Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/152

 millions every year in each country—without at last collapsing after protracted agonies to preserve national life. The system of equitable Exchange substituted for the present nefarious one of profit-*mongering would save the souls as well as the bodies of both nations; but that is absolutely impossible without such antecedent laws on Land and Currency as we have pointed out.

It is the same with Currency. You may, for instance, by repealing Peel's Currency Acts of 1819 and 1844, by making an annual issue of Exchequer paper, equal to the taxation, our legal tender, and by superadding to this the advantage of a free but sound commercial currency, in the form of private and joint-stock paper issues adequately secured,—you may by such a reform as this, and by making gold a mere merchandise to rise and fall in the market like all other merchantable commodities according to the law of supply and demand,—you may by this means make money more plentiful and come-at-able for trade purposes, and thus relieve society of a large proportion of its distress,—you may do all this and so far effect much good for society without any other accompanying reforms; but the benefits of such a reform per se would, we contend, be only temporary; they could not be permanent, for want of the other reforms. For a time money would be plentiful, employment abundant, prices and wages high, and trade what is called prosperous; but this very prosperity would soon work its own destruction; it would lead to increased speculation, increased production, increased competition, increased rents for lands and houses, increase of expenditure and taxation, and to a terrific increase of what are called vested interests; it would soon overstock the markets, and glut the warehouses with unsaleable goods. Then would come a crash—a fearful, ruinous crash; mills would run short time or stop; the factories and the workshops would dismiss their hands; multitudes accustomed for some time to full employment and good living would be cast suddenly adrift to beg, borrow, or steal; the workhouses would overflow as the mills and workshops became empty; the shopkeepers would be ruined by forced sales and the lack of legitimate custom. This would react on the manufacturers and merchants, and, through them, on the artisans and labourers. Meanwhile the increased pressure of inflamed rents, taxes, and vested interests would be found intolerable by a people without trade and without employment. Down would go prices and wages again, in despite of the superabundance of money, which would have found its way to and accumulated in the hands of usurers, fixed-income men, and non-productive, overgrown capitalists. In short, we should see a repetition on a larger scale than ever of one of those periodic crises in the commercial world which, under the present system, we invariably find to follow close upon the heels of every great development of our manufacturing and trading prosperity.

It is with Land-reform as with Currency; it would be of comparatively little use to nationalise landed property with the view of throwing open the land to labourers and small farmers, unless you at the same time enabled them, by a sound system of Credit, to