Now, this programme raises two separate questions. One question is
whether the proposed confiscation of interest is in reality, as its
advocates maintain it to be, practicable in the sense that the
disturbances which it would necessarily cause would not interfere with
the production of the fund which it is desired to distribute, and so
perhaps leave all classes poorer and not richer than they are. The other
question is whether such a confiscation would be just. To some people
this second question will possibly seem superfluous. If it can be shown,
they will say, that a policy, the avowed object of which is the
enrichment of the many at the expense of the relatively few, could be
really carried out successfully, and if the many had the power of
insisting on it, an inquiry into its abstract justice is merely a waste
of time; for whenever the wolf is face to face with the lamb, it will
eat up the lamb first and justify its conduct afterwards. And in this
argument there is a certain amount of truth; but those who take it for
the whole truth allow their own cynicism to overreach them. The fact
remains that even the wolves of the human world are obliged to assume,
as a kind of necessary armour, and often as their principal weapon, a
semblance of justice, however they may despise the reality.
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