property, and the safeguards they threw around capital. Unhappily, in modern European legislation, there are still to be found enactments which are nothing better than attacks upon the rights and liberties of capital. If a man has to save not alone for himself, but also for others, his economy will be more strict than if he had to save for himself alone. If you do away with the right of freely disposing of property, a man will take care to consume all his capital, rather than let it fall into the hands of those for whose benefit he has no mind to accumulate.
The accumulation of capital is often regarded with alarm, which, however, is baseless. We must not forget that capital is only the means of production, and that consequently it must always be profitably employed, else all its value is gone. Where capital is abundant, the capitalist is constrained to lend it at reasonable rates, and to go in search of labor, in order to find an advantageous investment. On the other hand, when there is but little capital, then labor must go in search of the capitalist, and pay him whatever interest he requires. Thus, individual property and the liberty of disposal are upheld by the very arguments that socialists bring to overturn them. The chief benefit of these institutions is to make accumulation of capital possible: this the socialists regard as an injury, for their aim is absolute equality, and they make small account of the interests of civilization. But we who regard civilization as the great aim of humanity find no more difficulty with inequality of capital than with inequality of wages. Some workmen get ten or twenty times as much pay as others, and some save ten or twenty times as much as others. If the capitalist has only to preserve what others have accumulated, or what has come to him by gift or inheritance, does not the workman in like manner profit by his capital of health and intellectual faculties, which he owes partly to inheritance and partly to his education, in order to demand higher pay?
In no country is the habit of saving so general as in France, and this is the securest basis of our prosperity and civilization. The French have been unjustly charged with prodigality; but the reproach should be confined to that quartier of Paris which lies between the Champs Elysées and the Faubourg Montmartre. Without these bounds, all France is steady and industrious. A very moderate estimate puts the annual increase of wealth in France at three milliards of francs. Unfortunately, however, we lose much of the benefit of this saving as a nation by embarking in ruinous adventures. The national debt, which will soon be twenty milliards, has doubled within twenty years. Though we make an annual increase of capital to the amount of three milliards, we annually burden posterity with a debt of a half milliard. Another and more serious defect of the French nation is, that this saving tends to check population; and this fact leads us to consider another element of civilization, viz., the value of the individual.
