B. It all comes to the same thing in the end.
F. No doubt; but only think what disturbances, what cheatings are produced in exchanges, when the value of the medium varies, without our becoming aware of it by a change in the name. Old pieces are issued, or notes bearing the name of twenty francs, and which will bear that name through every subsequent depreciation. The value will be reduced a quarter, a half, but they will still be called pieces or notes of twenty francs. Clever persons will take care not to part with their goods unless for a larger number of notes--in other words, they will ask forty francs for what they would formerly have sold for twenty; but simple persons will be taken in. Many years must pass before all the values will find their proper level. Under the influence of ignorance and custom, the day's pay of a country labourer will remain for a long time at a franc, while the saleable price of all the articles of consumption around him will be rising. He will sink into destitution without being able to discover the cause. In short, since you wish me to finish, I must beg you, before we separate, to fix your whole attention upon this essential point:--When once false money (under whatever form it may take) is put into circulation, depreciation will ensue, and manifest itself by the universal rise of every thing which is capable of being sold. But this rise in prices is not instantaneous and equal for all things. Sharp men, brokers, and men of business, will not suffer by it; for it is their trade to watch the fluctuations of prices, to observe the cause, and even to speculate upon it. But little tradesmen, countrymen, and workmen, will bear the whole weight of it. The rich man is not any the richer for it, but the poor man becomes poorer by it. Therefore, expedients of this kind have the effect of increasing the distance which separates wealth from poverty, of paralysing the social tendencies which are incessantly bringing men to the same level, and it will require centuries for the suffering classes to regain the ground which they have lost in their advance towards equality of condition.
B. Good morning; I shall go and meditate upon the lecture you have been giving me.
F. Have you finished your own dissertation? As for me, I have scarcely begun mine. I have not yet spoken of the hatred of capital, of gratuitous credit--a fatal notion, a deplorable mistake, which takes its rise from the same source.
B. What! does this frightful commotion of the populace against capitalists arise from money being confounded with wealth?
F. It is the result of different causes. Unfortunately, certain capitalists have arrogated to themselves monopolies and privileges which are quite sufficient to account for this feeling. But when the theorists of democracy have wished to justify it, to systematize it, to give it the appearance of a reasonable opinion, and to turn it against the very nature of capital, they have had recourse to that false political economy at whose root the same confusion is always to be found. They have said to the people:--"Take a crown, put it under a glass; forget it for a year; then go and look at it, and you will be convinced that it has not produced ten sous, nor five sous, nor any fraction of a sou. Therefore, money produces no interest." Then, substituting for the word money its pretended sign, capital, they have made it by their logic undergo this modification--"Then capital produces no interest." Then follow this series of consequences--"Therefore he who lends a capital ought to obtain nothing from it; therefore he who lends you a capital, if he gains something by it, is robbing you; therefore all capitalists are robbers; therefore wealth, which ought to serve gratuitously those who borrow it, belongs in reality to those to whom it does not belong; therefore there is no such thing as property; therefore everything belongs to everybody; therefore ..."
B. This is very serious; the more so, from the syllogism being so admirably formed. I should very much like to be enlightened on the subject. But, alas! I can no longer command my attention. There is such a confusion in my head of the words cash, money, services, capital, interest, that, really, I hardly know where I am. We will, if you please, resume the conversation another day.
F. In the meantime, here is a little work entitled Capital and Rent. It may perhaps remove some of your doubts. Just look at it, when you are in want of a little amusement.
B. To amuse me?
F. Who knows? One nail drives in another; one wearisome thing drives away another.