244 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



with other countries or places in which a better system 

 prevails, together with a solution of the problem of how to 

 replace it by the only just system, without any confiscation 

 of property or injury to any living individual. The book has 

 had a large circulation, and, in a revised edition, is still on 

 sale ; and, together with numerous tracts issued by the Society, 

 has done much to educate public opinion on this most vital 

 of all political or social questions. 



As, however, it was quite certain that it would take a 

 very long time before even the first steps towards land 

 nationalization would be taken, I took every opportunity of 

 advocating such other fundamental reforms as seemed to me 

 demanded by equity and to be essential to social well-being. 

 One of the earliest was on the subject of interest, about 

 which there was much difference of opinion among advanced 

 thinkers. A discussion having arisen in The Christian 

 Socialist, I developed my views at some length in an article 

 which appeared in the issue of March, 1884. As it still 

 appears to me to be logically unassailable, and is upon a 

 subject of the very highest social importance, I give it here — 



THE MORALITY OF INTEREST— THE TYRANNY OF 

 CAPITAL. 



By Alfred Russel Wallace. 



Having read Professor Newman's defence of interest and your remarks 

 thereon, I wish to make a few observations on the general question. 



Your position, and also that of Mr. Ruskin, appears to be that money 

 should be lent only as an act of benevolence or charity, and that lending 

 it in any other way is not only, in most cases, economically and socially, 

 injurious, but is also morally wrong. With the first part of this proposi- 

 tion I am very much inchned to agree, but not with the second. Looked 

 at broadly, I believe that the power of obtaining interest on capital, 

 however great, with the corresponding desire of the owner of capital to 

 obtain interest on it, is, next to the private monopoly of land, the great 

 cause of the poverty and famine that prevail in all the most advanced 

 and most wealthy communities. To prove this would occupy too much 

 space ; but I may just notice that bankruptcies, with the widespread 

 misery they inflict ; the speculations of promoters and financiers often 

 bringing ruin on hundreds or thousands of deluded investors ; and the 



