But he may safely say that the size of horses will never attain to infinity, nor the heads of sheep to nothing.
In the same way, no one can say to what point the price of stockings nor the interest of capitals will come down; but we may safely affirm, when we know the nature of things, that neither the one nor the other will ever arrive at zero, for labor and capital can no more live without recompense than a sheep without a head.
The arguments of M.Proudhon reduce themselves, then, to this: since the most skillful agriculturists are those who have reduced the heads of sheep to the smallest size, we shall have arrived at the highest agricultural perfection when sheep have no longer any heads.

Therefore, in order to realize the perfection, let us behead them.
I have now done with this wearisome discussion.

Why is it that the breath of false doctrine has made it needful to examine into the intimate nature of interest?
I must not leave off without remarking upon a beautiful moral which may be drawn from this law: "The depression of interest is proportioned to the abundance of capitals." This law being granted, if there is a class of men to whom it is more important than to any other that capitals be formed, accumulate, multiply, abound, and superabound, it is certainly the class which borrows them directly or indirectly; it is those men who operate upon _materials_, who gain assistance by _instruments_, who live upon _provisions_, produced and economized by other men.
Imagine, in a vast and fertile country, a population of a thousand inhabitants, destitute of all capital thus defined.

It will assuredly perish by the pangs of hunger.

Let us suppose a case hardly less cruel.
Let us suppose that ten of these savages are provided with instruments and provisions sufficient to work and to live themselves until harvest time, as well as to remunerate the services of eighty laborers.