are things to be lent; for the plough represents here the bulk of available capitals.

It is true, I have reduced the operation to the most simple expression of it, but if you submit the most complicated Government institutions of credit to the same test, you will be convinced that they can have but one result; viz., 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. &c.  Magnificent pieces of eloquence, and always adorned with this conclusion:—­“Vote fifty millions, more or less, for making ports and roads in Algeria; for sending emigrants thither; for building houses and breaking up land.  By so doing, you will relieve the French workman, encourage African labour, and give a stimulus to the commerce of Marseilles.  It would be profitable every way.”