PAPERS ON FINANCE AND COMMERCE.
PAPERS ON FINANCE AND COMMERCE.
PAPERS ON FINANCE AND COMMERCE.
PAPERS ON FINANCE AND COMMERCE.
In our last, the necessity of urging the consideration of the finance question upon Congress, with the view of having the whole range of the matter brought prominently before the country, was proposed. Of all practical questions that require immediate solution, none is of so much importance to man as this; and none more so to woman unless that of equality for herself is. No country can enjoy a series of years of uninterrupted commercial prosperity when that country has a circulating medium which can be affected by the manipulations of shrewd financiers for their own ends. And no financial policy is more ruinous to the true interests of a whole country than that of a constantly changing commercial valuation upon either personal or real estate, excepting alone in the latter, when it becomes the location of more capacity for actual production.
Real estate, abstractly considered, has no appreciable value. It only becomes relatively valuable when labor can make use of it to produce something valuable from it or by it. Absolutely there can be no individual title to any part of the soil of any country. Taken as a whole, the land comprised within the limits of the authority of any government can be made such use of as such government may determine, but as to actual conveyance of absolute individual ownership, that is impossible, because none of the powers involved in the attempt at conveyance could have had any part in the production of said land, and, therefore, could have no right or authority to transfer it, from the fact of an entire lack of title to transfer.
It may be objected that these are merely technical assumptions which the customs of society have never admitted. So, too, may it be objected to all encroachments of scientific principles upon old forms and customs. Nevertheless, science continues to analyze and demonstrate, and the world continues to come more and more under its guidance every year. In the principles of government science has not, until very recently, found grounds of attack. Since it has come to be recognized that there really is a science of society, and consequently that all its structure can be analyzed, understood and guided by its deductions many of the customs and practices that have so long controlled the people are found to be entirely without the support of principles fundamentally necessary to assure a permanently constructive form of society.
Wherever maxims of temporary policy are the guiding rules, there will ever be alternate construction and destruction; but wherever scientific, demonstrable principles are the governing power, there will be found permanency. That “money” is susceptible of analysis, and of being predicated upon a scientific basis is no longer to be questioned. It is a branch of the science of society, and as such must receive consideration as the science itself becomes disseminated among the peoples. It was not many years ago that “the sciences” were unknown in our common schools. It will not be many years hence until the science of society will be a recognized branch of every child’s education in the most enlightened portions of the world. Political economy, which is a branch of social science, is regarded with favor by many now, and, comprehensively speaking, all these questions which have been looked upon as “too abstract” for common comprehension, are found to be the real principles which underlie all social strictures.
First in importance, because it leads to the recognition of the “ultimate condition,” is the question of intercourse between the peoples of the earth. Money, as the means of bringing about this intercourse, should receive primary consideration. Let the fact once be generally recognized that the world is at last tending to “a unity of the peoples,” and financial and commercial unity are the introductory unities upon which to hasten governmental unity. Were these fully established upon a basis of mutual interest instead of upon the policy of each obtaining all the personal and selfish advantages possible, there could no such strifes as the one convulsing Europe to-day ever occur. Thus it appears that the assimilation of the world under one common interestis in the first instance a question of a unity of material interests which must serve as the foundation for all others to build upon.
Finance and commerce, then, lie at the very threshold of all the progress that is to be made in the direction of governmental consolidation, and when so recognized they will be rescued from the position that they now occupy as the means only of pursuing selfish interests, and be raised into that of principles and rules of action by which all intercourse must be regulated. Commerce, in its most comprehensive sense, does not apply merely to the exchange of the material products of the world, but to the exchange of intellectual, moral, social and religious products also, and its application thereby becomes common to all the interests of humanity. And as finance grows out of the necessities of commerce, it also becomes equally with commerce a humanitarian question. It is in this broad and general sense that all questions regarding it should hereafter be considered and not upon the basis of how much advantage such a measure will give an individual or a nation over another individual or nation.
Like all other questions that are now coming prominently before the world for solution, this one of finance and commerce rises to the dignity of a question of humanity. They are all to be considered in regard to their application, not merely to nations, but to all nations—all peoples—as forming the basis of the future confederation of the world under one government to be known as the United States of the World, when all the people will be inspired with a common Religious sentiment in regard to their primary origin and their ultimate destiny; when all the peoples will be governed in their relation to each other by the common social sentiment arising from the recognition of the fact that they are necessarily a community of brothers from having a common origin and destiny; when all the peoples will give a common adhesion to and support the deductions of a Universal Science, let those deductions militate as they will and must against whatever of speculation and theory there may still hang like a pall of night over the intellect of man. To all of these ultimate conditions of mankind, finance and commerce must furnish the means of attainment; and being thus the first essentials to the beginning of the actual constructive process which, when completed, will be this grand consummation, they should be treated with that gravity and consideration which is due to so grand a position as they are assigned in the third order of general civilization. Policy should be entirely discarded from all place in the argument, and principles should alone be discussed. When the consideration is fairlybegun upon this basis, scientific ideas regarding money will be rapidly diffused among the people, who now do not even dream that money can be reduced to the rules of scientific demonstration.
We urge again that this question should receive its proper share of attention at the hands of our next Congress as being the questions upon which the future good of mankind depends more immediately than any other that will be likely to command the undivided attention of it. This once settled upon the true principles, all other questions which all future Congresses will have to consider will be virtually determined by it.
New York, Nov. 4, 1870.
New York, Nov. 4, 1870.
New York, Nov. 4, 1870.
New York, Nov. 4, 1870.