Page:Aristopia (1895).pdf/233

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topia were trained in a wiser school. They knew that most war loans must be procured from usurers, and be paid over and over; that the borrowing generation must pay all or more than the debt in interest and the next generation must pay it in principal or go on paying it over and over in interest.

True, a paper currency offers a means of a forced loan without interest, but at the cost of terribly disordering the medium of exchange. In Aristopia, paper-money being issued solely as a medium of exchange, and not as a promise to pay a debt, no more and no less was issued than the wants of trade demanded. The Aristopian paper-money was not redeemable in gold, but in what the holders needed more than gold—any of the necessaries or luxuries of life to be had in the market, and it could not depreciate.

Every invading fleet and army which England sent over to America was either repelled with great loss to the invaders or captured. Nor was America left to fight her battles alone. The arrogant commercial policy into which England had been driven and kept by the clamors of her hordes of shopkeepers and traders, had gained her the enmity of all maritime Europe.