could receive for their money and what
could be made by it, would be an equivalent for incurring the risk and
labour of carrying on business. In this predicament is the property of
widows and orphans; of many public bodies; of charitable institutions;
most property which is vested in trustees; and the property of a great
number of persons unused to business, and who have a distaste for it,
or whose other occupations prevent their engaging in it. How large a
proportion of the property lent to the nation comes under this
description, has been pointed out in Mr. Tooke's _Considerations on the
State of the Currency._

There is another large class, consisting of bankers, bill-brokers, and
others, who are money-lenders by profession; who enter into that
profession with the intention of making such gains as it will yield
them, and who would not be induced to change their business by any but
a very strong pecuniary inducement.

There is, therefore, a large class of persons who are habitually
lenders. On the other hand, all persons in business may be considered
as habitually borrowers. Except in times of stagnation, they are all
desirous of extending their business beyond their own capital, and are
never desirous of lending any portion of their capital except for very
short periods, during which they cannot advantageously invest it in
their own trade.

There is, in short, a productive class, and there is, besides, a class
technically styled the monied class, who live upon the interest of their
capital, without engaging personally in the work of production.

The class of borrowers may be considered as unlimited. There is no
quantity of capital that could be offered to be lent, which the
productive classes would not be willing to borrow, at any rate of
interest which would afford them the slightest excess of profit above a
bare equivalent for the additional risk, incurred by that transaction,
of the evils attendant on insolvency. The only assignable limit to the
inclination to borrow, is the power of giving security: the producers
would find it difficult to borrow more than an amount equal to their own
capital. If more than half the capital of the country were in the hands
of persons who preferred lending it to engaging personally in business,
and if the surplus were greater than could be invested in loans to
Government, or in mortgages upon the property of unproductive consumers;
the competition of lenders would force down t