Either he is selling goods on credit, or entering
into contracts, or rendering services which give him the position of
a creditor, and make it of the last importance to him that the value
of money and the state of the public mind about money should not be
materially different six months hence from what they are now.
Of course there is more than one way of defining the term
"self-interest." There is one sense in which it is used by children,
savages, and thieves, and which makes it mean immediate
gratification, and this appears to be the sense in which it is used
by the inflationists in Congress, in considering what is for the
good of those Western men who owe money at the East. In that sense,
it is a good thing for a man to lie, cheat, steal, and embezzle
whenever it shall appear that by so doing he will satisfy his
appetites or put money in his pockets. But civilized and commercial,
to say nothing of Christian, society is founded on the theory that
men look forward and expect to carry on business for several years,
and to lay up money for their old age, and establish their children
in life, and that they recognize the necessity of self-restraint and
loyalty to engagements.
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