164 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



organization for the purpose of protecting people who 

 choose, with their eyes open, to lend money without 

 security. Let all business be on a cash basis, and if 

 persons who have confidence in a friend's honesty give 

 credit, let it be at the giver's own risk and responsibility. 



In the case of shopkeepers it may be said that they would 

 be liable to loss by persons having goods sent home and 

 then refusing to pay for them. But this would be very 

 easily remedied by either having cash with the order or 

 declining to leave any goods at the house of an unknown 

 or imperfectly known customer, till paid for. The whole 

 thing would right itself in a few months or even weeks, if 

 the Government and the law did not undertake a supposed 

 duty which is wholly unnecessary, and which inevitably 

 tends to endless developments of speculation and fraud. 



So far I have touched only on debts incurred without 

 security, but there are also many kinds of security which 

 the law should not recognize. Such are all those which 

 involve injury to others, and especially the loss or deterio- 

 ration of the family home. Bills of sale on furniture and 

 mortgages of the dwelling or homestead should therefore 

 be alike illegal and valueless. They are contrary to public 

 jjolicy as well as to individual well-being, and there is no 

 more necessity for them than there is to allow a man to 

 pledge his wife or children for a debt. The home should 

 be as sacred from such profanation as the family itself 



For analogous reasons nothing in the nature of post 

 obits, or any agreement to pay money out of a future 

 expected inheritance, should have the slightest legal value. 

 By enforcing such agreements the law has been the direct 

 cause of an overwhelming flood of demoralization, and has 

 produced more vice and suffering than have been caused 

 by the most irrational customs of the lowest savages. And 

 there is not the slightest need for such interference. Why 

 should the Government of any country calling itself 

 civilized use its vast organized power to tempt young men 

 to borrow money on their future exjoectations, almost 

 always for purposes of the wildest extravagance, debauchery 

 and vice ? Let the law simply ignore all such debts and 

 claims, and no one will lend money to persons in such a 



