Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/146

 CHAPTER XXI.

NATIONAL SYSTEM OF CURRENCY AND EXCHANGE REQUIRED.

Inadequacy and Absurdity of present Medium of Exchange—Necessity for new National Currency for Home Trade—Example from Iron Currency of Sparta—Labour Notes of Guernsey—Gold and Silver mere Commodities—All four Reforms must be combined.

In this chapter we shall elucidate the remaining two propositions of the League, on the important complementary reforms necessary to be introduced for the expulsion of human slavery from the face of the land, and the full emancipation of industry from the trammels of a false and pernicious system of Currency and Exchange. The sixth and seventh resolutions read as follows:—

"That the National Currency should be based on real, consumable wealth, or on the bonâ fide credit of the State, and not upon the variable and uncertain amount of scarce metals; because a currency depending on such a basis, however suitable in past times, or as a measure of value in present international commerce, has now become, by the increase of population and wealth, wholly inadequate to perform the functions of equitably representing and distributing that wealth; thereby rendering all commodities liable to perpetual fluctuation in price, as those metals happen to be more or less plentiful in any country; increasing to an enormous extent the evils inherent in usury, and in the banking and funding systems (in support of which a legitimate function of the law—the of property—is distorted into an instrument for the  of property to a large amount for the benefit of a small portion of society belonging to what are called vested interests); because, from its liability to become locally or nationally scarce or in excess, that equilibrium which should be maintained between the production and consumption of wealth is destroyed; because, being of intrinsic value in itself, it fosters a vicious trade in money, and a ruinous practice of commercial gambling and speculation; and, finally, because, under the present system of society, it has become confessedly the 'root of all evil' and the main support of that unholy worship of Mammon which now so extensively prevails, to the supplanting of all true religion, natural and revealed.

"That in order to facilitate the transfer of property or service, and the mutual interchange of wealth among the people, to equalise the demand and supply of commodities, to encourage consumption as well as production, and to render it as easy to sell as to buy, it is an important duty of the State to institute in every town and city public marts or stores for the reception of all kinds of exchangeable goods, to be valued by disinterested officers appointed for the pur