xxxiv] LAND NATIONALIZATION 245 



vast loans to foreign despots, which can only be paid by the sweat and 

 blood of their unfortunate subjects, are the direct, and in the present 

 state of society, the necessary results of the interest-system. Professor 

 Newman says that if it were to cease, business would be lessened by 

 one-third. But only rotten and speculative business would be stopped ; 

 commercial men would then be what they only now appear to be, and no 

 really necessary business would cease to be carried on. The late William 

 Chambers has stated (in his " Life of Robert Chambers ") that their vast 

 bookselling, printing, and publishing business was established and carried 

 on from first to last without one penny of borrowed capital ; and that, as 

 a result, panics and financial crises which brought ruin to some of their 

 competitors, only caused them a little temporary inconvenience. I 

 believe, therefore, that it would be for the benefit of the community if 

 loans of money, or advances of goods on credit, were not recognized by 

 the law, but were made wholly at the risk of the lender ; but I do not 

 see that it follows that he who lends, even under these circumstances, 

 and takes interest for his loan, is doing what is wrong. For I cannot 

 perceive any essential difference in principle between lending on interest, 

 and selling at a profit. If I buy a shipload of drugs or any other goods 

 at wholesale price, warehouse them, and sell them in the course of a 

 year at the current market rate, making a profit of, say, 15 per cent, on 

 my money, am I doing that which is morally wrong ? Of the amount 

 gained by me, we may put perhaps 1 or 2 per cent, for my personal 

 trouble in the matter, 2 or 3 per cent, for risk of loss, 5 per cent, for 

 interest on capital, and the other 5 per cent, for surplus profit. Is this 

 10 per cent, illegitimate gain ? and am I morally bound to sell my goods 

 at so much below the market rate as to leave me only fair payment for 

 my time and risk ? If it is wrong to take interest for the money which, 

 when lent to another man enables him to do this, surely it is wrong to 

 take a larger share in the shape of profit ; and this really means that all 

 trade is immoral which returns more than payment for personal labour, 

 and insurance of the capital employed. But if so, it should be so stated, 

 and the question should not be confined to interest on money loans only, 

 and, in fact, Mr. Ruskin does not so confine it. The quotation you make 

 from Mr. Ruskin does not, however, seem to me at all to the point. You 

 freely lend your friend an umbrella in his need, and you would even do 

 the same to the merest acquaintance or neighbour, but if your neighbour 

 called every day for your umbrella on his way to the city, and other 

 neighbours followed his example, so that you ceased to have the use of 

 your own umbrellas, you would soon have either to refuse to lend, or to 

 charge a rent for the use of them, and if this were convenient to your 

 neighbours, and they were willing to pay you sufficient to cover the wear 

 and tear of umbrellas, your time and trouble in looking after them, and 

 interest on your capital invested in them, it will require arguments very 

 different from any yet advanced to satisfy me that you would be morally 

 wrong in doing so. In like manner, though you lend your friend or 

 neighbour cab-money, or give him a bed for a night on rare occasions 



