I have been not a little pestered this month by the quantities of
letters, which I can’t wholly cure myself of the weakness of reading,
from people who fancy that, like other political writers of the day, I
print, on the most important subjects, the first thing that comes into
my head; and may be made immediately to repent of what I have said, and
generally to see the error of my ways, by the suggestions of their
better judgment.
Letters of this sort do not surprise me if they have a Scottish
postmark, the air of Edinburgh having always had a curiously exciting
quality, and amazing power over weak heads; but one or two
communications from modest and thoughtful English friends have
seriously troubled me by the extreme simplicity of their objections to
statements which, if not acceptable, I had at least hoped would have
been intelligible to them.
I had, indeed, expected difficulty in proving to my readers the
mischievousness of Usury; but I never thought to find confusion in
their minds between Property itself, and its Interest. Yet I find this
singular confusion at the root of the objections made by most of my
cavilling correspondents: “How are we to live” (they say) “if, when we
have saved a hundred pounds, we can’t make a hundred and five of them,
without any more trouble?”
Gentlemen and ladies all,—you are to live on your hundred pounds,
saved; and if you want five pounds more, you must go and work for five
pounds more; just as a man who hasn’t a hundred pounds must work for
the first five he gets.
The following sentence, written by a man of real economical knowledge,
expresses, with more than usual precision, the common mistake: “I much
fear if your definition of Usury be correct, which is to the effect
that it is a sin to derive money from the possession of capital, or
otherwise than by our own personal work. Should we follow this
proposition to its final logical conclusion, we must preach communism,
pure and simple, and contend that property is theft,—which God forbid.”
To this correspondent I answered briefly, “Is my house not my property
unless I let it for lodgings, or my wife not my property unless I
prostitute her?”
But I believe it will be well, though I intended to enter on other
matters this month, to repeat instead once more, in the shortest and
strongest terms I can find, what I have now stated at least a hundred
times respecting the eternal nature and sanctity of ‘Property.’
A man’s ‘Property,’ the possession ‘proper’ to him, his own, rightly so
called, and no one else’s on any pretence of theirs—consists of,
A, The good things,
B, Which he has honestly got,
C, And can skilfully use.
That is the A B C of Property.
A. It must consist of good things—not bad ones. It is rightly called
therefore a man’s ‘Goods,’ not a man’s ‘Bads.’
If you have got a quantity of dung lodged in your drains, a quantity of
fleas lodged in your bed, or a quantity of nonsense lodged in your
brains,—that is not ‘Property,’ but the reverse thereof; the value to
you of your drains, bed, and brains being thereby diminished, not
increased.