In our last, the necessity of urging the consideration of the finance
question upon Congress, with the view of having the whole range of the
matter brought prominently before the country, was proposed. Of all
practical questions that require immediate solution, none is of so much
importance to man as this; and none more so to woman unless that of
equality for herself is. No country can enjoy a series of years of
uninterrupted commercial prosperity when that country has a circulating
medium which can be affected by the manipulations of shrewd financiers
for their own ends. And no financial policy is more ruinous to the true
interests of a whole country than that of a constantly changing
commercial valuation upon either personal or real estate, excepting
alone in the latter, when it becomes the location of more capacity for
actual production.
Real estate, abstractly considered, has no appreciable value. It only
becomes relatively valuable when labor can make use of it to produce
something valuable from it or by it. Absolutely there can be no
individual title to any part of the soil of any country. Taken as a
whole, the land comprised within the limits of the authority of any
government can be made such use of as such government may determine, but
as to actual conveyance of absolute individual ownership, that is
impossible, because none of the powers involved in the attempt at
conveyance could have had any part in the production of said land, and,
therefore, could have no right or authority to transfer it, from the
fact of an entire lack of title to transfer.
It may be objected that these are merely technical assumptions which the
customs of society have never admitted. So, too, may it be objected to
all encroachments of scientific principles upon old forms and customs.
Nevertheless, science continues to analyze and demonstrate, and the
world continues to come more and more under its guidance every year. In
the principles of government science has not, until very recently, found
grounds of attack. Since it has come to be recognized that there really
is a science of society, and consequently that all its structure can be
analyzed, understood and guided by its deductions many of the customs
and practices that have so long controlled the people are found to be
entirely without the support of principles fundamentally necessary to
assure a permanently constructive form of society.
Wherever maxims of temporary policy are the guiding rules, there will
ever be alternate construction and destruction; but wherever scientific,
demonstrable principles are the governing power, there will be found
permanency. That “money” is susceptible of analysis, and of being
predicated upon a scientific basis is no longer to be questioned. It is
a branch of the science of society, and as such must receive
consideration as the science itself becomes disseminated among the
peoples. It was not many years ago that “the sciences” were unknown in
our common schools. It will not be many years hence until the science of
society will be a recognized branch of every child’s education in the
most enlightened portions of the world. Political economy, which is a
branch of social science, is regarded with favor by many now, and,
comprehensively speaking, all these questions which have been looked
upon as “too abstract” for common comprehension, are found to be the
real principles which underlie all social strictures.
First in importance, because it leads to the recognition of the
“ultimate condition,” is the question of intercourse between the peoples
of the earth. Money, as the means of bringing about this intercourse,
should receive primary consideration. Let the fact once be generally
recognized that the world is at last tending to “a unity of the
peoples,” and financial and commercial unity are the introductory
unities upon which to hasten governmental unity. Were these fully
established upon a basis of mutual interest instead of upon the policy
of each obtaining all the personal and selfish advantages possible,
there could no such strifes as the one convulsing Europe to-day ever
occur. Thus it appears that the assimilation of the world under one
common interest is in the first instance a question of a unity of
material interests which must serve as the foundation for all others to
build upon.
Finance and commerce, then, lie at the very threshold of all the
progress that is to be made in the direction of governmental
consolidation, and when so recognized they will be rescued from the
position that they now occupy as the means only of pursuing selfish
interests, and be raised into that of principles and rules of action by
which all intercourse must be regulated. Commerce, in its most
comprehensive sense, does not apply merely to the exchange of the
material products of the world, but to the exchange of intellectual,
moral, social and religious products also, and its application thereby
becomes common to all the interests of humanity. And as finance grows
out of the necessities of commerce, it also becomes equally with
commerce a humanitarian question. It is in this broad and general sense
that all questions regarding it should hereafter be considered and not
upon the basis of how much advantage such a measure will give an
individual or a nation over another individual or nation.
Like all other questions that are now coming prominently before the
world for solution, this one of finance and commerce rises to the
dignity of a question of humanity. They are all to be considered in
regard to their application, not merely to nations, but to all
nations—all peoples—as forming the basis of the future confederation of
the world under one government to be known as the United States of the
World, when all the people will be inspired with a common Religious
sentiment in regard to their primary origin and their ultimate destiny;
when all the peoples will be governed in their relation to each other by
the common social sentiment arising from the recognition of the fact
that they are necessarily a community of brothers from having a common
origin and destiny; when all the peoples will give a common adhesion to
and support the deductions of a Universal Science, let those deductions
militate as they will and must against whatever of speculation and
theory there may still hang like a pall of night over the intellect of
man. To all of these ultimate conditions of mankind, finance and
commerce must furnish the means of attainment; and being thus the first
essentials to the beginning of the actual constructive process which,
when completed, will be this grand consummation, they should be treated
with that gravity and consideration which is due to so grand a position
as they are assigned in the third order of general civilization. Policy
should be entirely discarded from all place in the argument, and
principles should alone be discussed. When the consideration is fairly
begun upon this basis, scientific ideas regarding money will be rapidly
diffused among the people, who now do not even dream that money can be
reduced to the rules of scientific demonstration.
We urge again that this question should receive its proper share of
attention at the hands of our next Congress as being the questions upon
which the future good of mankind depends more immediately than any other
that will be likely to command the undivided attention of it. This once
settled upon the true principles, all other questions which all future
Congresses will have to consider will be virtually determined by it.
NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 1870.