246 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



when he urgently requires such aid, you would give none of these things 

 repeatedly to a mere acquaintance. Yet, if circumstances rendered such 

 accommodation very useful to a considerable number of persons, and you 

 or some one else found it profitable to supply such accommodation, you 

 would charge rent for your beds, and interest for your loans, and the 

 transaction would differ nothing in principle from that of every tradesman 

 who sells goods at a profit, of the innkeeper who charges beds in his bill, 

 or of the jobmaster who charges for the use of his horses or his carriages. 

 Nothing deserving the name of proof has yet been given that either of 

 these things are immoral. Whether it is a good and healthy state of 

 society in which large numbers of persons get their Hving by such means, 

 is another matter altogether. 



The difference of opinion on this question of usury arises mainly from 

 the different standpoints of the disputants. Seeing that it is bound up 

 with many of the evils of modern society, and believing that it should 

 have no place in a system of true SociaHsm, you and Mr. Ruskin denounce 

 it as immoral. Professor Newman, on the other hand, looks at it as a 

 question of modern society, and finds nothing in its essential nature 

 contrary to justice, and here he seems to me to have the best of the 

 argument. No doubt, in a more perfect state of society, in which private 

 accumulations of capital were comparatively small, and the land and its 

 products were freely open to the use of all, usury would have little place, 

 because loans of money would rarely be needed ; but when they were 

 needed, I cannot see any grounds for maintaining that it would be 

 morally wrong to lend money on interest. On the contrary, such loans 

 would then retain their use without the evils their wide extension now 

 brings. There would be no great capitalists, and if one man lent to 

 another it would be a convenience to the borrower, and certainly some 

 loss to the lender, because, as Professor Newman well puts it, £,\oo paid 

 one year or ten years hence is not as valuable as ^100 paid to-day. To 

 say that it is so is really to say that it has no value to-day, for if its 

 payment can be delayed one year without loss it can two, or three, or 

 ten, or a hundred, or a thousand ! Where are we to stop? If we suppose 

 a perfect social state, we suppose all men to be producers, and as capital 

 is an aid to production, no man can give up the use of his capital to 

 another without loss. The true solution of the problem is, I believe, to 

 be found in the proposition that all loans should be personal^ and, there- 

 fore, te77iporaryj and that, as a corollary, the repayment of the capital 

 should be provided for in the annual payments agreed to be made by 

 the borrower, either for a fixed period (if he live so long), or for the term 

 of his life. This would abolish the idea of perpetual interest, which is as 

 impossible in fact as it is wrong in principle, while it would avoid the 

 injustice of compelling one man, or set of men, to pay the debts of a 

 preceding generation from which they may have received no real 

 benefit. 



This question of interest thus becomes involved in the wider question 

 of the tyranny of capital over labour, and its remedy. At present, 



