he same way;
and if all wealth consisted of such commodities as are due to the
efforts of man, and to the man-made machinery which assists him, all
interest would be really, as it is said to be by some, indefensible.
But, he continues, since interest on capital such as machinery is not
the whole of the interest paid in the modern world, but is only a minor
part of it, and since in the modern world all forms of capital are
interchangeable, the laws which govern us in our dealings with the
lesser quantity must necessarily be assimilated to those which govern us
in our dealings with the greater. If a ram and a sheep are capital which
yields just interest, because their wool and their progeny are
increments due to nature, and if a ram and a sheep are exchangeable for
some kind of machine, the possession of the one must be placed on a par
with the possession of the other. The machine must be treated, though it
is not so in strictness, as if it were prolific in the same sense as the
beasts are; and a part of what it is used to produce must be paid by the
user to the owner of it.

Now, both these arguments--that which deals with the fact of natural
increase, and that which deals with the assimilation of all such
possessions as are interchangeable--are in principle sound. The first,
indeed, touches the very root of the whole matter; but the first is
exaggerated in his statement of it, and unduly limited in his
application, and the second is wholly unnecessary for proving what he
desires to prove. The first is exaggerated in his statement of it
because, as a matter of fact, the kind of capital whose interest is
described by him as the gift of nature is not the major, it is only a
minor part of the capital yielding interest under the conditions which
obtain to-day. A part far larger is capital in the form of machinery;
and if the distinction which George draws between the two is a true one,
the case of the flocks and herds should be assimilated to that of the
machines, not the case of the machines to that of the flocks and herds.
Interest should be denied to both kinds of capital because machines are
not naturally prolific, instead of being conceded to both because flocks
and herds are so. We shall find, however, that the distinction which
George seeks to establish is illusory, that both kinds of capital yield
interest in the same way, and that his justification of it in the one
case is equally applicable to it in the other.

H