Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/166

166 facilitated as much as possible. It seems to us an odd suggestion that rewards should be offered to those judges who in mercantile suits should give judgment with the least delay; and that those merchants who had brought vessels and goods of great account to the port, should be honoured with seats of distinction on public occasions. Xenophon thinks that the state should directly speculate in ships to be let out on profitable terms, and in lodging-houses, warehouses, and shops; a loan should be raised for this purpose, and our financier assumes that the profit on these ventures would be sure to enable the stock-holders to receive 20 per cent on their contributions. It does not occur to him to ask why, if this form of investment would be so remunerative, private capital should not find its way into it, without passing through the hands of the state.

Another speculation which he recommends to the Government of Athens is the purchase of slaves to be hired out to private individuals, for the purpose of working the silver mines of Laurion, near the southern promontory of Attica. He thinks that the state might gradually collect a little family of ten thousand slaves, and let them out at the rate of an obolus ($1 1⁄2$d.) per head per diem. This would give an annual revenue of a hundred talents, or about £24,000. These slaves would be employed by the citizens, or foreigners, in mining for silver, and one twenty-fourth part of all the ore obtained would be paid to the state as a royalty. The whole calculation is based on the assumption that the silver mines of Laurion were inexhaustible, and