We shall teach men nothing, when we tell them that everything we do is done from interest. What! it will be said, is it from motives of interest that the wretched fakir remains stark naked under the burning sun, loaded with chains, dying with hunger, half devoured by vermin, and devouring them in his turn? Yes, most undoubtedly it is; as we have stated elsewhere, he depends upon ascending to the eighteenth heaven, and looks with an eye of pity on the man who will be admitted only into the ninth.

The interest of the Malabar widow, who burns herself with the corpse of her husband, is to recover him in another world, and be there more happy even than the fakir. For, together with their metempsychosis, the Indians have another world; they resemble ourselves; their system admits of contradictions.

Were you ever acquainted with any king or republic that made either war or peace, that issued decrees, or entered into conventions, from any other motive than that of interest?

With respect to the interest of money, consult, in the great “Encyclop?dia,” the article of M. d’Alembert, on “Calculation,” and that of M. Boucher d’Argis, on “Jurisprudence.” We will venture to add a few reflections.

1. Are gold and silver merchandise? Yes; the author of the “Spirit of Laws” does not think so when he says: “Money, which is the price of commodities, is hired and not bought.”

It is both lent and bought. I buy gold with silver, and silver with gold; and their price fluctuates in all commercial countries from day to day.

The law of Holland requires bills of exchange to be paid in the silver coin of the country, and not in gold, if the creditor demands it. Then I buy silver money, and I pay for it in gold, or in cloth, corn, or diamonds.

I am in want of money, corn, or diamonds, for the space of a year; the corn, money, or diamond merchant says — I could, for this year, sell my money, corn, or diamonds to advantage. Let us estimate at four, five, or six per cent., according to the usage of the country, what I should lose by letting you have it. You shall, for instance, return me at the end of the year, twenty-one carats of diamonds for the twenty which I now lend you; twenty-one sacks of corn for the twenty; twenty-one thousand crowns for twenty thousand crowns. Such is interest. It is established among all nations by the law of nature. The maximum or highest rate of interest depends, in every country, on its own particular law. In Rome money is lent on pledges at two and a half per cent., according to law, and the pledges are sold, if the money be not paid at the appointed time. I do not lend upon pledges, and I require only the interest customary in Holland. If I were in China, I should ask of you the customary interest at Macao and Canton.

2. While the parties were proceeding with this bargain at Amsterdam, it happened that there arrived from St. Magliore, a Jansenist (and the fact is perfectly true, he was called the Abbé des Issarts); this Jansenist says to the Dutch merchant, “Take care what you are about; you are absolutely incurring damnation; money must not produce money, ‘nummus nummum non parit.’ No one is allowed to receive interest for his money but when he is willing to sink the principal. The way to be saved is to make a contract with the gentleman; and for twenty thousand crowns which you are never to have returned to you, you and your heirs will receive a thousand crowns per annum to all eternity.”

“You jest,” replies the Dutchman; “you are in this very case proposing to me a usury that is absolutely of the nature of an infinite series. I should (that is, myself and heirs would) in that case receive ba............