EDUCATION.-MONEY.
(To the Editor of the EreningStar.)
Sib, —This is certainly the age of sage invention: Steel leviathans that strike rock-built cities with thunder, and make nations tremble, come up out of the water and traverse the land ; men sail at the bottom of the mighty: deep like some strange monsters, as though it were their natural element, holding" destruction in their hands; emotions, fresh from the heart are inscribed in the self-same characters,: by the same hand at the same instant of time, in two distinct places thousands of miles apart; the atmosphere, will be, it is affirmed, converted into a highway; space and time are actually annihilated ; sound, words, and harmony, light and heat; are stored up and reproduced at will, while thought and expression are vocally interchanged by hearers and speakers invisible to each other by immense distance ; mighty seas and rivers that divide continents and countries are spanned over or walked under; war and destruction are reduced to a science ; mechanism everywhere and in everything supplants human labour; personal communication is held with the spirits of unseen worlds,; while those that can be seen are examined and photographed by scientifically constructed instruments, revealing and measuring the mountains, the crests of waters, the blaaing worlds and mysterious spiral -nebulae ever rolling on, system upon system in phalanx deep and space eternal. Man holds, such complete control over the elements as though he knew all the subtleties of nature, and had almost discovered and would reveal the secret of the principle of life itself. This scientific knowledge, however, some-1 times renders him "oblivious to the ; start- | ling truth that the early inventions of mankind are the most wonderful ever J made. The commencement of human i speech and the analyzatibn of the sounds | of the voice into their simplest forms, and the employment of separate symbols for each, must have originated in the highest order of intellectual power. The knowledge of fire, its use, and the method of kindling and applying it; the development of cerals from wild, grasses, and some others are discoveries and inventions which, in ingenuity, importance, and value, no subsequent discoveries cau compare or excel. From the authors of suck wonderful works as these we should have no reason to hesitate in, or feel ashamed of taking lessons in the art of Government, seeing that in this respect they succeeded so far at least as to provide; their people with labour and abundance. Never to them as to us could be the reproach that, with;allour science, learning, and knowledge of government and money—or the misuse and abuse of both— pauperism, involving millions of human beings, criminals, vices, rings, and social degradation, exist amongst us as institutions. The ancients knew so much ofmoney and its evils as to prevent its standing as a barrier between producer and consumer, extracting from the first the just reward of his labour, and inflicting upon the latter the grievous wrong either of exorbitant price or frustrating his producing power, serving only to enrich he who uses the money but produces nothing. If, however, even the interest of consumers who have produced nothing are to be weighed against those of consumers who have produced something—that ia to say, the drones against the working bees—these working bees always should be, and the time is coming when they must be, the objects of first consideration. Some apprehensions of the evils that had and would result from the unrestricted use of money bare been felt ia all times and in
all nations, being evidenoed in England by the tinkering legislation of the 12th century (Anne), and other acts. As, however, the 17th and 18th centuries (Victoria) makes all rates of interest legal—the stock exchange, moreover, giving full liberty to usury—the terrible evils of a gold and silver currency will be more clearly explained and graphically illustrated from that stand point. Thus, if a newly formed State commenced its currency system with a borrowed capital of ten millions sterling at ten per cent., ten years would extract by interest the capital, leaving the country in r debt ten millions, without one shilling to pay it or a currency for- commerce. Experience! of the first year showing restricted power of exchange by the amount of interest paid >it is borrowed again at the same rate of ten per cent. Thus at the end of the first year,one million have been paid,, .but eleven millions is owed, at the end of the second year two millions has been paid, but twelve millions are owed, and so on until at the end of the tenth year ten millions have been paid, but twenty millions are owed. If, however,,a more approximate calculation is made at compound interest upon the first capital the interest to accrue quarterly, the enormous extracting power of gold will amount in the first year and ■/ upon the first loan to about £1,038,129, * £3,026,500, amounting to' about iihe astounding sum of £19,288,180 pounds in 10 years; and applying simple interettto ; - the second loan the first year's result would be £1,100,000, the second to £2,200,000, making a total of £15,500,000 in ten years, and a grand total of interest < amounting to £24,788,180, thus showing^ that this paltry loan of ten millions Sau\. extracted from the state this- T alinojit incredible sum, then leaving it bankrupt. But the same-process goes on and will ;got* on until the horrible abuse of money' becomes familiarly - known to the real wealth producing classes or until the day spring living flood of knowledge points out the remedy and inaugurates a new .. birth of intelligence and truth.—l am, &c, Bon Ami.
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Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3977, 27 September 1881, Page 2
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939EDUCATION.-MONEY. Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3977, 27 September 1881, Page 2
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