tion. In barbarous times it is, in
fact, cent. per cent., and more. Then it descends to eighty, sixty,
fifty, forty, twenty, ten, eight, five, four, and three per cent. In
Holland, it has even been as low as two per cent. Hence it is concluded,
that "in proportion as society comes to perfection, it will descend to
zero by the time civilization is complete. In other words, that which
characterizes social perfection is the gratuitousness of credit. When,
therefore, we shall have abolished interest, we shall have reached the
last step of progress." This is mere sophistry, and as such false
arguing may contribute to render popular the unjust, dangerous, and
destructive dogma, that credit should be gratuitous, by representing it
as coincident with social perfection, with the reader's permission I
will examine in a few words this new view of the question.

What is _interest_? It is the service rendered, after a free bargain, by
the borrower to the lender, in remuneration for the service he has
received by the loan. By what law is the rate of these remunerative
services established? By the general law which regulates the equivalent
of all services; that is, by the law of supply and demand.

The more easily a thing is procured, the smaller is the service rendered
by yielding it or lending it. The man who gives me a glass of water in
the Pyrenees, does not render me so great a service as he who allows me
one in the desert of Sahara. If there are many planes, sacks of corn, or
houses, in a country, the use of them is obtained, other things being
equal, on more favorable conditions than if they were few; for the
simple reason, that the lender renders in this case a smaller _relative
service_.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the more abundant capitals are,
the lower is the interest.

Is this saying that it will ever reach zero? No; because, I repeat it,
the principle of a remuneration is in the loan. To say that interest
will be annihilated, is to say that there will never be any motive for
saving, for denying ourselves, in order to form new capitals, nor even
to preserve the old ones. In this case, the waste would immediately
bring a void, and interest would directly reappear.

In that, the nature of the services of which we are speaking does not
differ from any other. Thanks to industrial progress, a pair of
stockings, which used to be worth six francs, has successively been
worth only four, three, and two. No one can