come, so to adjust my expenditure to it that there should be a
margin on the right side. This margin, of course, accumulated, and
reached in time, say, L1000. Just then, say, the London and
North-Western Railway Company proposed to issue Debenture Stock,
bearing four per cent. interest, for the purpose of extending the
communications, and so increasing the wealth, of the country. Whom in
the world am I injuring--what conceivable wrong am I doing--where or how
am I thwarting "the Will of God"--if I let the Company have my L1000,
and have been receiving from them L40 a year for the use of it ever
since? Unless the money had been forthcoming from some quarter or other,
a work which was absolutely necessary for the prosperity of the nation,
and which finds remunerative employment (K) for an immense number of
Englishmen, enabling them to bring up their families in respectability
and comfort, would never have been accomplished. Will you tell me that
this method of carrying out great commercial enterprises, sanctioned by
experience (L) as the most, if not the only, practicable one, is "not
according to the Will of God"?

153. Take another instance. In Lancashire a large number of cotton mills
have been erected on the joint-stock principle with limited liability.
The thing has been pushed too far probably, and at one time there was a
good deal of unwholesome speculation in floating companies. But that is
not the question before us; and the enterprises gave working men an
opportunity of investing their savings, which was a great stimulus to
thrift, and, so far, an advantage to the country. In a mill, which it
would perhaps cost L50,000 to build and fit with machinery, the
subscribed capital, which would be entitled to a division of profits
after all other demands had been satisfied, would not amount probably to
more than L20,000. The rest would be borrowed at rates of interest
varying according to the conditions of the market. You surely would not
maintain that those who lent their money for such a purpose, and were
content with 5 or 6 per cent, for the use of it, thus enabling, in good
times, the shareholders to realize 20 or 25 per cent, on their
subscribed capital, were doing wrong either to the shareholders or
anyone else, or could in any sense be charged with acting "not according
to the will of God"?

154. Take yet one case more. A farmer asks his landlord to drain his
land. "Gladly," says his squire, "if you will pay me