  From the days of Plato and Lycurgus to the present times, Social Reformers have sought to restrict or banish the use of money. We do not doubt that its moderate use is essential to civilization and promotive of human happiness and well-being—and we entertain as little doubt, that its excessive use is the most potent of all causes of human inequality of condition, of excessive wealth and luxury with the few, and of great destitution and suffering with the many, and of general effeminacy and corruption of morals. Money is the great weapon in free, equal, and competitive society, which skill and capital employ in the war of the wits, to exploitate and oppress the poor, the improvident, and weak-minded. Its evil effects are greatly aggravated by the credit and banking systems, and by the facilities of intercommunication and locomotion which the world now possesses. Every bargain or exchange is more or less a hostile encounter of wits. Money vastly increases the number of bargains and exchanges, and thus keep society involved, if not in war, at least in unfriendly collision. Within the family, money is not employed between its members. Where the The Socialists derive this idea of dispensing with or restricting the use of money, from Sparta and other ancient States; and to the same sources may be traced almost all their schemes of social improvement. Plato, in his philosophy, borrowed from those sources, and subsequent Socialists have borrowed from him. We annex an interesting article on this subject of money from Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia: UTOPIA; OR, THE HAPPY REPUBLIC."Therefore, I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the richer sort, who, on pretence of managing the public, do only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts that they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all they have so ill acquired, and then, that they may engage the former sort to toil and labor for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they please; and if they can but prevail to get these contrivances established by public authority, which is considered as the representative of the whole people, then they are accounted laws; and yet these wicked men, after they have, by a most insatiable covetousness, divi |
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