94 ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



It seems impossible to imagine any ground upon which this demand 

 can be resisted, and even difficult to understand how a question could 

 have been made rejecting it. If there were even the semblance of a 

 moral reason upon which opposition could be rested, there might be 

 room for hesitation and debate; if anything in the nature of a right to 



sivesense than is warranted by common usage. Attention is usually drawn to absti- 

 nence only when it is not united with labour. It is recognized instantly in the con- 

 duct of a man who allows a tree or a domestic animal to attain its full growth, but it 

 is less obvious when he plants the sapling or sows the seed corn. The observer's 

 attention is occupied by the labour, and he omits to consider the additional sacrifice 

 made when labour is undergone for a distant object. This additional sacrifice we 

 comprehend under the term abstinence. * * * of all the means by which man 

 can be raised in the scale of being, abstinence, as it is perhaps the most effective, is 

 the slowest in increase, and the latest generally diffused. Among nations those that 

 are the least civilized, and among the different classes of the same nation those which 

 are the worst educated, are almost the most improvident and consequently the least 

 abstinent." 



(At page G9) : " The savage seldom employs, in making his bows or his dart, time 

 which he could devote to Ihe obtaining of any object of immediate enjoyment. He 

 exercises, therefore, labour and providence, but not abstinence. The first step in 

 improvement, the rise from the hunting and fishing to the pastoral state, implies 

 an exercise of abstinence. Much more abstinence, or, in other words, greater use of 

 capital, is required for the transition from the pastoral to the agricultural state; 

 and an amount not only still greater, but constantly increasing, is necessary to the 

 prosperity of manufactures and commerce." 



From " Essai sur la Repartition des Richesses," par Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, 2d ed. 

 Paris, 1883: 



"The first cause of interest is the service rendered to the borrower, the increase 

 of productivity given to his labor, industry, commerce. The second cause of inter- 

 est is the pains taken by the lender, the sacrifice necessary for abstinence in depriv- 

 ing himself of immediate consumption for a delayed profit." 



From " American Political Economy." Francis Bowen, p. 204, ch. XI : 



"Capital boin^ amassed as wo have seen by frugality or abstineuce, profits are the 

 reward of abstinence just as wages are the remuneration of labor, and rent is the 

 compensation for the use of land." 



From "Some leading Princi pies of Political Economy Newly Expounded." By 

 J. E. Cairnes, New York, 1874, p. SO: 



"The term abstinence is the name given to the sacrifice involved in the advance 

 of capital. As to the nature of the sacrifice it is mainly of a negative kind, consist- 

 ing chiefly in deprivation and postponement of enjoyment implied in the fact of 

 parting with our wealth, so far at least as concerns our present power of command- 

 ing it." 



From "Principles of Economics." Alfred Marshall, professor in the University of 

 Cambridge, London, 1870." Vol. 1, bk. vn, ch. vn, sec. 2, p. 612: 



"A man who, working on his own account, makes a thing for himself has the 

 usance of it as the reward for his labour. The amount of bis work may be de- 

 termined in a great measure by custom or habit, but in so far as his action is deliber- 

 ate he will cease his work when the gains of further work do not seem to him 

 worth the trouble of getting them. But the awakening of a new desire will induce 

 him to work ou further. Ho may take out the fruits of this extra work in immedi- 



