21, Mincing Lane, London, E.C.,
19th March, 1874.
Dear Sirs,—On the 27th March, 1872, we directed your attention to this subject of Usury in a paper headed “Choose you this day whom ye will serve.” We have since published our correspondence with the Rev. Dr. Cumming, and we take his silence as an acknowledgment of his inability to justify his teaching upon this subject. We have also publicly protested against the apathy of the Bishops and Clergy of the Established Church regarding this national sin. We now append an extract from the ‘Hampshire Independent’ of the 11th instant, which has been forwarded to us:—
“The Church of England in South Australia is in active competition with the money changers and those who sell doves. The Church Office, Leigh Street, Adelaide, advertises that ‘it is prepared to lend money at current rates—no commission or brokerage charged,’ which is really liberal on the part of the Church of England, and may serve to distinguish it as a [[188]]lender from the frequenters of the synagogues.[7] It has been suggested that the Church Office should hang out the triple symbol of the Lombards, and that at the next examination of candidates for holy orders a few apposite questions might be asked, such as—‘State concisely the best method of obtaining the highest rate of interest for Church moneys. Demonstrate how a system of Church money-lending was approved by the founder of Christianity.’ ”
As such perverseness can only end in sudden and overwhelming calamity, we make no apology for again urging you to assist us in our endeavours to banish the accursed element at least from our own trade.
Your obedient servants,
J. C. Sillar and Co.
“The Church of England in South Australia is in active competition with the money changers and those who sell doves. The Church Office, Leigh Street, Adelaide, advertises that ‘it is prepared to lend money at current rates—no commission or brokerage charged,’ which is really liberal on the part of the Church of England, and may serve to distinguish it as a [[188]]lender from the frequenters of the synagogues.[7] It has been suggested that the Church Office should hang out the triple symbol of the Lombards, and that at the next examination of candidates for holy orders a few apposite questions might be asked, such as—‘State concisely the best method of obtaining the highest rate of interest for Church moneys. Demonstrate how a system of Church money-lending was approved by the founder of Christianity.’ ”
I put in large print—it would be almost worth capital letters—the following statement of the principle of interest as “necessary to the existence of money.” I suppose it is impossible to embody the modern view more distinctly:—
“Money, the representation and measure of value, has also the power to accumulate value by interest (italics not mine). This accumulative power is essential to the existence of money, for no one will exchange productive property for money that does not represent production. The laws making gold and silver a public tender impart to dead masses of metal, as it were, life and animation. [[189]]They give them powers which without legal enactment they could not possess, and which enable their owner to obtain for their use what other men must earn by their labour. One piece of gold receives a legal capability to earn for its owner, in a given time, another piece of gold as large as itself; or in other words, the legal power of money to accumulate by interest compels the borrower in a given period, according to the rate of interest, to mine and coin, or to procure by the sale of his labour or products, another lump of gold as large as the first, and give it, together with the first, to the lender.”—Kellogg on Labour and Capital, New York, 1849.
[[191]]
[1] The passage continues thus, curiously enough,—for the parallel of the boat at sea is precisely that which I have given, in true explanation of social phenomena:—
“The notion that when one man becomes rich he makes others poor, will be found upon examination to depend upon the assumption that there is in the world a fixed quantity of wealth; that when one man appropriates to himself a large amount of it, he excludes all others from any benefit arising from it, and that at the same time he forces some one else to be content with less than he would otherwise have had. Society, in short, must be compared to a boat at sea, in which there is a certain quantity of fresh water, and a certain number of shipwrecked passengers. In that case, no doubt, the water drunk by one is of no use to [[164]]the rest, and if one drinks more, others must drink less, as the water itself is a fixed quantity. Moreover, no one man would be able to get more than a rateable share, except by superior force, or by some form of deceit, because the others would prevent him. The mere statement of this view ought to be a sufficient exposure of the fundamental error of the commonplaces which we are considering.” [↑]
[2] The reader might at first fancy that the economy was not “absolute,” but that the expenses of the traveller were simply borne by his host. Not so; the host only gave what he in his turn received, when he also travelled. Every man thus carried his home with him, and to travel, was merely to walk or ride from place to place, instead of round one’s own house. (See Saunders Fairford’s expostulation with Alan on the charges incurred at Noble House.) [↑]
[3] But what is to be done, then? Emigrate, of course; but under different laws from those of modern emigration. Don’t emigrate to China, poison Chinamen, and teach them to make steam engines, and then import Chinamen, to dig iron here. But see next Fors. [↑]